Community Of Shame Essay

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, society wasn’t the most accepting of places for people who were different from the “social norms”. Now I know, people today still struggle with trying to fit in and be “normal” but it was different. Being a gay man living in San Fransisco at the time, which had a large gay population, Richard Rodriguez had a hard time dealing with the discrimination he faced. Richard Rodriguez was an American journalist who wrote and published a memoir about his life as a gay man. In October of 1990, Rodriguez published his memoir “Late Victorians” in Harper’s Magazine, a critically acclaimed publication of the time. In his memoir, Rodriguez describes what it was like to realize he was gay and watch as the country changed to become a more accepting place. He does this by setting up how things can change and then explaining the actual ways things change for the gay population.

Life for most homosexuals during the first half of the Twentieth century was one of hiding, being ever so careful to not give away their true feelings and predilections. Although the 1920s saw a brief moment of openness in American society, that was quickly destroyed with the progress of the Cold War, and by default, that of McCarthyism. The homosexuals of the 50s “felt the heavy weight of medical prejudice, police harassment and church condemnation … [and] were not able to challenge these authorities.” They were constantly battered, both physically and emotionally, by the society that surrounded them. The very mention or rumor of one’s homosexuality could lead to the loss of their family, their livelihood and, in some cases, their

Many people from the United States hold the belief that being gay is something that has always been considered to be okay. They believe that it is just a given. Despite people’s current beliefs on the subject, for a very long time, it was something that was widely believed to be taboo. In the past, people were imprisoned due to their sexuality. Regardless, throughout the decades, people have pushed for the widespread acceptance of people who are part of the LGBT community. Today, homophobia still exists in some parts of the United States, but we have come a long way since the early 1900s.

Ira L. Reiss, a well-known sociologist, has contributed greatly to the field of human sexuality and in the 1960’s brilliantly predicted the revolutionary changes in sexual attitudes. In his novel, An End to Shame: Shaping Our Next Sexual Revolution, Reiss develops the notion that our previous sexual revolution did not adequately eliminate the inequalities related to sexuality. In reality he argues that America is in need of a newly formed sexual revolution, one that will address the negative consequences that our sex negative culture is experiencing. A significant portion of our population argues that these consequences are due to the fact that we talk too much and too soon about sex. This is an inaccurate view of the reasoning behind the sexual problems we are experiencing in America, as in reality the negative sexual outcomes we observe are due to the opposite of this view. This misconception is a common explanation for our sexual problems and many believe it is the key to solving our sexual crisis, but in reality is part of the problem. Reiss argues that “America is long overdue for a rendezvous with sexual reality” (18) and that the future of our nation depends on accepting these realities.

“Sex was something mysterious which happened to married couples and Homosexuality was never mentioned; my mother told me my father did not believe it existed at all ‘until he joined the army’. As a child, I was warned about talking to ‘strange men’, without any real idea what this meant. I was left to find out for myself what it was all about.” Mike Newman, who was a child during the 1950s America recalls how homosexuality was perceived during the post-World War II era (F). This sexual oppression was not only in Newman’s household, but in almost everyone’s. While the civil rights movement began in the mid-1950s and ended late 1960s, the LGBT community started to come out of the closet slowly. The gay rights movement stemmed from the civil rights movement

Fifty years ago, in the early sixties, being gay was illegal in every providence in Canada, and in every single state in the United States. In the 1950’s, many gay individuals saw the men who had devoted their lives to being out and they knew what a horrible life that made for those men. This caused many gay men to “pass,” or live their entire lives in the closet. They would marry women for the soul purpose of protecting their secret. Before the stonewall riots, many Americans did not even believe gay people existed. Due to the lack of education and bigotry amongst Americans, being gay was very dangerous. Sexual acts in the gay community were commonly done in unsafe places and in public because they simply had nowhere else to go. Homosexuality was not just criminalized it was medicalized (Bawer). If you were gay, you could be subject to go into hospitals and were viewed by society as having a disability and a disease. In April of 1965, the very first gay protest took place in Washington DC. This protest was revolutionary and it began to pave the way for the future of gay men and women and reshape gay culture. In 1969, not long after the first gay protests of 1965, Canada decriminalized homosexual sexual acts in the privacy of one’s own home (Guerre). This was groundbreaking and gave the gay community hope that change was coming. Also, taking place in 1969 were the historic stonewall

The quickly increasing movement took a detrimental hit in the ‘80s “… as the gay male community was decimated by the AIDS epidemic, (they) demand for compassion and medical funding leading to renewed coalitions between men and women as well as angry street theatre by groups like AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and Queer Nation” (Morriss, 2017, par 14). Political lobby groups started campaigning against LGB, Churches started believing that AIDS were a damnation from God and the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy emerged in ’94. Not to mention the appalling hate crimes and backlash from society itself.

