(Frankly I think it’s pretty clear by now that many powerful and unscrupulous people don’t have any shame, or at least don’t feel shame about the same things that we think they should, and public disgust may have some value as a demonstration of solidarity with their victims but it sure as hell isn’t gonna convince them to quit harming others.) You can’t shame someone into good behavior at all if their bad behavior is widely accepted by society. You can’t shame someone with sufficient power and connections into good behavior, because they have enough social clout to insulate them from the negative effects. And by its very nature, it almost only ever “works” (if you can call it that) against people who are already vulnerable. It’s a demonstration of communal power and - let’s just admit it - communal pleasure in exercising that power, by making examples of people who step out of line. The end goal of shaming is to create feelings of shame, on the logic that shame and fear are the best tools society has for enforcing good behavior. The end goal of shaming isn’t to label a behavior as harmful, or explain why it’s harmful, or teach healthier ways to behave. Might labeling someone’s behavior as harmful cause them to feel shame? Sure, and I don’t think this is a bad thing. So I gotta ask - do you really think that the Weirdos are in any danger of forgetting that they’re weirdos? And why is it so incredibly threatening to you that they might? Even in the rare cases when we’re talking about genuinely harmful as opposed to just “weird” or “annoying” or “cringey” behavior, why is labeling behavior as inappropriate so closely linked with bullying in your mind? Why did my post make you feel such a pressing need to defend the social value of shame? Can you actually cite your sources here, and do they actually say what you recall them saying? Was there more nuance to it? Was there bias? Did you feel the need to check before sending this ask? How do you define “full kink gear,” and how many times have you actually encountered people wearing it in your local park - or is that a hypothetical image that lives rent-free in your imagination, as a symbolic representation of some underlying anxiety? If people genuinely aren’t hurting anyone else, why is it so important for them to feel ashamed of themselves? What are you afraid of? And why does it feel like such an urgent threat that you couldn’t let my very straightforward “bullying is bad and jokes about it aren’t funny” post pass without well-actually-ing it?
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