The Secret Keepers

UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

The Secret Keepers:

A Hermeneutical Inquiry into the Education of Female Child Sexual Abuse Survivors

Kate Beamer

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

GRADUATE DIVISION OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

CALGARY, ALBERTA

APRIL, 2010

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UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

The undersigned certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate

Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled "The Secret Keepers: A Hermeneutical Inquiry into the Education of Female Child Sexual Abuse Survivors" submitted by Kate Beamer in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts.

Supervisor, Dr. Jim Paul, Division of Teacher Preparation, Graduate Division of Educational Research, Faculty of Education

Dr. Darren Lund, Division of Teacher Preparation, Graduate Division of Educational Research, Faculty of Education

Dr. Christine Walsh, Faculty of Social Work

Date

ii Abstract

This thesis, utilizing a hermeneutic methodology – grounded in Hans Georg Gadamer‘s

Truth and Method – seeks to understand a way forward that will raise awareness of female sexual abuse. This thesis focuses on the schooling of adolescents – in senior high schools – as a site of information about the effects of sexual abuse. If a school‘s pedagogic practices and curriculum are opened up to the use of dialogue and narrative inquiry – particularly novels – then perhaps all young people can be made aware of the epidemic that is female child sexual abuse. Then, female sexual abuse survivors may come to understand that they are not alone and, indeed, have a voice and no longer must remain silent about the horrors they have endured. This thesis proposes a pedagogic way forward with female sexual abuse and specially proposes a way to end the silent regime of terror against females and young girls in particular.

iii Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge my supervisor, Dr. Jim Paul, for his guidance and support.

I would also like to acknowledge all the women and men who dedicate their lives to educating and helping victims of sexual abuse.

iv Dedication

I dedicate this thesis to all of those who helped and supported me throughout this process.

Namely, my mother, sister and grandmother for providing me with role models of strong women, my father and grandfather for their guidance and support, my partner Shane, who gave me time, support, childcare and cups of coffee while I wrote, and my son Taylor who taught me the true meaning of purpose and joy. And mostly, I dedicate this thesis to the myriad of women and girls who have survived the horrors of sexual abuse.

v Table of Contents

Approval Page ...... ii Abstract ...... iii Acknowledgements ...... iv Dedication ...... v Table of Contents ...... vi

PROLOGUE: THE SECRET KEEPERS ...... 1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 27

CHAPTER 2: THE HIDDEN YET OVERT STRUGGLE: THE OPPRESSIVE CONSTRAINTS OF FEMALE CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE ...... 41

CHAPTER 3: SILENTLY SCREAMING: THE AFTER-EFFECTS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE ON THE LIVES OF ADOLESCENT GIRLS ...... 70

CHAPTER 4: SHIFTING THE PRIVATE INTO THE PUBLIC SPHERE: THE EDUCATION OF A CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIM ...... 99

CHAPTER 5: HERMENEUTICS AS A COMPLICATED CONVERSATIONAL WAY FORWARD FOR UNDERSTANDING FEMALE SEXUAL ABUSE ...... 130

CHAPTER 6: THROWING OUT A LIFE LINE: THE ROLE OF LITERATURE IN THE EDUCATION OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE ...... 163

CHAPTER 7: SPEAKING OUT: DIALOGUE AND THE TRANSFORMATION TOWARDS FREEDOM ...... 200

EPILOGUE ...... 232

WORKS CITED ...... 239

vi 1

PROLOGUE: THE SECRET KEEPERS

This enquiry starts with a story...

―Don‘t worry, I promise, I‘m not going to hurt you.‖ His words try to soothe her, but all she can feel is the hot condensation of his breath closing in on her ear and his whiskers scratching her face. She doesn‘t know him but she knows he is lying. His hand forms a fist in between her legs and the weight of his other arm pins her to the bed crushing her chest. No face, only arms, arms holding her down, arms yanking down her

'days-of-the-week' panties. Today is Wednesday. She feels like she is going to throw up but she is too scared to even do that so silent tears flee from her eyes instead. But he doesn‘t stop. He doesn‘t stop.

―Sable, I asked you a question.‖ Suddenly, reeled back into the present, Sable finds herself under the scrutinizing glares of her classmates and teacher as she realizes that 'it' has happened again.

―Um, sorry, what question are we on?‖ Sable looks around, wondering if anyone has caught on to what has just happened or notices the heated red of her usual stone face, or can see the sweat falling off her neck, her hands clenched up in fists. This is the third time 'this' has happened to her in school during the past week, being unwillingly ripped out of her body by memories. But these are not just memories; she is there, in that moment, reliving something that felt deeply emotive, but still shadowed and veiled.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, her childhood had just been her childhood – but now something from that childhood is calling her and making her feel sick and, an almost obsessive preoccupation that makes her not care about school assignments. She puts her

2 head down on her desk and waits anxiously for the bell to ring. When it finally does, she tries to shake off the now increasingly ever-present feeling, stuffing it deep down inside her where it feels safe, where it has always been, as she walks out into the safety of the noisy hallways where her friends are waiting for her outside the classroom door.

Her new and emergent memories are fragmented, often appear in dreams, and seem to pop up in association with certain smells. When the memories arrive, Sable finds herself being very young, seeing certain faces, aware of oversized hands that smell like smoke and something stronger – something musky. But most of all she remembers the closet. That‘s where he had put her. It was an elevated closet, above her bed, and he put her in there and shut the door, securing it along the sides with knives. She can never get out. When the door would eventually open, she would be blinded by the light – not that she really desired to see, because once she felt that piercing blindness of the forgotten sun, she knew what was about to happen. Someone, and it was different almost every time, would take her out of that closet, and bring her onto her small single bed with the

'Strawberry Shortcake' sheets. Then, she would have to hug him tightly and put her hands in between his legs while he lifted up the ruffles on her dress and squeezed her insides, front and back. She didn‘t know all their names – these memories both revealed and concealed. She didn‘t know how or why; but the vividness of this remembering of her dismembering was intensifying. It had begun with the odd obscure nightmare, but now the memories have taken up permanent residence just behind her eyes – as her mind tries desperately to piece together the obscure fragments of her past.

