My current reading circle is reading Omaha native Roxane Gay’s Hunger, A Memoir of (My) Body. The book is an uncomfortable read. Roxane tells the story of building her own cage, a body weighing 577 pounds. She created this structure, she explains, as a way to feel safe, a way to avoid a desiring male gaze. She did this in response to being gang raped by a group of boys from her suburban middle school at age 12.
She says,
I hope that by sharing my story, by joining a chorus of women and men who share their stories too, more people can become appropriately horrified by how much suffering is born of sexual violence, how far-reaching the repercussions can be.
Only through Roxane’s painful description can I begin to imagine what this must have been like for her. But I don’t want to talk about the gang rape, or about her attempts to ease her pain and fear, but rather about what happened leading up to the rape. And read carefully, I am in NO WAY insinuating that the rape was in any way her fault. I am simply curious. In the months leading up to the rape she spent most afternoons with a boy (one of the rapists) who wouldn’t acknowledge her existence during the school day. She allowed him to do all sorts of things to her body that she doesn’t get into much detail about, only saying that she participated because she wanted him to like her. She wanted to believe he loved her. She wanted to belong to him and to his world. She wanted to belong, period.
This is the second memoir we’ve read written by a woman who in adolescence gave herself to the whims of adolescent boys. (We don’t always read memoirs, this is only the second, but in between the two we’ve read countless books that have touched upon sexual trauma —not because I look for sexual trauma books to bring to circle, but because it’s so PREVALENT). In the first memoir, Love Warrior, Glennon Doyle describes dumbing herself down, painting herself up and heading out into the night to get shit-faced in the basement of a frat house baring a sign reading no fat chicks. She writes about this on the same page she describes a sign over the toilet at her bulimia-stricken sorority house reading, when you throw up, please flush the toilet, it looks bad when people come to the house and there is puke all over.
Here are two books about a woman’s attempt to control her body, two books about the adolescent female catering to the gaze and desire of the adolescent male. The theme of boys’ power over girls is in the forefront of my mind as I raise three boys: one in full-on adolescence, one on the verge, and one who will be in a few years, all the while being a woman who has done her fair share of attempted body control. How much of this, I wonder, has had to do with catering to the male gaze? How much, I wonder, are the males aware of their power?
The connection between these two books comes on the heels of my twelve year old son asking me why middle school girls say sorry all the time:
They get into the van for carpool and and say I’m sorry. They sit down at lunch and say, ‘sorry, can I sit here?’ Mom, they haven’t even done anything, why are they always saying I’m sorry?
I was fascinated by his observation, and I couldn’t give him a response that satisfied either of us. Do I explain to him that something often happens to adolescent girls that makes them feel like they shouldn’t take up space? Do I add my own list of questions to his?
Why do girls that were once vibrant and boisterous begin to quiet and give away their power?
Why do girls look to boys for approval, acceptance and worth?
Why do girls do things with boys that they don’t want to do?
Why are boys so full of pain that they are sexually violent?
And more proactively,
What can we do to raise strong, compassionate and aware men and women?
What can we do change our violence-prone culture?
I don’t begin to think I have all the answers, but I know in my heart of hearts that it has to do with dialogue, and more dialogue, and more and more and more. More #MeToo. More what’s the pope doing about this? More uncomfortable and difficult conversations about sex, power, pornography and hormones. More embracing that our kids are sexual beings and actually talking about sex. Less creating a culture of secrecy around our human biology of desire. More bringing sex education to the dinner table and less relying on the schools or the kids’ friends or the internet to do it for us. Less shaming around sex, STDs and protection. Less shaming around emotions such as sadness and anger. More apologizing when we do. More finding books and movies to educate ourselves and our kids when we don’t have the words or the answers. More demonstrating to our girls how a strong woman behaves. More showing her that a woman is in charge of her own body, that a woman can change her mind, that a woman can inconvenience and say “no” loudly and defiantly when something isn’t a good fit for her. Less “boys will be boys” and more helping our boys access their innate ability to be sensitive and caring humans. More guiding our boys to access their emotions and more demonstrating how to show them. More teaching them how to dialogue and more showing them how powerful and strong a sensitive, caring and respectful man really is. More talking about actual sexual violence and more talking about how far-reaching the repercussions of sexual violence can be– especially if it isn’t ever brought out in the open. More talking ad nauseam about consent and more demonstrating it in our interactions with our kids. More teaching our children to use their voices and to ask questions. More questioning authority.
A problem doesn’t go away by pretending it doesn’t exist or by looking the other way. In the dark a problem grows, gets more power and becomes more confusing and illusive. A problem only goes away when we shine light on it, when we bring it out into the open and begin talking about it, untangling it in conversation and partnership with others. I praise women such as Roxane Gay and Glennon Doyle for having the bravery to share their stories and for bringing the difficult topics of rape and patriarchal culture to the hands of mainstream mamas like myself.
Thank you she-leaders.
May those of us who have read these memoirs keep the conversations alive.