I have felt shame. I know this feeling.
Insidious, pounding, discomforting. The weight of an elephant on my chest, crushing my rib cage. The tension of a prey in every muscle, standing straight, scrutinizing the unwelcoming surroundings.
I have felt shame. I know why it happened.
After mistreating a friend, sure. Thinking back on the drunken, foolish bickering, abrasively my carefully hidden flaws exposed: selfishness, insecurity. Fear of being misperceived, fear of being disliked.
After stumbling in public, knees and hands on the ground, I swear I can feel the stares poking my back, a pin holder.
The underlying commonality: a misstep, a mistake, an error on my behalf. I should have acted differently. I should have behaved.
I have felt shame. I know why it happened. At least, I think.
I not only felt shame for my actions. As it happens, you know, I felt it for other people’s actions.
I felt shame when my mother revealed to my crush that I liked him in primary school.
I felt shame when the people I introduced didn’t like each other.
I even felt shame because of the barbaric actions of humankind: wars, genocides, and inequality.
I guess, in a way, I feel responsible for others, even if their actions are out of my control: a little talking cricket sitting right by my ear whispers to my nervous system, “STIFFEN! TENSE UP! MAYDAY, I REPEAT, MAYDAY.”
I have felt shame after being assaulted, and I do not know why it happened.
I have felt shame even when the causal link between event and reaction is blurrier.
I can try and rationalize the feeling: human modesty, innate decency. Yet, it doesn’t add up.
I understand when shame is a byproduct of my own shit actions, or even other people’s shit actions that reflected on my persona.
But why does my brain suggest shame as an immediate reaction to wrongdoing done TO me? By someone whose primary intent was to take advantage of my body, an act so vile. I would understand rage, even sadness, but shame?
Why do I feel the need to wash other people’s sins off my skin? Scratch my legs so hard it hurts. I wish to molt, leaving my violated body behind, an undesired cocoon.
Maybe it is just like when I fell in front of all those people: I must have committed a misstep.
Yes, that is it.
I must have been distracted for a second, ruinously turned the wrong corner, and stupidly walked right into an insidious bump on the road. Tripped and fell over.
Dumb me!
A little more attention, and I could have avoided it. Avoided the shame of such a grandiose crash.
And if I think about it, it is kind of like when my high school friend embarrassed me in front of my university classmates. With his slightly racist joke, so out of place, his vigorous laugh echoed in tense silence.
Mortified, I felt his words as a direct extension of mine. It’s me who brought him there; it’s me who created the situation we found ourselves in.
Yes, if only I had been a bit more cautious of my surroundings and the people we were interacting with.
I lost control.
Why did I pour more wine into his glass, drink with him, and entertain familiar banter?
I could have avoided it. Avoided the disappointed looks of my new friends, seeing me in a different light.
Maybe that is it. I feel shame because, within me, I feel guilt. I feel guilty because if it happened, it’s because I let it.
So many times, I was warned against acting in a certain way: smiling at strangers, getting too drunk, too high, too loud, and too happy.
So many times, I decided that I could and should be in control all the time.
If I act as I am told, I can at least be free of the guilt.
If I act as I am told, I will at least have someone to blame, other than myself.
But I wasn’t wearing a revealing top. I wasn’t drunk or high. I wasn’t smiling; neither was I rude. I was everything I was always told to be.
…
The European Institute for Gender Equality reports that only 1 in 8 who experience violence reported the crime to the police, 1 in 5 to social services, and 1 in 20 to a victim support service.
The research further emphasizes the complex nature of abuse reporting, fueled by environmental factors and internal psychological dilemmas.
And I see why. Reporting is only marginally a matter of justice; it is about reputation, future perspectives, stigma, and prejudice.
If surgically analyzed, any situation can be made into what it isn’t, and a victim can be reduced to a stereotype: the blonde bimbo, the frigid bitch, the lesbian that “still needs to have a good ride.”
Amnesty reports that, “out of the 31 European countries covered in Amnesty’s briefing, only Ireland, the UK, Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg and Sweden define rape as sex without consent.”
How can women not feel shame when the very reason for their suffering is belittled by those same states that encourage them to report?
We look down on women who come forward, even years after the occurrence of the crime. We pick and choose the battles to fight. We advocate for guaranteeism but lack empathy. Victims are being publicly scrutinized on their “real” intentions, their “second motifs,” and the reasoning why they didn’t come forward earlier. Yet rarely do I see the same blind trust placed on men be directed towards women.
We fail to try and put ourselves in other people’s shoes: is it so hard to comprehend risks that follow showing up to a police station? Being morally and physically inspected? Putting at stake your whole career, family, friend group, and life?
The more I think, the more I convince myself I know nothing.
I want every woman who will read this article, if any, to know that my experience is theirs.