She remembers being dressed in a frilly dress and ankle socks with a lace border.

She remembers the first time her dad dressed her like that, which was a far cry from her

3 usual get up of overalls or jeans. She remembers, initially, being excited to go to a party.

But she also remembers coming to fear the dress and what it seemed to bring. She appeared to be like most other little girls on her block, but now she was realizing she had become different from those other girls – Sable was 'dead' on the inside. And whereas a home is to be a safe haven for most children, for Sable it was the site of violence. She couldn‘t run home and tell her parents because it was her parents and her home that she was trying to escape. She remembers begging her dad to let her go to work with her mom. She remembers pleading that she would be quiet; she would be good. But her dad would never let her go. That‘s why as a child, Sable came to anticipate going to school – it was the safest place she knew and would become that obligatory escape from her hellish home life.

But everything changed when she entered junior high. The nurturing feel of elementary school was stripped away and replaced with an odd aloofness mixed with silent aggression. The hallways reeked of felt judgement and Sable wanted nothing more than to slip through the crowds unnoticed. She wondered if other people could tell that she was different on the inside; that, she was tainted. And she cursed her luck that at a time in life that is difficult enough had to coincide with the emergence of things past.

The memories hadn't even start until Sable's adolescence. And then, bang! There they were, convoluted and overwhelming. The more frequent the memories became, the more they came to ignite something that had been buried deep inside of her. These were the first emotions that Sable had felt in years. She had always assumed that she was just born numb. The awakening anger woke her up and gave her new fuel. But it was too much – too fast; she couldn‘t contain the feelings, but was scared about what would

4 happen if she told someone. Once a secret is revealed it can‘t be taken back, and hearing herself say 'it' out loud would make it too real, too true. Trying to keep 'it' under control became a full time emotional job. All she knew was that she was not going to cry. She was through being a victim child and she wasn‘t going to be weak anymore so she had to find an outlet that would not appease her abusers, whoever they were.

Not knowing what to do to manage this new-found anger and fear, Sable discovered a release in cutting herself. She had tried other forms of escape including binge drinking, prescription medications and other drugs, all night parties and sex with strangers - basically, anything to distract her remembering mind, but cutting was different. It was a much more effective mechanism of control – ironically, the pain cured, at least momentarily, the pain. She found her outlet by accident. At first, vainly trying to escape the inner ache, she thought she sought death. But the sweet release of seeing the blood running down her arm subsided the seething emotions long enough for her to drift into slumber, only to awake the next morning with a smear of crusted blood on her arm.

There was such a relief of seeing something, a physical testament to her insides that propelled her into a pattern of release. And that‘s how she came to get through her pain; every time she had a hurtful memory or felt that explosive anger creeping up, she would take it out on her arms. She wasn‘t picky, and would use whatever she could find – shards of glass, exactor knives, discarded and dissected razor blades, or trial size perfume bottles. The more jagged, the more unruly, the better. But this blood-letting really wasn‘t about physical pain anyways. The cutting became more frequent - a quiet, and a polite

(private) way to vent all the half-known knotted emotions that were continuously twisting inside her. It became a ritual. She would close her door, securing the bottom ridge with a

5 towel preventing sudden intrusions as her mother had removed the lock last year. Save for a few candles, she would sit in darkness in front of her stereo with her knees locking in the chosen arm like a vice. Then she would start. The secret is to get through the first layer of skin. Sable did this by biting the inside of her cheek and focusing intently on the angst-ridden lyrics that blared out of the speakers, fusing the words with her feelings.

She always used the same compact disc. Sometimes, on those particularly dark days, music wasn‘t even needed as a catalyst; all she had to do was to hone in on her own anger, which boomed consistently and silently inside her chest, cascading out of her like the rivulets of blood that would soon follow. People would be surprised at how little blood actually comes out. It‘s not like in the movies, where it comes spewing out instantaneously after one cut. No, it‘s not like that at all. A good cut takes hours. The hardest part is the initial breaking of the skin, only the very first layer. Then comes the easy part, when the body‘s cells try to fight by building up a wall of puffy flesh around the battle wound. Ironically, it makes things easier. A certain numbness forms and Sable can press harder, go deeper, sawing back and forth until it is enough. This point keeps getting further away each time, the cuts more severe, the relief seeming to be just out of her grip before slipping away again. When it finally comes, Sable is so exhausted that she is unable to move from the position between the wall and her bed that she always eventually wedges herself into.

I am safe here.

The hard surface of the space heater grates against her back, and underneath her lay discarded fragments of glass. Not sharp enough, too thick.

―I need help,‖ she whispers to herself. ―This isn‘t normal.‖ Then, she reaches her arm up, feeling around for the telephone from the nightstand above her head to call one of her friends. But as she does, a drop of blood falls onto her face. She rubs it in, like cream blush.

I am a warrior. I can fight this.

She returns the receiver to the base. She doesn‘t want anyone thinking that she‘s weird.

The cutting became so frequent and so needed that Sable would bring mini- cutting kits to school in her backpack. A small old game cartridge case packed with different shapes and sizes of glass shards and blood encrusted razor blades. Her breaking point got shorter and shorter, until the smallest trigger would send her reeling into the girls bathroom and into a stall at the end of the row. There she would sit on the toilet seat, take out her collection of glass bits and like an addict, breathe a sigh of relief as soon as she felt the pressure on her skin and heard the first layer of skin pop. She wasn‘t exactly smart about it, working the cuts progressively up her arms, but still nobody seemed to notice.

Sable preferred the jagged edges of glass to the cold smooth slices razor blades offered. They seemed too impersonal, too easy. And this wasn‘t about making things easy – it was about feeling, feeling something, anything. Maybe if she had found out earlier in her childhood she would have been able to talk about it so that now she wouldn‘t have to do this, but there was no way she could now. She was a teenager.

