The value of empathy
I'm sharing the story below because it helped me to identify with those who are victims of public shaming. I remember experiencing the hot "...flush of red under the surface of..." my own skin, when I was a child.
Now when I see it happening to others, the heat returns, just as it did when I read some of the responses to this thread. We've probably all experienced the feeling of shame at one time or another, but what do we do when we see it happening now?
Please, can we stop with the stereotyping, name-calling, and shaming of others? Everyone has a right to feel comfortable here, despite their sexual, racial, social, and cultural backgrounds.
'if you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive. - Bene Brown
A year or two ago, I walked down the local high street with my openly gay younger brother. We were on our way to a party, and he was wearing skin-tight jeans and jacket adorned with feathers and sequins. I am never embarrassed to be seen with him, but on this occasion I felt uncomfortable. I noticed the stares from strangers and the sniggers from teenage boys, huddled outside the kebab shop, frightened, perhaps, by this confident display of archetypal homosexuality. As we crossed the road a woman pushing a pram stopped and gawped, 'fucking dirty queer', she shouted, shaking her head and walking away at speed, as if she couldn't bear to be near us.
It's possible that my brother wasn't bothered by this abuse - we both ignored it - but I noticed a flush of red under the surface of his skin. And I felt ashamed; he'd been abused and humiliated simply for walking down the street, and I had done nothing.
Shame is a powerful emotion. 'Shame operates through large and small acts of violence,' artist Jordan McKenzie tells me. 'For shame to flourish, you need a culture of silence and complicity'. McKenzie is developing his new project, Shame Chorus, which uses shame stories told by gay men to explore the relationship between shame and sexuality.
Researcher Bene Brown writes that, 'if you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive.'