Shedding Shame: Growing Compassion for Sexuality and Gender

By Miriam Hall

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“Body shame flourishes in our world because profit and power depend on it.”

– Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not An Apology

Oppression based on gender and sexuality is more heightened than ever in the United States and many other countries. Folks who identify as female, transgender, queer, nonbinary, or other identities that are not heterosexual and cisgender (identify with the gender they were given at birth) worry about their lives. Many compassionate people who are cisgender and/or heterosexual are shocked by these public persecutions and are unsure what to do. Oppression of those with differing gender and sexuality affects everyone, even if those closest to what is deemed “normal” often feel it less.

How is shame perpetrated internally? Humans are meaning-making beings. Tremendous wisdom and wrenching confusion can emerge from the meanings we create. When children are getting to know themselves and the world, if what they feel internally doesn’t match what others tell them is acceptable (implicitly or explicitly), the meaning they make is that there is something wrong with them, not with the world. As Sebene Selassie teaches, belonging is as basic to our survival as water and food; if we sense we don’t belong, we will do anything to fit in.

For instance, a common situation: a cisgender male child wants to wear dresses, but he is told by adults that he can’t wear dresses. Even if they don’t say there is something wrong with him, he will come to that conclusion. The child’s wisdom is in playing with gender representation and seeking something outside the straightjacket of what’s deemed okay. But he has also internalized many messages that even more strongly say there is something wrong with him. He will decide there is something wrong with him for wanting to wear dresses, instead of recognizing that there’s something wrong with a world where boys can’t have more clothing options. This idea that there is something wrong with us is what fuels shame from the inside.

Even folks who are cisgender and straight can remember back to adolescence when most people experience shame around gender and sexuality. Lovingly touching our personal experiences of this kind of shame can help develop empathy for others who fit the default even less.

In contemplative psychology, we study the ego as our basic sense of self, which is constantly forming and reforming every moment. The development of the ego is not dissimilar to the development of a child’s mind. The self is a pattern-seeking, meaning-making calculator, which adds up all the pieces, eliminating anything aberrant in ourselves or others. This reinforces a sense of difference as being wrong and deepens shame about our own “wrong” thoughts,views, or desires. 

What is driving the oppression of gender and sexual diversity externally? When shame grows unchecked, we suffer. We blame others for our fear, sadness, and disgust, the three primary emotions underneath shame. The more the folks who are blaming have systemic power, the more dangerous the blame is for their targets. 

Are you feeling overwhelmed? That’s fair. This is a deep and wide system, one meant to overwhelm us, that Sonya Renee Taylor calls the “Body Shame Profit Complex.” How do we peek underneath all those layers? Take a moment as you are reading, and pause. Let yourself feel the largeness of your own experience of how these systems have harmed you, and let that acknowledgment help you connect to others. 

I invite you to join us for this Karuna Live. Together, we will collectively begin to feel what is underneath shame and blame around sexuality and gender, shedding layers until our raw selves are able to tolerate being seen, even if it is only a little bit. Even if we can’t yet share with others our deepest fantasies, views, or identities, we can reveal them to ourselves, casting a light of love on what we would otherwise keep hidden.

We will talk more about the main emotions underneath the secondary emotion of shame, and how we are wired to be ashamed of our gender and sexuality, regardless of our identities. Then, we will carefully practice feeling into the wisdom locked up in our shame, letting it show itself so we can grow out of our shame shell slowly, in sustainable and loving ways. 

People of all genders and sexualities are welcome to attend.