I should clarify what I mean. Shame exists at one end of a continuum of emotions that also contains guilt, remorse and other less intense feelings. It’s comparable to how rage exists at one end of a continuum that also includes anger, irritation, and annoyance. What differs is the scope and scale of the emotion, but the basic foundation is the same. While the differences between guilt and shame are as important as the differences between rage and annoyance, I think it’s also valuable to recognize the commonalities. I tend to use “shame” and the umbrella term for all of these emotions, just as I tend to use “anger” as an umbrella term.

According to neuropsychologist Allan Schore, the emotion of shame serves the purpose of helping us learn social and cultural rules, as well as important safety rules. If you’ve ever yelled at a child who was in danger (for example, running towards a busy street), you’ve probably seen them freeze and hunker down. That’s a shame response and it serves the child’s well-being by stopping whatever dangerous behavior was going on. Similarly, when we break social rules, shame is one way that we learn where the boundaries are. As we grow and develop, it becomes more subtle and complex, but that’s the basic foundation. There’s a great article in the New York Times today about some research on this.

In order to be effective, shame requires that there is a positive and healthy relationship between the caregiver and the child. That’s because shame triggers a disconnection or what Gershon Kaufman calls a “rupture in the interpersonal bridge.” The discomfort of that disconnection motivates us to change our behavior in order to reconnect with someone who’s important to us. But if the relationship isn’t positive to begin with, there’s no reason to reconnect and shame becomes an ineffective tool.

Where this comes back to well-being is that when the rules are reasonable and when the response from those around us is proportional to the situation, we can learn how to move through the world in more positive ways. Unfortunately, caregivers who have unresolved shame have a tendency to apply unreasonable rules, have reactions that are out of proportion to the situation, or are unable to foster reconciliation. Any or all of these tend to create more undigested shame and the cycle repeats. As layers of undigested shame are lain down over the years, it can become toxic and we become highly reactive to anything that triggers it.

So of course, many sex educators, therapists and other folks with good intentions see the toxic version of shame and start assuming that that’s all there is to the experience of the emotion. And when that happens, they start talking about shame as if it’s always bad but that’s not the case. If we hurt someone by, for example, breaking a relationship agreement, I think that’s a perfectly fine reason to feel shame. Our emotions motivate us- that’s why they have the same root word. The discomfort of that experience of shame is part of what keeps us from hurting other people over and over. Shame isn’t supposed to be comfortable- that’s the point. But that doesn’t make it bad. In fact, Schore points out that people who truly feel no shame are sociopaths because they have no motivation to take other people’s experiences of their actions into account.

Developing a more positive relationship with our shames requires a few different pieces. One of them is learning to discern between the rules that make sense and those that don’t. “Don’t masturbate in public” makes sense. “Don’t masturbate” simply doesn’t. Another step is learning how to move through the discomfort of shame and listen to what it says so that we can grow from the experience. If we’re so uncomfortable with the emotion, we tend to dissociate or get stuck in it, neither of which helps us digest it. Another piece of the puzzle is learning to create true atonement and reconciliation. That often includes learning to hold space for the injuries we cause other people, to not flinch from them, to do whatever we can to heal them, and to take steps to not do it again.

One of the biggest ways in which I see shame connect to sex is through the word “should.” For example:

I should want sex as often as my partner.

You should  not be gay.

We should like this type of sex.

Sometimes the “shoulds” are as explicit as these examples and more often, they’re implicit in the language we use  and attitudes we have. And anytime we obey a “should” instead of listening to our authentic selves, it’s probably worth looking for the shame that’s underneath it. The shame might be external to ourselves or we might have internalized it so deeply that we can hear the voices in our imaginations.

And yes, I think that there are some “shoulds” that are worth keeping. We should care for the pleasure, health and well-being of ourselves and our partners. We should actively seek the informed consent of anyone included in or affected by a sexual interaction. But beyond that, the “shoulds” just get in the way. And those are the shames that we can learn to let go of.

Of course, it’s not an easy task and it can take a lifetime. There are quite a few resources and this isn’t meant to be an extensive list.

I’m a big fan of Pema Chödrön. She’s a Buddhist nun and her teachings are accessible to anyone of any religious affiliation, including folks with none at all. Her lecture Getting Unstuck has lots of wisdom that applies to letting go of the “shoulds” although that’s not the main focus.

If you’re dealing the the dynamics of shame in group settings, Karen McClintock’s Sexual Shame: An Urgent Call to Healing is a great resource. Her focus is on Christian religious congregations, although at least 90% of the book applies to most groups.

For folks who want to geek out on this stuff and like a somewhat denser read, Allan Schore’s books are really thought-provoking. One thing- he’s writing for a more scientific audience and his books are super dense. Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self is probably the most relevant, although it’s the third book in the series and the first two lay a good foundation. There’s also Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self by Donald Nathanson if you want a less dense but still amazing read.

There are quite a few self-help books out there. I’ve read quite a few, although none are really as sex-positive as I’d like to see. And of course, lots of people get a lot of help from therapy of whatever flavor works for them.

Ultimately, learning to let go of the toxic shames and developing a positive relationship with shame is an ongoing process. It’s not something that will happen overnight, although I often wish it could be. Wherever we each are in that journey, I hope that we can find whatever ease and comfort that we can.

