Speech On Public Shaming

Victims, through news reports and social media, often become celebrities overnight. Victims of crime are instantly thrown into the public eye and are fair game when reporters are rushing the scene for a top news story. The media frenzy creates a chaos that magnifies the victims pain and suffering to acquire viewer’s attention, and the reports are usually more gruesome, violent and more sexually charged than the truth. Sexually violent crimes are often a top news focus, re-victimizing the survivor of the sex crime. Research shows that “84% of prime-time television shows contain at least one episode of sexual harassment, which perhaps accurately reflects the commonplace nature of this violent crime”(Beirne, 2011, pg. 11). When a crime has been committed, victims are at a vulnerable time in their lives, which is when the media takes the opportunity to move in and overwhelm them even further while distorting the facts, asking questions, and snapping pictures looking for a news story. Victims are often even re-victimized as the media picks through their past, nothing is private, all information received, whether through a dependable source or just another citizen, is displayed for all of society to make their judgment. This can lead to society thinking the victim deserved it, it was their fault, or they weren’t a good person. This type of treatment has a greater devastating emotional

The purpose of this essay is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of Braithwaite’s reintegrative shaming theory. This will be accomplished by providing a description of the theory before examining the literature surrounding its strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of the theory surround its novel concepts, utility amongst academics and its policy implications. On the contrary, the weaknesses of the theory surround its limited empirical evidence, its ambiguous terminology and its impracticability towards certain offences and certain offenders.

In her article, “Condemn the Crime, Not the Person,” June Tangney argues that shaming causes more harm than good. She focuses on alternatives to traditional sentences instead of shaming and incarceration. As a more recent trend, officials are using shaming sentences more and more. Tangney states that it is important to know the distinction between shame and guilt. Tangney states, that research has shown feeling of guilt “involve a sense of tension and regret over the bad thing done.” Guilt makes people feel bad. It makes them want to change their behavior whereas shame does not motivate people to feel better and they are less likely to stop their wrong behavior (577). She also states that scientific evidence suggested publicly shaming a person makes a problem instead of creating a constructive change in them and individuals may hide and escape the shameful feelings and try to blame others (577). In conclusion, Tangney suggest community service as a sentence for offenders to pay their debt to society for their wrongdoing, been linked to the crime they did. Her tone is informative and innovative and keeps the reader interested while reading. However, this article displays weakness in term of the evidence the author presents, it is one sided and does not provide evidence her suggestion for community service as a sentence option works. Therefore, it fails to persuade the reader.

Public humiliation has changed immensely weighing heavily on the creation of the internet introducing the idea of online cyberbullying as opposed to scaffolding in a town square. As modern society revels in putting people on a public pedestal, the scaffold that Hester Prynne is put onto marks her as no longer a person with feelings, just as a negative figure people look upon to make themselves feel higher. After the news broke of Monica Lewinsky’s scandal, people no longer recognized her as a young adult who makes mistakes, but was treated like a person with no emotions and incapable of being affected by her mistakes. As the story went on throughout the internet, she was only represented as a person through the mistake she made just as Hester Prynne was recognized for the crime she committed. Publicly shaming Hester Prynne and Monica Lewinsky is and was a way for people to make themselves feel better and place themselves higher in society.

In “The Problem with Public Shaming,” an essay that first appeared in the Nation, Stryker argues against the form of public shaming promoted by online networks and how people have figured out a way to deal with crimes but not with social media. Stryker introduced the essay’s subject matter through social media examples, while reflecting on past experiences and stating important details that reinforce the subject of public shaming as well as “dox” and discusses this term throughout the essay. Stryker helps define the term “dox” by listing the common traits and information “doxxers” try to gather, which include—name, phone number, address, social security and financial

Statistics show that public humiliation is one of the most common fears. As many admit to this fear, many also grasp to this concept and shame one another for absurd conditions. In the Puritan Era, many methods were used to publicly shame someone for their wrong doing. One of their common methods was to openly tell their “sin” to the whole community. One of their extreme approaches was hanging someone. This showed the public to follow the regulations of the town and do not do anything against them. Fast forward to modern times, the scheme of humiliating one another changed drastically. For instance, many occurrences pertain from social media. In 1994, the first site of social media was created. From this point on, millions of different sites

Esperanza’s situation is a reminder that shame can have a positive effect on people’s lives by being a source of motivation and inspiration.

