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Badge of shame

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The yellow badge that Jews were required to wear in Nazi Germany as a badge of shame

A badge of shame, also a symbol of shame, mark of shame, or simply a stigma,[1] is typically a distinctive mark or token on a person deemed as worthy of public humiliation or persecution, and required to bear a distinguishing sign in public or in captivity. The yellow badge that Jews were required to wear in parts of Europe during the Middle Ages,[2] and later in Nazi Germany and German–occupied Europe, was intended to be a badge of shame.[3] The term may also refer to other identifying marks that are associated with shame. The biblical "Mark of Cain" can be interpreted as synonymous with a badge of shame.[4][5][6][7] The term is also used metaphorically, especially in a pejorative sense, to characterize something associated with a person or group as shameful.

History

Depilation

Punitive depilation of men, especially burning off pubic hair, was intended as a mark of shame in ancient cultures where male body hair was valued.[8] Women who committed adultery, have also been forced to wear specific icons or marks, or had their hair shorn, as a badge of shame throughout history.[9] Many women who fraternized with the occupiers in German–occupied Europe had their heads shaved by angry mobs of their peers after liberation by the Allies of World War II.[10] During the war, the Nazis also used head shaving as a mark of shame to punish Germans like the youthful non-conformists known as the Edelweiss Pirates.[11]

File:LOC Utah Prisoners c1885 3b27385u.jpg
Prisoners in Utah c.1885 wearing striped prison uniforms considered a badge of shame

Clothing

In Ancient Rome, both men an women originally wore the toga, but over time matrons adopted the stola as the preferred form of dress, while prostitutes retained the toga. Later, under the Lex Julia, women convicted of prostitution were forced to wear a toga muliebris, as the prostitute's badge of shame.[12]

At the beginning of the 13th century, Pope Innocent III prohibited Christians from causing Jews bodily harm, but supported their segregation in society. On at least one occasion he likened this to the fate of Cain described in the Book of Genesis, writing to the Count of Nevers, “The Lord made Cain a wanderer and a fugitive over the earth, but set a mark upon him,… as wanderers must [the Jews] remain upon the earth, until their countenance be filled with shame…”[13] After Innocent III later presided over the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215,[14] the council adopted cannon 68, requiring Jews (and Muslims) to dress distinctively to prevent interfaith relations.[15] This cannon was largely ignored by the secular governments of Europe until 1269 when King Louis IX of France, later Saint Louis, was persuaded to decree that French Jews must wear a round yellow badge on their breast and back.[16][17] After the Albigensian Crusade ended in 1229, the subsequent Papal inquisition of Pope Gregory IX imposed the ecclesiastical penance of the Cathar yellow cross as a badge of shame to be worn by the remaining repentant Cathars convicted of heresy.[18]

In colonial New England during the 17th and 18th centuries, courts required people convicted of sexual immorality to wear the letter 'A' or letters 'AD' for adultery and the letter 'I' for incest on their clothing, or have them burned into the skin of their face or forehead.[19] Striped prison uniforms commonly used in the 19th century were abolished in the United States early in the 20th century because their continued use as a badge of shame was considered undesirable.[20]

Skin

Like the Mark of Cain from the Bible, societies have marked people directly in the practice generally known as being "branded a criminal". Criminals and slaves have been marked throughout history with tattoos.[21] Sexual immorality in in colonial New England was also punished by human branding with a hot iron, by having the marks burned into the skin of the face or forehead for all to see.[19] The practice of human branding with visible marks on the face had been firmly established by King Edward VI of England under the 1547 Statute of Vagabonds, which specified the burning of the letter 'S' on the cheek or forehead of an escaped slave, and the letter 'F' for 'fraymaker' on the cheek of a church brawler.[22] James Nayler, an English Quaker convicted of blasphemy in 1656, was famously branded with a 'B' on his forehead.[22] Although abolished in England by 1829,[22] the practice of human branding continued in the former colonies until at least 1864, during in the American Civil War, where some deserters from the Union Army had their face branded with the letter 'D' as a mark of shame intended to discourage others.[23]

