We need to talk about shaming.
Breast shaming. Formula shaming. C-section shaming. Mummy shaming.
IT’S NOT A THING.
Ok sure, if you Google it, it’s a thing. “Five Mommy-shaming trends that need to stop”. “Mum shamed for buying formula fights back”. And accusations of shaming are sure to get a Facebook thread hopping. But it’s time we called out ‘shaming’ for what it is: a muzzle.
In shame culture, feelings trump facts, and victim mentality rules. Making someone feel uncomfortable has become transgressive; the perception of hurt has been passed off as actual harm. The substitution of reaction for critical engagement fuels conflict and tribalism which is not only divisive, but a distraction from the people and institutions which are truly harming mothers and babies.
When it comes to birth and infant feeding, the question demands to be asked: whose interests are served by the framing of advocacy and information-sharing among women as an act of aggression? The answer, of course, is patriarchy. The status quo which demands that medicalised obstetric care maintain control over the pregnant and birthing bodies of women. Or that the global formula industry continues making billions of dollars in the face of 800,000 preventable child deaths annually. Or for economies to maximise worker productivity with minimal investment in childcare or paid parental leave. So-called mummy wars and shaming is the sleight of hand which keeps us focused on the wrong part of a very nasty trick, depleting our energy fighting among ourselves instead of working together against common enemies.
There is no excuse for treating each other with anything less than respect and kindness, even in disagreement. But allowing personal offence to serve as the boundary of discourse is stunningly solipsistic. And in a world where knowledge and power has long been withheld from women on the basis that we are too emotionally volatile or fragile to cope with their demands, it is dangerously regressive to allow honest discussion of the lives of women and children to be shut down on the basis that it somehow constitutes ‘shaming’.
January 18, 2017 at 7:16 am
You don’t think shaming exists, beyond the lists on the internet? Why can’t others use the words they prefer.
I’m a nurse. In my journey in nursing school, taking classes as an expectant mother, and a mom with a new baby, you bet shaming exists.
And almost all of the shaming happened at the hands of other women who thought anything but a certain choice would be damaging to the baby. When I eventually decided to formula feed one of my babies and give up on breast feeding, even strangers decided to make remarks.
Perhaps this a matter of semantics, I don’t think denying the experience of women who have felt shamed is helpful either.
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January 18, 2017 at 9:27 am
Hi Kate,
Thanks for your comment and for sharing your experience.
I believe that women feel shame, but as far as the social phenomenon of ‘shaming’, no – I don’t believe it is what we all seem to think it is. As far as individual experiences of being ‘shamed’… some people are just arsehats. I am a passionate birth and breastfeeding advocate but I have no problem saying that some birth and breastfeeding advocates are arsehats about it, and I wish they wouldn’t be. Because there’s no excuse for it. It’s unkind and unnecessary I’m genuinely sorry you were at the receiving end of arsehattery. But is it objectively ‘shaming’, or is calling it shaming useful? I’m not convinced.
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