Public shaming has happened to many people over the years. It is one of the worst feelings in the world. The painful, antagonizing, embarrassing shame that comes out of it makes people’s lives as miserable as getting tarred and feathered. Hester Prynne committing adultery, Monica Lewinski having sexual relations with Bill Clinton, Justine Sacco tweeting out an African-AIDS stereotype. These are all examples of people who have been publicly shamed. Because public shaming promotes the negative change in perspective towards a victim, long-lasting embarrassment, and regret, it should be left in the past.

Within the midst of the sexual revolution, homosexual women struggled to find comfort in the whole sexual revolution. “For most of history, lesbianism was so little understood that it was actually pretty easy for gay women to live out their lives in peace and quiet” (Collins 173). Although it was great that these women were not persecuted for being themselves, it still must have been so difficult to hide themselves. It really brings me back to our modern day because I think it is so cool to think that I lived in the year where gay marriage was legalized. Going along with that though, I can not believe how long it took for homosexual people to be accepted into our society. I could not imagine the feeling of having to hide your true self. I am thankful that the LGBTQ community can finally make their love

We must begin with a tragic fact; the majority of gay men is imprisoned by shame and self-hatred that is robbing them of a fulfilling life of authenticity. Some people say this is an internal flaw or that the guilt they carry is a response to their knowing they are morally corrupt and know their choices are wrong. I believe these repressed emotions are deeply rooted in a response to socialization, heterosexual norms, hiding who they are, lack of role models and not being accepted during childhood by friends and family. The video Break Free has both the title and visuals that illustrate the dramatic transformation gay men can experience by going from overcompensating for validation and all-consuming guilt to living a joyful, authentic life as described in The Velvet Rage.

The 1980s were particularly devastating for the gay men. 1985 marked the beginning of President Reagan’s second term. Reagan is mentioned several times over the course of part 1 not only to set a political backdrop for the series, but also challenges the audience to question why the government was so slow to respond to this issue. Reagan didn’t even give his first speech on HIV/AIDS until years after the on-start of the epidemic and after thousands of lives had been lost. In this context, it is fair to assume that HIV/AIDS really became an epidemic through the lack of immediate action from the government and medical establishments that can be directly attributed to homophobic. From its onset, there was widespread fear of contamination as AIDS was constructed as a fatal infectious disease that threatened to wipe out mankind. It was also seen as a “gay plague” or punishment for sexually abnormal behavior.

In the past decades, the struggle for gay rights in the Unites States has taken many forms. Previously, homosexuality was viewed as immoral. Many people also viewed it as pathologic because the American Psychiatric Association classified it as a psychiatric disorder. As a result, many people remained in ‘the closet’ because they were afraid of losing their jobs or being discriminated against in the society. According to David Allyn, though most gays could pass in the heterosexual world, they tended to live in fear and lies because they could not look towards their families for support. At the same time, openly gay establishments were often shut down to keep openly gay people under close scrutiny (Allyn 146). But since the 1960s, people

Within modern-day America, there are certain societal standards based on sexual relationships. Within the poem, the narrator, a young woman, questions why she has to “wear the brand of shame; /whilst he amid the gay and proud/still bears an honored name” (Harper 26-28). Within her poem, Harper exposes the hypocrisy of the

Heric and Glunt (1988:886) explain how individuals suffering from the AIDs epidemic experienced “intensely negative public reactions” since it was found to be a “deadly disease” and the gay men it was associated with were heavily stigmatised for their sexuality. What is more, before ACTUP was established the government 's funding for AIDs was short and efforts were made to segregate AIDs inflicted people. However by 1985 gay and lesbian newspapers were bursting of reports of oppressive AIDs legislation suggesting that gay communities had taken confrontational activism years before the emergence of ACTUP, and according to Collins (2013) when ACTUP was established in 1987 “more than forty thousand people had already died in the US and five

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change”(Brené Brown). In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a woman is publicly shamed for having a child with a man who is not her husband. Another example of public shame can be seen in modern day articles “Florida ‘Scarlet Letter’ Law is Repealed by Gov. Bush,” by Dana Canedy, and “Houston Couple Gets ‘The Scarlet Letter’ Treatment.” Both talk of public shame that people have had to endure in the present day. Public shaming is not an effective punishment because it is a cruel and unusual punishment, it does not deter crime, and it can emotionally traumatize the one being shamed.