A child wearing a dunce cap in class, from a staged photo c.1906

Headware

In old-fashioned French schoolrooms, misbehaving students were sent to sit in a corner of the schoolroom wearing a sign that said "Âne" meaning donkey or ass, or were forced to wear a jester's cap with donkey's ears, sometimes conical in shape, known as a "cap d'âne", meaining "ass' head". In traditional British and American schoolrooms, the tall conical "dunce cap", often marked with a the letter 'D', was used as the badge of shame for disfavored students.[24][25] The dunce cap is no longer used in modern education, although other forms of shame are still used to punish students.[26]

Other meanings

Nazi concentration camp badges of shame were triangular and color coded to classify prisoners by reason for detention,[27] and Jews wore two triangles in the shape of the six-pointed Star of David. These symbols, intended by the Nazis to be marks of shame, had opposite meanings after World War II: the triangle symbols were used on memorials to those killed in the concentration camps,[27] the pink triangle that homosexual prisoners were required to wear became a symbol of gay pride,[28] and the Zionist's Star of David, also co-opted for the Nazi version of the yellow badge, was subsequently featured prominently on the flag of Israel.[29][30][31][32]

Conversely, symbols intended to have positive connotations can have unintended consequences. After World War I the U.S. War Department awarded gold chevrons to soldiers serving in the combat zones in Europe. The silver chevrons awarded for honorable domestic service in support of the war effort were instead considered a badge of shame by many recipients.[33][34]

More recently, in 2007, the Bangkok, Thailand police switched to punitive pink armbands adorned with the cute Hello Kitty cartoon character when the tartan armbands that had been intended to be worn as a badge of shame for minor infractions were instead treated as collectibles by offending officers forced to wear them, creating a perverse incentive.[35]

Fictional works

File:Reebock badge of shame.jpg
Shame badge used as a comedic prop in a Reebok television commercial

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic 1850 romance novel The Scarlet Letter, set in 17th century Puritan Boston, the lead character Hester Prynne is led from the town prison with the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. The scarlet letter "A" represents the act of adultery that she had committed and it is to be a symbol of her sin for all to see. Originally intended as a badge of shame. it would later take on different meanings as her fictional life progressed in the story.

The 1916 silent film The Yellow Passport, starring Clara Kimball Young, was also known as The Badge of Shame when it was reissued in 1917.[36][37]

Terry Tate: Office Linebacker receives a badge of shame from a sensitivity trainer in the comedic Reebok television commercial "Sensitivity Training" (first aired February 1, 2004). The shame badge was round with a stylized square emoticon face with a straight mouth and the caption "shame" below.

In the Halo series, specifically Halo 2 and Halo 3, after failing to eliminate Master Chief, the head of the Covenant Elite is branded with the Mark of Shame and forced to take the position of The Arbiter, an almost suicidal position in the Covenant military. In Halo 3, one of the possible emblems in the multiplayer mode is the Mark of Shame.

Media

Garrison Keillor, host of the popular American National Public Radio program A Prairie Home Companion, answered a listener question in 1998, by saying that he considered having never been fired from a job in his radio broadcasting career as a badge of shame.[38]

At the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Consumer Electronics Association decided to issue bloggers white credentials, while issuing colored press passes to other members of the media. The bloggers called this the "white badge of shame".[39]

Politics

After then President of the United States Bill Clinton's impeachment, and subsequent acquittal, Clinton told Dan Rather in a March 31, 1999 television interview, "But I do not regard this impeachment vote as some great badge of shame…."[40]

