On shame

But shame is a verb as well as a noun. Almost nobody arrives at shame on their own; there are shamers and shamees. Hester Prynne didn’t pin that scarlet A on her own chest. In fact, it may be wiser to think of shame as a relationship rather than just a feeling: a relationship of domination in which the mocking judgments of the dominant are internalized by the dominated.

Barbara Ehrenreich in her 2006 blog entry The Shame Game.