Mask Shaming Quotes

To those who abuse: the sin is yours, the crime is yours, and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: blaming the victims only masks the evil within, making you as guilty as those who abuse. Stand up for the innocent or go down with the rest.

The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.

You’re not weak because you can’t read. You’re weak because you’re afraid of people seeing your weakness. You’re letting shame decide who you are. […] It’s shame that lines my pockets, shame that keeps the Barrel teeming with fools ready to put on a mask just so they can have what they want with none the wiser about it. We can endure all kinds of pain. It’s shame that eats men whole.

It's shame that lines my pockets, shame that keeps the Barrel teeming with fools ready to put on a mask just so they can have what they want with no one the wiser for it. We can endure all kinds of pain. It's shame that eats men whole.

We hide our demons so good, that the angels we show, bare the shame on their faces.

To survive painful beliefs and feelings, we often mask them with anger. That way, we don’t have to feel the shame behind it.

Shalom is what love looks like in the flesh. The embodiment of love in the context of a broken creation, shalom is a hint at what was, what should be, and what will one day be again. Where sin disintegrates and isolates, shalom brings together and restores. Where fear and shame throw up walls and put on masks, shalom breaks down barriers and frees us from the pretense of our false selves.

For so many years my insignificance and invisibility have been a mask I can hide behind. And in the process I have avoided raking up the past. Raking up the shame.

The 16 characteristics of psychopaths: 1. Intelligent 2. Rational 3. Calm 4. Unreliable 5. Insincere 6. Without shame or remorse 7. Having poor judgment 8. Without capacity for love 9. Unemotional 10. Poor insight 11. Indifferent to the trust or kindness of others 12. Overreactive to alcohol 13. Suicidal 14. Impersonal sex life 15. Lacking long-term goals 16. Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior

There’s all this pressure in our society to be beautiful, to be strong, to be sexy. So we spend our time and money on trying to become these things. We put on the high heels, the suits, the makeup, the mask. Then, we feel more awkward than confident, so we drink away our anxieties. That doesn’t make us look any sexier – it just makes us stop caring about how we look. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone is sexy. Everyone is strong. It’s lunacy. We’re all running around trying to become something that we already are. You know what’s really sexy? A person who’s 100% comfortable with themselves. And you know what’s really funny? It is just as time consuming and difficult to learn to accept yourself as it is to pretend to be someone else. The only difference is – with self acceptance, one day, it’s not hard anymore. One day, you feel like your sexiest, strongest self just rolling out of bed in the morning. You’re either going to spend the little time you have in your life on trying to know yourself or trying to hide yourself. The choice is yours. You can’t do both. And you know what’s really amazing about choosing self-love? You’ll be setting an example for all the people around you and all the kids of the coming generation. You’ll be part of a revolution to take back the precious moments of our lives out of the hands of shame-inducing advertisers and back into the hands and hearts of real people like you, like me, like all of us. I know you’ve dreamt about changing the world. So this is your chance. Learn to love yourself, accept yourself, and unleash your strongest, sexiest self. It’s in there. You just have to believe it.

Everyone has a secret, but when it is bound by shame we're forced to live within the darkest circles of our crumbling masks; unable to find the light of the coming dawn; forever locked in the shadows of our own regrets.

Our need to be "greater than" or "less than" has been a defense against toxic shame. A shameful act was committed upon us. The perpetrator walked away, leaving us with the shame. We absorbed the notion that we are somehow defective. To cover for this we constructed a false self, a masked self. And it is this self that is the overachiever or the dunce, the tramp or the puritan, the powermonger or the pathetic loser.

Anger is a catalyst. Holding on to it will make us exhausted and sick. Internalizing anger will take away our joy and spirit; externalizing anger will make us less effective in our attempts to create change and forge connection. It’s an emotion that we need to transform into something life-giving: courage, love, change, compassion, justice. Or sometimes anger can mask a far more difficult emotion like grief, regret, or shame, and we need to use it to dig into what we’re really feeling. Either way, anger is a powerful catalyst but a life-sucking companion.

If I ask you to dance, you'll know I've been waiting So instead, I will whistle in the cold under my umbrella, Carrying a tune that I know you'd be hating, Killing what I want the most in case it won't want me.

My mother’s English has remained rudimentary during her forty-plus years living in the United States. When she speaks Korean, my mother speaks her mind. She is sharp, witty, and judgmental, if rather self-preening. But her English is a crush of piano keys that used to make me cringe whenever she spoke to a white person. As my mother spoke, I watched the white person, oftentimes a woman, put on a fright mask of strained tolerance: wide eyes frozen in trapped patience, smile widened in condescension. As she began responding to my mother in a voice reserved for toddlers, I stepped in. From a young age, I learned to speak for my mother as authoritatively as I could. Not only did I want to dispel the derision I saw behind that woman’s eyes, I wanted to shame her with my sobering fluency for thinking what she was thinking. I have been partly drawn to writing, I realize, to judge those who have unfairly judged my family; to prove that I’ve been watching this whole time.

My body is a political battlefield. It is a place of war, of death and suffering, of triumph and victory, of damage and repair, of blood and tears and sweat. It is a place where memories go to find purpose for their existence. It is a place where humans cast all inhibitions aside to discover what exists at their very core. It is a place of growth wearing a mask of destruction. It is a challenge, not for the faint of heart, beckoning us to face it with eyes wide open. The only war is within. When you are ready to fight it, the field awaits.

In the future, Martin will recall this night as the first time -- and one of the only times -- he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief and guilt.

Healthy people understand that others have the capacity to choose to end relationships and it serves as motivation for them to learn to relate in healthy and loving ways. However, when we are driven by shame, we don't just fear losing a relationship, but we live in terror that if we let anyone really get to know us, we would never be desired, pursued, or loved. In us, that fear can be worked out in the development of unhealthy denial, workaholism, perfectionism, chameleon-type behavior, and sadly, even revictimization... When we live in denial or present a false self out of fear... we will do anything to be accepted by people... When we begin to tell the truth about what happened to us we also begin the process of turning about from this type of idolatry... When we begin to tear away our layers of illegitimate shame... When our own vision is not distorted by our shame we can discern what was our responsibility and what wasn't.

So, you care about me now,’ I said, meaning to make a joke of it, but it came out soft and low and full of something guttural that made me embarrassed. ‘Why?’ “Because I don’t know anybody like you. You’re like … a rare artefact. And it would be a shame if you got broken.’ Amusement spluttered from me in the most unattractive way. ‘Are you really comparing me to an antique right now? Oh my God, you nerd.” He started laughing, and the carefree melody of it swept me up until I was laughing too, and it was absurd because our families were being threatened and murdered and there we were squished together in a hundred-degree heat outside a maximum security prison, and we used to hate each other and now we were laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. He composed himself first, but it took a while and I was left choking my laughter into silence. ‘What I meant was,’ his face twisted into a quiet smile that felt secret and deadly, ‘you’re a bright spark, Sophie. And I don’t want anyone to snuff you out.’ ‘Oh.’ Well I couldn’t make fun of that. Was I supposed to say something back? Wasn’t that how compliments worked? The silence was growing and suddenly his words felt heavy and important and he was so close to me and I was perspiring and panicking, and … and I said, ‘And you’re kind of like a snowflake.’ Oh, Jesus Christ. He masked his fleeting surprise with a quirked eyebrow. ‘Excuse me?’ ‘Nothing,’ I said quickly. ‘I didn’t say anything.’ ‘No, no,’ he said, rounding on me so his face was too close, his eyes too searing, his smile too irritating. ‘I’m a snowflake, am I?’ ‘Shut up. Seriously.’ I pulled wisps of loose hair around my cheeks. ‘Shut up.’ ‘I think you were trying to tell me I was special.’ ‘Icy,’ I said. ‘I meant you were icy.’ I could practically taste his glee. I was floundering, and he was relishing it. ‘And unique, in that you’re uniquely annoying,’ I added. ‘God, you’re annoying.