References

  1. ^ stigma. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Company. (accessed: January 13, 2008).
  2. ^ "Jewish History 1250 - 1259 : 1257 Badge OF Shame (Italy)". The History of the Jewish People. Jewish Agency. Retrieved 2007-11-06. …the badge of shame was imposed locally and infrequently in Italy until the Bull of Pope Alexander IV enforced it on all papal states.
  3. ^ D'Ancona, Jacob (2003). The City Of Light. New York: Citadel. pp. pp. 23-24. ISBN 0-8065-2463-4. But the wearing of a badge or outward sign — whose effect, intended or otherwise, successful or not, was to shame and to make vulnerable as well as to distinguish the wearer… {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  4. ^ Feinsilber, Mike; Webber, Elizabeth (1999). Merriam-Webster's dictionary of allusions. Springfield, Mass: Merriam-Webster. pp. p. 95. ISBN 0-87779-628-9. As the term [mark of Cain] is used today, the idea of a protective mark has been lost; only the negative sense of a mark of shame or criminality remains. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ R. Swinburne Clymer (2003) [1906]. Rosicrucian Fraternity in America. Kessinger Publishing, LLC. pp. p. 207. ISBN 0-7661-3019-3. Did we not say that when Mr. Lewis wrote his first history of A.M.O.R.C. that he also wrote his confession, placing on it the badge of shame—the mark of Cain—that revealed its real purpose and spurious nature? {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  6. ^ Clayton Kendall (2007). What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?: And Rebuttal To: Eve, Did She or Didn't She?. New York: Vantage Press. pp. p. 122. ISBN 0-533-15291-7. In light of this horror, some of the more ardent rulers and princes of this 'Christian' church related this [yellow] badge of shame to the mark of Cain as Christ killers… {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  7. ^ Maclean, Marie (1994). "9. 'Better to reign in Hell…'". The name of the mother: writing illegitimacy. New York: Routledge. pp. p. 164. doi:10.2307/3734056. ISBN 0-415-10686-9. The work of Jean Genet, poet, playwright and novelist (1910-86) and Violette Leduc, innovator in prose narrative (1907-72) reverts to the ancient traditions of bastardy as excess, a badge of shame and evil, a latter-day mark of Cain, which at the same time distinguishes the bastard from the herd and confers a sort of perverse and even grandiose power. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ Trexler, Richard C. (1995). Sex and conquest: gendered violence, political order, and the European conquest of the Americas. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8482-0. Other sexual punishments left a temporary mark of shame on the body. Perhaps the most important of these was depilation, especially the burning off of anal and pubic hair.
  9. ^ Winterman, Denise (2007-02-20). "Mark of a woman". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved 2007-11-06. Historically a shaven head has also always had meaning - and in a woman's case, mostly negative. It has been used as a badge of shame, often linked to sexual promiscuity.
  10. ^ Eva Simonsen; Kjersti Ericsson. Children of World War II: The Hidden Enemy Legacy. Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers. pp. p. 157. ISBN 1-84520-207-4. After the Occupation, Dutch women and girls who had consorted with the Germans were accused of treason. It was known before the war was over that they would be punished by having their heads shaved. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. ^ "BBC - h2g2 - Youth Resistance in Wartime Germany". BBC. Retrieved 2008-01-12.
  12. ^ McGinn, Thomas A. (1998). Prostitution, sexuality, and the law in ancient Rome. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. pp. p. 340. ISBN 0-19-508785-2. …through conviction under the law was cast as a prostitute, most visibly through imposition of the label of the toga, the prostitute's badge of shame. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  13. ^ Flannery, Edward H. (2004). The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism (Stimulus Books). New York, NY: Paulist Press. pp. p. 103. ISBN 0-8091-4324-0. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  14. ^ Adams, Maurianne (2000). Readings for diversity and social justice. New York: Routledge. pp. p. 147. ISBN 0-415-92633-5. Pope Innocent III, the most power of the medieval popes, presided over the fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and had the bishops decree that non-Christians must wear distinctive garments. