African Americans Doing Feminism: Putting Theory into Everyday Practice

13. I Took Back My Dignity: Surviving and Thriving after Incest

Chapter 13 I Took Back My Dignity Surviving and Thriving after Incest Carolyn E. Gross At a bed and breakfast nestled below the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, I sat quietly with other women at a spiritual retreat, listening to one woman’s testimony about her experience of sexual abuse in childhood. Tearfully, she told us the perpetrator was a man she had initially trusted. The abuse was traumatic, she continued, and negatively distorted the way she felt about herself. I was profoundly affected, to the point where I was barely breathing. Upon hearing that woman’s story, I began to reflect on my own experiences. For years, I had tried to bury my memories of sexual molestation. I thought about how those childhood experiences had affected my ability to enter into stable adult relationships with men. As I reexamined my unhealthy attitudes toward sex and my unhealthy sense of self-worth, my grief became all-consuming. I realized I had completely lost my sense of dignity. Battling racial and sexist stereotypes can toughen a Black woman. I know because those battles toughened me. When a Black woman tires of being devalued and is exposed to feminist thinking, she won’t tolerate those notions of inferiority and weakness any more. She begins to refuse to accept the low status accorded to her gender, race, class, and any other characteristic used to describe her. My intentions are not to deny or gloss over the real trauma of sexual abuse by claiming that it toughens women. Still, the traumatic aftereffects need not obscure a woman’s potential for growth. Women can and do heal from the destructive effects of incest. As a feminist, I honor the resilience of women. I am convinced that victims can become survivors in ways that facilitate broad social change.1 Feminists encourage women to “break the silence” by telling their stories publicly in order 211 212 Carolyn E. Gross to politicize their responses to abuse, rather than to privatize, pathologize, or infantilize such experiences, as certain television talk-shows often do. “Telling your story,” in a feminist context, always involves a process of politicization, whereby a “victim” identity is transformed into a “survivor” identity.2 Sad to say, the discussion concerning incest and child sexual abuse, which began and has become well-established in White communities, is still not accepted as a legitimate concern in many African American communities. Melba Wilson , Black feminist and incest survivor, describes how the damaging myth of the “strong and never vulnerable” Black woman compounds the problem and contributes to silence regarding incest in Black communities: The predominantly accepted view in black communities is that black women are strong and can handle anything that life throws at them—whether rape at the hands of white slave owners; the trauma of being separated from their children in slavery; racism; violence against us within our communities, or sexual abuse. . . . Black women are indeed strong. . . . But, despite the popular notion, we are not the ‘mules of the world.’ We do not possess an interminable ability to take all the shit that may be thrown our way. We can take a lot of it, and we do. But that does not mean to say we enjoy it or wish such a state to continue unchecked. It’s about time we made clear our need for space in which to be vulnerable. The failure to acknowledge the issues raised by incest and other forms of child sexual abuse in our communities, in any kind of reasoned and compassionate way, means that this more damaging of myths continues to oppress us.”3 The application of feminist theory implies the need for activism, and feminist activism entails speaking up for a woman’s right to exercise self-determination . Yet, as another Black feminist, Beth Ritchie, reminds us, “Disclosure is . . . easily confused with treason” in Black communities when Black women dare to expose publicly the violence against Black girls and women committed by Black men: Black women be forewarned. It is a painful unsettling task to call attention to violence in our community. You may find yourselves feeling caught by the trap called loyalty. There is already so much negative information about our families that a need to protect ourselves keeps us quiet. Yet we must not allow our voices to be silenced. Instead we must strengthen and speak the truths about our families.4 213 I Took Back...