Category: rape culture

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The importance of processing ancestral trauma and dislodging internalized misogyny

Internalized misogyny does not refer outright to a belief in the inferiority of women. It refers to the byproducts of this societal view that cause women to shame, doubt, and undervalue themselves and others of their gender. It shows up even in the most feminist and socially conscious of us. And it’s insidious.

~Suzannah Weiss, 7 Sneaky Ways Internalized Misogyny Manifests in Our Everyday Lives (Bustle, December 18, 2015)

So just why is it important to process the ancestral trauma that lives within us and to put focus on dislodging our internalized misogyny?

Because we, as women, will never find freedom or equality if we don’t.

Sounds kinda dramatic, doesn’t it?  Yet, it is true.

All women have varying degrees of internalized misogyny.  It is impossible to not have it.  When we are raised in a culture (and in families) that constantly tell us how we are inferior, how we are mere objects, how we don’t matter, how we are stupid, worthless, and not fully human, how we should feel shame about our anatomy and body shape, the only possible outcome is for those messages to find their ways into our psyches, into our bodies, into our very being.

These messages not only impact how we think of ourselves, it also deeply influences the way we look at and treat other women.

The so called “Mommy Wars”?  That was (and is) all about internalized misogyny.

Every time we comment or judge the way another woman does something, that she isn’t doing it “right” or “good enough” or that she is taking “too much” time or space – that is all internalized misogyny.

When we judge the way a woman dresses.  How she wears her hair.  Whether or not she’s wearing make up.

When we judge a woman based on whether or not she has children (or even wants children).  When we judge a woman who has children about whether or not she works outside the home.

Internalized misogyny.

Anytime we look at other women and judge them as not enough, as too much; every time we don’t believe another woman’s personal lived experience; each time we criticize and ridicule women for the choices they have made about their own damn lives…

All internalized misogyny.

(Note: criticism and ridicule are very different from critique.  Critique is loving and encourages growth.  Criticism and ridicule is spiteful or hateful and encourages shame).

Our internalized misogyny goes further than this too.  It shows up in the ways we insist on competing with other women, the ways we feel there are not enough resources for all of us, the ways we fight over men, jobs, minutia and technicalities.

It shows up in the ways we insist upon enacting revenge upon other women when we feel we have been harmed.

It shows up in a million different big and small ways, every day.

It lives in our consciousness and our unconscious minds.

It is a by-product of not only our ancestral trauma, but also our inter-generational and cultural relational trauma.

It is a part of us, whether we like it or not.

One of the ways we see our internalized misogyny is Mean Girl™ behavior.  Think back to middle school and the “cool kids” and how the “cool girls” treated everyone else.

They were bullies.

Here’s a thing though, this behavior doesn’t stop at middle school.

I see this type of behavior happening all over social media, perpetrated by ADULT WOMEN who are leaders in the feminist movement.

Yes, I have witnessed bona fide feminists, women who fight for social justice, who insist on being treating as equals and tearing down the status quo, who have been doing this work for decades, using the exact tools of the status quo of domination, authoritarianism, shaming, and othering.

(And then witnessed their followers, who seem more like sychophants, cheering them on!)

This is why we need to focus on our internalized misogyny.  Because tearing down other women will never get us to where we need to be.  It will never bring us the world we want for ourselves, our daughters and nieces, our granddaughters and grandnieces.  Or our sons and nephews for that matter.

Our internalized misogyny is deeply rooted in our ancestral trauma.  It lives in our blood and muscles and cellular make up.  It is in our very DNA.

For women of European descent, consider how it must have been to be a woman living in the time of the “Witch Trials” and watching your own mother or daughter or best friend being raped, tortured, and burned alive in front of you and others in the town square?

For women who are descendants of slaves, imagine the pain of having your children torn from you and sold at auction.  Imagine witnessing beatings at the hands of other (white) women, or worse when the slave masters would insist the slaves beat each other.

We can find examples from across the globe and across history of this kind of brutality inflicted upon women – mostly for simply being women – that women were witness to.

Being witness to that type of horror has its impact; it is traumatizing.  What our ancestors witnessed and experienced still lives today in our DNA.  And it shows up in the ways we don’t trust other women, the ways we criticize them, the ways we try to dominate and oppress them.