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  15. ^ Halsall, Paul (1996-02). "Lateran IV: Canon 68 - on Jews". Medieval Sourcebook. Fordham University. Retrieved 2008-01-12. …we decree that such Jews … shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress… {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. ^ Gilmore, George C.; Jackson, Samuel Macauley; Sherman, Charles Neil (2006) [1953]. "Israel, History of". Volume VI: Innocents-Liudger. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia Of Religious Thought. Kessinger Publishing, LLC. pp. p. 59. ISBN 1-4286-3180-1. In 1269 Louis IX. required all Jews to wear a badge of yellow on breast and back… {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  17. ^ Jacques Le Goff (2006). The Birth of Europe (Making of Europe). Wiley-Blackwell. pp. p. 85. ISBN 1-4051-5682-1. Most secular governments chose to ignore that decision, although in 1269, at the end of his life, Saint Louis was obliged, apparently against his will, to observe it. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  18. ^ Duffy, Eamon (2006). "What About the Inquisition?". Faith Of Our Fathers: Reflections On Catholic Traditions (Continuum Icons). Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. p. 159. ISBN 0-8264-7665-1. Suspects found guilty of heresy had ecclesiastical penances imposed on them, which might include the wearing of a badge of shame. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  19. ^ a b Howard, George P. (1994) [1904]. A History of Matrimonial Institutions: Chiefly in England and the United States, With an Introductory Analysis of the Literature and the Theories of. Fred B Rothman & Co. pp. pp. 169-178. ISBN 0-8377-2180-6. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  20. ^ Pratt, John Clark (2002). Punishment and civilization: penal tolerance and intolerance in modern society. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage. pp. p. 76. ISBN 0-7619-4753-1. The distinctive prison stripes were abolished in 1904. …stripes had come to be looked upon as a badge of shame and were a constant humiliation and irritant to many prisoners' (Report of the New York (State) Prison Department, 1904: 22) {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  21. ^ Sayer, Dr. Melissa (2007-06-17). [0684870576http://www.bbc.co.uk/surgery/body_mind/everyone/tattoos/ "Tattoos : AKA: Getting inked"]. The Surgery. BBC. Retrieved 2008-01-13. For thousands of years, people have been getting tattoos.… Others were branded a criminal or slave with tattoos. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  22. ^ a b c Andrews, William L. (2006). Bygone Punishments. Kessinger Publishing, LLC. pp. p. 138. ISBN 1-4254-9141-3. In the reign of Edward VI. was passed the famous Statute of Vagabonds, authorising the branding with hot iron {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  23. ^ Abdullah, Syed, MD (2001-03). "Wiiliam Chester Minor, M.D.: The Brilliance of a Tortured Mind". The Synapse. West Hudson Psychiatric Society branch of the American Psychiatric Association. Retrieved 2008-01-13. The branding was sometimes done over the cheek so that the would be deserter carried a visible mark of shame on his face forever. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  24. ^ Bulliet, Richard W. (2005). Hunters, herders, and hamburgers: the past and future of human-animal relationships. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. p. 169. ISBN 0-231-13076-7. In old-fashioned schoolrooms in France, teachers made misbehaving students sit in the corner wearing a sign saying Âne, or ass, and a cap with donkey's ears … Their naughty British and American counterparts wore a tall conical dunce cap, a term probably borrowed from French "cap d'âne." which means "ass's head. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  25. ^ Walker, Barbara G. (1988). The woman's dictionary of symbols and sacred objects. San Francisco: Harper & Row. pp. p. 83. ISBN 0-06-250923-3. …the "dunce cap" placed as a badge of shame on the heads of children who had failed to leam their lessons. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  26. ^ Bradshaw, John L. (1988). Healing the shame that binds you. Deerfield Beach, Fla: Health Communications. pp. p. 61. ISBN 0-932194-86-9. Sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on is a common association with schooldays. Even though most modem forms of education no longer use dunce caps… {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  27. ^ a b Hayes, Peter (1991). Lessons and legacies. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0-8101-1666-9. The 1947 plaque, which simply names the victims and the event, depicts a row of triangle badges, which had been used in the concentration camps to designate categories of prisoners according to the reason for their imprisonment. This badge of shame, which was unmistakably linked to the Nazi camps, was now used as a badge of honor.
