Wonderful essay. It is so true what you say: "In the dissociation of incest my mother cannot connect with empathy for her daughters without connecting to her own profound trauma." I believe this is the heart of the matter. Not just mothers, but all the others, siblings, grandparents, etc. And including therapists most of whom--in my experience--cannot deal with incest and dissociation in their patients.
"feminist mothering (that seems to have nothing to say on sexual abuse or sexual abuse prevention)"
I feel DEEPLY that feminist mothering that doesn't also speak about sexual abuse and it's prevention is not feminist (I'm a bit of a black and white thinker on this, and might not understand the concept completely, I admit it).
This story is played out in my family, like in so many other families. My grandmother was abused by her stepfather (her own father died when she was an infant) and my great-grandmother treated my grandma like competition right up until she died. She absolutely knew. She turned a blind eye. And punished my grandmother for it in many, many, many ways (when my grandmother became pregnant with her first child, her mother became pregnant, too. This despite being in her 40s and having already raised 4 children).
My mother abused us in a psycho-sexual way and has treated my sisters and I like competition our whole lives. It still continues even though we're all in our 40s/50s and she's in her 80s.
I'm so happy to subscribe to read your thoughts on this, Clementine, they are so comforting. More than you realize.
As always, your writing makes me think deeply, pause and have more nuance. And therefore, more empathy for the complexity of being human. Thank you for this brave, powerful and loving essay.
I can only imagine the flood of emotions that this essay brought up for you. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
Skinner asks us to wrestle with the complexity, so here is my attempt at that: unfortunately, intellectual pondering (“theory”) can be just another way to dissociate from the pain. There are some times when I talk about patriarchy and male privilege and Internal Family System, but what I really want to talk about is how much it hurts to be treated like this. Instead of stopping the bleeding, I’m having a debate on wether or not the liquid is crimson or deep red. Theory can be a cope.
Therefore, I gravitate towards feminist intellectuals that are not afraid of showing their souls. I want (expect) feminists to speak about why it is emotionally difficult to do feminism. I have no interest in the high horse. Being painfully self aware and having deep embodies empathy for others is arguably the most important part of praxis. I’m always gonna be a sucker for authors like Judith Butler and bell hooks, because as much as Andrea Dworkin or Camille Paglia are sometimes right, the lack of curiosity they display for the feelings of women (and men) is just cruel. There is no excuse for being that smart while acting that dumb.
So yeah, the way I try to commit to nuance, and honor the duality of these flawed mothers (and maybe my own mom also) is by finding it first and foremost in myself. As long as I’m doing it honest, I don’t think I’m doing it wrong.
ah, more writings for me to process in therapy i see. my mother is not famous, but she is a feminist, and my stepfather is a liberal, feminist, openly queer man.
part of how things functioned for me was my parents being open about sex and sexualizing me in the name of sexual freedom and sex education, and encouraging me to be sexy and sexual before i was ready. when i got my first period, my mom literally threw me a party to celebrate my ‘coming of age as a woman’ even though i told her i didn’t want that and it made me uncomfortable. my stepdad would ‘educate’ me and my teenage friends about sex and relationships and give us ‘tips’ on how to have sex. they cared more about appearing as cool sex-positive feminists than having boundaries with children.
Thank you for this essay. I just became a paid subscriber. As a survivor of incest myself, I am still personally reckoning with how commonplace it is, and reading your writing has been helpful. I used the bugs crawling on your face at the kitchen table metaphor to my therapist, and it perfectly described the unease I felt growing up.
The line that you are a writer and that is your favorite part of yourself stuck with me. I think it is beautiful and shows how much grief there is and how far you have come to recognize that everything is not black and white.
The second I read about Andrea Robin Skinner this week, I was hoping we'd get to read your perspective on her essay. Thank you for sharing this. I am not an incest survivor, but your work is teaching me how incest in my family created patterns of repression, oversharing and trauma that's persisted for generations and wounded me in the process. I feel less crazy because of you, and am finding it easier to understand my family's failures with compassion for the truths they are navigating and have never had words for. Thank you for writing work that helps me move past the shallow image of a monster and get to the truth. The truth being that it is incredibly challenging to change entrenched patterns of unreality, that most people do not do it, and that I'm grateful that I get to.
Your writing about this is valuable, thank you. I'm wondering if you think this dynamic changes, and how it does, in the case of incest from a sibling rather than a paternal figure? The mother may still react in a similiar way of denial but her bond to a son is different than to a partner.
If a child in a family is sexually abusing, sexually abusive behaviour has been normalized to that child, and there are likely sexually abusive adults in or around the family. That is something to consider.
I think the dynamic would likely play out differently if the perpetrator was the son, but it would still be traumatizing for the victim, and dysfunctional.
Yes that point about sexually abusive behaviour being normalised is a good one to keep in mind. Thanks for your response, for this essay and all your work in this space
Thank you so much for your writing on this, Clementine. This and other pieces you've written on incest have been so helpful and validating to me. I am going through some realisations at the moment. I don't know if this makes any sense or sounds plausible, but I think my dad was not predatory but had incesty boundaries with me. I know that he doesn't have fatherly feelings towards me and relates to me as if I'm just a person he's met. I'm quite hot lol and I have thought that he is attracted to me. I told an ex that I thought my dad fancies me and his response was "thank god it was never acted on." Of course I am happy that I was not actually abused, but I think the thoughts and the knowledge have affected me. I'm sorry if the confessional is inappropriate, I'm doing fine and have a lot of love and support in my life. It's just so hard to talk about. Thank you so much for talking about it 🧡🧡🧡
Wonderful essay. It is so true what you say: "In the dissociation of incest my mother cannot connect with empathy for her daughters without connecting to her own profound trauma." I believe this is the heart of the matter. Not just mothers, but all the others, siblings, grandparents, etc. And including therapists most of whom--in my experience--cannot deal with incest and dissociation in their patients.
