Sexual Shame

Shame, we all have experienced this little devil. It is very powerful and can sometimes be cripple a persons life.  Brent Brown gives a powerful ted talk about listening to shame or more accurately not listening to shame. She also tells us that to solution to shame is compassion. We can't judge people but be compassionate since every single person has experienced shame and when talking to people we have all experienced sexual shame.

One of the examples of shame that Michael Warner uses is the scandal of President Clinton when he was found out to be having an affair with a younger woman. He was not shamed but she was because while he was having an affair she was the home wrecker. She was the one who was sleeping with a powerful man she must be seeking power. She is the one with all to gain from sleeping with the president. She was having casual sex and she is unmarried. She was shamed while he was not punished for his affair. Shame is present with the person in the relationship that is bad, abnormal, unnatural because she was not going to wait for him to leave his wife so they could have a normal relationship. This is what the binary that society created wants. They want people to act in a certain way and have relationships in a certain way and it has to be normal.

I have experienced sexual shame at least twice in my life both from my mother. This is not to say my mom is a bad person or not a loving person because she is both she just wants a better life for me. Moving back on topic one example of sexual shame I have experienced is when my mother told me that if I hadn't had sex with my boyfriend I would be engaged right now. While I really do want to be engaged it is not because I have had sex. By saying this she is saying my relationship and my personal being is wrong because I had sex when I was not marriedThe other experience with sexual shame is when I had feelings for a girl but I still had feelings for a men and my mother told me it had to be either or; that it couldn't be both. My being bisexual is wrong because I don't fit into the normal category I am abnormal. I have feelings for both sexes. But I didn't understand why this was wrong because love is love, isn't it?  How come I couldn't have feelings for both genders? Why was it wrong?

Everyday an LGBTQ person will ask them selves the same question: why are my feelings wrong? Michael Warner talks about this very issue in his book The Trouble with Normal. One of the causes he points out is the hierarchies of shame and the difference between the perspectives of good, normal, natural and bad, abnormal, unnatural (25). If a person does not fit into the category of good, normal, natural than they are a horrible person and should be avoided at all costs. They should be shamed for homosexual feelings, for being unmarried, being promiscuous, nonprocreative, commercial, having sex alone (masterbation) or in groups, casual sex, cross-generational relationships, sex in public, pornography, or using manufactured objects to please oneself. Many people do these acts everyday and are shamed for it because our society is telling everyone of use that is shameful to be anything but in a monogamous relationship with the opposite sex and to have children.  This is not the case there are many way to express ones self.


The LGBTQ community and communities as a whole needs to be compassionate to every way of expressing ones sexuality whether that is being straight, gay, lesbian, transgendered, cisgendered, asexual, bisexual, etc. We are all human and we need to stop shaming one another because they don't fit into prefect little binary boxes. It seems like such a silly solution but if we could listen to another person, hear their story of their sexuality and not say that they are wrong it would change everything. If we could listen to that story and say while I don't understand what you are going through I do understand sexual desire; I understand desire. Then we would be able to grow as a society to accept one another they way they are and not what we think the prefect person is or the prefect relationship. People are different and will have different ways of expressing oneself and instead of shaming one another we should celebrate each other for being who they were born to be.