Because anger has too many faces, too many masks. This type of anger is the kind you don’t recognize until it’s too late

Acting like a crowd of kids/ the mask was a thin thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness/ He was safe from shame or self-consciousness behind the mask of his paint and could look at each of them in return/ They understood only too well the liberation into savagery that the concealing paint brought”《Lord of the Flies》

Perceiving a choice between her feelings and her relationships, Dana chose to be liked by others. But the self she displayed was a mask of the person she though others wanted her to be. The Curse of the Good Girl obscured and shamed the most important parts of who she was.

But Don you're still a human being, you still want to live, you crave connection and society, you know intellectually that you're no less worthy of connection and society than anyone else simply because of how you appear, you know that hiding yourself away out of fear of gazes is really giving in to a shame that is not required and that will keep you from the kind of life you deserve as much as the next girl, you know that you can't help how you look but that you are supposed to be able to help how much you care about how you look. You're supposed to be strong enough to exert some control over how much you want to hide, and you're so desperate to feel some kind of control that you settle for the appearance of control." "Your voice gets different when you talk about this—" "What you do is you hide your deep need to hide, and you do this out of the need to appear to other people as if you have the strength not to care how you appear to others. You stick your hideous face right in there into the wine-tasting crowd's visual meatgrinder, you smile so wide it hurts and put out your hand and are extra gregarious and outgoing and exert yourself to appear totally unaware of the facial struggles of people who are trying not to wince or stare or give away the fact that they can see that you're hideously, improbably deformed. You feign acceptance of your deformity. You take your desire to hide and conceal it under a mask of acceptance." "Use less words.

Love is not the answer, peace is. Throughout my whole life I have experienced and seen others use love as a reason to treat people with unkindness by being controlling, jealous, shouting in anger, and projecting guilt and shame. If you love someone but there is not peace in your heart when you think of that person then your work is not done. Do not stop at love, continue all the way towards the freedom of inner peace. Love starts when peace begins. Without peace love is simply a mask for our insecurity, judgment, and egoic attachments.

Propaganda infuses our culture with messages that there are just a few winners and many losers; that we are killing the earth and time is running out; that prosperity is an anachronism and detrimental to life; that individual freedom is selfish and injures those who are less free. These messages are crafted to shame and pressure you, and to create a sense of urgency that impairs your ability to reason clearly.

Everyone seems to know this. We are universally tormented by our consciences for what we know we should have done yet did not do. We are tormented equally by what we did but know we should not have done. Is this not a universal experience? Can anyone escape the pangs of conscience at four o’clock in the morning after acting immorally or destructively, or failing to act when action was necessary? And what is the source for that inescapable conscience? If we were the source of our own values and masters of our own houses, then we could act or fail to act as we choose and not suffer the pangs of regret, sorrow, and shame. But I have never met anyone who could manage that. Even the most psychopathic of people seemed motivated at least to mask their malfeasance with a layer of lies (with the depth of that layer precisely proportionate to the severity of the impropriety in question). Even the most malevolent, it appears, must find justification for his or her evil.

Wounds that haven’t healed properly still hurt you. You pretend to allow them faze you, but I see past the mask. Shame, that a pretty woman like you has to perish by fire.” Cain shrugged. “I’m surprised they didn’t burn you in the witch trials.” He shook his head as if he corrected himself. “No, what am I saying? You were with Saain during that time.

Between the ages of 10 and 21, my thoughts were consumed with how to escape reality - how to mask my feelings of inadequacy, shame, guilt, fear, abandonment, rage and loneliness.

Whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable. Might not nothing less than the opposite be the proper disguise for the shame of a god?

...thanks to the mask, signs of fatigue or shame showed on my face no more than on yours.

Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it never has and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Within beauty both shores meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I’m not a cultivated man, brother, but I’ve thought a lot about this. Truly there are mysteries without end! Too many riddles weigh man down on earth. We guess them as we can, and come out of the water dry. Beauty! I cannot bear the thought that a man of noble heart and lofty mind sets out with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What’ still more awful is that the man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and in the bottom of his heart he may still be on fire, sincerely on fire, with longing for the beautiful ideal, just as in the days of his youthful innocence. Yes, man’s heart is wide indeed. I’d have it narrower. The devil only knows what to make of it! but what the intellect regards as shameful often appears splendidly beautiful to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, most men find their beauty in Sodom. Did you know this secret? The dreadful thing is that beauty is not only terrifying but also mysterious. God and the Devil are fighting there, and their battlefield is the heart of man. But a man’s heart wants to speak only of its own ache. Listen, now I’ll tell you what it says…

Startled, Cinderella fixed her eyes on his mask. It was to her shame, but he was right. It wasn’t the thought of her marriage prospects that made her pull away, as usual, but the image of Friedrich’s disappointed face. “How

An important difference between overt and covert incest is that, while the overt victim feels abused, the covert victim feels idealized and privileged. Yet underneath the thin mask of feeling special and privileged rests the same trauma of the overt victim: rage, anger, shame and guilt. The sense of exploitation resulting from being a parent's surrogate partner or spouse is buried behind a wall of illusion and denial. The adult covert incest victim remains stuck in a pattern of living aimed at keeping the special relationship going with the opposite-sex parent. It is a pattern of always trying to please Mommy and Daddy. In this way the adult continues to be idealized. A privileged and special position is maintained; the pain and suffering of a lost childhood denied. Separation never occurs and feelings of being trapped in the psychological marriage deepen. This interferes with the victim's capacity for healthy intimacy and sexuality.

Fundamentalism wears many masks, but always claims a monopoly on the Truth. Many people buy into fundamentalism in much the same way people buy cola to quench their thirst. There are elements of truth in fundamentalist thinking, just as water is an ingredient in cola. But just as the water loses much of its value when artificial flavors and colors are added, Truth loses its value when guilt, shame, and rigid dogma are present. Fundamentalism is to the soul what artificial sweetener is to the body.

Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one. “Why is one of your legs fatter than the other?” asked Bell Pepper. The Drippy Man realized Bell Pepper was not looking at his sandwich but towards the inconsistency of his leg sizes. “You always get your kicks pointing out defects?” retorted The Drippy Man. “Just curious. Never seen anything like it before.” “I was raised not to feel shame and hide my legs in baggy pants.” “So you flaunt your deformity by wearing short shorts?” “Like you flaunt your pockmarks by not wearing a mask?” Bell Pepper backed away, kicking wide the screen door, making an exit to a porch over hanging a dune of sand that curved into a jagged upward jab of rock. “He is quite sensitive,” commented The Dry Advisor. “Who is he?” “A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does.