Of course, there are a lot of feminist issues involved in the porn industry, sex work, and in human sexuality; I just don’t think “sex positivity” is one of them. So you’re a feminist, and you like sex—well, that’s normal. So do a lot of people, including a lot of non- and anti-feminists. So what does that have to do with feminist identity?

Apparently, the author seems to have missed out on the fact that for many people, liking sex or believing that they deserve to have the sex that they want or getting to experience sexual pleasure or being able to ask for the sex they want isn’t as common as she seems to think

Lots of people of all genders and sexual orientations, including lots of women, have been shamed for their sexual desires and practices. That’s what happens in a sex-negative world. The fact that our culture is obsessed with sex doesn’t make it sex-positive. If anything, our obsession with sex is a sign of our sex-negativity, in the same way that people with eating disorders often obsess about food and people with self-image issues often obsess about how they look. In many ways, the obsession fuels the problem, rather than being a sign that there is no problem.

Here’s another snippet:

And yet, sex-positivity has wormed its way into the feminist movement. Why? One reason, of course, is that for a long time, women weren’t allowed to want or like to have sex. And sure, I’ve been lucky to grow up in a time and place where I haven’t needed a porn star PhD mentor to tell me it’s okay to like doin’ it.

And I talk to women all the time who are still being told that they aren’t allowed to want or have the sex that they desire, especially if they’re queer or are interested in sexual practices other than intercourse within a heterosexual relationship. I’ve spoken with thousands of women and their partners who feel embarrassed that they want to use vibrators, or lubricants, or engage in any other 100% common and (dare I say it) normal sexual practice. So the fact that this one person feels comfortable having sex doesn’t imply anything about the sexual shame that many women experience. That’s why sex-positivity is relevant for feminism.

One last quote:

But there’s another reason, too: If people who like sex see sex-positivity as a part of the feminist movement, maybe they’ll see feminism as less prude and scary and icky and straight-laced and serious and anti-man. And I think it’s condescending to the feminist movement that we have to bring orgasms in to be taken seriously.

I don’t see it that way at all. I think that the reason that sex-positivity is important for feminism is that sex-positivity is about making room for the range of sexualities that exist among human beings. It’s about honoring the diversity of experience and ensuring that we each have the space to be the sexual beings that we are, without submitting our desires to a socially-constructed role. It’s about honoring each of our personal experiences and not trying to force someone into a particular image.

Sex-positivity is important for feminism because it invites feminism to make space for our entire experiences as sexual, human beings. If you can’t do that, then you risk falling into the trap of trying to fit people in a different box. It may seem different simply because it’s new, but it’s just as limiting as the box you just left.

There are plenty of anti-porn folks out there who make lots of sweeping statements about the experiences of women in porn. Of course, they almost always ignore the experiences of men in porn and the existence of gay porn, which they justify by saying that their focus is on the experiences of women. Which is all well and good, although I’d suggest that they need to coin a new term to describe what they’re talking about since the word “porn” actually refers to a larger phenomenon than the one that they discuss.

What I find most frustrating about their discourse is that they don’t usually include the voices of women who are actually in the business. Instead, they’ll tell talk about what they think these women experience and present it as fact rather than interpretation. Or they’ll interview someone in the biz and then misrepresent what they said. (Check out Ernest Greene’s report on how this happened to Joanna Angel.)

Given how many women there are/have been in the business, I’m surprised that they can’t find a few who are willing to be interviewed. Granted, someone currently working in the biz might be unwilling to speak up since it might make it harder to find work but there are plenty of former porn folks who don’t have that concern. Whatever the motivation for not including the voices of these women in their research, it certainly makes it questionable.

On the other hand, there are the women who make porn and genuinely enjoy it. Sasha Grey, Madison Young, Lorelei Lee, Joanna Angel, to name a few of the current folks and there are plenty of folks who no longer show up in movies but enjoyed their careers. But while these women can stand up and tell us that their experiences are different from the caricature that anti-porn folks present, we don’t have any real way of knowing whether positive experiences are common or rare. Please note- I am not questioning the authenticity of these women’s stories. I’m simply wondering how many women are in this group, as compared to the number of women in porn.

What’s missing from both sides of this is any real data about the experiences of women in porn. We have anecdotes, but the plural of anecdotes is not data. This is especially important to remember because people are prone to “confirmation bias,” which is the tendency to interpret new information in ways that confirm preconceptions and avoid or ignore information that contradicts our beleifs. The best tool that we have for overcoming confirmation bias is the scientific method since it gives us ways to minimize the effects of our biases. (For a great read on confirmation bias and other pitfalls of how people process information , check out the book “Mistakes Were Made.”)

Every now and then, a grad student approaches me and asks if I have suggestions for a research project. So here’s what I’d like to see: a qualitative analysis of the experiences of women in porn. I’d suggest using Grounded Theory since it’s a well-validated method that lets the interpretation emerge from the data. It requires that the researcher make their biases explicit as a way to limit how they influence the process and allows the voices of the people being studied to drive the project.

This is an ideal topic for a dissertation and it would finally give us some real information about the experiences of women in porn. That would make it easy to follow up with some quantitative analysis to discover how many women have which sorts of experiences.

I don’t see this as likely to happen, though. It can be really difficult to study anything about sex or porn, what with the lack of academic and financial support. Plus, there are people who have built their careers on each side of this debate and it seems to me that many of them would resist any research that might question their stance. Unfortunately, what that leaves us with is propaganda masquerading as science and lies that pretend to be journalism.