It’s common to argue that a perpetrator “deserves” to be shamed, but in fact human psychology doesn’t work this way. Many pedophiles, for instance, recognize that that they are inexorably—even biologically—bound to impulses that they themselves loathe. Does the shaming—through public registries for example—cause the pedophile to reform? Unlikely. Does it deter others from engaging in pedophilic acts, or does it drive them to darker corners and sneakier tactics?

When we hear shaming our minds quickly go to someone being embarrassed and humanized for their past actions. In public view for people to create judgments and uncertainty about a behavior seen from a certain person. This description falls under the common form of shaming known as stigmatization, found in our criminal system stigmatization is disrespectful shaming, “where the offender is treated as a bad person. The offender is left with that stigma permanently” (Braithwaite, 2000, 282) due to the forgivingness found in this form of shaming. Stigmatization shaming only tends to bring more shame than a resolution so crime tends to increase the crimes because the offender feels like there no way out, so I might as well

Ronson also talks about how Google plays a role in the continuation of public shaming. Ronson quotes Jared Higgins, who says “What the first page looks like determines what people think of you” (Higgins 265). Through this quote, Ronson shows how public shaming ruins an individual for years to come. The results of their shaming incidents will always be at the top of Google’s search engine.

As an individual, it’s a part of life to make plenty of mistakes, but is public shaming the answer to solving it? In todays’ society, punishment for people is completely different from back in the Puritan days. For example, in the novel the Scarlett Letter, Hester Prynne commits adultery, which leads her to having to wear the letter “A” on her chest, which is a form of public humiliation but in this sense, it’s not right. This is Hester Prynne’s sin that she committed that she lives with forever and it shouldn’t be any of the public business for her to be humiliated even more. This is a form of public ridicule, reintegrative shaming where attention can be drawn by wrong doing, and in order for you to learn in life you have make some mistakes . Public shaming is immoral in today’s society because as an individual that has done something wrong, you will start to feel like an outcast besides having to endure humiliation for your actions.

Most people believe that public humiliation is cruel and unusual punishment, yet it seems to be the only thing working. Doxxing is when you take someone's personal info -info such as social security numbers or address- and post it for the world to see. Some people still see doxxing as ineffective and just flat out wrong as discussed Cole Stryker in “The Problem with Public Shaming” written in The Nation, Stryker notions that public shaming doesn't work and that people need to talk about its effects on people all around the world. Stryker discusses how doxxing and Scarlet Letters are one in the same and are equally bad to do, he even “And when it slithers its tentacles in a person’s life, we become desperate for some way to fight back—to

“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.

In today’s internet savvy world, ‘Shaming’ has become an aspect of core-competency. And this aspect holds the power to destroy lives and confidences. This issue has become so large in the past few years that an entire book (“So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed”) has been written focusing on this very topic. But who is responsible for this chaos? Is it the person engaging in bad behavior or the person pulling the curtain off of the act? The answer depends on whom you ask. Social media when used properly has proved to be a powerful tool against the powerful organizations and influential people. Giving voice to pain of millions.

Of course, shaming should be part of society due to the fact that it brings order and control among the people. Shaming controls people who perform unacceptable behavior that can cause great damage. It is extremely critical for any society to be in order since it brings peace and balance. But, in order for that to happen society must shame people who violate or break moral and social norms that are highly valued. According to Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School stated that, “Shaming is a form of social control... Shaming has always been extraordinarily important—often... shaming was a major source of public order”(sec. 2). Controlling individuals with shame is the