What is sex for you? For me, it’s a kind of shelter, a burning hot burrow where I can hide away from the world’s critical gaze. Where I can truly be myself, and in a way, be divinely perfect. Sex is where I can free myself from all the masks that society demands us to wear. To be simply naked. Sex is a place where there are no more vicious tongues to whip me with criticism. It is a place where I can be praised; where my desires are more likely to be a virtue, rather than a shameful bit of human waste. Where a slap isn’t an act of hate.

kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic. To the Kathakali Man these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughs at it because he loves it. He can fly you across whole worlds in minutes, he can stop for hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey’s tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the crafty ebullience of a rakshasa with a new idea into a gossipy Malayali with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna’s smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory. He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart. The Kathakali Man is the most beautiful of men. Because his body is his soul. His only instrument. From the age of three it has been planed and polished, pared down, harnessed wholly to the task of story-telling. He has magic in him, this man within the painted mask and swirling skirts.

For this equality belongs to the post-Renaissance world of ideology-of political magic and the alchemical science” of politics. Envy is the basis of its broad appeal. And rampant envy, the besetting virus of modern society, is the most predictable result of insistence upon its realization. Furthermore, hue and cry over equality of opportunity and equal rights leads, a fortiori, to a final demand for equality of condition. Under its pressure self respect gives way in the large majority of men who have not reached the level of their expectation, who have no support from an inclusive identity, and who hunger for “revenge” on those who occupy a higher station and will (they expect) continue to enjoy that advantage. The end result is visible in the spiritual proletarians of the “lonely crowd.” Bertrand de Jouvenel has described the process which produces such non-persons in his memorable study, On Power. They are the natural pawns of an impersonal and omnicompetent Leviathan. And to insure their docility such a state is certain to recruit a large “new class” of men, persons superior in “ability” and authority, both to their ostensible “masters” among the people and to such anachronisms as stand in their progressive way. Such is the evidence of the recent past and particularly of American history. Arrant individualism, fracturing and then destroying the hope of amity and confederation, the communal bond and the ancient vision of the good society as an extrapolation from family, is one villain in this tale. Another is rationalized cowardice, shame, and ingratitude hidden behind the disguise of self-sufficiency or the mask of injured merit. Interdependence, which secures dignity and makes of equality a mere irrelevance, is the principal victim.

Each year I kept it quiet was another year where the shame and guilt grew. It was another year where I became more scared of someone finding out. It was another year where I got better at acting as someone else, wearing masks to protect the face underneath. I became so good at masking my emotions that no one would have ever guessed what was going on internally.

Fear of being shamed causes people to put on masks and live in fear and pretense, creating a stronghold of pride. Authentic, transparent leaders encourage people to develop trust through their own honesty and vulnerability. They do not view transparency as weakness, but recognize it as a source of their virtue, power and anointing because power flows through humility.

Their famous attempt to make clothing of fig leaves perfectly illustrates the utter inadequacy of every human device ever conceived to try to cover shame. Human religion, philanthropy, education, self-betterment, self-esteem, and all other attempts at human goodness ultimately fail to provide adequate camouflage for the disgrace and shame of our fallen state. All the man-made remedies combined are no more effective for removing the dishonor of our sin than our first parents' attempts to conceal their nakedness with fig leaves. That's because masking over shame doesn't really deal with the problem of guilt before God. Worst of all, a full atonement for guilt is far outside the possibility of fallen men and women to provide for themselves.

Perfect by nature Icons of self indulgence Just what we all need More lies about a world that Never was and never will be Have you no shame don't you see me You know you've go everybody fooled Look here she comes now Bow down and stare in wonder Oh how we love you No flaws when you're pretending But now I know she Never was and never will be You don't know how you've betrayed me And somehow you've got everybody fooled Without the mask where will you hide Can't find yourself lost in your lie I know the truth now I know who you are And I don't love you anymore Never was and never will be You don't know how you've betrayed me And somehow you have everybody fooled It never was and never will be You're not real and you can't save me Somehow now you're everybody's fool

HONORIUS. You talk as a child, Myrrhina, and without knowledge. Loosen your hands. Why didst thou come to this valley in thy beauty? MYRRHINA. The God whom thou worshippest led me here that I might repent of my iniquities and know Him as the Lord. HONORIUS. Why didst thou tempt me with words? MYRRHINA. That thou shouldst see Sin in its painted mask and look on Death in its robe of Shame.

Brené Brown, a social scientist and TED speaker who has researched shame, worthiness, courage, and vulnerability, recently published a book called Daring Greatly, which I fortuitously picked up at a Boston bookstore when I was just beginning to write this book. I was so blown away by the commonalities between our books that I twittered her, praising her work and asking her if she would give me a foreword for this book.3 She writes: The perception that vulnerability is weakness is the most widely accepted myth about vulnerability and the most dangerous. When we spend our lives pushing away and protecting ourselves from feeling vulnerable or from being perceived as too emotional, we feel contempt when others are less capable or willing to mask feelings, suck it up, and soldier on. We’ve come to the point where, rather than respecting and appreciating the courage and daring behind vulnerability, we let our fear and discomfort become judgment and criticism.

But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honour to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted. Wholly repugnant to the general freedom are such devices as enthralling men’s minds with prejudices, forcing their judgment, or employing any of the weapons of quasi-religious sedition; indeed, such seditions only spring up, when law enters the domain of speculative thought, and opinions are put on trial and condemned on the same footing as crimes, while those who defend and follow them are sacrificed, not to public safety, but to their opponents’ hatred and cruelty. If deeds only could be made the grounds of criminal charges, and words were always allowed to pass free, such seditions would be divested of every semblance of justification, and would be separated from mere controversies by a hard and fast line.

Roll toward me,” she directed and leaned close to reach around him as he complied. Easing the bandage away from the wound on his back, she pushed it as far beneath him as she could before sponging the dried blood from his back. The basin of tepid water had been placed on the bed beside him, and as he lay flat she reached across to wring the cloth out. In the next moment his left hand rose and pressed lightly between her shoulders, causing her to fall toward him until he could capture her lips with his own. Off balance, she could not immediately withdraw and was held snared by a torrid kiss that torched her cool-minded resolve and cindered it beneath the heat of his demand. His open mouth moved upon hers with a hunger that greedily sought for a like response. The stirring rush of excitement flared through her, and the need was there to answer him, but the sudden intrusion of a black, staring mask into her mind made her push away with a sudden gasp. She came to her feet, her cheeks ablaze with the shame of her own ardor. Christopher challenged her with a mocking grin. “You must have read my mind, madam. ’Twas the very gift I desired.” -Erienne & Christopher

To-do list: 1. Science – stop people from getting sick and dying. 2. Keep people economically solvent – as you request their help in fighting the pandemic. Some states do better at one. Others, at the other. None strike the right balance. Everything collapses. Utter failure. One party is full of bad ideas that their rivals merely rubber-stamp. Like a reverse Robin Hood, they scapegoat the powerless, while simultaneously handing out checks to the richest stakeholders. The other party has few ideas, except for a few bad ones of their own that they throw into the mix. Businesses, flush with cash, appear almost embarrassed to take public money. But they soon get over their initial shame.

