This book review was written by Eugene Kernes
This book was provided by the author
“My personal and emotional boundaries lay destroyed by parental, religious, and cultural authorities, and I lived resigned to their demands and crumbled beneath the power lorded over me and against me. In the end, the abusers enjoyed free reign at my expense while I silently absorbed all the chaos, including crippling guilt and crushing blame and self-loathing that paralyzed any hope of my becoming the best of who I was meant to be.” – Kathleen Hoy Foley, Chapter: First Words, Page 2
“Withheld from me, as it is for all victims of dismissed abuse, was the personal understanding that comes with seeing the truth, the empowerment to release myself from blame, permission to point the finger of responsibility outward, the prospect for the disabling shame to dissipate. What other reasons could there possibly be to deny a sexually traumatized girl or woman her humanity, except to uphold the demands and fantasies of the spineless and to protect the guilty and their defenders?” – Kathleen Hoy Foley, Chapter: First Words, Page 6
“Dearest, it is up to you to take charge of yourself, to
assert your own authority. It is your responsibility to recognize that you were
abused. You label abuse. You define rape. You assert that what happened to you
was unconscionable and undeserved. You claim your innocence. It is the
integrity you bring to yourself — the fairness, the kindness you present to
your own life spirit. Realizing and correctly labeling what happened to you is
necessary self-care. It is choosing wholeness.” – Kathleen Hoy Foley, Chapter
6: There Is Only One Authority: Beautiful You, Page 81
Excerpts provided with permission from the author
Is This An Overview?
There are social and personal problems of keeping silent
about abuse and harassment. Those who
are socially punished into silence, do not receive the support needed to
recover their physical and mental health.
Those who are dehumanized do not simply get over the trauma. Those who had traumatic experiences become
vulnerable and do not develop appropriately.
Without support, trauma can take on a language of its own, in the form
of inappropriate behavior. Tantrums,
quick to become aggravated, and even lash out by physically harming
others. Traumatic wounds teach lessons
that ought not be learned.
When a culture is blind to the victims, the culture protects
the guilty. While the harassed carry
guilt and endure silent torment, the abusers can skillfully continue to inflict
violence. If society will not give the
abused power, the abused need to take control, assert authority, to recognize
and label what happened as abuse. The
traumatized transform themselves when they break the silence. Speaking about what happened is a way to
support oneself, to find understanding in what happened, to become empowered.
Caveats?
The book is poorly organized,
without a systemic analysis of trauma. Although
being traumatized is tragic, the author assumes that the way people react to
the situations and recover is the same for everyone. The problem is that not all women think the
same way about the tragic circumstances.
The book is against the silence of the harassed, against how society can
silence the harassed, but movements and organizations have developed to provide
support and give the harassed a voice.
