Fuck Being Ashamed!

Shame sucks. It makes us want to hide and it pushes other people away. Yet we live in a world full of it: shame around sex, slut-shaming, victim-blaming, body-shaming, performance anxiety, kink-shaming, internalized homophobia and transphobia, fear of being judged, being ostracized from communities, and more. Lots of shame is rooted in injustice. Shame props up oppressive systems. We feel bad for the ways that we don't conform to others expectations of us or the dominant society. Misogyny, white supremacy, ableism, heteronormativity, compulsory monogamy all work to make us feel bad. Shame convinces us that we're alone, and that's usually not true. Even if we have vastly different experiences and privileges, we all experience shame. It's not a competition of who has it worse, we should all be working together to dismantle useless shame. Talking about the ways we feel ashamed helps us let go of the harsh self-criticisms and realize we don't need to carry that weight with us. 

Here are a few things I constantly have to remind myself I shouldn't be ashamed of (even if it's fucking hard): 

[CW: mention of eating disorder in #1 and sexual assault in #2] 

My body: I spent my entire adolescence obsessing over my changing body. I wanted to remain stick thin and puberty wasn't cooperating. It didn't help that my dance instructors also wanted skinny and weren't afraid to say it. There were plenty of fights with my parents about eating, getting dragged to doctors when I refused, and lying to everyone about it. I would get so wrapped up in the number on the scale that I missed almost everything else that was going on in my life at that. time. I hated my body, my fixation was mostly on my boobs. I wanted them gone completely. I thought by boobs were fucked up for being asymmetrical rather than realizing it's incredibly common (in half of people). It didn't actually matter what I looked like, nothing would have pleased me. It took years and years and years before I could stand to look at myself in the mirror without wanting to restrict.  

Body-shame is bullshit. There's a multi-billion dollar beauty and diet industry invested in making us feel like shit. Regardless of how you look, body-shame can become a big problem for anyone. In reality, you don't get to choose your genetics, and there's only so much you can do to alter your appearance (though these industries insists otherwise). Once you fall into a shame spiral, the things you can change are never enough. It wasn't until well into my 20s that I realized that being happy with the way I look meant I had to change inside not outside. Part of recovery meant I had to be gentle and learn to look at myself in the mirror with neutrality rather than criticism. I also had to set really strict boundaries with myself. This past Christmas, I stepped on a scale for the first time in 5+ years, violating a boundary I'd upheld to that point. Seeing my weight sent me spiraling again.  Even after years of work, it's easy to fall into destructive thought patterns. The shame doesn't just go away, but I know it's my responsibility to keep trying to love myself instead. I don't need to fall back into a hole of self-hate. What I look like is irrelevant to my worth. Body-shame is bullshit. 

Being a SV survivor: My freshman year of college I was assaulted by someone I trusted. It sent me into a tailspin of shame. I felt so betrayed. I believed at the time that I must have done something to deserve it. I tried to convince myself that I'd misread the situation. Turns out, being drugged and waking up in a pool of blood, can't be read as consensual. I didn't know how to talk about it for months. When I confronted the person about it, he insisted that I'd wanted it, even if I was completely incapacitated. I knew that couldn't possibly be true but the conversations around consent were nearly non-existent, and I didn't trust myself. I kept my mouth shut. It wasn't until I started experiencing severe pain when I tried to have sex again that I opened up to my gynecologist about what had happened. She diagnosed me with vulvodynia and told me the best thing to do was to stop thinking about that experience. This was before #MeToo.

Victim-blaming is bullshit. No one chooses to be assaulted. No one chooses to be the victim of any crime. No one chooses to be drugged against their will, OBVIOUSLY. It's degrading, terrifying, and super fucked up to have your bodily autonomy brutally taken from you. Sexual violence sucks. I work with past offenders now and believe folks are able to take responsibility and change their behavior. It's important to me to help folks break patterns of sexual aggression, and I believe that the majority of people are able to. But the truth is, changing doesn't undo the harmful impact that past behavior has on victims. I hope for my offender's sake that he's changed. But even if he comes to terms with his mistakes, that doesn't actually help me. I still have that memory. I still get triggered. I still have to work to not blame myself.  It sucks. This person felt entitled to my body, which he wasn't. No one is entitled to anyone's body without clear on-going enthusiastic consent. Period. He took anyways. He went so far as making sure I wasn't consciously able to say no. His blatant disregard for my humanity is his burden to bear. His actions are 100% not my fault. It's lunacy for me to blame myself. Sexual violence is never the survivor's fault in any context. Victim-blaming is bullshit. 