I could bear it [the shame] because I knew the truth, child," I say. "There was one of us in that marriage who was old, fat, and smelly, and it wasn't me." "The King was cruel to speak thus," Alice says, but in a low voice. As if Henry, dead these past ten years, might somehow hear her. "He was, yes," I say. "But I think mostly he was afraid." Alice is sceptical. "Kings are afraid of nothing," she says. "This King was afraid. I know it, for I'm the one who made him so. I made a mistake, child, a grave one." "What was it?" "I made my face a mirror when it should've been a mask, and what the King saw there terrified him. He hated me for it, and never, ever forgave me." [Anna of Cleves]

You know, those single-use masks everyone is wearing in the pandemic are made of plastic too,” my friend Imani Barbarin said to me. Imani is a talented disability advocate who often speaks about the intersection of disability and environmentalism. She pointed out that the acceptable use of plastic is always set according to what a healthy person needs to be healthy (think masks, gloves, plastic prescription bottles, kinesiology tape… even home delivery supplements that individually package your daily vitamins), but when it comes to someone with a disability using plastic, everyone wants to shame them for killing the planet. “You need what you need,” she said to me in a gentle but firm voice. She was right.

The worst form of bondage is the bondage of dejection, which keeps men hopelessly chained in loss of faith in themselves. We have been repeatedly told, with some justification, that Asia lives in the past,—it is like a rich mausoleum which displays all its magnificence in trying to immortalize the dead. It was said of Asia that it could never move in the path of progress, its face was so inevitably turned backwards. We accepted this accusation, and came to believe it. In India, I know, a large section of our educated community, grown tired of feeling the humiliation of this charge against us, is trying all its resources of self-deception to turn it into a matter of boasting. But boasting is only a masked shame, it does not truly believe in itself.

We got up, still talking, and began to dance again. “I want to try something,” he said. “Okay, what?” “Twist your arms behind your back.” “Hmm, okay … Like this?” “Yes. And now I’ll hold you like that.” I licked my lips and gave him the look, and I said, “Okay.” “If you want me to stop, tell me.” “Okay. I’ll bite you if I don’t like it. If I’m okay, you get a kiss.” He smiled and clasped my wrists tight, pinioning my arms behind my back. The pressure twisted my shoulders back, just a bit, and thrust my breasts forward. We moved, and I felt my breasts pressing through the silk T-shirt against his chest. I kissed him. “I like it,” I said. “I like it when you hold me, when you have me … in your power.” He kissed me. It was a rapid, sudden, ravishing kiss. He let go of my wrists, and I flung my arms around him. We twirled around. He lifted me up. We plunged back down onto the divan. I was astraddle him, on my knees, looking down on him, breathless. “Lift it off,” he said. “You lift it off,” I said. I bowed, and he pulled the silk T-shirt over my head, leaving it halfway off for just a minute, and masking my face. He kissed me on the forehead through the silk. His lips pressed on my lips, and I hungrily tried to kiss, but I was a prisoner of the silk, and then, slowly, he pulled the T-shirt off my head, and my lips were free, and our lips met, and we kissed, a deep, free warm, liquid kiss. I was melting into him. His hands went up and down my back, sweeping, exploring, pressing, and caressing. He kissed my breasts, slowly, licking and biting each nipple.

The Old Testament traces one complete cycle of that history, one people’s rise and fall. This particular people is unique only in that they’re the ones who begin to remember what man was made for. Moses’ revelation at the burning bush is as profound as any religious scene in literature. There, he sees that the eternal creation and destruction of nature is not a mere process but the mask of a personal spirit, I AM THAT I AM. The centuries that follow that revelation are a spiraling semicircle of sin and shame and redemption, of freedom recovered and then surrendered in return for imperial greatness, of a striving toward righteousness through law that reveals only the impossibility of righteousness, of power and pride and fall. It’s every people’s history, in other words, but seen anew in the light of the fire of I AM. It

You had her looking after Evie,” she spits. “Were you screwing her while she was working here? While she was looking after our child?” He removes his hand, his face a picture of contrition, of deep shame. “That was terrible. I thought . . . I thought it would be . . . Honestly, I don’t know what I thought. I’m not sure I was thinking at all. It was wrong. It was terribly wrong of me.” And the mask changes again—now he’s wide-eyed innocence, pleading with her: “I didn’t know then, Anna. You have to believe that I didn’t know what she was. I didn’t know about the baby she killed. I would never have let her look after Evie if I’d known that. You have to believe me.” Without warning, Anna jumps to her feet, pushing her chair back—it clatters onto the kitchen floor, startling their daughter. “Give her to me,” Anna says, holding her arms out. Tom backs away a little. “Now, Tom, give her to me. Give her to me.

The plea for ethical veganism, which rejects the treatment of birds and other animals as a food source or other commodity, is sometimes mistaken as a plea for dietary purity and elitism, as if formalistic food exercises and barren piety were the point of the desire to get the slaughterhouse out of one’s kitchen and one’s system. Abstractions such as 'vegetarianism' and 'veganism' mask the experiential and philosophical roots of a plant-based diet. They make the realities of 'food' animal production and consumption seem abstract and trivial, mere matters of ideological preference and consequence, or of individual taste, like selecting a shirt, or hair color. However, the decision that has led millions of people to stop eating other animals is not rooted in arid adherence to diet or dogma, but in the desire to eliminate the kinds of experiences that using animals for food confers upon beings with feelings. The philosophic vegetarian believes with Isaac Bashevis Singer that even if God or Nature sides with the killers, one is obliged to protest. The human commitment to harmony, justice, peace, and love is ironic as long as we continue to support the suffering and shame of the slaughterhouse and its satellite operations. Vegetarians do not eat animals, but, according to the traditional use of the term, they may choose to consume dairy products and eggs, in which case they are called lacto-ovo (milk and egg) vegetarians. In reality, the distinction between meat on the one hand and dairy products and eggs on the other is moot, as the production of milk and eggs involves as much cruelty and killing as meat production does: surplus cockerels and calves, as well as spent hens and cows, have been slaughtered, bludgeoned, drowned, ditched, and buried alive through the ages. Spent commercial dairy cows and laying hens endure agonizing days of pre-slaughter starvation and long trips to the slaughterhouse because of their low market value.

When we risk being open, vulnerable and honest about our struggles and our joys, the fullness of who we are emerges and connects us to one another at a profound, authentic level. Sharing our stories allows us to take the risk of coming out from behind masks that separate us from one another and from ourselves. Experience has taught me that the pattern of hiding behind masks and disconnecting from authentically engaging in life is at the root of some of our greatest struggles in the times in which we live. We are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness rooted in the destructive powers of judgment, shame, blame and guilt. We are experiencing a culture that is numb to some of the deepest travesties of human history as we sooth ourselves with over-consumption of things, addictive substances and repeated mindless patterns. Too often, we are cut off from the roots of meaning at the core of our being as we strive to survive by fulfilling shallow expectations, rather than allowing ourselves to be nourished by the rich of wisdom and the vision of collaboration that is deep within us. Sharing our stories connects us at the deep level of our profound longing for community, creativity, compassion and acceptance.

