Over the course of your lifetime, which event(s) stand out as the one(s) that brought you the most intense sensations of shame, indignity, and humiliation? Please describe the circumstances of the event, explain why you felt embarrassed, and state how your feelings of shame and degradation manifested themselves.
Who you were humiliated in front of? Did you display physical symptoms of your embarrassment? Did you recover from his event?
Thanks.
When I posted a thread earnestly asking people to share their most humiliating experiences, and got only one reply.
Puberty.
ding ding ding
We have a winner!
You first.
Yeah, it does seem entirely appropriate for the OP to start us off. Otherwise s/he is just a voyeur.
::reading Google ads::
WTF? What’s “sissy husband humiliation”?
I think even knowing the answer to that would count as a humiliating experience. I’m personally humiliated that I can even guess what the answer would be.
I know exactly what I would post, if I felt any inclination to share.
Aren’t most people actively looking for ways to permanently block these memories?
I don’t know, but I’m guessing it involved alcohol.
uh, yeah. Not doing this.
Perhaps you might have used the word “embarrassing.” Humiliating has some pretty strong connotations.
Besides high school, I can think of one time that I still cringe about. After a few years riding the subway for 45 minutes each way every day, I got this idea that it’s every man for himself and screw everyone else. That included vying for an empty seat. So one day I am strap-hanging on the 2 train and a guy gets up before the next stop. I kind of notice him vaguely indicating the seat but in my hurry to let no man beat me out, I swing mightily into the empty seat. It’s only then that I look up and notice the hugely-pregnant woman standing in front of me. To this day I wish I had just sucked it up and given her the seat but I was in the middle of Show-No-Weakness mode. I did feel vaguely ill and uncomfortable but I made it through. But I still hate to think about it; it wasn’t long after that that I moved to the country.
There’s also the time that I … :o nope, it’s no big deal but it’s still just :o
I was in college – a large Division I NCAA type college, and noticed a sign posted in the gym for open walk-on tryouts for the men’s baseball team. I’d never played hardball in my life, but I was a great slow-pitch softball player…so I figured, what the hell. I could be a diamond in the rough, a raw undiscovered natural talent.
No, I wasn’t.
I got into the batting cages with a pitching machine, and after a dozen or so pitches whizzed by, never even came close to even fouling one off. The head coach – bless him – a former MLB player and alumnus, said “ok, thanks, kid…you wanna take some ground balls?” I thanked him, and just slunk off.
If I posted my most humiliating experience on a public message board, it would no longer be my most humiliating experience because I’d have set a new record.
The first time I got my period, I didn’t know it had happened, and it bled through the seat of my pants and I walked around without knowing. No one said anything, but it was bad.
I went to a dinner party, once, at a friend-of-a-friend’s, she was an acquaintance of mine also, us being a couple years apart at the same college. It was this somewhat fancy jewish affair, the girl’s mom was a high-powered PR exec at a big firm in manhattan, I had just moved to NYC from a modest background, so I was trying to be on my best behavior despite the wealth shell-shock. After eating, we were all sitting around the table having cannollis (sp?), my friend and some other acquaintances and their parents, and also some scattered kids from the same college who also lived in NY- small college so, even though I wasn’t specifically friends with many of them, we all sort of knew eachother and it was all very congenial.
Then a couple other people arrived, way outside my circle at school so I only knew they looked familiar, and one of the guys looked very, very familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I am not a shy person so I asked him, “I know I know you from somewhere, did we take a class together?” and we had a conversation wherein I kept wracking my brain trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, hostess acquaintance is snickering and whispering to people at the table, this escalates to more whispering, more laughing, etc. At one point I say, “what’s so funny?” and get “oh nothing, nothing” in response so I let it go.
