Recently, in responding to Elena's thought-provoking hub on Pride and Dignity, I found myself rambling on for so long in comments that I realized I'd better just move my whole discussion with myself over to my own hub.

Elena looks at how pride and dignity are both different and alike, and in the end comes to the partial conclusion that 'pride' tends to refer to an outward expression of self-worth, whereas dignity tends to refer to the personal comportment that comes from internal reflection on one's own worthiness.

'Pride' also seems to carry a more ambivalent connotation socially than dignity.

We usually feel it is fine to be proud of our own personal accomplishments, yet we see it as undignified and unkind to be too overly proud of possessions, good looks, property, or other objects and attributes that might have come to us more as a function of luck or social status than personal effort.

'Pride' also carries the suggestion of self-defeating stubbornness, as in "He was too proud to accept charity so he let his family go hungry," or even dangerous hubris, as in "Pride goeth before a fall."

I got to thinking though that both of these terms are relative to the situation surrounding the dignified or proud individual, and that both conditions (pride and dignity) often come together around issues of personal disclosure that have political implications.

Dignity, the more unequivocally acceptable condition, is often dependent on keeping personal information confidential and on willingly conforming quietly to social expectations.

When we think of a person having dignity, a certain amount of silent suffering is implied and expected in that designation. For example, a newly widowed person who cries a lot and talks endlessly to anyone who will listen about his or her loss is behaving in a perfectly sane, understandable fashion, but no one would call that behavior 'dignified', even though it is totally appropriate to the situation.

Non-disclosure of the reasonable pain associated with personal loss results in the the public perception that the individual holding back is grieving with dignity.

On the other hand, if no emotion at all is shown, or if the grieving person behaves in a happy or cheerful fashion that is too gracious, we again take our 'dignity' award away from that person and our negative regard increases with every new joke told at the funeral.

'Dignity' in this case really involves understanding and conforming to the expectations of others. We want our widows to be sad because we think they should be sad. We don't want them to be so sad they make us uncomfortable. Widows who hit that middle ground get rewarded with the badge of 'dignity'.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? And, for whom?

It's complicated, don't you think?

I don't mean to suggest that stuffing one's feelings for the sake of the social comfort of people around us is always a bad thing. Quite the contrary!

Imagine if we all just 'let it all hang out' no matter what the consequences in each and every situation. Life would quickly become unbearable. Every social situation would turn into a big Jerry Springer episode.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

What the world does not need now is a mass outbreak of emotional diarrhea.

But sometimes, stuffing who we are and what we feel so other people don't become uncomfortable or upset comes with trade-offs that are much more difficult to evaluate.

The example we hear about the most in the news and the media involves homosexuality.

Not that long ago, it was expected that no one would ever admit to being gay in public because 1) that personal disclosure made heterosexual people upset and even violent, and 2) because of #1, that disclosure also put the gay person disclosing the information at risk for being fired, arrested, assaulted, or worse.

Often we behave with dignity out of self-interest. We know that if we wail for too long after a death or talk about our gay lover at the office when other women talk about their husbands, it won't go well for us. Ultimately, we protect others to protect ourselves.

But if we begin to perceive that nondisclosure is unfair or damaging or violates our own values in some essential way, we may take a risk and disclose information or feelings that make other people squirm.

Doing so always has political consequences.

Historically, the quiet 'dignity' of closeted homosexuals gave way to gay 'pride'--'pride' being the outward expression of self-worth that is a bit more dicey socially.

This had to happen, because the political cost of 'dignity' in this specific case--of stuffing one's true feelings and identity for the comfort of others--was just too damaging to the gay people stuffing it. (No pun intended.) More compliance only seemed to lead to more persecution, and moreover, individuals realized that successful disclosure often led to a better quality of life almost immediately.

Keeping secrets takes energy. Some secrets are bigger than others and harder to keep. In general, I think that the closet was a secret that clearly served a bad social purpose, and I'm personally glad to see it finally opening up. With widespread disclosure, social acceptance is slowly emerging on a broader scale for gay people, at least in the U.S.

Decisions about what to disclose about ourselves and when are often the hardest decisions to make. Keeping confidence and keeping secrets are arguably different acts altogether, and often the evaluation is based almost entirely on the nature of the undisclosed information and the social situation surrounding the individual.

Who gets to decide which is which?

That's an intensely political question.

In my own life, I have struggled with issues of disclosure, dignity and pride in a number of ways.

Having grown up in less than ideal circumstances, I have first hand experience with the effects of poverty and violence on self-esteem.

Being poor may not be anything to be ashamed of, but in America it is nothing to be proud of either. I vividly remember grade school friends who were not allowed to visit my house because their parents perceived the neighborhood I lived in as poor and dangerous, even though I was invited frequently to their (much nicer) homes. I remember my mother pushing my brother and me to befriend kids with money and avoid kids from our own block.

It was a painful time; one in which it was impossible not to learn a certain amount of shame.