STAY AN ORIGINAL WORK OF ART In this short lifetime, Why not be -- True to your own voice, Your own story, Your own truths, Your own style, Beat and drum -- Instead of reflect the words, Songs and march of another? Why not use your soul's own Unique language, Instead of constantly try to toot something Not true, suitable or intended For your own instrument, Painting, Song, Or story? Why create an image you cannot produce? And if you can create a brilliant mask, How long will you really be able to hide your true soul Behind it Until its colors and plastic Begin to fade and melt with Time? Do not speak about truth when there is no truth in you. Do not speak about being yourself when you are trying hard to be someone else. Do not keep crying about your pain when you you have no shame creating pain in others. Do not step on truth, or someone else's truth, or someone who fights for truth -- And think there will be no repercussions; For there is more danger in silence, And for every action there will always be a reaction Of opposite or equal measure. Treasure integrity, Treasure your own story and truths. How will people remember you when you want to be an imitation? How will people remember your voice when you want to sound like another? Be so different that everybody will remember you. Be yourself because an original is worth more than a copy. Be true to yourself or your heart will never forgive you; For once you silence the music from your own instrument, Your true purpose and intended path will begin to fade. There is no greater crime Than ignoring your conscience And the truths intended For you to live, learn, And share. So Stay TRUE to YOU In everything You do. That itself is the purest And truest Art.

STAY AN ORIGINAL WORK OF ART In this short lifetime, Why not be -- True to your own voice, Your own story, Your own truths, Your own style, Beat and drum -- Instead of reflect the words, Songs and march of another? Why not use your soul's own Unique language, Instead of constantly try to toot something Not true, suitable or intended For your own instrument, Painting, Song, Or story? Why create an image you cannot produce? And if you can create a brilliant mask, How long will you really be able to hide your true soul Behind it Until its colors and plastic Begin to fade and melt with Time? Do not speak about truth when there is no truth in you. Do not speak about being yourself when you are trying hard to be someone else. Do not keep crying about your pain when you you have no shame creating pain in others. Do not step on truth, or someone else's truth, or someone who fights for truth -- And think there will be no repercussions; For there is more danger in silence, And for every action there will always be a reaction Of opposite or equal measure. Treasure integrity, Treasure your own story and truths. How will people remember you when you want to be an imitation? How will people remember your voice when you want to sound like another? Be so different that everybody will remember you. Be yourself because an original is worth more than a copy. Be true to yourself or your heart will never forgive you; For once you silence the music from your own instrument, Your true purpose and intended path will begin to fade. There is no greater crime Than ignoring your conscience And the truths intended For you to live, learn, And share. So Stay TRUE to YOU In everything You do. That itself is the purest And truest Art. Suzy Kassem, "Stay An Original Work of Art" Copyright 1993, The Spring For Wisdom

The best way to come out of hiding is to find a nonshaming intimate person or social network. The operative word here is “intimate.” We have to get on a core, gut level because shame is core, gut level stuff. Toxic shame masks our deepest secrets about ourselves; it embodies our belief that we are essentially defective.

THE HE’S ARE SHE’S In 1847, three novels excite England’s readers. Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell tells a devastating tale of passion and shame. Agnes Grey by Acton Bell strips bare the hypocrisy of the family. Jane Eyre by Currer Bell exalts the courage of an independent woman. No one knows that the authors are female. The brothers Bell are actually the sisters Brontë. These fragile girls, virgins all, Emily, Anne, Charlotte, avenge their solitude by writing poems and novels in a village lost on the Yorkshire moors. Intruders into the male world of literature, they don men’s masks so the critics will forgive them for having dared. But the critics pan their works anyway, as “rude,” “crude,” “nasty,” “savage,” “brutal,” “libertine” . . .

Walking through the halls of my son's high school during lunch hour recently, I was struck by how similar it felt to being in the halls and lunchrooms of the juvenile prisons in which I used to work. The posturing, the gestures, the tone, the words, and the interaction among peers I witnessed in this teenage throng all bespoke an eerie invulnerability. These kids seemed incapable of being hurt. Their demeanor bespoke a confidence, even bravado that seemed unassailable but shallow at the same time. The ultimate ethic in the peer culture is “cool” — the complete absence of emotional openness. The most esteemed among the peer group affect a disconcertingly unruffled appearance, exhibit little or no fear, seem to be immune to shame, and are given to muttering things like “doesn't matter,” “don't care,” and “whatever.” The reality is quite different. Humans are the most vulnerable — from the Latin vulnerare, to wound — of all creatures. We are not only vulnerable physically, but psychologically as well. What, then, accounts for the discrepancy? How can young humans who are in fact so vulnerable appear so opposite? Is their toughness, their “cool” demeanor, an act or is it for real? Is it a mask that can be doffed when they get to safety or is it the true face of peer orientation? When I first encountered this subculture of adolescent invulnerability, I assumed it was an act. The human psyche can develop powerful defenses against a conscious sense of vulnerability, defenses that become ingrained in the emotional circuitry of the brain. I preferred to think that these children, if given the chance, would remove their armor and reveal their softer, more genuinely human side. Occasionally this expectation proved correct, but more often than not I discovered the invulnerability of adolescents was no act, no pretense. Many of these children did not have hurt feelings, they felt no pain. That is not to say that they were incapable of being wounded, but as far as their consciously experienced feelings were concerned, there was no mask to take off. Children able to experience emotions of sadness, fear, loss, and rejection will often hide such feelings from their peers to avoid exposing themselves to ridicule and attack. Invulnerability is a camouflage they adopt to blend in with the crowd but will quickly remove in the company of those with whom they have the safety to be their true selves. These are not the kids I am most concerned about, although I certainly do have a concern about the impact an atmosphere of invulnerability will have on their learning and development. In such an environment genuine curiosity cannot thrive, questions cannot be freely asked, naive enthusiasm for learning cannot be expressed. Risks are not taken in such an environment, nor can passion for life and creativity find their outlets. The kids most deeply affected and at greatest risk for psychological harm are the ones who aspire to be tough and invulnerable, not just in school but in general. These children cannot don and doff the armor as needed. Defense is not something they do, it is who they are. This emotional hardening is most obvious in delinquents and gang members and street kids, but is also a significant dynamic in the common everyday variety of peer orientation that exists in the typical American home.

