shame-web

Women most often experience shame as a web of layered, conflicting, and competing social-community expectations. The expectations dictate who we should be, what we should be, how we should be.

It is easy to see how quickly expectations become layered, competitive and conflicting. This is how the shame web works. We have very few realistic options that allow us to meet any of these expectations. Most of the options that we do have feel like a "double bind." When Marilyn Frye describes a double bind as "a situation in which options are very limited and all of them expose us to penalty, censure or deprivation.