It shows up in the cautionary tales we tell our daughters about what to wear or how to act or the stories about those types of women.

In many ways our internalized misogyny was originally a survival mechanism.  It helped to keep us alive, it helped to keep our daughters alive.

But the tools aren’t useful or helpful anymore.  And in order for true social change to occur, we need to start with change within.

This is why I believe as part of our own liberation we need to explore and process our ancestral, inter-generational, and cultural relational traumas and become curious and aware of our internalized misogyny so we can begin to dislodge it, do different, and stop passing it on.

This is why for the past three years, every spring, I offer this intimate online circle centered around our ancestral trauma and internalized misogyny.

Because this is one more piece to the puzzle that will help bring about our liberation.  Is is a vital piece that will help insure we do not simply use the tools of the patriarchy against other women so we ourselves can be reap the benefit.

We are all in this together.  And until all of us are free, none of us are free.

…

If you’d like to learn more about the upcoming spring circle,  Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny that begins April 1, you can click here.

Did you miss the educational essay and video series I wrote introducing the ideas and concepts we’ll be exploring and examining in the spring circle?  If so, you can find them at the links below:

Defining Ancestral, Inter-generational, & Cultural Relational Traumas and Internalized Misogyny

Connecting the Dots

Connecting Individual & Collective Traumas

Ending Cycles: Processing the Past & Changing the Future

The importance of processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny (this essay)

More About the Unleashing Ourselves Circle

You can find the FAQ for this circle here.

Below are three essays I wrote prior to the 2017 offering of this circle.

Unleashing Our Self :: Mothers, daughters, and generations of trauma

Unleashing Our Self :: The loss of sisterhood

Unleashing Our Self :: Disconnection, shame, & thinking it is us

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Connecting the Dots

We’re all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.

~Liam Callanan, The Cloud Atlas

Sympathy is only meted out if you follow all of
society’s rules for how a victim is supposed to behave.

~Nenia Campbell, Cease and Desist

We live in a patriarchal culture.  The way this culture, our culture, presents itself is one of domination, authoritarianism, and oppression.  There is a hierarchy in our culture with able-bodied, CIS, heterosexual, socio-economically abundant men at the top of the hierarchy.  Women, are always below men in this hierarchy.  White women below white men, black women below black men, Latina women below Latino men, etc.

Men first, then women.  There is a hierarchy for women only too, based again on color of skin, able-bodied-ness, sexual orientation and presentation, socio-economic (and marital) status.

It is import to note the hierarchy, and the hierarchy within the hierarchy.

This is the way our culture presents itself.

It is also the way our culture keeps us in line, on our leashes so to speak.

Our culture clearly defines our place in the world for us, and if we dare to step out of that well defined box, well, there are repercussions.

Historically speaking, the repercussions have meant torture, rape, and death.

Depending on the home, these same repercussions may be in effect to this day.

Going back to the hierarchy, it is clear that women are less than men.  We are not considered equal.  We are below.

This “less-than-ness” has been around for a very long time.  It is how patriarchy took hold in the first place – by convincing society in general that women should be subservient, that we are not competent, that we are not to be trusted, that we are evil.

Once these stories became rooted in general society, they insinuated their ways into our homes and families.  Once there, they seeped right in our minds, our bodies, our very essence and being.

The perpetuation of misogyny, the hatred of women, is dependent upon these stories.  It is dependent upon not only society in general believing that women are inferior; it is also wholly dependent on how we, as women, view other women and ourselves as inferior.

When we begin to consider how our literal survival (as in to continue breathing and having a heartbeat) was dependent on, in the beginning, us not speaking up and out against these stories, and then through the course of time us wholly believing and internalizing these stories, we can see how we became isolated from other women and from our own female self (this is also true for men, however, I am speaking directly to and for women at the moment).

Other writers and coaches call this passing down of the inferiority of women the “mother-wound”.  I actually refuse to use that term because I believe it perpetuates the idea that women are responsible for our own oppression and continues to put the mother at the center of the cause of all the ills of the world and our own personal ills.  I believe the term itself, “mother-wound,” to be complicit and compliant to our misogynist patriarchal culture.

I have called this a “patriarchal” wound in the past.  That name is still relevant and fitting, as it is a wound, or more to the point, a part of the trauma, we as women experience living in our current culture.