After that letter, I became a victim of the secret agencies in March 2013. I am not going into details, but it is enough information related to my letter written on 20 November 2012 to retired Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Kayani; the details are in my biography, The Prisoner Of The Hague, on Google Books.com. I hope that information will enlighten Pakistani authorities to realize the facts that foreign secret agencies' engagement to damage the Pakistani state through hired ones since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the shameful behavior of our agencies and media figures who stay ignoring and do not take it seriously. Please do not wear the mask if you love Pakistan and its people; there should be clarity between you and the enemy.

anger can mask a far more difficult emotion like grief, regret, or shame, and we need to use it

Pitiful. To obtain such gifts and not appreciate them. Mortarion’s tragedy was that he had become what he had spent his life opposing. He hated himself. He could not reconcile his own drastic transmutation in his mind. The pestilential stench seeping from his plate was, as much as anything, shame. For our part, thought Ahriman, you are the enemy, Pale King. How ironic you are content to be known by that title now, the name of the very monsters you used to hunt with such glee. Mortarion, witch-burner, purger of wisdom. Louder than any other voice, yours was raised against our being from the very start. There were other accusers too: Dorn, Russ, Corax, Manus, but none as loud or as self-righteous as you. Because of you, Prospero burned and Tizca fell. Russ was the implement, and dread Horus the architect, but you were the instigator who fomented the prejudice to begin with. We have longed to see you punished for that, and this is sweet indeed. Look what has become of you: Manus is long dead; Corax and Russ are broken, and lost from the field of war; Dorn is cornered and sweating out his last hours in a prison of his own making as oblivion descends. But you. You couldn’t even cling on to your principles, unlike them. You, the loudest critic of all, have become one with us. Your strength counted for nothing. You have submitted to the warp, and you loathe yourself for doing so. And we can now watch with relish as you rot and hate yourself for ever. Behind his gold-and-azure mask, Ahzek Ahriman smiled.

Toxic shame is a powerful driver behind addiction. It leads to constantly needing to numb and distract yourself from the pain of feeling that you are somehow inferior. Addiction not only masks shame, but as the accumulated effects of addiction take hold, we feel even more additional shame.

I am locked into this crisis where I am questioning my continuance as a human being. What do the days ahead hold for me? Can I pick myself up from the floor, scooping up the millions of scattered pieces, and face the nothingness of tomorrow? The writing can only reflect a surface image of what is going on. This does not devalue its importance. Its very existence may be the key to another person’s feelings. Feelings. Those parts that we all try to hide from each other. The shame, the jealousy, the guilt and insecurity. Our inferiority. Who can put up the most convincing mask to hide the inner turmoil? It’s all about chasing illusions that don’t really exist. It’s like hating some bastard yet when he dies we realise he wasn’t so bad after all. 1st June ’77 I think of the Unit Community while doing my exercises. The once strong foundation of our Community – the meetings – is crumbling. Crumbling in the sense that it will evaporate into the impotent ways of the whole prison system, be smothered by their stringent restrictions, bound up in bureaucracy. And even if this did happen, people would still visit the place from outside and say what a fine place it was because it will always be that bit different from the main penal system. They will see it only as it is,

I think most people wish they could be more of who they are and still feel accepted. But it's understandably hard if, growing up, you were ignored or shamed for being yourself & rewarded when you conformed.

Being different is not a reason for shame. Shame is wearing the mask of conformity to conceal your differences.

After a lifetime of contorting myself to fit into boxes never meant for the likes of me—it’s true. I got tired of feeling ashamed all the time. It is wildly subversive to say that I no longer feel ashamed—not in body, soul, beliefs, or movement through the world, not for who, what, or how I am. I do not hold an apology for the ways, hows, and whos of my work, my desire, and my love. There is an ownership of power in this simple fact that refuses to fit into words. But if you see me, you’ll know it. Sovereignty. That’s what I call it. Somehow, through all the twists and turns and fuckery of this life, I became a woman who is sovereign unto herself. Does this mean I’ve beaten all my demons and that I don’t give a fuck, and that everything is peachy keen all the time? Oh, hell no. Not even close. I am a woman who will forever be grappling with herself—pushing and growing and expanding and contracting, learning and unlearning, and tripping over the same lessons 50 times or more on the way to integration. It gets messy in this brain, heart, and body of mine. That’s just how I’m made. But the fact remains that no person, relationship, religion, belief system, or organization holds me to any agreement that negates my contract with myself. Fact: Your shame serves nobody. In fact, where there is shame, there is no pleasure. It is your pleasure that the universe spirals eternally toward. There comes a time in human evolution when a woman gets tired of asking permission to live, breathe, be, and love in the most honest and true way. When she stops looking outside of herself, she writes her own permission slip and doesn’t look back. A time when she is ready to own her story. Remove the masks. Shed the shame. Speak and write and live as a human sovereign unto herself. Are you ready to be subversive? How about revolutionary? Is this finally your time?

Our anger is the energy that gives us strength. The Incredible Hulk becomes the huge, powerful hulk when he needs the energy and power to take care of others. Our sadness is an energy we discharge in order to heal. As we discharge the energy over the losses relating to our basic needs, we can integrate the shock of those losses and adapt to reality. Sadness is painful. We try to avoid it. Discharging sadness releases the energy involved in our emotional pain. To hold it in is to freeze the pain within us. The therapeutic slogan is that grieving is the “healing feeling.” Fear releases an energy that warns us of danger to our basic needs. Fear is an energy leading to our discernment and wisdom. Guilt is our morality shame and guards our conscience. It tells us we have transgressed our values. It moves us to take action and change. Shame warns us not to try to be more or less than human. Shame signals our essential limitations. Shame limits our desire for pleasure and our interest and curiosity. We could not really be free without our shame. There is an anonymous saying, “Of all the masks of freedom, discipline (limits) is the hardest to understand.” We cannot be truly free without having limits. Joy is the exhilarating energy that emerges when all our needs are being met. We want to sing, run and jump with joy. The energy of joy signals that all is well. Dissmell is the affect that monitors our drive for hunger. It was primarily developed as a survival mechanism. As we’ve become more complex, its use has extended interpersonally. Prejudice and rage against strangers (the ones who are not like us) have terrible consequences. Dissmell is a major sexuality factor. Disgust follows the same pattern as dissmell. Originally a hunger drive auxiliary, it has been extended to interpersonal relations. Divorces are often dominated by disgust. Victims of abuse carry various degrees of anger and disgust. Rapists who kill operate on disgust, anger and sex fused together.

Would you scale the highest heaven, Would you pierce the lowest hell, Live in dreams of constant beauty, Or in basest thinkings dwell. For your thoughts are heaven above you, And your thoughts are hell below, Bliss is not, except in thinking, Torment nought but thought can know. Worlds would vanish but for thinking; Glory is not but in dreams; And the Drama of the ages From the Thought Eternal streams. Dignity and shame and sorrow, Pain and anguish, love and hate Are but maskings of the mighty Pulsing Thought that governs Fate. As the colors of the rainbow Makes the one uncolored beam, So the universal changes

Well, the gold fish in the bowl lay upside down bloating Full in the sky and the plains were bleached white with skeletons Various species grouped together according To their past beliefs The only way they ever all got together was Not in love but shameful grief

There is an anonymous saying, “Of all the masks of freedom, discipline (limits) is the hardest to understand.” We cannot be truly free without having limits.

