Morally, I am a pagan, which is not to say that I believe in preposterous and odd things, but rather that I do not believe in a morality of shaming.
I do not believe in shaming others, I do not know how to do it, I do not think it has any point.
I recall that when I was trying to be a middle school teacher, one of the mechanisms of control I saw teachers using was in making implicit suggestions that certain actions were shameful. This was not the mechanism that was imposed on me, whilst growing up. I learned, rather, that as a student one must understand that there is a system of power -- a hierarchical system -- that rules over one, and that one disobeys authority strictly at one's own risk. Power, then, rather than morality, was my yardstick that determined the DOs and DON'Ts of my childhood thinking.
Contrasted with this mode of paganism, shaming is very Christian. One is supposed to internalise fear and self-doubt in order to fit in. To put my finger on another hot button of Christian consciousness, the only real power that women have in a society that is governed by Christian morality is the power of shaming. Apart from being guardians of morality, they have no means to hold sway over the males of that society. To lack power in life is to withdraw into self-hatred, and to generate a toxicity that destroys all happiness and pleasure.
Christian society is based on shaming. The dynamic is thus: women shame others in order to get some semblance of power, no matter how toxic. Men avoid being shamed by projecting their negative and uncomfortable emotions back onto (and into) women, by claiming they emanated from women in the first place. Thus males in Christian society have no capacity for introspection, no insight.
Christian males are permitted to express an aspect of character that is denied Christian females. They may express themselves egoistically as a way of trying to deny, or avert shame. Women are not supposed to do that, but to take it to the Lord in prayer.
Thinking of all the right wing trolls I've run into over the past ten (or so) years on the Internet, the views of women they espouse seem to be fundamentally based on the principles I have outlined above.
I do not believe in shaming others, I do not know how to do it, I do not think it has any point.
I recall that when I was trying to be a middle school teacher, one of the mechanisms of control I saw teachers using was in making implicit suggestions that certain actions were shameful. This was not the mechanism that was imposed on me, whilst growing up. I learned, rather, that as a student one must understand that there is a system of power -- a hierarchical system -- that rules over one, and that one disobeys authority strictly at one's own risk. Power, then, rather than morality, was my yardstick that determined the DOs and DON'Ts of my childhood thinking.
Contrasted with this mode of paganism, shaming is very Christian. One is supposed to internalise fear and self-doubt in order to fit in. To put my finger on another hot button of Christian consciousness, the only real power that women have in a society that is governed by Christian morality is the power of shaming. Apart from being guardians of morality, they have no means to hold sway over the males of that society. To lack power in life is to withdraw into self-hatred, and to generate a toxicity that destroys all happiness and pleasure.
Christian society is based on shaming. The dynamic is thus: women shame others in order to get some semblance of power, no matter how toxic. Men avoid being shamed by projecting their negative and uncomfortable emotions back onto (and into) women, by claiming they emanated from women in the first place. Thus males in Christian society have no capacity for introspection, no insight.
Christian males are permitted to express an aspect of character that is denied Christian females. They may express themselves egoistically as a way of trying to deny, or avert shame. Women are not supposed to do that, but to take it to the Lord in prayer.
Thinking of all the right wing trolls I've run into over the past ten (or so) years on the Internet, the views of women they espouse seem to be fundamentally based on the principles I have outlined above.
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