Let Guilt, Not Shame, Fuel the Revolution

LET GUILT, NOT SHAME, FUEL THE REVOLUTION

KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO WILL PROPEL US FORWARD BY MATT CHARNOCK

At the mercy of my bedroom’s waning wifi, I’ve been reflecting on my early twenties, a time marked by substance dependency. And shame – buckets and barrels and boatloads of it, all of which led me to dead ends for years. I distinctly remember stumbling into my first LGBTQ-minded Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting. Bewildered, I took to an aluminum folding chair in the far corner of the room, what seemed like oceans away from the diminutive podium. I was agitated, oscillating in place. I was also still very high from the 75-mg Vyvanse, a stimulant used to treat ADHD and binge-eating, that I’d downed inside a Sonic bathroom three hours prior. The Red Bull I was nursing began to lose its bite as the room thronged with people underneath harsh incandescent lighting in an assembly room in Austin, Texas. That’s when a woman named Alice saddled the seat next to me – two years sober and five months pregnant. (She and her newly wedded wife were about to welcome their first child into the world.) Over the course of that late-August meeting in 2015, we cemented our friendship. The weeks that followed would involve countless coffee refills – hers, sans caffeine – sipped while the other told stories of past traumas, terribly naive ex-partners, and plans to cement stable incomes. Our shared affinity for the literature of vulnerability caused time to collapse when we were together. “Have you read anything from Brené Brown?” questioned Alice from across a cafe table one midday. “There’s this passage she has about the difference between shame and guilt, and I think you’d like it.” She fished inside her JanSport and pulled from its depths a copy of Daring Greatly, finned by a strip of torn paper to bookmark the following passage: “I believe that if we want meaningful, lasting change we need to get clear on the differences between shame and guilt and call for an end to shame as a tool for change.” Alice’s hunch was right. I was interested. Right on the heels of my first published piece of academic writing, I brought this idea to my then-therapist for peer review. And what I gathered – an insight that has now fueled years of tepid investigation into the subject – profoundly affected me. Shame and guilt are vastly different. Guilt is a reckoning with yourself. It’s a focus on behavior that allows for selfreflection on the coarser conduct you’ve engaged in. Shame? It dissolves you of accountability and value, naming your character by that less-than-ideal thing you did.

Whereas guilt says, “I did something bad, and I will hold myself liable to amend this as best I can,” shame says “I’m just a bad person, and I will do this again.” Our political landscape and LGBTQ culture are both rife with shame. It’s the insidious “shade” we throw to stroke our egos, the capitalized name-calling in Facebook comments. It’s the humiliations we subject strangers to. It’s cancel culture, in other words. Alice, though, was far from flung out of my life. We’ve since taken to separate coasts – she, her wife, and their four-yearold daughter now call Boston home – but our friendship remains intact and as mighty as ever. We reminisce on those illuminating early days in AA through physical letters, notes often accompanied by Polaroids of her adorable daughter, for levity. (After all, handwriting and stamping messages is a time-consuming practice, one antithetical to today’s fastpaced lifestyle.) We see episodes of how shame plays out online and in our real lives. It’s the path of least resistance, for sure. However, it’s one that only leads to a cul-de-sac of broken dreams and bitter, despondent ash. The Gay Activists’ Alliance (GAA) and now-defunct Gay Liberation Front (GLF) were erected soon after the Stonewall riots and each created dialogues around culpability. They held up reflectors to our nation’s joint actions and humanities and said, more or less, “We know you can do better and should do better, so here’s how you can do better.” They radicalized guilt as a conduit for transformation, holding people and institutions accountable for their actions, but also driving home the point that they’re inherently capable of changing for the greater good. Abiding by an agenda founded on shame would’ve stopped those coalitions dead in their tracks – a collective Naomi Campbell-circa-1993-runwaycollapse, if you’ll indulge me. Shame – internalized, publicized, actualized – is neither virtuous nor fruitful. It tarnished almost every episode of palpable joy in my early twenties. It masks itself as a congenial absolute, playing on one’s failures of self-improvement. Guilt, though, has proven to be the stern, yet amicable drag queen who slaps me on the wrist time and time again. That makes me a better friend, a more gracious lover, an overall improved human being. On the golden anniversary of Pride, let’s better understand guilt’s place in our revolutions, personally and collectively. And, like the beige cargo shorts and spiked blonde tips of yesteryear, assign shame to the wayside.

Matt Charnock is the weekend editor for SFist, an associate editor for 7x7 and Bob Cut Mag, and a freelance contributor to other publications in the Bay Area. Proud to continue our national sponsorship of the Human Rights Campaign as part of our ongoing commitment to the LGBTQ community.

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