I googled public humiliation. I was trying to see how others dealt with being a scapegoat. I came across a great article written by Monica Lewinsky. She knows a thing or two about this.  I admire her work to stop public humiliation on social media and how she has taken back her voice and story.

It is awful when your voice gets taken away and others tell your story.

I didn’t feel a fraction of what she did but being shamed by a group I thought would be my “family” forever, was bad enough. I wonder, will this happen to all of us? Is that the culture now? Humiliation? Lack of compassion? Afraid to talk to each other and hear first hand accounts? Trying so desperately to find the “right” side, that you can’t sit in the discomfort that everyone did their best?

I’ve noticed on the Neighborhood app that a lot of people post about rude things people said to them, or horrible things people are doing.  I appreciate the posts on “suspicious” people if they really are dangerous and not just fear of “outsiders”, but this public humiliation thing makes me nervous. 

We can all just be out doing our lives when someone films us and puts us up on the Internet to be shamed.  Makes you afraid to live!

I know that what goes around comes around and the thing that bothered me the most at our cohousing community was the fact that no one noticed that how everyone treated me would be repeated someday, maybe one of them would be next? The truth is I didn’t notice myself.  We had a meeting months earlier on an issue in the Common House and one person felt attacked and another called the discussion ‘cruel”.  I assumed we’d process and work it out but we never did.  

So, can we stop humiliation and shame and be a new world of questions and compassion?  That’s my holiday wish!

Monica in her own words, 2014

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/society/2014/06/monica-lewinsky-humiliation-culture