Stigma is first of all, at the level of animal wiring, a matter of appearance, something that sets the person apart because it looks “different.” Not repellent necessarily, but unusual. It’s the white crow phenomenon: a white crow will be excluded and even attacked by the black crows. Is there a book called “the white crow” to go with “the black swan?” But a black swan is quite normal in Australia. It is not the blackness itself, which aesthetically is fine, but the unexpectedness of it. Something in biology wants a group to be homogenous. Outliers are eliminated. Yet they are the source of evolution because if circumstances change radically, they may be the only ones equipped to survive. THAT’s what fitness means -- not biggest and most vicious.
As a card-carrying liberal (albeit with an awkwardly eclectic bent) I’ve always felt that stigmas were unjustified, that oddballs were valuable (maybe geniuses!!), and that those in minority groups must be protected in order to preserve democracy. When I ran across this old (1963) almost unknown study by Erving Goffman called “Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity,” which is really somewhere between an expanded essay or thesis and a conventional book, I realized that I was naive. It’s the “management” element that I hadn’t considered: that stigma is a way of managing social groups and individuals. Persons who make trouble are stigmatized and thus “spoiled identities.” rendered powerless. Excluded. Fair game to punish or ignore or deprive.
I know this firsthand. Really powerful people pay no attention to me -- tubby old ladies in small towns are easy to ignore. But those in some contexts who are uncertain about their hold on money or status are quick to label me “bitter, greedy, hysterical” or as one woman put it, “too outspoken.” But it has backfired: instead of bringing me under control, being stigmatized has freed me from having to play the game by majority rules. I do not have to stay “in favor,” since I’m already “out” with no perceptible damage except the opinions of people I don’t care about anyway. (Context? Try Unitarian Universalists. Try the Industrial Cowboy Art Cartel. Try the Montana Humanities scene.)
I may be moving too fast for you. Okay, back up. Being a member of a stigmatized group can be an advantage or a disadvantage. Any boundary presents an opportunity for strategy. Simply excluding people does not render them “safe” or nonexistent. Both the people in the in-group and the people in the out-group need to consider management of these “spoiled” identities.
Stigma turns out to be several different things.
Originally, says Goffman, the Greeks used stigma as an imposed mark or brand to signify status, maybe as a class (slave) or maybe associated with moral failure (thief). But then the mark might be converted into a mark of pride and voluntary association, even holiness as in bodily signs of Christian grace that echo the Crucifixion, like bleeding palms. Today piercing and tattooing that might once have marked people to avoid, have become, through defiant modeling by culture heroes, marks of belonging and identification -- pride. Of course, something permanent signs a more serious commitment to the category than does a sign on clothing: the yellow star marking Jews vs. the concentration camp tattooed number on the forearm.
Congenital characteristics like skin color or eyes with epicanthal folds or noses with too bold a curve are the kinds of stigma I was taught to oppose because they sign the stigma of groups that are simply “other” with no fault -- though the primitive idea of racial tribes, now swept aside by DNA analysis, still persists, and we are still afraid of those who are different. They might be enemies, or at least competitors, or your sister might want to marry one, which would introduce the possibility of her loyalty going to a group not the family. (Not YOU.)
Being born with no nose or a cleft palate (Have you seen those horrific photos of babies with holes in their faces?) can be addressed by surgery, but often even after repair there is some subtle difference that draws stares. I once rode the bus with a young woman who had Marfan Syndrome (unusually tall and thin) and couldn’t keep from staring at her. Our brains want more information. I thought she was beautiful, but I hurt her by making her self-conscious. Freaks trigger a terrible contradiction: how can people be so different and still be human? But one of the forces for good has been science fiction movies that humanize “persons” made weird by latex and silicone, excellent practice for looking past, say, the scars and melted-off ears of a burn victim to the mind inside.
There are plenty more stigmatized categories that are not immediately obvious. What is a stigma in one time/place (“What, you have no children?”) is a virtue in another (“How fine that you’ve refrained from having children in this over-populated world!”). And things have a tendency to flip: there have been many stories about the damage done by bullies, especially in grade school, but yesterday on the radio there was a story about how bullies have been damaged and should be helped, forgiven. Even so strong a category as murder flips: murder is so stigmatized that murderers are murdered by society, which triggers mercy in certain nuns. When there is a strong stigma countered by strong compassion, we become obsessed with it, can’t let it go.
Consider illiteracy or sexual orientation. They can be hidden. But everyone shares them to a degree: everyone is illiterate in some dimension or to some extent and everyone is unique in their sexuality to some extent. The boundary is blurry, so we don’t really know whether we’re on this side or that side, and yet there’s little space to manage being right on the line. It could give you a mid-life crisis, wondering whether you are old or not and whether it’s “in” or “out” to be old. Should you dye your hair? Get plastic surgery? Roll the bottoms of your trousers?
What makes Goffman’s book so interesting is that he’s working to help the stigmatized person figure out what to do about the stigma. Should a Native American among whites make a big deal out of it, taking the attitude that it’s a noble identity carrying special faculties? Or should he or she, aware that some people will expect them to be violent and drunk, simply let the unknowing assume they are Italian? Or abandon pride and get drunk: smash anyone who is critical. And how do you handle your inner life: be proud, be wary, shut the whole thing out of consciousness?
I’ve been watching the “spin” on Assange, who is either a principled whistleblower or a traitorous squealer, depending on how you manage your stigmas. The issue was moved to a sexual offense, rape, which is almost universally stigmatized. Now it appears that the event in question was consensual “sex by surprise,” which is defined as not using a condom. But our feelings about that are even more problematic because it addresses disease, one of the original reasons for stigmatizing and excluding people in order to protect the larger “herd” from contagion. But we have intense social commands to heal and protect everyone. (The health industry depends upon it.)
It’s a counseling truism that every problem is an opportunity. It appears that we’ve got a great opportunity to sort our stigmas and that it is a task that badly needs doing.
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