Being a teenager, to Sable, is something that adults could never understand. And the last thing her faltering reputation needed was a self-mutilation rumour going around school.

She would be shunned, isolated even more than she was now. And with her ‗special

7 problem‘ mounting each day, she was less convinced that there was anybody out there who could handle the story. Who could she trust enough to tell about her past?

Chloe was the first. Even though she hung out with her group of friends every day until she was finally forced to go home, Chloe was the first person that Sable felt truly connected to. It was as much love as anything. Sable had never felt anything like it before, and never expected it to come from that source. Before that year, that year that proved to shape her life, Sable had known who Chloe was, and though they had never exchanged words, Sable had pre-decided that she didn‘t like her. She seemed too perfect, too popular, the type of person that Sable and the rest of her group made fun of when she wasn‘t around. Chloe was one of those people who is always nice to everyone, always smiling, always surrounded by a group of admirers. Fake. Secretly, Sable was just jealous of Chloe‘s life of normalcy. So, she was shocked when Chloe, out of the blue, asked Sable to hang out with her that evening. Inside Sable‘s head there was an instant

'No', but something buried deep inside her drove her to utter the word, ―Yes.‖

That night would prove to change her life. At first, Sable was nervous. She remembered saying to herself, 'We‘re not going to have anything in common. What am I doing?' But it didn‘t take long. They sat together on the roof outside Chloe‘s bedroom window, chain smoking cigarettes and creating patterns out of the stars. Chloe looked at

Sable through her blonde strands.

―Do you ever think about dying?‖

Of course, she had. She thought about it often. But she didn‘t think anyone else had. She thought of Chloe, with her long blonde hair, so perfect and so happy; why

8 would she ever think of death? What did she possibly have to be sad about? More than

Sable knew.

―Uh, yeah, I‘ve thought about it for sure,‖ Sable replied.

―Sometimes I just want to run away.‖

In fact, she already had. Everyone knew about it. It was only several months ago that Chloe had abruptly taken off in the middle of the night, successfully hitchhiking nine hours to Vancouver in search of her biological father whom her mother wouldn‘t let her talk to anymore after a rather nasty divorce. The rumour was that she had slept in a half constructed house, never having located him, only to be found by the police, reported and sent back on the bus three days later. The story had always seemed so contradictory to

Sable‘s image of Chloe, so unlike this girl who appeared to be above everything. Sable had later sluffed it off as a successful attention-getting tactic. And, it worked. To see all the other blonde girls when she was gone, having bathroom conferences and walking around like someone had died. Ridiculous. But that night, on the couch, Sable realized that this girl, this paragon of popularity, was very similar to herself.

―I cut myself.‖ Sable had never said the words aloud before. They tasted like salt as they sliced through her speech. Instantly, she regretted saying them. Okay, so maybe

Chloe wasn‘t as perfect as she appeared, but what would she know about something so ugly, so shameful? But Chloe‘s response was not as Sable expected. She did not look surprised, but instead gave Sable an eye of knowing. And, then, it was her turn to flip the tables. She took Sable‘s self-mutilation and raised her an eating disorder. And, even though, at first these two illnesses seemed to be very different, the both shared the same goal: control. Both of them immediately recognized in each other the rampant desire to

9 have some form of control over their lives that seemed to be reeling into chaos. It seemed that they had more in common than they thought. The only difference was that one knew why and one was still discovering.

After that night, the two girls were inseparable. Both left their respected groups to bond solely to each other. Together they looked like an unusual pair. Sable, who wore only black, clashed with Chloe‘s floral prints and long hair. The difference was made more striking when Sable, in an attempt to keep her hands busy on one particularly bad night, shaved her head and dyed the stubble black. But Chloe was much more subtle.

She didn‘t look anything but perfect, a camouflage, which would come to make Sable giggle in hysterics after they had gotten into a substantial amount of trouble together.

Oh, if they only knew.

This new relationship was the closest thing to love and safety that Sable had ever felt.

They had a summer of firsts. Dropping acid in the school playground and hanging off the monkey bars thinking they could fly. They became hippies together and blared Janis

Joplin songs while sitting on the front steps of Chloe‘s house, stringing rose petals and making love bead necklaces for one another. They hitchhiked (Chloe‘s idea) to a local hemp fest and danced to reggae music under the stars. Together, they found a sense of freedom from the restrictive cliques of middle school, and the confines of their houses, and dismissed everyone around them as narrow-minded materialists. Sable cut less;

Chloe kept her food down. Together they could almost forget what had happened to them. They were so mature for their age — light years ahead of the other teenagers, at least that‘s what they thought at the time. They thought they were the only ones.

It was only after they had been best friends for almost a year that Sable found out the specific details of what drove Chloe into bulimia. And, it was by accident. Chloe got too high on some unknown drug that she and Sable had shared while being coaxed on by a bunch of twenty-five year-old guys. After being caught by Chloe‘s older sister and sent back to her house, they lay in bed giddy and high. And then Chloe just sort of started talking. Sable wasn‘t sure if Chloe was talking to her or just disclosing to herself, but either way, it all came out in spews.

―My step dad, it was my step dad.‖

Sable rolled over on her side to look at Chloe who was lying on her back, pupils dilated, staring at the ceiling; she wasn‘t laughing anymore. Now she looked possessed.

―It was my step dad, I was wearing a bathing suit, he wanted to rub suntan lotion on me ... oh God.‖ Her eyes remained fixed above. How many tiles were up there?

