How to be an ethical gossip

Hi readers! Shayla Love here, science journalist and longtime fan of Your Mileage May Vary.

I’m honored to be subbing for Sigal Samuel while she’s out on parental leave.

I’m diving into your questions as a way to help understand human nature and our choices through multiple lenses: philosophical, psychological, and beyond.

Please send in any emotional, body/brain, sociological, perceptual, or other kind of life quandaries you might have.

When I get together with my two best friends, we often talk about other people.

We catch up on what acquaintances we knew in college are doing, and gossip about the mistakes people are making in their love lives.

The other day I realized I left dinner and we had spent the entire time gossiping.

It made me feel a little weird.

Are we mean? Is it okay to gossip so much? It’s so much fun… Dear Dirt Disher, I share your love of gossip.

I could blame my job ( I’m a journalist, of course I’m hungry for information ), but the truth is that I’ve always wanted to know what other people are up to.

At times, I have, like you, confronted the fact that gossip is often considered a vice.

There was even once a medieval punishment for gossiping called a gossip bridle, an iron muzzle placed over the head of a person who spoke a little too freely.

Those punitive dynamics were gendered, of course: Most of the gossip bridle’s victims were women, meaning that the directive to watch what you say may have really been a way to produce the right kinds of femininity.

The same may be true today.