Female sexual shame hurts

"Unquestioned cultural teachings that female sexuality needs to be controlled through shame" (Jennifer Gunsaullus)

For thousands of years, religions have used shame as a method of control. It is easy to see how shame is detrimental to females in patriarchal religions, but it has grave consequences for males as well. We hear a good deal today about the shaming of women and girls, but we don’t hear as much about male shame. Male shame is all around us and starts at infancy. Its message is strong and consistent: males must act a certain way or they are not really male. 

Males must always be seen as distinctly different and superior to females. From male shame comes a wide range of behaviors designed to oppress women and ensure male dominance. Understanding the interplay and dynamics of shame makes it possible to explain much of the misogynistic behavior we see in the religious and non-religious alike.

Male shame is most easily seen in relation to women or girls. Boys who act superior to girls are exhibiting the results of male shame. Someone taught them this idea, and behind the idea are a number of shaming messages beginning with, “If you are like a girl in some way, then you are less than male, less than a man.” 

For example, if a boy has a mannerism that is seen as feminine, he may be teased and bullied by other boys for acting like a girl. In this case, it is the bullies who are responding to male shame. They feel they must contrast themselves from the feminine in order to avoid being shamed themselves. They are afraid of the feminine but terrified of becoming the objects of shaming and teasing by other boys.

The path to adulthood is full of signals about gender-appropriate behavior, roles, and expectations — as well as the consequences for not complying. They are the roots of the social constructs we live by every day for a lifetime.

All patriarchal religions are hell-bent on maintaining the gender binary, which is the social construct that defines sex and gender as the two distinct and rigidly fixed categories of male and female. It is a critical component of the strategy to keep people shamed and guilt-ridden. 

In my book The God Virus, I talk about how guilt and shame are the currency by which people stay infected with religious ideas about sexuality. What would happen to most religions if shame were not part of sexuality? Without shame, the notion of virginity, for example, would be meaningless. Remove that shame, and it becomes clear that men are programmed to protect a daughter’s virginity as if her body were his property and not her own. 

Tying virginity to shame is part of a larger system of social control, one that could be called the procreation culture. It is a culture that wants to tightly control who to marry, when to marry, and what the status of the bride must be. Virginity ideas also say a lot about male status. A man who marries a non-virgin is seen as less of a man and may be shamed by other men.

The attached video has more to reveal.

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