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• Prototypical male shame situations by Heidi L. Eyre, 4/25/98
  
  

Much male shame results from disapprobation from others, especially from respected groups of which one is or would like to be a member. For example, first year law students compete with, cajole, and criticize each other as part of forming their new "lawyer" identities. In a classic scene from the 1973 movie "The Paper Chase", after a student can not answer a question properly, law professor Kingsfield (played by John Houseman, who won the best supporting actor Academy Award for this role) summons the student (Hart, played by Timothy Bottoms) to the front of the class, hands him a dime, and says "go call your mother, and tell her there are serious doubts as to whether you will become a lawyer". To which Hart, with shame leading to rage (shame -> rage) responds, "Kingsfield, you are a son of a bitch". In prison, the consequences of not becoming part of a group, e.g. a gang, or not finding a niche in the social structure, is to be demeaned and otherwise subject to physically noxious (as opposed to necessarily physically demanding) conditions. A good fictional study of male shame is the main character Mersault in Camus' novel "The Stranger". Mersault is constantly embarrassed and often preoccupied with his own feelings of even slight physical discomforts. He kills someone because "the sun was in his eyes", then in his trial he is sentenced to death, mostly because he is said to have acted inappropriately after his mother's recent death. Then at the end of the book, his shame culminates into a brief episode of rage. There is I believe a shaming prototype in the typical political debates between the left and the right (with men overrepresented on the right, being on average somewhat more conservative than women). In his 1995 book "The Vision of the Anointed", pg. 4, Thomas Sowell quotes another writer: "Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, foolish, a dope. Disagree with someone on the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, a sell-out, insensitive, possibly evil". In other words, while the right considers the left to be mistaken, the left considers the right to be flawed closer to its core, in a more personal, therefor shameful, way. Perhaps the most basic prototype of male shame is when a man's wife tells him he is sexually inadequate, which may lead to shame -> rage.

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