 

And.

I am finding that term to even be a bit sterile and to not take into account, at least not blatantly, the reality that this wounding and trauma has been going on, and being passed down, for hundreds and thousands of years.

I believe we need to remember the context for why we (women) began to believe these stories of our own, and other women’s, inferiority.  We need to look at the consequences of what it meant not to believe them for our ancestors.  We need to consider how the trauma of watching our mothers and daughters being tortured and murdered impacted us then and still impacts us today.

We need to look at the ancestral trauma that lives within us and how it presents itself as internalized misogyny and disrupts our relationships with other women and with ourselves.

I talk more about all of this in the 12-minute video below

This essay is the second in a four part series I have written exploring ancestral, inter-generational, historical and cultural relational trauma and internalized misogyny.  I hope you find it helpful and informative.

This essay series is also to introduce the themes we will be exploring in the spring circle I facilitate: Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny. We begin April 1.  You can learn more here.

To read the other essays in the series, go to the links below::

Defining Ancestral & Intergenerational Traumas and Internalized Misogyny 

Connecting the Dots (this essay)

Connecting Individual and Collective Traumas

Ending Cycles :: Processing the Past & Changing the Future

The importance of processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny

More About the Unleashing Ourselves Circle

You can find the FAQ for this circle here.

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Rape Culture, 13 Reasons Why, & the Mental Health community

They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.

~Louise O’Neill, Asking For It

 

I’ve read many criticisms of the graphic portrayal of suicide in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why.  I’ve seen posts and articles railing against the “irresponsibility” of Netflix to “glorify” suicide and countless comments from mental health professionals (i.e. my colleagues) about how now there will be an epidemic of suicides across the country and how the show doesn’t once mention mental illness as the “real” cause of suicide and other towing the line statements and declarations.

With every criticism, particularly from therapists, social workers and psychologists, I became more and more irritated.  I disagree with there stance and opinions, yes, but my reaction was more visceral, more intense than a simple professional differing of opinion.  I was furious.  I was rolling my eyes.  And at one point with one discussion I was literally shaking.

It took a conversation with my own therapist, being in a space to talk without interruption or needing to defend my opinion  and reaction, to understand why so much rage was coming up with these comments and “professional statements”.

Where I came to was this:: Not a SINGLE therapist or counselor mentioned in any way, shape, or form the depiction of rape culture and how it contributed to Hannah’s suicide.

Not one.

No where. 

(I did find a single site when researching for this article originally, written by a therapist, talking about depiction of rape culture in the show.)

As I continued talking in my session, I realized how I believe many mental health professionals miss the mark when it comes to discussing topics like anxiety, depression, and suicide and their root causes. How they ignore the impacts living in this culture has on all of us.  How the interconnections and intersections of our own lived experiences, our culture, and our ancestral history affect us.  How living in a culture where women and girls are only seen as valuable when it comes to the male gaze.  How sexual assault and harassment take their toll on our mental and physical health – DAILY – whether we have personally experienced either or now.  How witnessing rape and or being raped impact us to the point of considering and for some attempting suicide (According to the National Center for PTSD, it’s estimated that one in three women who have been raped contemplate suicide, and one in 10 victims attempt it.)  How culturally it is more important to us to protect rapists than the person who was raped.  (Remember how Brock Turner received an incredibly lenient sentence because the (white male) judge didn’t want to impact Brock’s precious future?)

These are not discussions we typically have within the mental health community.  It is only in recent years that any discussion of how our greater environment (including our culture and ancestral history) impacts our mental health.  We, mental health professionals, seem to want to pretend that a person lives in a vacuum and that our mental health has nothing to do with our daily lives or outside forces.  That it is all in our heads.  And while there is acknowledgement that childhood experiences can and do impact our mental health, we don’t talk about the systems that create and allow those experiences to exist and how they impact us and compound things.

I’ve said it before and will say it many times more:: We live in a culture that hates women.  

And frankly the professional “outcry” (and absolute lack of outcry in regard to rape culture) around this Netflix series only emphasizes this truth.

