Intersectionality: The Causes Of Public Shaming Women

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Public shaming can happen to any one, for any reason, at any time. In today’s society, a shaming attacks the fault of a person – whether it be racism, sexism, or lying – but there is always a division of shamers that focus not on the action that brought on the shaming, but the person who is being shamed. When shaming minority groups, people use their physical or cultural traits to harass them.
Intersectionality is a complicated state of being in society that entails unique issues and paves the way for equally unique harassments. Intersectionality is a fairly recent term that refers to "the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relations and subject formations" (McCall 1771). People that are intersectional essentially
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This tactic “is based on sexual double standards established and upheld by men, to women’s disadvantage” (Armstrong et al. 101). Slut shaming is a go-to-method when it comes to calling out or shaming a woman because the process strips away the “status” and dignity of the person (Armstrong et al. 101). While this tactic was created and is usually used by men, women are also guilty of shaming others using this repugnant method. With slut shaming, “women’s participation in this practice is only indirectly related to judgments about sexual activity…it is [primarily] about drawing class-based moral boundaries that simultaneously organize sexual behavior and gender presentation” (Armstrong et al. 101). Slut shaming is used to create a social barrier among women, and since “status…is largely dictated by class background…low-status women are [more] vulnerable to public shaming” (Armstrong et al. 101). The vulnerability created by this barrier is similar to the vulnerability that arises in intersectional spaces, which creates contempt between “high-status” and “low-status” women (Armstrong et al. 101). The class dichotomy in itself is foolish and only serves to give outsiders justification for belittling those who are lower on the societal food chain. These outsiders are essentially people that do not face intersectional issues or difficulties and the lack of issues they face is a result of coming from a privileged …show more content…
Ronson described the beginning of mass online public shaming as “the democratization of justice” (“When Online Shaming Goes Too Far”). Instead of a well-oiled machine that cranks out slaps on the wrists and lessons in what is right or wrong, public shaming became a weapon of mass destruction; it attacks everyone in sight, leaving nothing left. In the dawn of the Internet, “voiceless people realized that they had a voice, and it was powerful and eloquent” (“When Online Shaming Goes Too Far”), but that voice that started off whispering began to inaudibly scream, and the only words that could be heard from that deafening scream were “rape,” “murder,” “n***er,” and