18.2 A filthy body
Linda is one of the employees of the
Incest Centre who have worked there longest, and she argues that all the
painful acts her body has been subjected to make her whole body shameful. She
seems not to be any doubt that sexual abuse and what I choose to call as
body-shame (Gilbert and Miles 2002). She connects her body-shame to the sexual
abuse she suffered as a child. She says her whole body is shameful and filthy,
and did not want to show her body to others. Not only did she have to endure
oral intercourse, but she was forced to swallow her fathers’ semen. Not understanding
why the semen did not come out again with her faeces, she tried to scratch a
hole into her stomach to get it out, being afraid that her stomach might
explode. After a while her handling strategy (appendix 20) as a child became to
“cut out” her body in order to survive. By creating a distance to her body she
was able to cope with her shame.
Linda_1: Yeah.
My feelings about who I am and what I believe others think of me…Yeah, because
I feel so horrible…Yeah, I think (.)
it’s the shame (.) you’re ashamed of
yourself and about umm (.) things
that have happened. You feel shame, because of the things that have happened to
your body. That’s why your body is so shameful (.). So I’d say that your whole body is shameful…That’s something that
never goes away. All those experiences you’ve had that have made you feel
horrible, disgusting and dirty and umm that’s something you don’t want to show
others. Well for me ((Looks up at the ceiling)) when I was a child, it was especially my stomach that was special,
because I had to swallow so much semen. I was only five-six years old, and I
thought that what I ate had to come out. I often went to the bathroom to get it
out again. But it never came out. I started to scrape my stomach to make a
hole, because I thought umm that if I don’t get it out, all of that slimy stuff
would make my stomach explode. (.) I
just had to get it out. That’s why I have a very special relation to my
stomach…It’s like that for a whole lot of those people who have come here
through the years. It’s especially the stomach region or in the stomach, also
in the mouth, and all those, all those thoughts you have about yourself, that
you’re a misfit umm and others can see umm you have to hide it away. Some
people hide themselves inside oversized clothes because they’re so ashamed of
their bodies ((Nods her head))…It’s
because the body has been umm used, it’s filthy, your body is not yours and
someone has umm or you don’t think that someone has destroyed it but you think
that it has been destroyed and umm (.) that’s
why you are the way you are, or ((Clears her throat)) that this has happened umm because you have a body umm ((Looks from
side to side)) it’s your body’s fault
that umm you’ve been abused. You blame your body, when you try to find a cause
for what happened. What’s wrong with my body since umm (.) umm it’s been chosen to be abused? Am I
talking bullshit now? ((Laughs))…Why’s
the body so disgusting? If you didn’t have just that body the abuse would never
have happened. It’s filthy because it’s been polluted by sex organs, licking,
and everything…I cut out my body ((Scratches her elbow with tiny
movements)) all the way from the start (.) umm I was maybe five or six years old ((Drinks
some water))…It’s about shame. It’s a
shame (.) your ashamed of umm (.)
things that have happened. That’s why
your body is shameful. (.) I’d say
that umm your whole body is shameful.
Linda
speaks of how others she has met at the Incest Centre try to hide their bodies
because they view their body as disgusting and filthy, and believe that also
others view them the same way. Some also place the blame of being abused on
themselves, saying that there must be something wrong with my body since I have
been chosen to be abused and not others. Andrews (1997) has examined the body-shame that Linda speaks about and
argues that body-shame plays a mediating role in the relationship between
experiences of childhood physical and sexual abuse and depression in mature women. She has conducted a study where she
investigated the role of body-shame
in the relation between childhood abuse and bulimia in a community sample of 69
teenagers and young adult women. There was a significant association between
childhood abuse and bulimia, but this was no longer as apparent once bodily
shame had been taken into account. The results of her study suggest that body-shame
may act as a mediator between early abuse and bulimia.
Sally
argues that the shame she feels towards her body has its roots in the sexual
abuse she suffered from her stepfather in childhood years.
Sally: I
believe that if you’ve lived with abuse for many years (.) that this
feeling of shame (.) becomes
enormous and impossible like you said ((Looks at Ruth))…I believe that (.) for me shame has something to do with (.) what happened to me, during the years I was abused, I felt so dirty. No
matter how many times I washed, showered, scrubbed and bathed, it was always
somethng that wouldn’t (.) disappear
((Moves both hands up and down her body)) from your body. And that’s where my shame comes from. Shame is, it umm (.)
is (.) it came to me when my stepfather did things to my body and made me feel
filthy.
Sally’s
shame seems to be focused on her body and she feels filthy trying again and
again to wash herself clean, but her sense of being dirty would not disappear.
In my opinion this form of shame may be identified as body shame and that shame
has to do with being degraded, humiliated, abused, disrespected, and having
ones integrity violated. All this seem to lead for some victims of sexual abuse
to a feeling of a deformed and dirty body. It might also seem that Sally implies
that the body has its own memory of the sexual abuse. The sexual abuse her
stepfather has done to her are stored in her body as memories. In my opinion it
seems imperative in order to change ones victim identity to a survivor identity
that such memories which may lie in the body are shared with others in
narratives and receive respect and recognition. Understanding ones past and telling
ones life stories are essential for many in order to start living their lives forward
instead of backwards.
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