Could anybody hear her? ―He pinned me down, pushed my bikini bottoms to the side with his fingers. He had my hands; I couldn‘t move my hands. He told me that if I told anyone that he would deny it ... nobody will believe me anyways but he did it. He did it to me and I kept saying no but he did it anyways.‖

Her voice came out in halted whispers, as if the lightness of her voice would somehow deaden the pain of transmission. Sable watched as Chloe‘s body reacted in convulsions, writhing around more with every word, every memory unwillingly drug into the present. Sable felt completely sober now. But she obviously wasn‘t. She kept trying to process this information, wishing for once that her mind was clearer. She kept trying to let it sink in, but everything was spinning. She was in shock. She never imagined that this horror happened to anyone else but her, especially not to someone like Chloe. How

11 could she keep living, and looking so happy and be so nice and carry this around everyday? And how could she remain so soft, allowing herself to feel, so unlike Sable who could only hold herself together under a hardened shell?

―Chloe, what is going on? What‘s wrong with you? What can I do?‖

But Chloe just remained on her back, her lifeless eyes focused on the ceiling. She would‘ve been worried that she was overdosing if it wasn‘t for the rapid sound of her breath and the tears that slid off the side of her face, disappearing into the folds of her hair.

―I hate it,‖ Chloe blurted out. ―I have to live with him; I can never sleep. My mom makes us go out for lunch together, makes me be alone with him. She doesn‘t know, but I can‘t tell her, I‘ll never tell her.‖

So it‘s not just Sable. She isn‘t the only one. A new kind of rage flared up inside her. But this time it wasn‘t just her anger; it was beyond that. It was for all of them who have suffered in silence, who have had to carry this weight around inside them, blaming themselves, hating themselves.

Then suddenly, a fleeting moment of clarity came for Chloe.

―Hey Sabe — don‘t tell anyone OK. Promise you won‘t ever tell anyone. If anyone ever found out ...‖

―It‘s okay Chloe, I promise.‖

Sable felt sick. And this time it wasn‘t from alcohol or drugs; listening to Chloe‘s story made her insides twist into this knot of rage and nausea. But even though the story was horrifying, Sable had never admired Chloe as much as she did right then. The way she could just let it all out, her words and her tears. Sable wanted to cradle her in her

12 hands, to protect her from any more pain. She wanted to stand behind her eyes for a day, just to give her a break from her life. Sable knew she had to do something. She reached her hand out and slid her fingers in the damp crevices of Chloe‘s fingers.

―It happened to me too. I mean, I think it did. It‘s not like yours; I was a kid.

And, I could never remember anything about being a kid, but I‘ve been having these dreams and sometimes I‘ll be walking and I‘ll smell something like lilacs or wood chips and the scent will take me right back to being four years old again and thinking about all that stuff, but I can't prove anything, so I don‘t know how to tell if it‘s real. But I know how you feel.‖

And that was what was important. Yes, their experiences differed in age and the amount of times, but they both knew what it was like. Finally, after years of solitary confinement, Sable had found a real outlet. Now there were no more secrets. She knew herself when she was with Chloe and she felt safe with her. Chloe shared her experience, her secrets and together they felt strong, but they needed more because in the background there always lingered the fear of the darkness that would come at night, when they were finally too tired to talk. Chloe feared the times when Sable wasn‘t there in her bed, and of who might enter. Sable feared the silence and what it would do to her mind. She was afraid of being alone with herself. Even though they harboured each other‘s secrets, neither of them could stop their addiction to trying to flee their own memories. They had questions that needed to be answered and no one to ask them to. Last year they had a school assembly about date rape. Sable could sense the fear in the teachers, praying that no one would stand up and say things that they didn‘t want to hear. Instead, they stood there, with their ten-foot poles and flung this information out at the students before

13 fleeing to the safe confines of the staff room. They told everyone just to say ‗no‘ and then asked if anyone had any questions. Rather than choosing the option of self- disclosing in front of the whole school about something as ugly as incest, Sable and

Chloe muddled along, cradling each other‘s secrets softly in the palm of their hands, sought control through their bodies, albeit in their different ways, and told no one.

But they were in no form to save each other. There would always be those times when Sable would have to go home and be alone with her thoughts. And sometimes, submerged in shame and guilt and hate, she couldn‘t, she didn‘t have the strength to hold herself up. Then, once again, the emotions would take control. This feeling was bigger than anything that she had felt before. She couldn‘t decipher one emotion from the next, as they would all slide into each other, forming what felt like molten lava in her chest.

What‘s wrong with me, what did I do wrong, why did this have to happen, why…?

And then, without even knocking, the anger would rush in, tongue in cheek, and grab

Sable by the throat. It consumed her whole body, until she could feel it clawing at her insides, trying to push its way out through the surface of her skin. She wanted to pull the plug and have it all drain out of her, but she knew it would just fill up again, endless. She didn‘t know where it was all coming from—all she knew was that it wanted out. That‘s how it all started. She was just trying to create an opening for the anger to escape. She didn‘t even mean for it to go that deep, but she was persistent in her perseverance to continue until the anger had subsided. When satisfied that the anger was silenced for the night, Sable looked down to see what she had accomplished. She was amazed to see the size of the wound. It was bigger, ran deeper than any of her previous ones. She could

14 see everything: the pulse of her veins, the movement of the blood as it continued to course.

I am alive.

She stuck her finger into the breach of skin and felt the grooves of her tendons. She pushed on her veins and watched the blood pile up like a kinked hose. One more slow application of pressure and she could end it all. And then it would all be gone—all the pain, the knotted secrets, the weight, would all slip away. But the thought of Chloe, trying to navigate her way along the treacherous path of teenage angst alone, shoved those thoughts out of her head. Besides, death wasn‘t the point. It was the pain, the inescapable pain.

But the anger, and her method of controlled escape, eventually caught up with her.

The very next day after that especially irate night, some snitch in her junior high school caught wind of her accidentally overly deep slash wound and reported it to the school authorities. An abrupt wave of whispers caused Sable to realize something was up around ten. By ten-thirty she was plucked out of her science class by one of the vice principals and the school counsellor. She left with them amidst the buzz of her classmates. She directly asked for Chloe. She was denied. Instead, she was offered Ms.

