So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

In 2008, News of the World exposed Formula One motor racing chief Max Mosley—the son of the reviled British wartime fascist leader Oswald Mosley—for attending a “NAZI-STYLE orgy.” The outlandish article featured lurid details of Mosley’s romp with a group of sex workers and even published photos of the encounter. When Ronson met with Mosley, he wanted to interview him about how “immaculately” he’d endured his public shaming: Mosley had emerged intact. But when Ronson asked Mosley how he’d managed to emerge as a figurehead for humanity’s right to feel unashamed, Mosley struggled to find the words. At last, he ventured that his unusual upbringing might have prepared him to weather the storms of public shaming.

Mosley’s father had founded, in 1932, the British Union of Fascists. His wife was obsessed with Hitler, and their wedding even took place at Joseph Goebbels’s house. Mosley’s first memories are of visiting his parents in prison in the early 1940s, where they’d been incarcerated for the duration of the war. As an adult, Mosley saw his parents’ deep-rooted fascist ideology as a “nuisance.” But in the motor-racing world, no one cared about Mosley’s past. When Mosley began visiting sex clubs that specialized in kink and S&M, he tried to be careful. In the 1990s, opponents of American politician Ralph Nader’s push to make seatbelt laws mandatory sent sex workers to lure him into compromising situations in hopes of attaining material that could be used as blackmail.

In 2008, when Mosley heard that pictures of him at an orgy had been published in the news, he went on the offensive. He gave interviews on the radio and in print admitting that while his sex life was strange, sex itself was strange, and only an “idiot” would try to shame him for it. Mosley sued News of the World for claiming that the orgy was Nazi-themed; while it was German-themed, there were no Nazi scenarios being played out. The News of the World’s case all but crumbled, and Mosley won over 60,000 British pounds in damages. Within three years, the paper folded amid another scandal. The paper had a legacy of shaming people so intensely that they killed themselves. 

Ronson was determined to get Mosley to identify how his behavior throughout his public shaming had in fact made him immune to the process. Mosley suggested that perhaps he was a sociopath, and that because he’d felt no shame, he had an advantage. But Ronson knew that wasn’t the answer. Ronson left the interview disappointed, but Mosley promised to think hard and get back to him. In the meantime, he urged Ronson to have a ball at an American sex club, Kink, to which Ronson had been invited as part of his research.

One of Ronson’s Twitter followers, Conner Habib—an adult performer—asked if Ronson was planning to research people who derive pleasure from being publicly shamed in preparation for his book. Ronson realized he should take Habib up on his offer to put Ronson in touch with Princess Donna Dolore of Kink.com studios, a famous porn impresario who’d turned an intense struggle with shame throughout her childhood into her own liberation. By being open about what embarrassed her, she set herself free. Donna missed her initial interview with Ronson, but she invited him to a public disgrace-themed porn shoot the following night.

At the shoot, Ronson mingled with adult performers and listened to Donna describe the rules for the shoot, during which porn actor Jodi Taylor would be spanked, spit on, and shocked with electrodes. Taylor would later write in an email to Ronson that the shoot, and others like it, are “pure fantasy” realms in which all taboos are off, so there’s no shame involved. Ronson was amazed to find that the environment at the shoot was even more respectful and welcoming than a standard office environment. Donna’s mission, she told Ronson afterward, was to help people feel “less freakish and alone because of what they like.”

Weeks after the shoot, Ronson received an email from Max Mosley. Mosley said that what helped him to weather a public shaming was simple: it was his refusal to feel shame. Ronson began to wonder if unashamedness was something that people could be taught and how many lives it would change if it could be.