Julia Kes

English 3960

Rough draft

Intimacy after Sexual Abuse

            There are many responses a child can have when sexually abused by a family member. She can act out or try to disappear. She could become overly sexual or try to minimize that as much as possible. She could get angry or sad. In one study, “almost two-thirds (63 percent) of the questionnaire respondents with siblings indicated that the offender had moved down a line of children in their families” (Westerlund 41). With this sort of data, it is no wonder that even siblings may react to their experiences in totally different ways.

            If left untreated, the same behaviors exhibited in childhood can be carried into adulthood. These behaviors include anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, sexual problems, revictimization, fear, aggression, and guilt. Adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse may also show a lack of trust in others (Abdulrehman and De Luca 194).

                        These responses can have major impacts on the survivor’s ability to enjoy and maintain intimate relationships, sexual or not. The “happily ever after” ending that many people want thus becomes harder.

Depression/ Low Self-esteem/ Suicide

            One major thing that affects this ability is the survivor’s mental state, such as depression. “Regarding psychiatric disorders, women are 3-5 times more likely to have one or more episodes of major depression in their lifetimes than women without such a history” (Olafson 153). Depression makes even the simplest tasks a chore. Is it no wonder, then, that relationships would suffer?

            Going hand-in-hand with depression, there are also self related problems. In a study of women in a support group for women sexually abused as children, “a number of respondents” were “in some respect developmentally delayed. A unanimous complaint was of persistent problems with negative self-image and low self-esteem” (Westerlund 48). This can leave survivors hating their bodies. “Whether attractive or not, many respondents (44 percent) reported feeling unattractive or “ugly” due to the incest” (Westerlund 56). When one’s image is warped in this way, the compliments that come with courting may be hard to believe. “Respondents frequently reported having difficulty accepting compliments regarding their appearance. Several respondents stated that they were unable to realistically assess their own appearance and had difficulty believing that others found them attractive” (Westerlund 56). Not only would survivors disallow a positive body image, but they often abused themselves, too. This is what some of the study volunteers said:

“I was going to teach myself that I was in no way important. I would get rid of any lingering notion that I had a right to certain things. I would humble myself. I wasn’t a person anyway. I was a thing. I tried real hard to be a slut. I tried real hard to be crazy and succeeded at it for a time” (Westerlund 121).

“I didn’t eat on a regular basis, I wouldn’t give myself enough sleep, I just didn’t have any rights. I was surprised I didn’t have to ask anybody for permission to breathe. That’s how low my self-esteem was.” (Westerlund 140).

“I physically feel like I’ve gone into a black hole. I feel like a shroud of blackness is coming over me and it’s just such an awful, awful feeling. Sometimes it’s so bad that I feel suicidal. I just want to reject whatever that is. And I know it has to do with being so frightened because I don’t have any limits. My boundaries were totally destroyed. I’m just so frightened of being a nothing. And that’s what the incest did to me. It turned me into a nothing. It robbed me of personhood” (Westerlund 145).

Besides the depression, low self-esteem, feeling crazy, and suicidal thoughts, some people also have a fascination with death. “Survivors often indicate that they do not expect to live long or predict their death before a particular age” (Tessier 178). This may cause them to neglect taking care of themselves.

Emotional Intimacy

“Love can threaten; touch can burn; caring can seem to violate. Is it any wonder that the adult incest survivor feels out of control?” (Blume 45). Emotional intimacy may be a difficult thing for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. When someone close to her betrayed her, it may have left her with a feeling that the only way to protect herself was to not let anyone get in the position of being able to use her that way again.

 “Evidence presented by Lisak (1994) and Mullen et al. (1994) maintained that adults who had been sexually victimized as children had problems in their intimate relationships in adulthood” (Abdulrehman and De Luca 198). Emotional attachment might be very difficult for some people. “With the development of emotional attachment, respondents found their desire decreased as the sexual partner became more familiar and/or more intimate” (Westerlund 84). This can be explained by the fact that as someone becomes closer to a survivor, she grows to become more dependant on him or her. When she was dependant on an abusive family member, she was hurt. To her, the closer she lets someone, the easier it is for that person to hurt her. “Some respondents (7 percent) reported that in more emotionally intimate relationships, desire was lost because sex became associated with duty as in the incest” (Westerlund 84). The best way to be able to have sex and friendship, for these women, is to separate them. “For the incest survivor, affection is not affection; it is sex. And sex is an assault, not making love” (Blume 215). “To be emotionally intimate where there is no sexual intimacy and vice versa is preferable because it is not threatening” (Westerlund 133). However, this was not always an easy thing to do.