Barret, the gym teacher/school nurse/rumoured token lesbian who had thrown herself in front of a city bus the year before, which made Sable wonder if she was the best candidate for operation attempted adolescent suicide rescue. It didn‘t take an expert inspection to conclude that she was going to need stitches, and lots of them.

En route to the hospital, she was asked why she did it. She almost wanted to tell her, at least to clear her name from the death rumours, but something was lodged inside her, holding it in. She kept remembering the warnings...

...no one will believe you; you have no proof… and the shame of divulging that it was her own family that allowed this to happen, so she just shrugged her shoulders and said her usual nothing.

After submitting her wrist to seven stitches and her face to a firm finger wagging from the doctor on call, Sable was relieved to return to school. At first, the reaction was as she had expected. Halted conversations, the stare and look away, then look back again, this time at her bandaged wrist. And that‘s just what they know … she couldn‘t imagine their reaction if they knew the cause. She thought of Chloe and felt temporarily jealous of her more subtle method of control.

She‘s just as bad as me but no one can tell of the horrors that happen in the bathroom stalls as she tries to purge herself of the pain.

If anyone would ever have close inspection of her teeth, with the stomach acid beginning to take its toll on the back of her incisors they might get a clue. But nobody thought to look. After all, she wasn‘t bad, not like Sable. She also guessed it was easier to target the dark haired girl in black than it is to peg trauma on the sweet-faced blonde in floral. She scoffed at Chloe‘s own contradiction and then felt instant regret that she also did not choose a more feminine outlet for her anger. But this was the only thing that seemed to work, that allowed her to regain concentration, to be able to breathe again, and allowed her to continue on in her silent fight for survival. She wondered where Chloe was, if she had heard what had happened (of course she had) and when they were going to let her see

16 her. After a day like this she needed to see her. But the real kicker happened as Sable tried to nonchalantly slip past the condescension and return to class.

―Um, Sable, would you mind stepping into my office for a second?‖

It was Mr. Bradshaw the, want-to-be-cool, vice principal. Although relatively okay—for an adult—he was most famous for the school transfer of ‘89, where he had to leave his position as the high school vice because he kept hitting on all the female students, which again, made Sable wonder where they keep finding these people and selecting them for her to talk to. Mr. Bradshaw was wearing his usual snap up track pants and extra small t-shirt.

Great, one more lecture for the road; and he better not try to cop a feel while I‘m in there.

Everything just seemed so predictable and procedural; at least that‘s what Sable thought until the office door was opened.

Packed like sardines into Mr. Bradshaw‘s office – a once rumoured custodian closet – was what looked to be a hastily formed, twelve hours too late intervention for the emotionally drained. Half-seated, half-standing, all with the ashamed eyes of traitors were the following: Mr. Bradshaw – vice principal by default (or fault, depending on your point of view); Mr. Jefferson – vice principal number two (the original). The two were standing on either side of Mr. MacDonald, principal of Central Junior Secondary School, who sat seated at the desk, looking overwhelmed and unprepared for the procedure that was about to take place. Seated on the right, in a tearful slump, was Sable‘s mother, whose hand was conveniently being cradled by one assumed lesbian, Ms. Barret, who had snuck into the office promptly upon returning to the school.

She knew—the whole time, she knew. Traitor.

Closest to the door was Bryn, one of Sable‘s longest friends, taken abruptly out of science, to form an adult sandwich with every person a rebellious teenager does not want to hang out with. She was glad to see at least one of her friends, but she had to wonder, where was Chloe? Chloe was the only one she wanted. Bryn looked at her, eyes blazing with discomfort. If retinas could send alarm signals, Bryn‘s would be pulsing red and pounding on Mr. Bradshaw‘s desk. Last, but most intriguing to Sable were two large, bald men in white suits (no joke) that stood soberly silent in the corner.

―Sable, have a seat.‖

Sable wanted to squish herself in next to Bryn, but Mr. MacDonald stood pointing to a seat, obviously pre-planned, next to her mother.

Don‘t worry mom, I won‘t tell.

She sat.

Mr. Jefferson took the lead.

―Sable, the display that you caused here today was very alarming for our students and staff and, of course, your mother. We feel that you pose a safety threat to this school and that it would be in the best interest of our school and your family if you take a leave of absence.‖

Her eyes darted at Bryn.

What are they talking about?

Was she being suspended for cutting herself? In her own home? She couldn‘t understand how her once private behaviour was now a red alert for the entire student body.

―No, Mr. Jefferson, I‘m fine. It‘s over now. I really don‘t need to go home. I feel better now. I promise.‖

―Well, Sable. Unfortunately, we disagree. And after talking extensively with your mother and some of the other teachers we feel that it would be better for everybody if you spent some time in Steveson."

Now it all became clear. They thought she was nuts. Steveson was the neighbouring city, an hour away. It had become synonymous for two things: a sawmill and a mental institution. Her mind began to race. The two men in white coats, her sobbing mother and yes … pushed to the corner was one of her mother‘s suitcases, a floral tweedish material; she‘d had it forever. She was all packed and ready to go. And they never even bothered to ask her why she did it. When did this happen? When she was getting stitches? Were all those long lectures just stalling tactics so they could make the necessary arrangements and group everyone together? Sable felt had.

―I‘m not going.‖

Mr. MacDonald took the second shift.

―Well actually, Miss Anderson, because of your age, it‘s your parent or guardian that has the final decision.‖

―I want to see Chloe.‖

The group of impostors all glanced knowingly at Sable‘s mother. Her mother put her head down and nodded for the principal to proceed with the second half of the bombshell, which had also apparently been decided during in her absence.

