I guess this week’s topic is self explanatory. I encourage you to take special care as I speak about sexual violence, child abuse and rape. Take care of YOU! Switch off and step away if you need to.

TRANSCRIPT

Sex is such a difficult and complex topic, and one that is naturally shied away from. Yes, even today, when so much is considered acceptable in conversation, and women are so much more empowered than ever before. There is still a lot of subterfuge around the subject, so many lies we tell ourselves and others, so many ways in which the world, and by the world, I mean society, imposes it’s standards upon us. 

Truthfully, this topic requires more than just a short podcast, but it’s certainly one of the “Things Unspoken” and so I have to include it here. 

Promiscuity is also an extremely loaded word:

The original meaning of the word in the 1500s was to describe something random or disordered, by the 1600s it was used to describe someone who was undiscerning in their choices. By the 1800s it was used to describe sexual behaviour, particularly the sexual behaviour, or perceived behaviour of women. While the word is being reclaimed and the meaning once again opening up, there are still some negative overtones in many sectors of society.

The word “hypersexuality” is used to describe compulsive sexual behaviour, and risky sexual behaviour speaks for itself.

I have experienced all of these.

There’s quite a bit of research around these behaviours and choices as they relate to abuse, and even more speculation. I’m not going to talk about that, the research is available for anyone who want to explore more. What I want to talk about is my own experience and the lived experiences of hundreds of survivors of childhood sexual abuse that I have spoken with over the years. It’s something seldom discussed outside of support groups, and often not even in the sanctitude of therapy.

It seems counterintuitive at first that sexual abuse in childhood, or sexual violence in adulthood would lead to promiscuous and even risky sexual behaviour. People often think that the natural response would be to shy away from physically intimate contact. 

While this is certainly true for many women, it is not the case for a multitude of others…and it’s really not that simple or that binary. Our responses and attitudes toward sex can vary over time, and even in the short term. We can sleep with a stranger one night and be filled with self-loathing, or feel nothing at all, and then not want to have intimate physical contact at all for a long time. We can obsess over sex and even turn to pornography, yes, women too, as a trauma response. 

The fact that this is not spoken about further isolates survivors and exacerbates our feelings of self loathing and shame. I have spoken with women who are so wracked with guilt and shame over their physical, emotional and cognitive responses to sex, that they are convinced that everything that happened to them is punishment for their own thoughts and feelings. 

When I was a young girl, around twelve I think, I fell with a bottle in my hand and sliced open the ball of my thumb, exposing the muscle. It required a lot of stitches, and I was convinced that it was punishment for using my hand to masturbate. I didn’t know the word ‘masturbate’, this was in the mid seventies, and NOTHING was spoken about. Sex, politics and religion were taboo topics, at least they were where I lived. All I knew was that I had sinned and this was my punishment.

It may be useful to break down what happens when we are sexually traumatised. Trauma, especially in childhood, but also later in life, shatters us on the level of identity. If the trauma occurred in childhood, we had not yet developed a sense of self. A lot of what I cover in my various courses and programmes, revolves around identity. Our sense of identity lies at the core of our trauma.

My identity and worthiness (or lack of worth) was built primarily around sex, around the way in which men responded to me. As I’ve mentioned before, the abuse began before the age of three, I had no identity outside of the abuse. 

This is an enormously complex issue. I’ve also mentioned in an earlier episode that I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. This compounded things enormously. No explanation can do justice to my experience of life, but to simplify things, the different parts of me took on different roles. 

I was both drawn to sexual encounters and repulsed by them. 

I found both validation in sexual encounters and self-loathing.

As much as my self worth was upheld by being desired sexually, it was immediately shattered in the fulfilment of that desire. 

I’d come to learn years later, that it was very much like addiction, it was something I both craved and hated about myself. 

Sex and love were so messed up in my head, as soon as I had feelings for someone, I could no longer maintain a sexual relationship. My body and my mind were completely separate, and I had no idea which way I would respond. 

Sex was both an escape and a wound.

The first season of this podcast is called “Things Unspoken” and our relationship to sex in the aftermath of sexual violence is definitely one of those unspoken things. As much as we are shining a light on sexual abuse and violence, there is still so much that is hidden, that we keep from the world and each other because of the foundational shame around our experiences and, as we begin to try and heal, around our trauma responses. Keeping silent about what we experience in the aftermath of abuse and sexual violence is as isolating and damaging as the silence around the actual abuse. 

It really is time to break the silence. About all of it. It’s also important to acknowledge that the same way in which each of our experiences are different, our trauma responses and our healing will be different too. It’s my hope that we can destigmatise it ALL, so that we can make the transition from shame to healing without the added judgement from society.

Shame is a residue of trauma that separates us from ourselves and from others.

Before I end this, I want to say something about sexuality and promiscuity.

There is nothing wrong with having different sexual partners. There’s nothing wrong with sexual experimentation and exploration. Sex with different partners can be a way of reclaiming your sexuality. There are both healthy and unhealthy ways of doing this.

However and with whomever you engage in sexual activity, it should leave you feeling empowered and affirmed and good about yourself, it should be an embodied experience, not a dissociative one, and should not leave you filled with guilt and shame and questioning your self worth.

Unfortunately we are fighting both ourselves and society on this front, I just hope that the world will continue to change so that young women are able to grow up without the societal stigma around women and sex. 

As always I welcome your thoughts and comments.

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