Content note: the second half of this essay discusses rape and sexual violence. Those sections are marked. About one in four American women has experienced sexual violence.
This week, as I was researching badges of shame for a post about what happens after MAGA to the cult members, I also could not stop reading about the Cornell Seven. Rape was a norm when I was in school. How, decades later, does it remain so much a part of our culture?
As I attempted to understand how we employ visuals of shame, like the dunce’s cap, to try to guess what happens after MAGA finally falls, I could not help but wonder how shame seems to function differently in terms of violence against women.
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Emblems of Status
For many societies in history, the body was a tool to express status. On the street, you might not know someone has a palatial estate, but their manner of dress could tell you. Today, class markers are harder to decode because luxury is available to anyone with credit. Historically, though, sumptuary laws, legal restrictions that determined who could buy what, ensured people dressed in ways that faithfully projected their social rank. People needed to display their position in society to maintain power. Scholar Thorstein Veblen said, “The wealth or power must be put in evidence,” because otherwise the tides of power would shift. How could you defer to someone if you can’t see their rank? Projecting power means people have to perform it.
