I’ve known about Shame for some years. Ever since I watched Brene Brown’s TED talk years ago (which, let’s face it, is probably a lot of people’s introduction to the concept)…

But I didn’t really “get” it at the time.

A lot of emotions are easy to understand intuitively…

Anger? I know what it’s like to feel angry.

Anxiety? I know what it’s like to feel fear.

But shame?

What does shame even feel like? How do you know if it’s happening? When do you hear people saying “I’m feeling a lot of shame right now.”?

Turns out, it’s because shame is fucking everywhere!

Literally, most of our society is built on shame.

(If you want more on that, read Unlearning Shame by the brilliant author and researcher Devon Price)

We don’t see all this shame around us because we’re like the fish in the sea asking what water looks like. We live our lives being constantly reminded that we should feel shame about pretty much every aspect of ourselves.

It turns out I have a lot of shame…

… and, I’m going to be honest, I am feeling shame about even publishing this…

… but then, part of the cure for shame is talking about it, so…

The shame of being a man

My trigger for doing this particular “Classic Alex Deep Dive” on the concept of shame is this…

I’m learning that I have huge shame about being a man.

Specifically, a man who is attracted (at least primarily) to women.

Even more specifically, a neurodiverse man who is attracted to women.

Over the years, it seems I have built up a huge undercurrent of shame around feeling attracted to women. This has been influenced by societal messages, the social groups I’ve been around since childhood, and my own lack of self worth caused by various factors, including my neurodivergence.

The basic story my brain believes goes:

• I am fundamentally wrong and bad for being a man attracted to women.
• If I show signs that I am attracted to a woman, I am committing the worst moral crime.
• If I think that a woman might be attracted to me and I misinterpret this – which may be more likely due to my autistic traits – I am a terrible person, everyone will hate me, and I will be expulsed from the social group and “cancelled.”
• If I am attracted to a woman and I believe that the associated social group has any opinions about this, the group’s opinions matter more than my feelings for that woman. If anyone in the group has anything “negative” to say about the pairing – even if it turns out they are joking and I’ve misinterpreted this – I am fundamentally wrong for being attracted to that woman and I must withdraw all attention from her.
• Because I am neurodivergent, I am fundamentally unsexy, unattractive, and no woman could possibly actually be attracted to me. Therefore, if my brain tells me that a woman is attracted to me, my brain is probably delusional. My brain must then search relentlessly for “evidence” of this delusion.
• Because I am 36 years old, I will be considered by all women under my age to be “a creepy old man.” And women 36 and above will be so jaded with the dating scene that they will inherently consider me a “bad man” as they have been burned so many times… therefore I am inherently bad because I am a man.

Where does all this shame come from?

There are a lot of sources.

The unhelpful side of being an optimistic feminist

Let’s start with… <Alex flinches, fearing even saying the word>… feminism.

I have long identified as a feminist.

Though, to be honest, a large part of me doesn’t feel like I am even allowed to say that I am a feminist. I feel shame for just saying that I am a feminist, because I feel like I’m not entitled to say that I am a feminist… because I am a man.

On the rare occasions I talk about feminism, I always preface it by saying “My female friends who are strongly involved in feminism say that I am a feminist, so that’s why I feel I can say that I am.”

I say this because I feel like I am inherently wrong if I label myself a feminist (which, by the way, is a statement of shame… that’s what shame can look and sound like).

But…

… I don’t think being a feminist is particularly radical.

For me, it means this:

Women, men, and all genders and sexes are equal.

That’s it.

I firmly believe that we are all human beings. We are all fundamentally just trying to live in the best way possible. We all want similar things from life at a deep level.

I don’t believe that any group is inherently better or worse than any others.

I think it’s ridiculous that some groups are treated differently.

I think we all struggle as humans.

We humans are all “broken” in some ways. In the sense that life has beaten us all down in some way or another, and we are just trying to do the best with what we’ve got.

I don’t believe that anybody should be penalised or their life made even harder just because they happen to have a different body, brain, or circumstances than anyone else.

Since I was a child, I have hated it whenever someone says “You did/said that thing… because you are a woman/man.”

No! The person did/said that thing… because they are unique personality as a human being! Their gender might be a factor in creating that personality, but it is only one of many, far more important factors!

I remember, when I was maybe 10 years old, listening to a recording of Billy Connolly doing stand-up.

Connolly said: “I don’t get it when people say women and men are the same. They’re not the same, they’re different!”

My 10-year-old self shouted at the tape player: “You’re wrong! They’re the same!”

But, the world didn’t agree with me.

