I’m starting this blog just by recording some of my existing opinions.

— what started this train of thought was seeing Gwen on BlueSky post, “If you don’t believe in prison you really have to believe in shame if you want a functioning society.”

And bestie Kevin reposted it, so I got upset because I disagree. This is what I described:

Shame as social control isn’t an alternative to prison. It’s one of the emotional mechanisms that makes prisons necessary. It maintains hierarchy, harms agency, and reproduces the trauma-based domination that anarchists try to dissolve. Shame, accountability, and other types of force are different categories, and there are much better ways to cultivate prosocial behavior.

And when I say “shame,” I’m not talking about the little flicker of “healthy shame” people feel when they realize they’re out of alignment with their own values. 

I mean systematic, socially enforced shame — which flows downward in hierarchy, not upward, thus Gwen’s story about making a CEO cry by protesting is *not* an example of shame to me, although she calls it shaming. Shame requires a relationship of dependence, not just a moment of conflict.

“Shame is a well-documented form of social control” — but mainly because it trains people to self-police in accordance with hierarchical norms. Graeber writes a lot about how violence becomes internalized as habits of deference, silence, and inhibited action. In that sense, shame works as a kind of ‘internalized coercion.’

And without a state to formalize limits around punishment, shame-based control can actually become even more intense and unpredictable.


Let me clarify the definition of “shame,” because people do blur what exactly it means. What I’m talking about is the affective mechanism of shame — the identity-collapse that only occurs inside a dependency relationship. It’s specific and psychological, and it’s not the same thing as broader social disapproval or public pressure.

Those broader things exist, but they function differently because they don’t cause a loss of agency. This loss of agency is very important!

And with Gwen’s post — the person she was responding to said “the alternative to shame is criminalization,” but shame is not an alternative. It is part of criminalization already. Criminalization uses shame to enforce norms, so it makes no conceptual sense to call shame an alternative to it. That’s like saying, “we don’t need engines if we have cars.” Cars are built on engines — criminalization is built on shame dynamics.

What they might be trying to say is the alternative to decentralized informal sanction is centralized formal sanction. But that’s still a misuse of “shame.”

They’re also framing shame as a softer or more benevolent governance tool, but it’s not. Affective shame only operates through domination, because it involves an internalized collapse of self triggered by dependency. Mechanically, it functions as a traumatic psychological injury, not as accountability.

Because affective shame and social sanction get lumped together under one word, it can get really misleading. It’s similar to how psychological words like “gaslighting” or “emotional labor” are annoying when misused, but in this case, I think the confusion can actually become dangerous, because it leads people to unintentionally promote mechanisms that reduce agency. And when agency collapses, people tend to respond with submission or retaliation, not prosocial behavior.

Where I’m going with this is that agency-preserving consequences hold people responsible with the community, not under it. They work because people can participate in determining the consequences without losing their agency. It is a collaboration between the people involved, not a domination dynamic.

I can give specific examples if you want — things like mediation between the survivor and aggressor or the aggressor choosing to go to classes to improve themself etc. There are a lot of collaborative options.

A social norm can guide behavior, but it doesn’t collapse agency, because it isn’t imposed inside a dependent relationship. Shame as a weapon requires hierarchy, a threat to belonging, and identity destabilization. A norm shapes behavior; shame attacks the self.

Agency is what allows people to develop their own sense of morality and participate in repair, instead of becoming resentful or defensive. Shame destroys agency, which makes real alternatives to prison impossible.

And that’s true both in formal criminalization and in informal community shaming. The mechanism is the same. Neither creates the conditions for accountability or repair.

Just to be clear, I actually don’t think confinement itself is always carceral!  If someone chooses a temporary separation space because it helps them regulate or prevent harm, that’s agency-preserving, not domination. The issue is the collapse of agency, not the existence of boundaries.

Anarchism only works if social coordination doesn’t rely on domination.

Shame = domination.

Agency-preserving accountability = non-dominating social coordination.

Coercion limits behavior, but domination reshapes identity. Even forced confinement can potentially protect people without humiliating anyone or collapsing their agency.

“You can reintegrate whenever you choose to take steps toward repair. We’re containing this unwanted behavior,” is very different from, “You are an evil person who must be broken.”

— There are some circumstances that *would* trigger identity collapse and are unavoidable still. For example, how we handle ICE/fossil-fuel execs/corrupt justices who are no longer in power.

Because

Once they’re removed from power, those conditions do create the setup for affective shame: 

1. sudden loss of status leads to dependency, 

2. withdrawal of recognition, 

3. collapse of the role that shaped their identity, 

4. internalizing the meaning of that collapse

…which could trigger the identity-collapse mechanism.

We should care not because they deserve gentleness, but because collapsing their agency might make rehabilitation impossible and leave them volatile, brittle, or retaliatory. They’d still be a threat to us all.

Here’s Aeris’s Little Chart to Affective Shame/Domination to help you visualize how it works:

CONDITIONS (must all be present)

   1. Dependency: The person relies on the other/group for belonging, identity, or acceptance.

   2. Evaluation: The other withdraws recognition or signals “defectiveness of the self.”

   3. Internalization: The judgment enters the self. (“They’re right about what I am.”)

   4. Exposure & Helplessness: The self feels seen as unworthy, with no route to repair.

 triggers 

MECHANISM (identity collapse)

   • The sense of self becomes unstable.

   • The person shifts from “I did something wrong” to “I *am* wrong.”

   • Agency collapses:

        – can’t act

        – can’t speak

        – can’t repair

        – can’t stay present

   • The self becomes an *object* of the other’s evaluation rather than a subject.

 leads to 

OUTCOMES (how domination reproduces itself)

   A. Submission:

      Internalizing the other’s judgment, becoming compliant, self-erasing.

   B. Appeasement:

      Performing goodness to regain belonging, masking true self.

   C. Defensive aggression:

      Shame flipped outward  violence, retaliation.

   D. Shame-identity formation:

      Chronic loss of agency, difficulty with repair, avoiding responsibility, brittle selfhood.

RESULT:

   • No prosocial repair.

   • No accountability.

   • No agency.

   • Domination dynamic reproduced.