 “Adult peer relationships also appear to be at risk of being impaired. Tong et al. (1987) found that adult survivors of sexual abuse have fewer friends or social supports. Adult survivors of child sexual abuse recalled having fewer friends and having trouble connecting with others in their childhood (Lisak, 1994).” (Abdulrehman and De Luca 198). The few friendships she may have can be confusing for her.

“A common aftereffect for incest survivors is the tendency to sexualize their relationships” (Blume 216). This can be because she’s had a relationship that should not be sexual become sexual. “When she wants affection, she may think she wants sex” (Blume 216). Her skewed view of her worth tells her that people want her sexually and that is the only way to secure their love. “Valuing her sexual gifts more than her self and more than her own needs, the incest survivor may attempt to win affection and closeness by giving sex to friends and lovers” (Blume 217). But this can lead to confusion when this sexuality is expressed towards people of the non-desired gender.

She may have a “confusion over what was sex and what was affection. A few respondents (7 percent) [in a study] specifically mentioned being sexual with both genders when, in fact, they only wanted the friendship and affection of one of those genders.” (Westerlund 63). This is not to say that childhood sexual abuse leads to homosexuality. This is confusion over boundaries of what is sexual and what is not. In one woman’s words:

“I visualize a little girl that wants to be hugged and kissed, that wants attention, that wants someone to play with. I guess that’s how I feel in terms of men. I want men to feel like I’m their girl, there’s nobody else, and I’m really special. And I’m very needy and I feel really stupid – I hate those moods” (Westerlund 143).

An aspect that often goes with intimacy, touch, can have negative reactions. “Touch can be frightening, angering, or painful to an incest survivor. She frequently misinterprets it. She has no basis on which to judge the other person’s intentions; therefore, she cannot know how to react. In her experience, touch often foreshadows a demand. It is, therefore, threatening” (Blume 195). Imagine being hugged. Now imagine not knowing when that hug will be accompanied with unwanted groping. This could be a reason for a woman to avoid being touched.

But what about touching another person? A survivor could probably live without touching people most of the time, but if she has a child, her parenting will often cause her to touch him or her. In fact, there is no way to take care of an infant or small child without having to touch him or her. “With her son during his adolescence Pat also sometimes experienced difficulty distinguishing between physical and sexual touch. That confusion remains today. “I forget that you can touch without it being sexual or without having it become sexual, that it can be just touching. It’s hard not to confuse the two.”” (Westerlund 137).

“Some sexually victimized individuals exhibit behavioral problems and antisocial behaviors, in childhood and adulthood, that disconnect them from others (Widom and Ames, 1994)” (Abdulrehman and De Luca 194). They did a study of college students to compare sexually abused people to ones that were not. However, “individuals attending university are less affected by their abuse experience than those victims not attending university” (Abdulrehman and De Luca 200). Still, they found differences between the two groups. “Nonabused participants scored significantly lower on the overall social dysfunction score […] than did abused participants” (Abdulrehman and De Luca 198). This means that survivors, even those who were less affected, are socially more dysfunctional than people who have not gone through such a trauma.

Sexual Problems

            If a survivor was able to have sexual relationships, choosing to not be celibate, she may have problems with her sexual functioning. “Incest survivors were found to have a higher incidence of sexual problems than rape survivors” (Westerlund 17). “While there were women with incest histories who experienced no difficulties with sexual functioning, such women were evidently in the minority” (Westerlund 20). These problems could take many forms.

In the study of women in therapy, the women were affected by their experiences. “Sexual thought, feeling, behavior, and/or activity were described as having a constrained quality that was felt as unnatural” (Westerlund 65). This constrained feeling could be contributed to guilt or shame regarding their abusive experiences. “Guilt and/or shame in association with sexual desire were reported by a majority of the respondents (53 percent). For some respondents (21 percent) shame interfered with initiating sexual activity since to do so involved the acknowledgement of sexual desire” (Westerlund 77). Some, though, actually did not have sexual desire. “An absence of sexual desire was reported at the time of the questionnaire by 14 percent or the respondents” (Westerlund 77). Desire, these women feel, was something their abuser(s) felt. To feel desire would associate them with their abuser(s).