Those experiences left me with the simultaneous need to 'rise above' that culture of poverty through nondisclosure, and at the same time, to disclose, claim and defend it. In other words, I grew up with the twin urges to hide my upbringing and disclose it angrily. Confusing to say the least, and it took me years to sort that out. In many ways I'm still sorting it out.

Similarly, even after enormous improvements in law enforcement and public awareness, violence against women still tends to leave the women victimized by such violence with feelings of shame that are reinforced by intense social pressure not to disclose individual crimes to others, except maybe therapists and law enforcement officials.

Let me explain.

If your house is robbed or someone steals your car, you can tell everyone you know about it and you probably will. Disclosing such information results in immediate social support and commiseration and a certain level of shared outrage. Providing you don't act too damaged or victimized by your experiences, no one will blame you for sharing them.

You lose your stuff, but not your dignity. You gain a bit of support. Then you move on.

That's the social script anyway.

With rape or domestic violence it's not so simple. Despite a gazillion Lifetime made-for-TV movies about rape and incest, and despite every guest Oprah ever had going on and on about raising the national consciousness until we all practically OD on the topic, even after all of that, even today--if you disclose that you were raped in any social situation except a therapist's office, the effect is similar to what would happen if you smacked someone in the face with a brick.

It's very, very hard for people to receive this kind of information without feeling intense discomfort, and the effects on the person making the disclosure are usually even more negative. Certainly no one will say you are dignified if you go around talking about your rape the way someone else talks about their car being stolen. Some people will judge you harshly on the spot just to reduce their own discomfort (as in, "you're lying," or "you were asking for it"), some will freak out, some may even see you as potential prey or ask for salacious details.

Disclosure on topics of sexual violence comes with a huge social price tag.

So, even though one out of every two women will be raped at some time in her life; very very few women will ever disclose their own rapes outside a therapist's office.

When women do disclose such painful information about their personal experience, not only are they considered undignified by most people, they also lose their authority on the very issues that are closest to them.

I find this really weird. But I think it has to do with our need to believe we are invulnerable.

For example, if you know how to fix a car, and you've fixed a lot of cars, and you start talking about car repair, you are granted a certain authority by virtue of your direct experience with automobile problems.

If, on the other hand, you have been raped or beaten or grown up in impoverished circumstances and you begin to speak out of your own experience, the disclosure itself makes others so uncomfortable and reactionary that your authority is instantly undercut. Everyone welcomes info on how to fix their own cars. No one welcomes the realization that anyone can be raped, beaten, or fall into terrible poverty.

So people will say, "You're too close to the issue to speak rationally," even though you may be perfectly calm and simply repeating verifiable facts. In the case of sexual violence or poverty, a personal disclosure creates such a tense environment that you cannot have a reasonable discussion once the disclosure has been made, nevermind get any social support or commiseration for making it.

So most women with such issues, even though they are horrendously common, do not disclose. I don't think that's bad. In fact, I think it's smart and self-protective.

I bring it up here in this context because clearly, the other side of the coin is that nondisclosure of sexual violence, while it brings tangible immediate rewards (dignity, self-protection, social approval), also has the long term effect of perpetuating the social shame pressed onto the victims, and in some doing in many ways perpetuates the crimes themselves

I don't have easy answers: I just think these are interesting questions.

For my own part, I keep painful facts close to my chest in personal conversations, but sometimes I will write about them at length and publish. Writing is a kind of a buffer--it keeps the 'hot' info at a safe distance and also allows people to deal with my painful disclosures in the privacy of their own space, where their emotional reactions to my personal experiences won't be immediately registered by me.

That seems to go well most of the time.

But in other cases I have a tougher time making decisions.

For instance, I've been married three times. I used to keep that to myself because I didn't want to deal with other people being nasty to me over it. But over and over again I'd get into situations at work and elsewhere where others would pry and I'd eventually feel like I was being secretive and it was all getting more important than it really was.

So over time I quit concealing that information.

To my surprise, while some people still do dish out exactly the kind of negative shaming crap I expected they would, lots of people either don't care, don't notice, or actually have a positive reaction. At my last job, one young woman came up to my cubicle one day and whispered, "Is it true that you refuse to marry?? I think that is so cool!"

Whoa.

Hell, I didn't know anyone even knew I existed let alone though I was 'cool', but apparently, I was wrong, and to my utter shock deciding to routinely disclose in this instance wasn't all bad. Not having to keep my marital history to myself is a lot easier for me than I thought it would be, even though it's a seemingly small thing, and after being open about it for years now, I don't even care about other people's reactions anymore.

Change is slow, and I think one of the reasons feminism comes in waves is because of the some of the traumatic issues discussed here. The public accepts upsetting info for awhile, then it shuts down. The window is small and slams shut fast. A generation later the process starts again, until finally, openness and acceptance is achieved. You see this cyclical trend in the gay rights movement and the civil rights movement as well. I think it's just the way change happens.

I really do have to wrap this essay up before it turns into a book though, so in summary, I just want to say that the personal is still political, even now, even in the 21st century.

I think everything we say and don't say matters.

Think about that for awhile, and you'll realize that even in the most oppressive situations, you're never as powerless as you think.

Especially if you're a writer.