Dear ones,
On an unseasonably cold March afternoon in 2003, I stood in the middle of Pennsylvania Ave., methodically raising my arm up and down with my gloved index finger pointed toward the White House, my voice making clouds in the air as I bellowed with my comrades: “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!” It’s a chorus chant that will be familiar to longtime protestors, and one we used a lot during demonstrations against the Iraq War. “Bush Lies, People Die,” read a sign, “Hey ho, what do you say, how many kids did you kill today?” I remember sing-songing later in the march. “Somewhere in Texas, a town lost their local idiot,” another sign said.
I remember experiencing the glee of cutting down the enemy. I remember how good it felt to ridicule George Bush for being unintelligent and Dick Cheney for being evil. “DESTROY WHAT DESTROYS YOU,” a friend of mine once spray painted on a building during a riot. With words or molotovs, this advice seemed apt.
Any activist or organizer will be familiar with shame as a tactic. We see it show up in aforementioned chants and graffiti, as well as confrontational direct action that amplifies the wrong-doing of a person or entity (seen in countless examples from groups like ACT UP, Earth First!, PETA, the Dreamers, etc.), and more recently in the form of online call outs (that veer between, I would argue, accountability and shame). And many will remember the powerful moment this past June when Black Visions collective members got the mayor of Minneapolis to come out of his apartment and tell the crowd on a megaphone whether or not he would abolish the police; when he said “no,” the crowd broke into “Go home Jacob, go home!” followed shortly after by that same chant I learned in DC. Just one word over and over: “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
*
In March of 2015, I did a lot of curling up in small spaces in the fetal position and quietly weeping while reading self-help books. I’m able to write about it now with a bit of humor, but the truth is, getting diagnosed with complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) while going through a breakup and confronting trauma from your childhood that you never previously acknowledged...is dark. Until that period of time, I never understood the concept of “barely being able to get out of bed,” but swimming through old wounds that ended up having last impacts makes basic tasks seem nearly impossible. Commuting to work felt dangerous because what if I had a panic attack or cried so hard I couldn’t see the traffic in front of me? I hated the events and circumstances that caused the trauma, but barely surviving the aftermath of it made me also hate myself.
*
In a recent episode of her podcast, researcher-turned-pop-psych-guru Brené Brown argues that shame is never an effective social justice strategy. She invokes Audre Lorde to say that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” and clarifies, “shame is a tool of oppression.”
Brown’s research on shame was life-changing for me while I was working through my trauma diagnosis. One of her key insights about shame is that it’s the evil twin of guilt. She explains: “shame is ‘I’m bad’ and guilt is ‘I did something bad.’ Shame is a focus on self; guilt is a focus on behavior.” In those curled up moments in small spaces, I closed my eyes and repeated, “I am not bad, I am not bad, I am not bad” over and over until I was open to considering the possibility (maybe) of believing it.
It took me a while to even understand I needed to focus on shame at all. The thing about shame is that it shows up in disguise: anger, resentment, even (sometimes especially) as superiority. Even shaking in my therapist’s office, whispering quietly that “I feel like a monster,” I didn’t understand that perhaps shame was at the root of this -- because just as quickly I was telling her how angry I was with X, or insisting that I was right about Y. But Brown gave me a “breakthrough moment”: with my head on my cat’s big belly and my knees in my chest, I plopped tears onto one of her books when I saw myself in the pages. “You do not have to be good,” I remember thinking of the Mary Oliver poem, “but that doesn’t mean that I am bad.”
*
A simple lesson from shame work is that “you can’t hate yourself into changing (or healing).” Anyone who has struggled with addiction will be familiar with this aphorism - you can’t hate yourself into stopping drinking, or eating in ways you don’t want to, or engaging in any behavior you decide is harmful that you want to stop. Trauma survivors also know this well: you can’t hate yourself into loving yourself. I have my story, clinical research, and millions of other stories to support that this takeaway is true: shame doesn’t change anything. It does the opposite: it keeps you stuck, it keeps you cycling in self-and-other-destruction, it keeps you in making excuses instead of looking at the root of the wound. “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change,” writes Brown.
And yet.
“Often groups spring up around sites of shame,” Elspeth Probyn writes in Blush: Faces of Shame, “and a politics that actively seeks to cause shame in those seen as the enemy.”
Queer people know this well. It is a reclaiming of what has been shamed (gay sex to start with) that gives a sense of identity and creates what Judith Butler calls the “strategic essentialism” needed for political organizing. It is shame, of course, that gave us “Pride.”
Eve Sedegwick furthers that the phrase, ‘Shame on you!’ is “transformational grammar”; indeed the opposite of the stagnancy Brown would suggest.
And although I am admittedly nearly always against public, online call-outs of individuals, many activists compellingly argue that naming (often) men who have caused sexual violence is a powerful way to keep others safe. Further, online callouts, shaming, or doxxing of racists and white supremacists has resulted in meaningful consequences, such as job loss or de-platforming. The difference between accountability and shaming is an important one, but in online spaces especially, the line can get blurry. Some would argue that risk is worth it.
*
Cognitive dissonance is the phenomenon of having inconsistent -sometimes diametrically opposed - thoughts at the same time. I find myself here in regards to shame. What I know is true is that shame is more harmful than helpful in changing behavior. What I also know is true is that shame is an incredibly powerful political tool. Can both these things be true at once, or is Brown right that we should stop using shame altogether, including in our social movements? Or is Malcolm X (via Frantz Fanon) right: we should fight for liberation by any means necessary?