If we (mental health professionals) think for one moment that living a world where we (girls and women) are considered less than human, where we are unable to earn an equal wage, where what we wear and where we choose to walk or socialize are up for dissection when we are assaulted raped, where our bodies are mentally dissected and compared and contrasted with others… if we think for one moment that none of this impacts our mental (and physical) health, then we should absolutely give up our licenses and find another line of work.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we doing far more harm than good.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we are being complicit to a culture that causes great harm.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we are being compliant and doing harm to our clients, friends, and family members ourselves under the guise of being “professionals” and “authorities”.

Rape culture is real.  It is part of this world each of us lives in.  It impacts all of us, in varying degrees.  It causes harm.  It can cause depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and attempts.

These are facts.

And.

Those who experience rape and sexual assault (in any or all its forms from being touched without consent to being placed on a “Hot or Not” list to having rumors spread about us) are not the only ones who are victimized by this culture either.

The people who perpetrate the rapes and assaults are victims too.

Because they are given the message, over and over and over again, that it is acceptable to objectify women and girls.  Because they are given the message over and over and over again that no doesn’t really mean no.  Because they are given the message over and over and over again that it is perfectly acceptable to take what they want, no matter what.  Because they are given the message over and over and over again that they will not be punished for their crimes. Because toxic masculinity goes hand in hand with rape culture.

I am not saying that rapists and abusers are not responsible for their actions. They absolutely are.  AND.  They are also pawns in a system that subjugates women to a role of only being as valuable as the male we are attached to.

Bryce (the rapist in the series for those of you who have not watched it) is a victim.  Not in the oh-the-poor-boy-and-his-future-Brock-Turner way.  Rather in the way that he lives in a world that says there is nothing wrong with what he has done or continues to do.  Because he was not taught about consent and boundaries from an early age.  Because he was not taught that silence DOES NOT MEAN COMPLIANCE.  Because he was protected and defended by many different peers.  Yes, he is responsible for his actions, as is every rapist and abuser, and we are responsible, due to our own compliance and complicity in this culture, for his actions too.

I am irritated (again) with my profession.  I am irritated with the “outcry” that has been targeted against this show (and also the lack of outcry).  I am irritated at my profession for not addressing rape culture.  I am irritated at the world for not supporting victims and instead re-victimizing and victim-blaming them over and over and over again.

She shouldn’t have gone to that party.

She shouldn’t have gotten in the hot tub in her underwear.

She shouldn’t have drank so much.

She shouldn’t have worn that.

She shouldn’t have had her hair that way.

She shouldn’t have talked to him.

She shouldn’t have expected to NOT be raped.

She shouldn’t have expected anyone to stand up and speak up for her.

She had mental health issues.

It was all her own fault.

It was meant as a compliment.

She’s being too sensitive.

What a bitch.

She was asking for it.

If you won’t give his name, you just have to deal with it.

Are you sure that is what happened?

Fuck. All. Of. That.

It is time that we as a culture start to name these behaviors and insinuations for what they are:: complicity in rape culture.  It is time we stop victim blaming and gas lighting.  It is time that we stop avoiding difficult conversations, including our own compliance and complicity in a culture that harms other humans.

It is time my profession pull its collective head out of its collective ass.

It is time we begin to understand how living in this culture impacts us, especially women, people of color, the LGBTQi community, the differently abled, those who live or have lived in poverty… the list could go on and on.  It is time we stop blaming victims and gas lighting our clients.  It is time we begin to understand how deep the wounds and scars of cultural and ancestral trauma run.

It is time we stop causing the harm ourselves.

In rebellious solidarity, always.

xoox

This essay was originally shared in my weekly love letter on May 6, 2017.  If you’d like to read more essays where I breathe fire and talk about the intersections of the personal and political, the social and singular, the communal and individual, you can sign up right here. 

Resources and References

13 Reasons Why Shows the Deadly Impacts of Rape Culture

US Veterans Administration Center for PTSD (Sexual Assault) Public Site

US Veterans Affairs Center for PTSD (Sexual Assault) Professional Site

13 Reasons to Make Violence Against Women Unacceptable (tons of resources at the bottom)

13 Reasons Hits Hardest When Depicting Rape Culture

The Truth Behind Rape Culture

Psychological Analysis of ’13 Reasons Why’: People’s Feelings About Hannah Say a Lot About America’s Rape Culture  (the only article I could find by another therapist on this topic)