So I've been publicly shamed - again

Reflections on being wrong, being shamed and the right to make mistakes

Shaming has been used as a tool for behaviour control for as long as we’ve been human. Back then, being ostracised from the group was a matter of life and death. Without support, an individual would get sick or be mauled by an animal and die. Perhaps it is no surprise that a panicky survival instinct is awakened when the mob arrives at your digital doorstep.

Reading the anthology, Panics and Persecutions: 20 Quillette Tales of Excommunication in the Digital Age as well as Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is both heartening and frightening. Many of the people in Panics and Persecutions felt liberated after being shamed, the stranglehold of the tribe’s unspoken rules had become too much for them and they eventually felt the better for being liberated from them. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed isn’t so sanguine; perhaps this is why Ronson goes to such lengths to keep the online mob at bay? 

I’m very well used to online mobbings. For years I’ve been somehow owned by anonymous accounts who seemed to have made it their life’s work to be Twitter policemen, pouncing on every word out of place, analysing every half-baked thought, and coming to elaborate and nefarious conclusions.  I’ve been here many times before. I have been publicly shamed for the last six years by keyboard warriors who have misrepresented me, lied about me, and taken my words out of context. Their aim, I suppose, is to silence me, but it doesn’t work. The more people try to silence me, the less I will be silenced.

However, I have an over-the-top sensitivity to unfairness, and this doesn’t work well in an unfair world. Albert Ellis called it ‘musturbating’ – “There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.” I can fall prey to these musts just like anyone else, but I’ve learned how important it is to let go of the expectation that I will always get things right.

Being wrong is an important aspect of being human. A myth arose in the early days of the gender wars that the people who were concerned about gender ideology must always be perfect. The general consensus was that trans activists would pounce on our every word and try their level best to slander us, and so we needed to respond by making sure our work was always immaculate. I didn’t agree with that then and I don’t agree with it now.

Seeking perfection is an unhealthy approach to life that tends to lead to toxicity, internalised shame and a spitefully critical internal voice. It strangles the individual’s voice and it limits creativity and courage. Perfectionists often do great work, but it tends to be joyless, life-limiting and prohibitively slow. It is a good deal healthier to accept that making mistakes is part and parcel of life – and inevitable for anyone who is trying to be courageous. High quality work can be reliable without needing to be perfect – and striving to be perfect can create paralysis that severely curtails productivity.

I’ve long been fascinated by how many ROGD kids are perfectionists – and so are their parents. This tendency towards perfectionism often runs in families and appears to be linked with anxiety and an earnest desire for approval. In my clinical practice with ROGD youth I first focus on the therapeutic relationship and then move into exploring the inner voice of the young person and how it can be harshly critical, leading to self-sabotage and self-loathing. A cruel and spiteful inner voice can be the undoing of a fragile young person. Every little mistake, every tiny flaw is examined with religious and punitive zeal. Self-critical people are often critical of others – and often demand that others live up to their high expectations.

I’ve had to contend with not only my own harsh inner voice this week; thousands of other voices from the internet helped me with this endeavour. My sins are plentiful; one of them was that in an interview with Travis Brown I was really clumsy in the way I tried to communicate about how it is not only autogynephiles who get a sexual charge out of wearing certain clothes. At the time I stupidly suggested that lesbians also get a sexual charge out of wearing clothes. I explained and apologised for this here. Anyone who has made any effort at all to read the thousands of words that I have written (including co-authoring this book) or the hundreds of hours of content I have amassed on the subject of sex and gender (including co-hosting this podcast) will know very well that I’m not homophobic or lesbophobic. Nor am I, for that matter, transphobic, claustrophobic or arachnophobic. In fact I have no phobias, although given the right environment I could easily develop musophobia (horrible wretched little vermin).

I’m not homophobic or lesbophobic. However, I know that in a heightened environment a badly worded and ill-thought-out point could be construed in this way by someone who doesn’t know my work. It could also be taken in this manner by people who don’t like me and want to score points. I need to learn to live with that.

I remember being hounded online by trans activists about certain things I said. “It’s mostly about looks” was considered a particularly egregious phrase that I uttered in 2018 and I was harassed about this for many long and tedious months. It is quite difficult to resist the temptation to apologise every time I do something less than perfect. But the right to make mistakes is a concept I believe in almost as strongly as I believe in the right to free speech.

If I’m wrong then of course it’s appropriate to apologise – and so I did apologise for what I said in the Travis Brown interview. But that doesn’t mean that online keyboard warriors have suddenly exposed me as a secret homophobe or transphobe. They haven’t. Nor does it mean I should fall to my knees, repeat an act of contrition and beg for forgiveness. Half a sentence was clipped, highlighted, taken out of context and used inappropriately as evidence that I was homophobic/lesbophobic. This half-sentence is now being misrepresented to imply that I somehow think that every woman wearing gender non-conforming/stereotypically male/just clothes/whatever you’re having yourself is walking around with an inner hard-on.

I don’t think that and I didn’t say that. I wear ‘just clothes’ myself.  I seldom wear anything that would be considered gender conforming/stereotypically female/just clothes/whatever you’re having yourself. I wear comfortable jeans, jumpers and runners. And no, I don’t think women get a sexual charge out of that (although some autogynephiles do, in some sort of “I’m one of the girls” vibe).

There is a lot to say about female sexuality and shame. Society and religions have ruled women’s sexuality with an iron fist for millennia. These last few decades of so-called sexual liberation for women has been both very good and very bad. We have so much work yet to do. Lesbians in particular have had an extremely hard time. But there are important things at stake. Young people – many of them gay or lesbian – are being encouraged to think of themselves as wrong and encouraged to undertake unnecessary medicalization. Since 2018, I’ve been trying my hardest to bring an end to this unfolding medical scandal. Trans activists didn’t shame me into silence back then, and extremists on the other side won’t shame me into silence today.