It’s possible that it’s a bit of both. Part of me thinks a simple solution is that shame can and should be utilized against entities and structures (banks, America, police as an organization, capitalism, white supremacy and so on), and also used to shame individuals with power to directly uplift those systems. This means people like the president, CEOs, white supremacists with platforms (and so on) are fair game; but that maybe we need a different approach for those who may be wrapped up in those systems (who have no substantial power), but may be capable of changing their beliefs. Would it be beneficial for us to consider how shaming everyone on the alt-right (including nearly-powerless insecure, missguided white men) may do what Brown says, which is shut them down and make them dig their heels into vengeance even more? Are we willing to consider that public callouts may create a kind of shame that will be hard to undo, and that healing for the person who caused harm (which I believe is necessary for stopping harm), may become near-impossible?
Reader, I don’t know the answer to this. But I think it’s worth considering that what works for us on a microcosmic level may work on the macro too; that if we want “change” we need healing, and that shame can’t be a part of it. It’s also worth considering that power imbalances means the gloves come off, and we’ll use whatever we need to win.
*
Movement comes from healing shame, and also hurling it. But is it movement in opposite directions? I want to go the way the gets us free.
Love & solidarity,
Raechel
Read, Watch, Listen.
An excerpt from Lee Weiner’s new book A Conspiracy to Riot about protesting the 1968 DNC. A smart reflection on Ivan Illach’s Tools for Conviviality. Long before Covid, disability justice advocates were advocating for teachers to see the value in centering online learning; here’s an example of why. How digital tech divides are growing wider during Covid. And Gala Mukomolova on June Jordan and the moon: “June Jordan knew that alongside revolution, there’s herbal tea and lovers who want to run a washcloth over your grief. She knew what the moon knew, and what you now know too, connected as we are.”
Mutual Aid.
Monday was Overdose Awareness Day (I recommend this thread on some complexities about how it’s taken up). In honor of it, my humble mutual aid tip of the week is to take a Narcan training. This kind of training will equip you to administer naloxone, which is a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses. I highly recommend you seek out a training via your local harm reduction organization/collective (their politics will likely be much better than some other places), but if that’s not an option, just do a Google (or a Facebook search can be useful too) for “your city” + “Narcan training” (or “Naloxone training”). It’s a life-saving skill to have!
Joy & Attention.
Bike rides. Chilly autumn air. Hot coffee. The sweet kitties. The full moon. September. Voice notes from B. Voice notes from M. Tarot & picnicking with J. A very sweet, fulfilling, and exciting meeting with my Black & Pink collective. Back yard fire with T, D, & M. The new Kevin Morby video. Attending a very sweet virtual wedding. Seeing fellow Belt author, Jen Howard, make an appearance in the New York Times Review of Books! Tarot & enneagraming with L. A fun podcast interview for Rust Belt Femme. My comrades across the country still out in the streets, even in the face of incredibly scary and traumatizing events. Starting to pack for Cleveland. The incredibly romantic shift from late summer to early fall that makes everything dreamier. <3
(Note: Last week I requested that readers send me their lists of Joy & Attention, and I was overwhelmed by the response! Thank you all for these beautiful reflections. There were way too many to post today, so I’ll be sharing them in pieces every week. Keep them coming! I’d be delighted to get new lists every week. They’ll make an appearance within a few weeks after you send them. <3)
...& from the collective
the japanese house’s dionne. the “am i a lesbian” masterdoc. rereading childhood favourite books and realising they’re still good! watching a lil bat fly around outside our house at night. the twilight movie soundtracks. new girl bloopers. staying up till 2 with a book and knowing i can stay up to finish it because it's the weekend and i don't have work in the morning. Trees dancing in the breeze this morning: the tallest ones with leaves and thin branches swaying up high while the thick bottom parts were completely still. If you don't look up, you'd never know they were moving; that the same tree could seem completely different when seen from different perspectives. BLM uprisings. Vegan baking while listening to podcasts (Black Frasier; You’re Wrong About; The Struggle Bus). Memoirs (Cameron Esposito’s, yours, and now Mark Lanegan’s). Naming my limits and practicing boundaries, even though it’s hard.My partner and my cat somehow getting cuter with each passing day.Queer community and friendships.Cooler weather. Your newsletter and this invitation to reply. Finally some cooler weather here in Berlin, and rain (no more sweating through masks!). Being able to work a little on my own newsletter. My rotation in cardiology being better than expected (the bar was low…). Making baby step progress in planning my novel. Fresh sheets. Yoga and meditation. Feeling better after exercise. Having found inspiration for dinner just as I got hungry. My 19 year old son being pulled over on Sunday by the Charlotte County sheriff in Florida (where we live) with a rifle in the back seat (dumb, I know, but a story for another time)...and surviving. He is a white-presenting multiracial (Black/Spanish/Asian/Native American/Irish) boy who is the angel of my heart and life. Danielle Dulsky’s books and The HAG School. Lunar meditations. Massage therapy school. Radical love letters that bring my awareness to a new level. The Midwest Trans Prisoner pen pal project. A thrifted, found piece of art that was $4. Daily afternoon thunderstorms. My tall, dark and handsome Ohio boy with the sparkling blue-green eyes and calm, lilting voice that always finds a way to settle me. The garden outside my window. Small, sometimes private, acts of resistance.