Arousal is also a facet that could be affected. “An absence of sexual arousal was reported at the time of the questionnaire by 26 percent of the respondents. Such women described experiencing little or no erotic pleasure during sexual activity” (Westerlund 80). These may be the lucky ones, though. “Guilt and/or shame in association with sexual arousal were reported by a majority of the respondents (56 percent)” (Westerlund 80). This may link back to uncontrollable arousal when being abused. “In some instances (9 percent), the presence of sexual feeling was perceived as evidence that the incest was the respondent’s fault” (Westerlund 77). One respondent “stated “I just wasn’t aware that his doing what he did to me was really going to affect me as an adult, that that was going to affect my sexuality”” (Westerlund 101). Is it any wonder?

It is enough of a trauma for an adult, who has already developed ego strengths, to be held captive – as, for instance, a prisoner of war – and to be raped besides, but for a child to be virtually born into this situation, before she is fully developed psychologically, is to damage her to the very core (Blume 13).

 With all of these problems, many women developed avoidance tendencies. “The development of social and/or sexual avoidances was reported as a response to the incest by 67 percent of the respondents” (Westerlund 47). “The resentment felt over having to comply during childhood was sometimes expressed via avoidance or refusal in adulthood” (Westerlund 65). “ “My first husband would label me frigid. It was always such a fight about frequency. I realize today that he raped me all the time”” (Westerlund 135). “Thus, “frigidity” was viewed as a problem more in terms of female sexual compliance or noncompliance than in terms of the female’s subjective experience” (Westerlund 8). On the other end of the spectrum, some women engaged in risky sexual behaviors.

High-risk sex

            When not being celibate, some women engaged in promiscuity. “A period of self-defined “promiscuity” was reported by 47 percent of the respondents” (Westerlund 68). This is another way survivors victimized themselves. “Several respondents spoke of “promiscuity” as a way of “abusing” or “punishing” themselves” (Westerlund 68). Promiscuity can be seen as a natural outcome of divorcing emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy. Once a partner got too close emotionally, a new sexual partner was found. “Sexual addiction has nothing to do with enjoying sex. It is sex as compulsion, an activity over which the individual has little, if any, control. It brings not joy, but distress” (Blume 222).This, you would think, leads to prostitution.

            Something that is not directly attributed to sexual abuse is prostitution. “Although there had been little evidence to support the notion that many women with incest histories became involved in prostitution, there had been substantial evidence to support the notion that many prostitutes had been involved in incest” (Westerlund 12). “According to some estimates, 92% of teenage prostitutes were sexually molested in childhood” (Blume 181). This, though, is not a way to an intimate relationship. However, since the women learn as children that their worth is for sex, it is not surprising that some engage in these high-risk behaviors.

            This is just a small sample of how women’s ability to have intimate relationships is effected by childhood sexual abuse. It rocks her to her very core and leaves her to try to go on. Depression, lack of emotional intimacy, sexual problems, and compulsive promiscuity would seem to be enough to cause any woman to have difficulty with relationships.

Delighting Still

            Should men have the right to tell women how they prefer they look? In explaining how they see the ideal woman, Jonson and Herrick, in their poems “Still to be Neat” and “Delight in Disorder,” construct a look of naturalness through artificial means. In these poems, the authors use different ways, but many of the same images, to explain how a looser, open look is more appealing to them than one constructed too “neat” (J 1).

            In Jonson’s poem, “Still to be Neat,” the simplicity of the poem’s structure compliments the “simplicity” in the way he wants women to look (J 8). The rhyme scheme is straightforward with two rhyming lines following each other. The only place where this does not work is in the first two lines where “dressed” and “feast” do not rhyme (J 1, 2). Perhaps, since the scheme hadn’t been set up yet, it was worth sacrificing it to get the right meaning across.

            The last line shows the final meaning of a poem. “They strike mine eyes, but not my heart” is about spectacle (J 12). The final force of it is that the art women use to make themselves pretty is only a glamour, an illusion that dazzles the eye but has no substance. He cannot love this phantom: he needs something real. He finds this in a look of “sweet neglect” that is not “powdered… perfumed” (J 10, 3).

