How shame works to legitimise social injustices and why you need to know

Ever been medically gaslighted? It comes with shame, and shame is not just a ‘bad feeling’. It has a function, and that function is power to uphold status quo. Here’s how it works.

“There is nothing wrong with you, you’re as healthy as an eagle” the doctor told me. I could barely walk the 100 metres from my taxi to the clinic, I couldn’t sit upright and I was cold and clammy. 

I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I was being medically gaslighted (gaslit?). And it didn’t feel good. Was I really not sick? Was I just stressed and burnt out? Why did I not deserve a deeper inquiry? Why did I not deserve being listened to? Was I not worthy?

Because I wasn’t aware of what was really going on, I internalised it — and it turned to shame. 

See, shame is not just a ‘bad feeling’. It’s a subconscious (maybe at times conscious) belief that there is something wrong with oneself. Unlike guilt, which is a feeling that you have done something wrong, shame is a feeling like there is something wrong with you, like you have less value than others.

Katharine Cheston, researching shame and ‘medically unexplained symptoms’ writes: “…shame can be displaced onto the patient, who is made to feel that her illness is her own fault. This results in a profound and distressing sense of shame, which is chronic, provokes intense feelings of self-blame and is seen to be uniquely corrosive to self-worth.”

The smart thing about shame is that it makes you not want to speak up about what happened to you, because deep inside you feel like it is your fault. There is a sense of embarrassment embedded in shame. I felt like I wasn’t really sick, like I was creating my own symptoms. I felt shame for even having wasted his time, embarassed that I wasn’t worth a doctor’s ear. And I kept quiet about it, at the time, because that is how shame works.

From a feminist perspective, shame is a political issue. Shaming is about power. It serves to uphold and “regulate socially-prescribed femininities.” (Shefer & Munt 2019)

That’s how medical gaslighting works. It essentially shames you into believing that you are the problem, not the doctor or their lack of knowledge, and so you say nothing, thereby upholding a socially-prescribed femininity — a femininity whereby women don’t question male authorities (like doctors). 

Have you experienced medical gaslighting? I’d love for you to share your story in the comments below, the more we talk about this, the more difficult it is to gaslight.

The function of shame is to silence and to ‘otherise’ (you are not part of us, you are an ‘other’ — one of lesser value). In this way, shaming is used (rarely consciously) by cultural power-holders to maintain status quo and thereby maintain their power. In the case of medical gaslighting, the doctor gets to maintain his power as ‘holder of knowledge’, rather than admit he lacks knowledge.

By making us ‘not really ill’, we become the other, the ‘not really ill ones’, the ones who waste doctors’ time, the difficult patients. By otherising us, they get to maintain the status quo, the system remains unflawed and nothing has to change.

Shaming is also used to silence certain social groups and prevent them from threatening status quo. ME patients, when they have called out flaws in medical science, have been shamed. We’ve been called ‘militant’, ‘anti-science’, and ‘activists’ (in a demeaning way). We’ve been called ‘too sensitive’ when we spoke up about stigma (I’ll write more about stigma and power at a later stage) and the flaws in the western medical system that have neglected women’s illnesses for decades.

But the truth is, we’re being called that because we are a threat to the status quo, not because we are indeed too sensitive or militant or anti-science. 

Kelly Diels, who writes

Lift Your Face to the Sun

, writes in her Sunday Newsletter : 

“Too sensitive" means two things:

(1) You see things clearly

(2) Your clear-sightedness is inconvenient for power structures that require invisibility

So…when they shame you, remember that: your power is a threat to the status quo.”

Let’s remember that next time we are shamed for calling out social injustices: we see clearly, and our clear-sightedness is a threat to their power. 

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Things I love

The Man Enough Podcast. My brain doesn’t do well with podcasts, but this one I love so much — it gives me hope. I chop it up into ten minutes listening time so it doesn’t hurt my brain, it’s doable. Here’s my favourite episode right now: Strong enough to listen. It’s about men who dare listen — what’s not to like.

This New Year I put together an eastern themed menu for my family (mom, dad, bro + his girlfriend). I wrote the recipes and my parents cooked the food (because of my illness I’m unable to cook). One of my favourite creations was a skewer with sashimi salmon, pink grapefruit and cucumber and a chilli lime dressing made of: 3 tsp tamari, 2 tsp oil, 1 tsp coconut sugar, 1 tsp dried chili flakes, 1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil, Juice of 1 lime. YUM! I might post more ideas from my New Years later.

Kelly Diels is a force of nature. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur I encourage you to sign up to her Sunday newsletter. She writes them “as an inoculation against the chronic self-doubt that comes with living in a culture hostile to most of our identities and bodies.”