  28. ^ Seifert, D. (2003). "Between Silence and License: The Representation of the National Socialist Persecution of Homosexuality in Anglo-American Fiction and Film". History & Memory. 15 (2): 94–129. Retrieved 2007-11-11. …the pink triangle, which had been the designation for concentration camp inmates incarcerated under Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code, became one of the most widespread symbols of the new gay liberation movement.
  29. ^ "Star of David". The University of Rochester. 2005-04-27. Retrieved 2007-11-10. The Star of David was used by the Nazis as a "badge of shame" every Jew had to wear prior to deportation and mass murder. Expressing the feelings of hope and re-assurance, the State of Israel in 1948 placed the sign on its flag.
  30. ^ Bulka, Reuven P. (2002). Modern folk Judaism: the reality and the challenge. New York: Ktav Publishing House. pp. p. 47. ISBN 0-88125-783-4. The Star of David, imprinted on the flag of Israel,… The Nazis made it a badge of shame, and we reestablished it as a badge of honor. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  31. ^ Trepp, Leo (2001). A history of the Jewish experience: Book 1, Torah and history: Book 2, Torah, mitzvot, and Jewish thought. New York: Behrman House. pp. p. 508. ISBN 0-87441-672-8. Intended to be the Jews' badge of shame, the Jews transformed it into a badge of honor and affirmation. It has acquired a new significance and flows proudly as the flag of Israel. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  32. ^ Ma, Sheng-mei (2000). The deathly embrace: orientalism and Asian American identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. p. xvi. ISBN 0-8166-3711-3. In a different context, the Star of David, once used by the Nazis to signal vermin to be exterminated, adorns the national flag of Israel. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); line feed character in |quote= at position 83 (help)
  33. ^ Keene, Jennifer D. (2001). Doughboys, the Great War, and the remaking of America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. p. 59. ISBN 0-8018-7446-7. After the war, the War Department awarded silver chevrons for each six months of army service in the United States. The silver chevron intended to recognize honorable stateside service, became instead a badge of shame to those who wore it. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  34. ^ Keene, Jennifer D. (2006). World War I (The Greenwood Press Daily Life Through History Series). Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. pp. p. 131. ISBN 0-313-33181-2. Soldiers who never made it overseas were eventually given silver chevrons, which many saw as a badge of shame. In a poem published by The Stars and Stripes, one soldier imagined the ideal homecoming for a soldier with a silver chevron: 'But, my darling, don't you bleat. No one thinks you had cold feet; You had to do as you were told; Silver stripes instead of gold.' {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  35. ^ Myndans, Seth (2007-08-25). "Cute Kitty Is Pink Badge of Shame in Bangkok". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-06. It is the pink armband of shame for wayward police officers, as cute as it can be, with a Hello Kitty face and a pair of linked hearts.
  36. ^ "The Yellow Passport (1916)". The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-11-06.
  37. ^ "Clara Kimball Young - Silent Film Star -". goldensilents.com. Retrieved 2007-11-06.
  38. ^ Keeler, Garrison (1998-01). "A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media". Post to the Host. National Public Radio. Retrieved 2008-01-12. I never was fired, which, in the radio business, is a badge of shame. That is, NOT to have been fired is shameful. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  39. ^ "Hot Badges Of Shame: CES Separates the Wheat From the Chaff with Blogger and Press Badges". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2008-01-12. High drama at CES! Instead of all of us being united under the umbrella of "press," some of us were arbitrarily deemed "bloggers" and others "press." … We refer to [this] badge as the "white badge of shame."
  40. ^ Woodward, Bob (2000). Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. p. 516. ISBN 0-684-87057-6. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)

See Also

Other 'shame' topics

Achievement badges

Membership badges

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