―We all feel that your relationship with Chloe is potentially volatile. With the running away and the rebellion, we feel that it is in your best interest for the two of you to

19 be separated, indefinitely. Chloe did not react well to your hospitalization and was being rather incorrigible and rude, but luckily her stepfather took time out of work to come and get her. Both her parents agree with us that she would profit from a more formal educational setting. Her stepfather is driving her to Alberta as we speak to fill out transfer applications for a rather reputable boarding school. It‘s caring parents like that can help her more than you two can help each other. I know it may seem hard initially, but you‘ll make other friends.‖

The words took the breath of life from her. What are they doing? They have no idea. Sable felt herself reeling out of control, felt herself slipping away, again. Taking the one person, the one outlet, that helped her to get through this hell…

Ask me! Somebody ask me; I will tell.

They didn‘t get it. She wanted to stand up on her chair and scream that they were all idiots, that if it wasn‘t for Chloe, Sable would be dead by now. She wanted to tell them that Chloe had brought her back to life and unearthed her from her solitary grave, through a story. But Sable had promised Chloe that she would never reveal her secret. The school authorities don‘t know...

...nobody knows but me

―Mom – mom, we have to go get Chloe. Mom we have to go right now!‖ She was begging now.

But the look on her mother‘s face didn‘t require any words. That was it. The decision had already been made. Sable had no power here. And once again, everything was out of her control. Bryn held her hand as she was escorted to an unassuming white

20 van. Her mother was to follow directly behind her in her own car. And, it didn‘t look like they were making any pit stops.

―I‘m not crazy Bryn—I was just mad. I hate ...‖

―I know honey. We all have your back. We‘ll visit you soon, okay? Don‘t worry

— everything will be fine. Be strong.‖

Strong was the one thing that Sable was sick of feeling. She wished for a safe space without judgement that she could fall into, curl up, drop her guards and do the one thing she never let herself do—lose control. She had found that place with Chloe, and just knowing that there was someone else out there who knew what she knew—who felt how she felt made things more bearable, but now she was gone, and again Sable was left to fight the battle alone. She rode alone in the van on the way to await her falsely predetermined future.

Seated in the admitting room to the psychiatric ward, still ignoring her mother, who sat stricken beside her, Sable thumbed at the stray stitches that poked through the cheesecloth bandage. Rebels. They called it a 'ward', but in reality it was a cube, because it was structurally separated from the rest of the hospital. And in case that wasn‘t enough to set off the crazy alarm, it was also encased by a twenty-foot fence and phallic shaped hedges. She had never seen so much pastel in her life: mint green walls framed with a peach floral border. There were pastel pictures of kittens, and nurses pushed pastel pills to the walking corpses in their baby blue gowns and matching slippers.

Like I‘m going to get better in here.

The doctor entered.

―Hello Miss, uh … Anderson. Oh yes, of course. Sable Anderson. Welcome to the East Ward.

Sable looked around the room half expecting a nurse to come in wheeling a giant cake decorated with pink happy pills followed by a marching band huffing nitrous and waving streamers. Welcome indeed.

―Before we can show you your room and get you settled, I just have to ask you a few standard assessment questions.‖

Great, here we go.

―You are 15 now Miss Anderson?‖

―Yes.‖

―Is this your first time being admitted?‖

Admitted. The way the word was being used, it sounded more like 'committed' — like she was on trial for some brutal massacre. But to the ignorant, she was.

―Yes.‖

―Do you have problems sleeping?‖

―No,‖ she lied.

They‘re not going to pinpoint me on some psycho grid chart, thank you very much. And what teen doesn‘t have problems sleeping, or sleeping too much?

―Are you sexually active?‖

Sable‘s eyes darted towards her mother.

―Yes.‖

―Have you ever experimented with drugs?‖

―Yes.‖ God, it was hard keeping a straight face.

―Which ones?‖

―Most.‖

―Marijuana?‖

―Yes.‖

―L.S.D.?‖

―Yes.‖

―Ecstasy?‖

―Yes.‖

―Cocaine?‖

She looked over at her mom, who was biting the inside of her cheek (genetics), tying to force her mouth into some warped sort of nonchalant smile, but her eyes that stretched huge, as if she‘d done a couple of lines herself, gave it all away.

―Yes.‖

―Heroi…‖

Great, now they‘re going to think I‘m a drug addict.

But it wasn‘t that either. They didn‘t know what it was like to wake up in the early morning, drenched from nightmares, to have those thoughts—thoughts that she couldn‘t bear to process, let alone carry them around in her head all the time. She would do anything it took to escape, even if just for a second that feeling, the heaviness of holding this shame. She thought of some of the other girls at her school, whose biggest problem was matching their foundation to their skin tone, who sashayed through the halls with an ignorant freedom. They seemed so light. She wished that she could be one of those girls, who didn‘t have secrets this convoluted and complicated pulsating inside her chest,

23 driving her life. She looked at the doctor as he rambled away about the dangers of drugs, like she was an idiot, and wondered in amazement as to why nobody throughout this process had asked why she did it. They were so preoccupied with what she had done that no one bothered to ask. Maybe they were scared, and Sable didn‘t blame them; it was all very messy. She wondered whether telling the full story would decrease or increase her stay at the asylum. She wondered if her mother had any inkling of knowledge of what had happened while she was at work. She wanted so badly to ask her but the risk of her ignorance being shattered was more than Sable could bear, even for a woman she was not that fond of at the moment. But what bothered Sable the most, something that her mother could have no way of knowing, a fact that was just recently confirmed by Sable herself in a recent flashback on the way home from school is that, she never said no. You‘re always supposed to yell ―No!‖ That‘s the first thing they tell you in the school assemblies. At first she tried, but her voice betrayed her. And later on, she developed the essential survival skill of being able to separate herself from her body and feel, almost nothing.

And it is there that she still remained, lost in her numbed silent separation, ever since.

But she never said anything, she never tried to stop it and the pain of knowing that was more excruciating than the events themselves.

―Ahem, Sable, are you on drugs right now?‖

Right, back to the reality of the so-called psychotic.

