Aftonbladet’s cultural editor, Åsa Linderborg, are all the rage almost all the time. Myself, I read her always. I often think that she is wrong, but always in an interesting way – so also this time.

She has read my text on doctors who are not taking female patients seriously, and stuck to my formulation that they should be ashamed.

”It is as if the doctors lack structure or context. None of them had done anything wrong or illegal, and yet they would be ashamed”, she says ( 10/3).

done. Equal treatment is one of health care’s most important principles, and discrimination is illegal, even if it is difficult to prove.

Her stance is, however, common among the di taught: Shame is a very ugly feeling. To feel guilt, on the other hand, is fine. For debt considered, with Åsa Linderborgs words, be ”that you want to go away because you made something wrong”. Shame means, according to her, rather than ”to want to go away to you is wrong, you question his entire existence.”

But I do not agree with. As I see it, shame is a very important function to fill.

with the shame that is foolish, of course, not least the Åsa Linderborg takes up our time’s moral renhetsiver and the need to raise and condemn. In social media try to people incessantly skamma each other, as it is called, that is to say, hang out and humiliate people for trivia, get others to feel bad, really in anguish; all is unforgivable, there is no reconciliation.

Åsa Linderborg also takes up skamstämpeln which the working class traditionally struggled with, and yes, is not it interesting? That people have for themselves that it is embarrassing to be short of money. To the disadvantaged so often ashamed, even though they are struggling at least as hard as all the others.

Shame is such a misunderstood and underrated feeling.

But this does not mean that the shame in and of itself is something wrong. On the contrary, Shame is such a misunderstood and underrated feeling. And it is needed now, more than ever, in this hugely individualized time, where shameless has become a compliment, and it is almost considered as a strength never to be ashamed. Who cares well for everyone else and what they think?

morality, that it should be right in the sight of the higher powers, ultimately, before god. It is a question about mathematics, about the division of responsibility and the meting out of punishment.

Shame, however, is about to put its act in relation to other people. To realize that you have a responsibility also to them. This sense of shame hath covered the face of what has been done can not be imposed neither from the top or from the outside, it comes from within the heart.

And the doctors who are not taking female patients seriously? Yes, I believe that they should actually be ashamed.