Internalized homophobia: The first times I tried to come out were unsuccessful. I was told I didn't look like a "real gay" and that my queerness was just a result of "bad experiences with men" (my mother's words). I felt rejected which turned to shame. I crawled back into the closet for another six years. I didn't have queer people in my life to affirm my identity and tell me that was nonsense. I believed the people in my life rather than what was authentic to me. Since I had a male partner, I told myself that my attraction to women was probably a figment of my imagination. I felt incompetent at being straight but assumed I should just try harder. I believed I was doing something wrong which was inhibiting my attraction to the men I dated. I dismissed my queerness for a long time. I stayed in the closet instead of facing the shame. Being straight around other people somehow seemed easier, even if it felt unbearable inside.  

Internalized homophobia is bullshit. Heteronormativity is so prevalent; it tells us that being straight is the only option. Even if you have supportive friends and families, the dominant culture doesn't fully accept us, so you're not immune from shame. Gay marriage wasn't legalized for four years after I first tried to come out. We internalize these injustices. We learn to be ashamed. If you're unfamiliar with internalized homophobia, Rainbow Project explains it well. Major religions tell us we can become straight if we choose a moral path. Companies, schools, and communities tell us we'll be tolerated if we don't flaunt our queerness. Denying your attraction is nonsense; yet most of us do when we're in the closet. It's easier to believe that we're broken for the ways we feel desire and love than to believe that the lessons we learn are broken. And sometimes shame isn't the only thing holding us back, being queer can be dangerous. It's not always safe to be out. All of these considerations can be a lot to deal with. But end of the day, internalized homophobia does not make people straight; it makes us hate ourselves; it makes us hate other queers; it makes us gate keep our community. We deserve to feel good about our attractions. There's nothing wrong with expressing authentic identities. Internalized homophobia is bullshit.  

Being sexual: I've written before about having my nudes leaked when I was a teen. I learned really quickly from that experience that the rules for sex was different for boys and girls. I remember specifically how vicious the other girls were, they hated what I'd done and made it clear they were better than me for not being in my shoes.  The rhetoric was (and is) always "You shouldn't have taken them, what did you expect, slut?" rather than "he shouldn't have leaked them without your consent, that's a form of sexual violence." The double standards are real. Again, I knew deep down that I should be the one who decides what I do with my body. I knew it didn't make sense to be called a slut for having sex (especially when he was applauded for his "conquest"). I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, but it's still hard being shamed by your peers. It took a really long time to fully recognize my sexuality as an awesome and worthy part of me. For a long time, I felt it was better to hide what I was doing, even if it brought me pleasure. 

Slut-shaming is bullshit. Under patriarchy, women and trans people's sexuality is constantly under siege. Folks who claim their sexuality are threatened with retaliatory violence. Being a slut fundamentally challenges the place women, and folks who experience oppression under patriarchy, are allowed to occupy in society. As we've said, sex isn't just sex; sex is power. When we claim our sexualities and insist on choosing who we fuck, how we fuck, and when we fuck, we destabilize the patriarchal status quo. Read Down Girl by Kate Mann for an in-depth analysis of misogyny if this is unfamiliar to you. But sex shouldn't be something that's used as a form of control. We should get to choose how we engage with pleasure. There's nothing wrong with being allowed to set the terms for your consent. Slut-shaming attempts to give only cishet men the power to decide who has sex, how, and when. Reclaiming your sexuality is hard. But it's ultimately other people's problem to work through why they feel the need to get sex through abuse of power. Your pleasure matters. Slut-shaming is bullshit.  

Needing support around mental health: I struggle every day with emotional regulation. Even if I logically know these dysregulated responses are ways that my mind and body attempt to protect me, I still feel embarrassed. There's a lot of stigma around mental health, disabilities, and asking for accommodations. People often treat mental health challenges as personal failures. And while therapy is starting to be more normalized, it certainly hasn't always been this way. It's easy to beat myself up for having "bad days" or for not being able to work. I have to constantly use tools to get through a day, and backsliding can be incredibly frustrating. I believed for a long time that my worth was dependent on my ability to conceal mental illness. It's taken so long to open up and ask for support from the people in my life. I've felt ashamed for needing accommodations that I think "normal" people don't need. 

Ableism is bullshit. The notion that we need to function "normally" is a capitalist construct. It's not true. Yet, our worth is often measured through our ability to be productive. Folks who require different accommodations are told that they're worthless or broken. Obviously, different disabilities require different types of support. This should not be a problem. People are more than how much they work.