The operative word here is “intimate.”We have to get on a core, gut level because shame is core, gut level stuff. Toxic shame masks our deepest secrets about ourselves; it embodies our belief that we are essentially defective. We feel so awful, we dare not look at it ourselves, much less tell anyone. The only way we can find out we were wrong about ourselves is to risk exposing ourselves to someone else’s scrutiny. When we trust someone else and experience their love and acceptance, we begin to change our beliefs about ourselves. We learn that we are not bad; we learn that we are lovable and acceptable. True love heals and affects spiritual growth. If we do not grow because of someone else’s love, it’s generally because it is a counterfeit form of love. True love is unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard allows us to be whole and accept all the parts of ourselves. To be whole we must reunite all the shamed and split-off aspects of ourselves. Virginia Satir speaks of the five freedoms that accrue when one is loved unconditionally. These freedoms involve our basic powers. These are the power to perceive, the power to love (choose and want), the power to emote, the power to think and express, and the power to envision or imagine.

A mask of feigned nonchalance. It took practice to come up with that look. Somebody who had been shamed so many times that he’d adapted to simply never showing it, rather than changing to not do things he was ashamed of.

when love is eclipsed by power, the somber hues of shame darken life

A Kula or spiritual community is like a nudist camp for the soul. Not only are we given the permission to remove our robes of guilt, our suits of shame, and our masks of false identity—we are encouraged to do so. To become naked and hold nothing back is to become truly beautiful.

But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted.

Guilt is our morality shame and guards our conscience. It tells us we have transgressed our values. It moves us to take action and change. Shame warns us not to try to be more or less than human. Shame signals our essential limitations. Shame limits our desire for pleasure and our interest and curiosity. We could not really be free without our shame. There is an anonymous saying, “Of all the masks of freedom, discipline (limits) is the hardest to understand.” We cannot be truly free without having limits. Joy is the exhilarating energy that emerges when all our needs are being met. We want to sing, run and jump with joy. The energy of joy signals that all is well.

Martin will recall this night as the first time--and one of the only times--he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief, and guilt...The walk home was magical. No one was glum. For this Christmas night they were lifted from the damning particularities of their own lives and invited to be a small piece of eternity. Years later, as a professor, Martin would try to find the words to articulate the power of togetherness in a world where togetherness had been corrupted--and to explore the effect of the music, the surprising lengths the people had gone to hear it and to play it, as evidence that music, and art in general, are basic requirements of the human soul. Not a luxury but a compulsion.

A man whose sense of shame has some profundity encounters his destinies and delicate decisions, too, on paths which few ever reach and of whose mere existence his closest intimates must not know: his mortal danger is concealed from their eyes, and so is his regained sureness of life. Such a concealed man who instinctively needs speech for silence and for burial in silence and who is inexhaustible in his evasion of communication, wants and sees to it that a mask of him roams in his place through the hearts and heads of his friends. And supposing he did not want it, he would still realize some day that in spite of that a mask of him is there - and that this is well. Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is growing continually, owing to the constantly false, namely shallow , interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives.

Another thing about this house that used to creep me the fuck out. Uncle Jude. Latex mask wearing, Freddy Kreuger slash Jason Voorhies wannabe Uncle Jude.

It’s such a shame your body gives you away. I bet if i stuck my fingers under that tight dress you have on, your pussy would be soaking for me.

We venture out into the world And assume our shameful daily task Of fearing what our peers might think And putting on a public mask Smothering our private passions Behind our masks we suffocate And watch as others do the same Letting their dreams asphyxiate -Asphyxiation

The origins of the current description of the psychopathy syndrome can be traced back to the work of Harvey Cleckley in 1940s, and his book, The Mask of Sanity. Some of the key features of psychopathy recorded by Cleckley included: absence of nervousness, interpersonal charm, lack of shame, impoverished affect (emotions seem shallow and are often used to manipulate others), and antisocial behaviour that appears senseless and without obvious motivation. Since Cleckley’s days, scientists have systematically developed ways of assessing psychopathy in criminal populations and in community samples. They have also developed assessments for psychopathic traits in children.

As he opened the door to the building, he recognized the smell even through his mask. He didn’t describe to Reine-Marie in detail what he’d found. But he’d told her enough, and she’d seen the subsequent news reports to know that all had been as far from well as it was possible to get. The most vulnerable. The weak. The infirm. Those who could not care for themselves had been abandoned. Left to die. And die they had. Armand had been the first in and last out. Staying with each man and woman, each body, until all had been removed. He’d immediately sent teams to other nursing homes, until all of them had been checked. And all the horrors uncovered. It was a shame he’d carry all his life. Not that he himself had abandoned these people, but that Québec had. Quebeckers had. And he, as a senior police officer, hadn’t realized sooner that this could happen in a pandemic. That this could ever happen. Here. Here.

Every masked Autistic person has a litany of experiences like this. Most maskers dodge the massive psychological bullet that is ABA therapy, but we still receive endless conditioning that says our unfiltered selves are too annoying, unusual, awkward, nonconforming, and cold to fit in. We also witness how other nonconforming bodies and minds are treated. When the entire world shames people for being into “childish” things, having odd mannerisms, or simply being irritating, you don’t need ABA to program you into compliance. Everyone around you is already doing it.

When I failed to learn how to ride a bike at the “correct” age because I had poor balance and motor control, my dad shamed me for my immature clumsiness (perhaps because it reminded him of his own masked motor disability).

There is no limit to the foolishness of men of my age. Our only excuse is that we leave no mark of our own on the girls who pass through our hands: our convoluted desires, our ritualized lovemaking, our elephantine ecstasies are soon forgotten, they shrug off our clumsy dance as they drive straight as arrows into the arms of men whose children they will bear, the young and vigorous and direct. Our loving leaves no mark. Whom will that other girl with the blind face remember: me with my silk robe and my dim lights and my perfumes and oils and my unhappy pleasures, or that other cold man with the mask over his eyes who gave the orders and pondered the sounds of her intimate pain? Whose was the last face she saw plainly on this earth but the face behind the glowing iron? Though I cringe with shame, even here and now, I must ask myself whether, when I lay head to foot with her, fondling and kissing those broken ankles, I was not in my heart of hearts regretting that I could not engrave myself on her as deeply.

Drag helped me to combat my anxiety and social awkwardness. It brought a joy to my life that allowed me to feel at home in my body. It changed how I saw myself. I went from being largely mirror-evasive to feeling affirmed, empowered, almost as if I had seen myself for the first time. It gave me the confidence to do uncomfortable things, like eventually calling my father to talk to him about my love life and my sexuality – something I had long been avoiding. His response was masked disappointment and awkwardness, but I felt the relief of laying claim to myself again, of not hiding parts of my life as if they were too shameful to mention.

