See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence

by Jess Hill

Shame is a concept few people understand, so Gilligan lists its synonyms – and there are dozens: being insulted, dishonoured, disrespected, disgraced, demeaned, slandered, ridiculed, teased, taunted, mocked, rejected, defeated, subjected to indignity or ignominy; ‘losing face’ and being treated as insignificant; feeling inferior, impotent, incompetent, weak, ignorant, poor, a failure, ugly, unimportant, useless, worthless. Envy and jealousy are siblings of shame, says Gilligan, since they trigger – and are underpinned by – feelings of inferiority. So central is shame to the human experience, writes Gilligan, that we have as many words for it as the Inuit are said to have for snow.