―Huh? Uh, no, not unless you include whatever sublingual stuff buddy in white shoved in my mouth for the car ride over.‖

―Okay, moving on then. Was this your first suicide attempt?‖

Sable let out an exhausted sigh. She was sick of explaining to people who obviously could never understand. There was no more of a connection with this cut to death than there was between Dr. no name here and the inner workings of a fifteen-year old girl‘s mind. The thing is that they were asking her all the wrong questions. These things she did were all ways, albeit not the most positive, to escape the pain. And she only chose it because she knew of no other way. She didn‘t want to be like this, but she didn‘t know how not to. The well of agony that she was trying to climb out of was the one topic that they did not ask her about. But she wasn‘t going to waste her breath explaining. And she wasn‘t offering up any answers.

While the doctor lectured on, Sable began to float above her body, her ingrained talent, and watch her life unfold procedurally before her. She didn‘t even have to be there. They had it all planned out. In one short day her life had gone from painfully manageable to regrettably lost.

Has it only been that long?

If felt like days had past. She knew where she was because she could still hear a faint semblance of a sermon but in her mind, she was gone. Her body sat there in disconnect. She felt helpless. How did she get here? And then she did something that she never did: she started to cry. She felt a certain release, similar to the result that cutting offered. She only wished that she could cry more and then she wouldn‘t have found herself in this mess. But tears over what had happened were one thing that she wouldn‘t allow herself, not as long as she was in control. But as her long awaited tears made her realize—she wasn‘t.

―Okay Miss Anderson, try to remain calm. That‘s enough for now. The nurse is going to show you to your room and introduce you to your roommate; we don‘t believe in isolation here in the East Ward, unless to reprimand for misbehaviour. But first you must give your bags to the security staff, for a routine safety check, settle yourself in and then come back and wait for your mother in the foyer to say goodbye. I‘d just like to have a few words with her—in private.‖

Before she was escorted to her new abode, one of the guards did a procedural search to remove any items that might cause injury to self, other patients or staff. He removed her razor, two pens, blow dryer and toothbrush. These items could be checked out when needed, used only under supervision and then promptly be returned after use.

The nurse concluded by giving Sable a thorough pat down, taking away her lighter in the process, then told her to grab her belongings, as she turned left, leading her down the paisley pastel carpet to the women‘s wing.

The room was to be expected. It looked like an economy class room in a demented Holiday Inn. The same muted walls, serene photographs of waves and sand, and everything was in double. Two matching beds and desks, both bolted to the floor, closets with no doors or coat hangers—she could see the precaution that went into designing these rooms. The bathroom also didn‘t have a door, the tap only ran one temperature of water (a very non-soothing lukewarm), and the sink had no plug, you know, just in case. The bedroom door did have a lock though, but it was on the outside, as lock down or lights out was sharply at ten.

After the grand tour of insanity was finished for the day, Sable was led out into the foyer to say good-bye to her mother. Her mother, the woman that she had come to

26 hate for her own silent acceptance of things passed, now seemed to be her closest ally.

Sable clung, sobbing, to her mom‘s waist begging not to be left alone in that place.

―I promise, mom, I will be good, I won‘t do it anymore ... don‘t let them take me

...‖

―Don‘t worry sweetie, it‘ll be okay. I‘ll see you real soon. You‘ll be out of here in a couple of days.‖

She was there for four months. And still, she told no one of her secret.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

I wrote the preceding story to serve as a guiding, running example that could be called upon throughout the writing of this thesis. I wrote the story as a way to broach a complex, indeed, difficult, topic. That topic is 'child sexual abuse', specifically female- child sexual abuse victims/survivors. I wanted to depict in narrative form everything I am about to discuss: how child sexual abuse survivors are oppressed in their silence, have no form of community, and that when left undisclosed and untreated can be plagued with a serious set of after-effects and post-manifestations of abuse. Because my theoretical framework is hermeneutics, I also wanted to include a narrative to serve as a hermeneutic reference point. All of this will come into play in the pages to come, but for now I must explain how I decided to proceed with this difficult, indeed, complex topic. I have purposefully chosen, for my graduate studies thesis, not to offer over an inquiry into the quantitative-based statistical accounts regarding child sexual abuse and its victims. Nor have I selected a sociological, or psychological, or historical, or medical, or social services and so on way of inquiring into this topic. Rather, I desire to write about the topic in an enquiring way. That is, intimately and pedagogically about how and why female child sexual abuse annihilates a girl's/woman's soul, and how and why the consequences of victimization manifests itself throughout an abused girl's/woman's body, and how and why such a traumatic experience often becomes a controlling agent in many girls‘/women's lives as they move through adolescence and into adulthood.

Simply, the effects of sexual abuse do not cease when the abuse stops, nor are their/its effect/affects dependant on conscious memories (Morris 150). The effects of

28 sexual abuse can come to be negatively manifested in almost every aspect of an abused girl‘s life, be it in her personal, professional and/or social relationships, her actions or behaviours or how she expresses or communicates herself, and unless these effects, as well as the source are dealt with, they will continue to wreak havoc on her life, either consciously or, more commonly, unconsciously (Blume 15). How may girls who have been sexually abused as children become privy to this information – in a helpful way – regarding the effects of childhood female sexual abuse? What might we, as educators and/or those who work in the fields of child or youth services, do to help erode and heal the devastating effects of female child sexual abuse? How and where might we, who seek to help, reach out to these victimized girls?

Let me begin my response to these questions with a reflection ... I used to feel this queasy anxiety when first presenting my graduate studies topic to others either in graduate classes I was taking as preparation for the study, or when friends enquired about my thesis topic. I felt I knew what some people were thinking regarding my choice of this enquiry topic – female child sexual abuse, and my thoughts would unfold something like this:

Did ‗it‘ happen to her?

Is that why she‘s doing this enquiry?

Why else would anybody choose such a topic?