After about another half-hour, I said something else to the guy, and there’s open laughter at the table. As people start drifting away to watch a movie, one of my friends pulls me aside and tells me that I should very well recognize that guy, tells me the exact party we “hooked up” at (oh! yeah, right! he was very generic looking, honestly) and that, apparently, afterwards, someone had started this rumor that I had taken his virginity, which I hadn’t, and he thought I had started this rumor, and told everyone it wasn’t true-
So basically, to the whole fancy dinnertable, including people’s parents and family members, as well as a bunch of classmates and acquaintances I barely knew, I was the girl making a fool of myself because I didn’t even remember the boy I fooled around with at a college party and then publically lied about screwing.
I was so outraged that the hostess would be whispering this sort of story to other guests while I was foolishly asking the kid what classes he’d taken last year, so everyone got a chuckle on my behalf (stupid slut!), AND that my friends didn’t even speak up for me, to tell people to knock it off, that I was almost in tears of embarassment. I snuck out the front door without saying goodbye to anyone, and almost cried again on the subway ride home. I had NEVER been so humiliated, and at a party where I was a guest! Me being humiliated had been the after-dinner entertainment. And people’s parents were even in on it. To give them more credit, anyway, they had merely looked concerned/troubled, they weren’t the ones snickering and laughing and whispering.
Needless to say, the hostess girl eventually emailed me to apologize for being a bad hostess, for humiliating me while I was a guest in her home, but I was having none of it. I never went back to her house and I am polite, but certainly not friendly, to the other people who were at the party that day. Gosh! Even now, recounting it makes me angry.
There are so many that it’s impossible for me to rate them. After awhile, they all blend together.
There was the time a girl in middle school was fucking with me on the school bus, and I responded by blowing a bunch of snot out of my nose, to the laughter of everyone in the world.
There was the time these boys in high school were tossing my shit around in class, and while I was trying to get it back, the substitute teacher threatened to send me to the vice-principal’s office. For some stupid reason, this was enough to send me into loud braying sobs. The whole world thought that was hilarious too.
There was the time in the fifth grade that I forgot my notes for the speech I was supposed to give in front of the whole school. I was running for class president against–wait for it!–my twin sister. She was eloquent and charming, while I was a stumbling, bumbling idiot. After the assembly, my class shit-talked about me to the teacher WHILE I was in the room. Guess who won the election? When I told my father about it, he was totally non-sympathetic. I just wanted to die.
There was the time I started my period while on a camping trip in graduate school. I felt compelled to tell the professor because he had told us he wanted to know about such matters (yes, he explicitly mentioned periods). It didn’t take long for at least all the girls on the trip to know about it. I only had one pair of pants, and I had bleed through them! I had to find a washing machine, detergent, and a bunch of quarters while everyone else had a fun, carefree time. I’ve been dealing with periods for almost twenty years, but they still manage to freak me out each time, even in the best case scenarios. And I don’t like telling people I’m on my period, especially sixty-year-old men who don’t know me from Eve. So this was a major deal for me. I can’t even think about that trip without remembering all the embarrassment, which sucks 'cuz I actually had a good time.
Oh yes, and then there was the time I was in New Orleans for a conference, and its humidity-from-hell instantly turned my cute curls into hopeless frizz. One of the guys I was traveling with, who for some reason couldn’t stop making fun of me, made the mistake of saying something about it. In a flash of a second, I transformed from nice, easy-going monstro to I-Kill-You-Now! monstro. You know that neck-swerving, finger-pointing stereotype thing pinned to angry black women? Magnify that by one-million and that was me. Among other things, I threatened to send his ass over the balconey…which would have been no small feat considering this guy’s proportions. The guy’s face turned sheet white. He was Filipino! It was humiliating for me just as much as it was for him because 1) I had made a public spectacle out of myself (the folks we were with were all witness to the scene), and 2) I had just aired my hair issues to the world. Afterwards, I was teary-eyed and I didn’t say much for the rest of the evening. Every time I think of my visit to New Orleans, I think of that embarrassing moment.
My life is full of them. When it comes to monstro, it’s better to ask “What is your LEAST humiliating experience?” 'Cuz I could be here all day.
monstro , that kind of stuff wouldn’t have fazed me a bit. I would have been your best friend, and stood up for you against bullies and loved your frizzy hair. Sorry I didn’t know ya.