You know what I have learnt, when you can't stand up for others you lack the spine, which means you can never truly stand up for your own self. And vice versa. It is as basic and simple as that, when you can't man up the courage and voice up against the evils of this society, you become a part of that evil cycle, you become the very vacuum through which the injustices flow. But it's not your fault, it's called Spine, and God hasn't really graced everyone with it. Anyway, this isn't gonna be a talk invested on such creatures, neither on those who try their hardest to pull others down by body-shaming, age-shaming, ganging up to mock and ridicule, in short being a bully to those their darkness can't withstand the Light of. This is for everyone, Woman and Man, who's faced such a bully in their personal space, workspace or even in their random space. You guys, stay in your Light and remember when someone is literally shaken by your power and feel their failures as a living success on your being, they try to pull you down. It's like their mind cannot fathom how you shine all along that too so spontaneously and palpably, while those poor insecure beings have to literally wear a mask or turn in tactics that their soul knows the cost of. This is for everyone, who stands up for their own selves and for every other soul who they see deserve (no, not need but deserve, these two words have very different connotations) their support at the moment, to fight the menaces of this evil system. This is a Thank You note to every soul who fights these Bullies with a fierce strength and sunshine. You go, guys. You've got this. Every day, we lose countless people from suicides to depression, and one of the core reasons to that is always going to be these cruel and worthless beings who try to pull down another only to feel their worth, because of their own insecurities; we lose good people from children to adults, because certain dark creatures are too loud in their derogatory treatment, and certain 'neutral' people find it difficult to take a stand (after all, those words weren't hurled at you, right?), but you see that's the thing we gotta tell the good people, that their goodness is their strength not weakness, we gotta tell them to raise their voices for themselves, because honestly one clear voice is enough, always enough. You don't have to be loud to be heard. And if you think, they are too many and you're just one, remember a sheep moves in a herd, a lioness, oh she roars baby, and that's just pretty much enough. And if this gives you Strength, remember every time someone tries to pull you down, someone bullies you, it's just a reflection of their own insecurities; it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Remember who you are, and walk with your Head up. And if you're fortunate, you will find some support coming your way in the shape of like-minded souls, true friends and souls who know what it takes to be human and stand up with a clear spine, and then be gracious enough to thank them with all your soul. So this one's for them, who know their worth and have the heart to stand up for what's important not only for their own sake but for others around. Because when you fight to let your goodness shine on an individual level, you also channelise the spirit of fighting for the good at the collective level. Hope this reaches and gives courage and strength to at least a single being, remember you've got this, already. Love & Light, always - Debatrayee

You don’t have to wear the mask,” said Arajo, looking at her with concern. “If I don’t,” said Juliet, “I’m saying that everyone in the room is my better, and deserves to rule me.” Arajo went very still. “Is that how you felt when you came here?” she asked. Juliet hesitated a few moments, trying to find the truth. “Yes,” she said finally. “But at least you were all shaming yourselves along with me.

gives us a road to the decency and legitimacy we want while sparing us the difficulty and struggle of true virtue. Dissociation turns virtue into a mask. It gives us the means to construct a “face of The Good.” It counts the mere mouthing of glossy ideas of The Good the same as an honest struggle toward what is actually possible.

The degree to which a person experiences feelings of shame depends on two variables: the way other people are treating him (with admiration and respect, or with contempt and disdain), and the degree to which he himself already feels proud or ashamed. The more a person is shamed by others, from childhood by parents or peers who ridicule or reject him, the more he is likely to feel chronically shamed, and hypersensitive to feelings and experiences of being shamed, sometimes to the point of feeling that others are treating him with contempt or disdain even when they are not. For such people, and they are the rule among the violent, even a minor sign of real or imagined disrespect can trigger a homicidal reaction. The purpose of violence is to force respect from other people. The less self-respect people feel, the more they are dependent on respect from others; for without a certain minimal amount of respect, from others or the self, the self begins to feel dead inside, numb and empty. That is how the most violent criminals told me they felt, and it is clear that it is the most intolerable of all feelings (though it is actually an absence of feeling, lack of the feeling of pride, or self-love). When people lack self-respect, and feel they are incapable of eliciting respect from others in the form of admiration for their achievements or their personalities, they may see no way to get respect except in the form of fear, which I think of as a kind of ersatz substitute for admiration; and violence does elicit fear, as it is intended to. For example, I have spoken to many violent criminals who spoke of how gratifying it was to see fear in the eyes of their victims. Feelings of shame and self-contempt are often overlooked by others, because the people who experience them do their best to conceal such feelings behind a defensive mask of bravado and boasting. There is nothing more shameful than to feel ashamed — it reveals that a person has something to feel ashamed about. Why are these feelings of shame and self-contempt so bottomless, chronic, and almost ineradicable in the most violent men? Because, in the men I knew, they had been subjected to a degree of child abuse that was off the scale of anything I had previously thought of describing with that term. Many had been beaten nearly to death, raped repeatedly or prostituted, or neglected to a life-threatening degree by parents too disabled themselves to care for their child. And of those who had not experienced those extremes of physical abuse and neglect, my colleagues and I found that they had experienced a degree of emotional abuse that had been just as damaging: being focused on as the parents' emotional "whipping boy," in which they served as the scapegoat for whatever feelings of shame and humiliation their parents had suffered and then attempted to rid themselves of by transferring them onto their child, by subjecting him to systematic and chronic shaming and humiliation, taunting and ridicule.

BRANKS – MASKS OF SHAME OR INFAMY

If Jacob was right and clothes were costumes and makeup a mask, then our attitudes and habits must be our shields. Isn’t that what compulsive eating was for Mom? And round-the-clock work for Merc? And Dad’s meanness, his sniping, his criticism — wasn’t that just a front to cover his shame? His humiliation?

impossibly thin link with the Grey Swords. Each one had fallen to Anomander Rake, and this knowledge alone was sufficient, for it burned like acid, it stung like shame. They wore their masks, and as they fought, the painted slashes, the sigils of rank, began to fade, worn away by the fires of chaos, until upon each warrior the mask gleamed pure. As if here, within the world of this sword, some power could yield to greater truths. Here, Dragnipur seemed to say, you are all equal.

At certain times and concerning certain topics, admitting that you have feelings, particularly the 'wrong' feelings, is tantamount to admitting the Devil has got a hold of you. Yet another time and concerning another topic, you may be accused of not being godly enough if you don't express emotions (by which I mean, of course, the 'right' emotions for a Christian, for the particular moment, and for your gender). It can be tough for a newcomer to get the hang of the rules, particularly rules like these that are never spoken outright. But if you spend enough time in the subculture, and experience a few shamings to help show you the way, you eventually figure it out: Express lots of emotions here, perhaps even falsifying emotions if you don't have them, and put on your 'joy' mask the rest of the time -- disconnecting from or hiding feelings that don't fit.

A score of Seguleh, all that remained of the Second’s forces, formed one impossibly thin link with the Grey Swords. Each one had fallen to Anomander Rake, and this knowledge alone was sufficient, for it burned like acid, it stung like shame. They wore their masks, and as they fought, the painted slashes, the sigils of rank, began to fade, worn away by the fires of chaos, until upon each warrior the mask gleamed pure. As if here, within the world of this sword, some power could yield to greater truths. Here, Dragnipur seemed to say, you are all equal.

We were like children who've suffered an outrage but refuse to confide it to their parents because the shame, which should never have been theirs, was now theirs to shoulder. For us, identity was a mask, not a face. We were provisional people, born sidelined on the wrong side of history. No one was like us, which was why we hid. We were wrong people.

Sadly, we bury our feelings so deeply, masking our true selves, that by the time we come to understand there is no shame in being who we are, we’re already deeply damaged, and the scars of that silence have already carved their way into our souls.