Over the years, my belief that people are equal has been beaten down again and again. Fundamentally, I still strongly believe people are equal… but holding onto that belief has ended up growing a lot of shame inside me.

The shame of wanting to date as a man

One thing that has happened, I think, is that my brain has taken on a lot of stories associated with feminism, masculinity, and sexuality… stories that I don’t necessarily believe deep down but are very strong stories in the world.

Here is some of the shame that my interactions with these stories has helped create:

• A prevailing story in the world (particularly the dating world) is that: Men only want one thing (sex). They are all bad and they will fuck you over.
  • My shame says: Any desire that I have for sex is inherently wrong. I am wrong for wanting to explore my sexuality. When women seek to regain their pleasure and explore their sexuality, this is a positive, empowering thing. But, because I am a man, I am inherently evil for wanting to do this, it is impossible for me to do this in a positive way, and I should feel deep shame for even considering it.
• Women and men are not the same. Men are worse than women. Cisgender males are worse than all other genders. And cisgender males who are attracted to females are the worst.
  • My shame says: My personality doesn’t matter. My positive beliefs, my compassion, my good intentions, and my own needs, dreams, and desires as a unique human being are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that I am a cisgender man who is attracted to women. And that makes me a horrible person who should be ashamed of myself.
• Looking at women is sexual harassment. Even just looking for a second at a woman in the street is an act of violence. Talking to a woman out of the blue is creepy and sleazy. Finding any woman attractive is wrong.
  • My shame says: Any type of interaction I make with a woman will be wrong. Therefore, if I do look at a woman or interact in another way, I should berate myself relentlessly and obsessively think about all the “mistakes” I made in that interaction. If I do ever interact with her again, by this point she will hate me.

Such shame stories can be brutal.

Even though I now recognise these stories exist, they still control my life. Every time I try to make a small move in the direction of “putting myself out there” in the dating world, these stories rise up like a tidal wave to drown me and send me back into my shell.

Which makes trying to engage in dating and romantic connections extremely hard…

The shame associated with being around women

The past couple of years, I have become single for, basically, the first time in my adult life.

For years, I have felt more able to communicate with women than with men. I have always felt more comfortable in groups of women.

Being single, that has now become a problem.

I grew up as the only boy in a community with 6 girls my age.

This is apparently quite common for people with autistic traits… at least anecdotally (I may have some confirmation bias here). Autistic girls are more likely to have male groups of friends. Autistic boys are more likely to be have female groups of friends.

Feeling more comfortable around women was okay when I was in a long-term relationship. I wasn’t looking for romantic connections because I had one. Also, I mostly socialised with my ex-partner’s friends, who were all women… and Spanish.

This made me “other” and “different” in two ways: I was the only male in a group of females. And I was the only Scottish in a group of Spanish.

The fact that I was probably the only autistic (though we didn’t know it at the time) was therefore easily hidden.

Suddenly, now I’m single, this seems to put me at a huge disadvantage… and opens up more shame:

• I feel like I don’t interact with women in the way that is expected of a “man.” Because I never learned the social rules of being a male.
  • My shame says: I will always be seen as weird and unattractive by women.
• I don’t know how to interact with women in a way that doesn’t give off “friend signals” because I have so many years with women as my primary friends.
  • My shame says: If I interact authentically with women, I will always be seen as a friend (at best). If I want to be seen as a man, the only solution is to “pretend to be a man” (i.e. mask)… which is tiring and will come off as weird in the end anyway, so is pointless.
• I have basically no experience navigating the social cues associated with flirting and attraction, as I never learned them.
  • My shame says: I will never be able to flirt, signal my attraction, or read other people’s signs of attraction. So I should just give up because any attempt to do so will end in complete social disaster.

The more I dig into my shame and the stories around them, the more stories I seem to find!

It makes complete sense that I am struggling so much to get going with dating and have fun with it (which, ultimately is the goal, right?… to have fun and make new connections with people).

At every step, I have to battle through a huge wall of shame.

And what does shame make us want to do?

Give up.

Give up and hide back in our shell. The shame tells us that we are in danger and that the only way to remove this danger is to isolate ourselves.

“The world doesn’t want us,” our shame tells us. “Better to avoid all human interaction.”

But there is a positive…

Seeing something is the first vital step to truly working through it.

In the past 2 years…

I’ve made friends with my anger. It is now one of my best friends on stage.

I’ve made friends with my anxiety. It’s complicated, but we’re learning to be with each other.

Now I can see my shame. I wonder what type of friends we’ll become…