I don’t know Raj Kundra’s story. Frankly, I’m not concerned about the veracity of the story. What concerns me are the range of reactions that the news received in my household and the kind of content that has been created around it.
My mother sympathized with the wife and children. My father bemoaned the breakdown of society, values and culture. My sister reacted to the exploitation inherent in the story and I reacted to the breach of consent.
I’m not saying that my parents’ reactions are invalid. But that they’re predictable. In the sense that we are, once again, hiding behind a moral high ground and resorting to shame. We’re calling them ‘dirty’ movies – not because they’re exploitative but because in India, everything that shouldn’t be shameful is shameful.
We have weaponized shame as a means of keeping everyone in control. We thrive on shame. It’s our currency. What does it say about how broken we are when in a story of the perpetrator of violence and the recipient of violence, it’s the recipient who is wrong, who must take responsibility, who must bear the marks of shame?
What really shames me is that almost every LGBT+ content I have consumed comes with an attached, accepted baggage of shame. Every woman’s story comes with a free attachment of shame. Every story where anyone – even someone like Naomi Osaka or Simone Biles or the volleyball team that refused to play in bikini bottoms, or the runner who was fined for wearing too small bottoms – does anything that makes anyone uncomfortable comes with shame.
Why. Why have we made shame such an acceptable part of our lived experiences?
And with this shame comes the inherent price of ‘you are not enough.’
I’m not saying I’m above it. I’m constantly ashamed of my body. So much so that when I was scrolling through an apparel app and I saw someone of my body shape, instead of going WOW, I cringed.
I cringed.
I did correct myself. I did tell myself that the only reason I’m cringing right now is seeing someone of my shape is so novel that I don’t know how to handle it. So I made myself look at that model till that feeling went away.
This was one instance. I’m sure if I sit to count, I’ll come up with several other things I’m ashamed of.
Shame is addicting. Because it plays into your insecurities and gives you an “out” where either you rebel or you learn to hide. And if I try and dive deep into this shame, I’ll probably realize that that’s not even how I feel. It’s a borrowed feeling, from someone who is/was perhaps equally traumatized.
Speaking of, there is a quote from James Baldwin which I came across while I was *not* reviewing his book Giovanni’s Room. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, the reason the homosexual experience is so traumatizing is because we as a society are traumatized.
Instead of healing from this trauma, we keep passing it on to others, like we are in an endless game of passing-the-parcel and the music refuses to stop.
While I have taken only baby steps in dealing with my shame, the exercise that has helped me is to say to myself, in as many clear and concise words as I can: I am ashamed of…
Seeing it like that in black and white tells me how ridiculous it is to be ashamed of my body. It’s mine, my own, my precious. And well I damn treat it like my precious. It’s the only one I’m getting.
Stop passing the shame, and deal with yours first. You may not be able to heal the world, maybe that’s not even your job, but you can start with you.
Work on your shame.
Photo by Elina Krima from Pexels
This post is part of Blogchatter’s CauseAChatter, Gender Talks and Blogchatter Half Marathon.
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