Shaming the Victims
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Flip Side Barbara Ehrenreich Shaming the Victims Iwas on a radio show in Minneapolis, listening to the callers tell their tales of economic woe: an eight-month job search followed by a job at half...
...It doesn't always work, of course...
...Hester Prynne didn't pin that scarlet A on her own chest...
...The ultimate trick is to make people ashamed of the injuries inflicted upon them...
...In many cultures, rape renders a woman an unmarriageable pariah...
...Laid-off and coming up empty on your job search...
...Dan Quayle and rightwing writer Charles Murray attempted to restigmatize out-of-wedlock births by restoring the old pejorative term "illegitimate...
...Her website is www.barbaraehrenreich.com...
...an eighteen-month search leading to serious depression...
...All the rest of us should hold our heads up high...
...Shame was far more effective in the buildup to welfare reform...
...Even in America, often a woman's first response to sexual harassment or assault is to feel soiled and shamed, as if she had brought the unwanted advances on herself...
...During a commercial break, my host- the amiable Jack Rice-noted that almost all these stories were told in the third person, usually as something that had happened to a spouse...
...Snap out of it, I want to say...
...In fact, it may be wiser to think of shame as a relationship rather than just a feeling: a relationship of domination in which the mocking judgments of the dominant are internalized by the dominated...
...a five-year search leading to nothing at all...
...Then what are you...
...In case anyone fails to feel their full measure of shame over unemployment, there is an entire shame industry to whip them into shape: the career coaches, self-help books, motivational speakers, and business gurus who preach that whatever happens to you must be a result of your own attitude...
...That's deeply internalized shame...
...It's easy enough for enlightened members of the comfortable classes to insist there's no reason for shame: You didn't bring the layoff down on yourself...
...You must be too negative, and hence attracting negative circumstances into your life...
...Flip Side Barbara Ehrenreich Shaming the Victims Iwas on a radio show in Minneapolis, listening to the callers tell their tales of economic woe: an eight-month job search followed by a job at half the person's former pay...
...Not working...
...Blame the economy or its corporate chieftains...
...Were some of the callers just too embarrassed to own their own stories-too crushed by the shame of layoffs and unemployment...
...But somehow the country wasn't ready to label millions of babies bastards...
...Barbara Ehrenreich is a columnist for The Progressive...
...Something similar goes on in the case of the laid off and unemployed, thanks to the prevailing Calvinist form of Protestantism, according to which productivity and employment are the source of one's identity as well as one's income...
...And to put the Calvinist message in crude theological terms: Go to hell...
...Shame on Ford and GM for putting all their eggs in the SUV basket and then laying off thousands...
...Instead, let's turn it against the aggrievers...
...But shame is a verb as well as a noun...
...To paraphrase one career coach I encountered during my research for Bait and Switch: We're not here to talk about the economy or the market...
...The peasant who stepped out of line could be derided for daring to question his "betters...
...Shame is a potent weapon, but it should never be used against the already-injured and aggrieved...
...Just don't blame yourself...
...In Pakistan today-one of our more embarrassing allies-a woman who brings charges of rape can be punished for adultery...
...there are shamers and shamees...
...The woman who spoke out against patriarchal restrictions could be dismissed as a harridan or even a slut...
...we're here to talk about you...
...Her latest book is "Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream...
...you didn't determine that the maximum wage in your line of work would be in the neighborhood of $8 an hour...
...Almost nobody arrives at shame on their own...
...Shame on Congress for leaving us with an unemployment insurance program that covers only a little more than a third of the laid-off...
...Shaming can be a more effective means of social control than force...
...Shame hangs heavy over the economic landscape: the shame of the newly laid-off, the shame of the chronically poor...
...Shame on the CEOs who make eight-figure incomes while their lowest-paid employees trudge between food banks...
...I remember talking to a young (white) woman who professed great enthusiasm for draconian forms of welfare reform-only to admit that she herself had been raised on welfare by a beloved and plucky single mother...
...Consistently stereotyped as lazy, promiscuous parasites, welfare recipients largely failed to rally in their own defense...
Vol. 70 • November 2006 • No. 11
