Is self-hatred common to all sorts of people?

[nancylebov]

osewalrus has suggested that it is, but I'm not sure he's correct. All I've got is snippets and hypothesis, and I'd be grateful for information about research on the subject

Comments

[whswhs]

I don't think I've had the experience, or at least not often enough for it to be a vivid memory.

[heron61]

Almost all of the cases I know of where someone is dealing with significant self-hatred issues are from people from an oppressed group. In addition to women and people of color, it's also an exceedingly well known problem in both the queer and the transsexual communities. From what I've read, this correlation is supported by a number of studies. Oddly, I've also seen this problem fairly frequently among Jews (both men and women, but also somewhat more commonly among women) - which might well be a legacy of the fact that while very few Jews I've known have had any direct experience with overt or frequent prejudice, almost all of their parents did, and almost all of the Jews I know report tales of parents doing their best to teach them fear of outsiders and the existence of potential threats.

Also, FWIW, I've also known almost no straight, white, non-Jewish men who have serious issues with self-hatred. I have known one or two, but it's clearly less common.

[whswhs]

I was a very bright kid with almost no social skills or interpersonal intelligence (not uncommon in fandom, I know), and I was harassed and bullied for nearly my entire public school career. It doesn't seem to have led to self-hatred. I don't know if this can be attributed to my being white, male, and heterosexual, or if it's a result of something psychologically distinctive about me as an individual. Abstractly it might seem as if being a target for bullying could lead there, but perhaps there's something different about being targeted as an individual rather than as a member of a disvalued group.

[nancylebov]

As noted, I have significant problems with self-hatred. I'm Jewish, but my parents didn't overtly teach me fear of non-Jews. I don't think I'm less comfortable with my non-Jewish friends than with my Jewish friends.

The holocaust wasn't much a topic of conversation in my family (my great-grandparents left Europe in the early 1900s), though this certainly hasn't kept me from obsessing on the subject.

[sodyera]

Self-hatred is common in this culture becuase the culture has built it into its basic marketing infrastructure. If you don't feel ashamed of something in you or about you, then how else can They get you BUY SOMETHING or VOTE FOR {NAME HERE} to ameliorate it? OBEY. MARRY AND REPRODUCE.
But once you become aware that you're being manipulated you can ignore the fnords being e-mailed to you every day. I'm still looking for the schmuck who put me on the mailing list for Viagra® and penis enlargement aids. As the popular graduation speech said, "Stay away from beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly."

[nancylebov]

People will make each other miserable for power and/or fun, not only for money.

[sodyera]

Wanna bet? People are slaughtering each other over their real estate, and not just in the US.

[nancylebov]

We may be talking past each other.

I think that on-going cruelty doesn't require a commercial culture.

It's plausible that advertising makes it worse in the US, though I don't think this has been tested.

[richardthinks]

there was shift in Europe sometime in the middle ages between people confessing to sinful actions and sinful thoughts

This is a hobby horse of mine, and tangential to your main point, but I'm going to use this forum to complain about it anyway. Sorry. I've read quite a few sweeping statements about how Modern Man is Fundamentally Different from people of... erm... well, over 400 years ago (give or take 200 years) and I still don't know if I buy it. I'm not convinced that the evidence we have for the psychology of medieval people (psycho-sociology?) is conclusive at all. The Cheese and The Worms is a great book, but like most humanities research it's a fund of good ideas rather than reliable knowledge. IMHO.

OK, that out of the way, where do thoughts come from? I still sometimes feel guilty about thinking things, but given that I can't answer that question, I'm starting to imagine that I can't be responsible for them.