Oof, this makes me wonder if there’s something about my mother that she hasn’t wanted me to know.
This is an incredible piece. Your ability to look clearly at the issue, with compassion and honesty, is brave and incredible.
"feminist mothering (that seems to have nothing to say on sexual abuse or sexual abuse prevention)"
I feel DEEPLY that feminist mothering that doesn't also speak about sexual abuse and it's prevention is not feminist (I'm a bit of a black and white thinker on this, and might not understand the concept completely, I admit it).
This story is played out in my family, like in so many other families. My grandmother was abused by her stepfather (her own father died when she was an infant) and my great-grandmother treated my grandma like competition right up until she died. She absolutely knew. She turned a blind eye. And punished my grandmother for it in many, many, many ways (when my grandmother became pregnant with her first child, her mother became pregnant, too. This despite being in her 40s and having already raised 4 children).
My mother abused us in a psycho-sexual way and has treated my sisters and I like competition our whole lives. It still continues even though we're all in our 40s/50s and she's in her 80s.
I'm so happy to subscribe to read your thoughts on this, Clementine, they are so comforting. More than you realize.
So clear and incisive. Thank you.
As always, your writing makes me think deeply, pause and have more nuance. And therefore, more empathy for the complexity of being human. Thank you for this brave, powerful and loving essay.
I can only imagine the flood of emotions that this essay brought up for you. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
Skinner asks us to wrestle with the complexity, so here is my attempt at that: unfortunately, intellectual pondering (“theory”) can be just another way to dissociate from the pain. There are some times when I talk about patriarchy and male privilege and Internal Family System, but what I really want to talk about is how much it hurts to be treated like this. Instead of stopping the bleeding, I’m having a debate on wether or not the liquid is crimson or deep red. Theory can be a cope.
Therefore, I gravitate towards feminist intellectuals that are not afraid of showing their souls. I want (expect) feminists to speak about why it is emotionally difficult to do feminism. I have no interest in the high horse. Being painfully self aware and having deep embodies empathy for others is arguably the most important part of praxis. I’m always gonna be a sucker for authors like Judith Butler and bell hooks, because as much as Andrea Dworkin or Camille Paglia are sometimes right, the lack of curiosity they display for the feelings of women (and men) is just cruel. There is no excuse for being that smart while acting that dumb.
So yeah, the way I try to commit to nuance, and honor the duality of these flawed mothers (and maybe my own mom also) is by finding it first and foremost in myself. As long as I’m doing it honest, I don’t think I’m doing it wrong.
ah, more writings for me to process in therapy i see. my mother is not famous, but she is a feminist, and my stepfather is a liberal, feminist, openly queer man.
part of how things functioned for me was my parents being open about sex and sexualizing me in the name of sexual freedom and sex education, and encouraging me to be sexy and sexual before i was ready. when i got my first period, my mom literally threw me a party to celebrate my ‘coming of age as a woman’ even though i told her i didn’t want that and it made me uncomfortable. my stepdad would ‘educate’ me and my teenage friends about sex and relationships and give us ‘tips’ on how to have sex. they cared more about appearing as cool sex-positive feminists than having boundaries with children.
Thank you for this essay. I just became a paid subscriber. As a survivor of incest myself, I am still personally reckoning with how commonplace it is, and reading your writing has been helpful. I used the bugs crawling on your face at the kitchen table metaphor to my therapist, and it perfectly described the unease I felt growing up.
The line that you are a writer and that is your favorite part of yourself stuck with me. I think it is beautiful and shows how much grief there is and how far you have come to recognize that everything is not black and white.
The second I read about Andrea Robin Skinner this week, I was hoping we'd get to read your perspective on her essay. Thank you for sharing this. I am not an incest survivor, but your work is teaching me how incest in my family created patterns of repression, oversharing and trauma that's persisted for generations and wounded me in the process. I feel less crazy because of you, and am finding it easier to understand my family's failures with compassion for the truths they are navigating and have never had words for. Thank you for writing work that helps me move past the shallow image of a monster and get to the truth. The truth being that it is incredibly challenging to change entrenched patterns of unreality, that most people do not do it, and that I'm grateful that I get to.
Your writing about this is valuable, thank you. I'm wondering if you think this dynamic changes, and how it does, in the case of incest from a sibling rather than a paternal figure? The mother may still react in a similiar way of denial but her bond to a son is different than to a partner.
If a child in a family is sexually abusing, sexually abusive behaviour has been normalized to that child, and there are likely sexually abusive adults in or around the family. That is something to consider.
I think the dynamic would likely play out differently if the perpetrator was the son, but it would still be traumatizing for the victim, and dysfunctional.
Yes that point about sexually abusive behaviour being normalised is a good one to keep in mind. Thanks for your response, for this essay and all your work in this space
Thank you so much for your writing on this, Clementine. This and other pieces you've written on incest have been so helpful and validating to me. I am going through some realisations at the moment. I don't know if this makes any sense or sounds plausible, but I think my dad was not predatory but had incesty boundaries with me. I know that he doesn't have fatherly feelings towards me and relates to me as if I'm just a person he's met. I'm quite hot lol and I have thought that he is attracted to me. I told an ex that I thought my dad fancies me and his response was "thank god it was never acted on." Of course I am happy that I was not actually abused, but I think the thoughts and the knowledge have affected me. I'm sorry if the confessional is inappropriate, I'm doing fine and have a lot of love and support in my life. It's just so hard to talk about. Thank you so much for talking about it 🧡🧡🧡
A child sensing that an adult is sexually attracted to them is traumatic.
Thank you. 🧡 This is obviously bad news lol but thank you!