            The look he praises in his poem suggests slavery by force, “more taketh me,” though it is presented in a positive way (J 12). Apparently, he should be forcibly taken, and it is the woman’s job to do so. In this way, though he discourages “art,” he makes a request in such a way that a woman would have to try to get it right, thus just using a different style of art (J 11).

            However, Jonson doesn’t see it that way. He belittles the style he doesn’t enjoy, going as far as to say they are “adulteries” (J 11). This suggests that the art is corrupt and that it must, therefore, hide something equally corrupt. The word adultery also suggests that the woman using this art is not being faithful to her true form, perhaps masking an illness or the infirmity that often comes with old age.

            The style he doesn’t enjoy makes a woman look as though she “were going to a feast” (J 2). He doesn’t say whether or not he thinks this look is okay just for special occasions, just that it is inappropriate on a day-to-day basis. It is not because it takes too long to construct the look or that it takes too much work for upkeep, but because it betrays the true nature of what is underneath, hiding it from the casual viewer.

            In the end, Jonson’s poem focuses more on what he doesn’t like as opposed to what he does. However, in Herrick’s poem, “Delight in Disorder,” the opposite is true. This poem focuses on what he prefers women to look like, going so far that some may see it as a fantasy or a sweet memory, and almost completely ignores what he’s opposing. This makes it a good compliment to Jonson’s poem, which was written first.

            Herrick also uses the simple rhyming scheme of pairs of rhyming lines. Here, even if the lines didn’t rhyme, they are coupled as lines on one subject, like an article of clothing. With the next two lines comes a new part of a woman to be taken as an object, summing her up based only on appearing to be as “wanton” as her clothing (H 2).

            The last line in this poem, “Is too precise in every part,” is about perfectionism (H 14). He is rejecting the notion that everything must be in it’s place. He finds “a wild civility” in not striving to achieve an unattainable goal, but letting the wrinkles show where they are (H 12).

            The look he describes in this poem suggests slavery by magic, “more bewitch me,” though, again, it is presented in a positive spirit. He wants to be bewitched, and devotes the entire poem to telling women what the ingredients are to this spell. His description is almost like a blazon, where it catalogues each piece of a body. The only difference is that he left out the beloved, since any woman could fill the role by taking on the appropriate mode of dress. It doesn’t matter who fills out the clothing, just that it is placed in the way he finds pleasing.

            In the style he likes, Herrick finds “a wild civility” (H 12). One does not usually associate civilization with the wilderness, it is usually in places that have been tamed and subdued. Only then can the control come that makes wild things civil. Therefore, once again, the “disorder” is actually a form of “art” (H 1, 13). Here, though, he is trying to suggest that nature is more civil than mankind is and that this style is kinder on both the woman wearing it, and the people who look upon her.

            The effects of these two poems being so similar, and yet touching on different ground, is that, though both stand well on their own, together they fill out a picture of what this style truly is. Where Jonson’s poem sets up the example of what not to do, Herrick finishes off with what should be done instead.

            However, some people think that the poems are not at all about how women should dress, but only use them as a metaphor of how poems should be structured. In this way, the simplicity of the poetic forms, the way they rhyme and are set up, follow their own advice. Here the subject is represented by the woman and the poetic form is represented by her clothing. Therefore, the fastidiousness of clothing, the “powder” and “perfume” are the extras that distract from the meaning of the poem, and may even try to mask that the poem lacks substance and, though it looks okay, it really should be disregarded. However, in Herrick’s poem, the natural style he describes is also a “fine distraction,” showing that it, too, is “art,” and not a true natural form of expression (H 4, 13).

            If this is the meaning behind the two poems, then women should not find them offensive. Instead, the poets who write in these overly done artistic ways should feel the offense. There should be responses, not only of the agreeing kind, but also of the opposite viewpoint. However, most men would not get in a disagreement over women’s clothing, and since women were not prominent poets in that time period, especially on such a subject, it is easy to see why there are no responses taking the opposite viewpoint, where such art is more desirable because it shows a care for every detail and a learning of how the beautifying works.

            It is up to the reader to ultimately decide what the poems are about, whether or not to be offended by them, and what lessons (if any) should be taken from them. Obviously they are noteworthy, if only based on the structure and not even thought of on a deeper level than that, otherwise they would not have stood the test of time and been passed along so that we may read them in class and enjoy them today. And, approached in the right way, everything can give a life lesson, even if it is simply a feeling of disgust.