To respond to these questions, which I thought were in the heads and on the tongues of others, or perhaps you yourself the reader, I must be direct and say, ‗No‘. I did not choose this topic as my own personal vendetta against some abusive childhood. In fact, I did not choose this topic at all; it chose me.

Initially, when I began my post secondary schooling, I wanted to be an English professor. I dreamed of sitting with steamy cups of coffee and discussing stimulating language or literature topics amidst the rush of university students in and out of my classroom. So, I did not choose this topic as something I have always dreamed of doing.

But life has an interesting way of interrupting and redirecting one's dreams, wishes and intentions. And my interruption – well, while enrolled in a university English department, I began to volunteer as a rape crisis counsellor. It was this experience that shaped my future in ways I could not determine at the time.

At first, I just wanted some place to volunteer and, as a woman, I chose a women‘s organization. But something started, post-training, to occur once I began to talk with the ‗clients‘. I started to notice a pattern of post-abuse manifestations that were controlling the lives of many of the women and girls who I spoke with. I became both lost and found again as a woman and as a human being in their often difficult to hear stories. When young or more mature women would confide in me and tell me their stories, a theme emerged—ironically, all the stories voiced by young or even mature women were tributes to self-silence. Simply, almost all the women I spoke with were victims of not only sexual abuse, but of a deafening self-imposed silence.

When women called, or when they came in to the office, most were no longer in present physical danger, but they were all emotionally high risk. They would talk on the phone or come in, yet most of them did not want active interventionist help. Most did not want to avenge their attackers; they just wanted to try speaking the truth out loud in order to actually believe they could break the oppressive silence they had been living with – often for an extended period of time. These contacts, with us as front-line counsellors,

30 were often their first recounts of their abuses with their own audible voices. Almost all these women seemed to want was someone to hear their voices, just once, and, upon hearing, to confirm and validate what had happened to them. And, they wanted to know that ‗it‘ had happened to others. Generally, they never wanted any action; they did not want anyone else to know, but what they did not realize is that without action, there can be no healing. And, most of these women did not know, and why would they know that even such a thing as disclosure, which is a simple act of telling, can initiate healing.

At the same time as I was noticing what these women were going through, I began to wonder about the unfairness of victimization. That is, it is not fair that a girl or a woman has to become so desperate, for the lack of a better word, and muster what often she lacks most – self-awareness and self-esteem – in order to get help for a situation in which she is the victim. Moreover, by the time many women had acquired enough of a voice to disclose, it seemed too late; so much effective damage had already been done that now needed to be undone. I began to mull over ways for such girls and women to acquire the information they so desperately needed without a forced disclosure episode which many were just not ready for. I also wanted to reach out to them while they were still young, and before the effects became rooted in their beings. There had to be a way.

These questions of how came to encircle me; they kept me awake at night and gnawed at me in their relentless asking to be heard. Finally, I began to listen to them. And that is why I entered a graduate studies program —to find responses to the questions that had been circling in my head and pulling at my heart for almost a decade.

So, what is the definition of child sexual abuse that I will be working with in this thesis? Definitions of child sexual abuse include ‗inappropriate‘ kissing, fondling and

31 sexual intercourse as well as non-contact behaviours such as exposure to pornography, taking pornographic pictures of children, exposure to exhibitionism and sexual propositions or talk (Berrick and Gilbert 5). In recent research regarding child sexual abuse, it is estimated that 40% of all North American women have survived a defined case of child sexual abuse (Courtois 22). But these statistics only represent women who have disclosed their abuse. And, we must assume that child sexual abuse is an ice-berg phenomenon – that is, ¾ of the iceberg is below the visible waterline. To take into account all the women who have kept an abuse secret hidden, or who do not remember the abuse, the statistic easily jumps to an estimated 62% of women, which is to say that over half of all North American women have survived child sexual abuse as defined above (Berrick and Gilbert 4). If this epidemic resulted in physical deaths, as much as it does in spiritual, wellness, emotional, social, or soul deaths, there would be a national task force immediately struck to deal with this crisis. But child sexual abuse is a very quiet phenomenon. Child sexual abuse operates in a covert manner, with the perpetrator, or oppressor, using specific tactics to keep the girls silent; therefore, protecting the very person who violated them (Blume 4).

As well, we know, as a society, that most people do not want to talk about sexuality and especially not about sexual abuse. Indeed, Wagner states in her work on incest that, ―The only taboo on incest is the taboo on talking about it‖ (208). Any attempt to discuss – in political, or societal, or cultural, or media, or religious institutions – child sexual abuse seems to create uneasy feelings or harsh denials or non-responsiveness and the result is that addressing sexual abuse remains a powerful taboo. Even when we – as a society – talk about sexual abuse, we don‘t really 'talk' about it. We often resort to using

32 statistical or empirical and/or descriptive language. That is language that objectifies the topic – distances us from it. We prefer to 'talk' about the 'topic' in large and impersonal group assemblies—conferences, seminars, workshops and so on—and we attempt to toss out volumes of objectifying information with few options for dialogue. But, as a society, by refusing to acknowledge child sexual abuse as one of the main socio-political forms of oppression, and by refusing to discuss it, we are simply feeding into, and perpetuating, the cycles of abuse. And, although child sexual abuse does cross all gender, class and racial lines, across time and place, its main target has always been the female (Blume xiii). That means child sexual abuse, including incest, is not some far out there topic that only happens to 'those women‘; it happens to our sisters, our daughters, our friends and our co-workers (Blume xiii-xiv). But you and I, we and us, would almost never know child sexual abuse even existed in the public sphere, because the act and the topic is kept hidden by both its victims and victimizers.

Many child sexual abuse survivors label/name what had happened to them as a form of death (Halliday 35). And, it is—sexual abuse kills possibilities to life in certain ways. With the amalgamation of sometimes physical, and always emotional, verbal and sexual violations, child sexual abuse quickly becomes the ―most devastating form of abuse that a child can endure‖ (Blume 19). Girls who are victimized by such abuse become oppressed in their isolation (both other-imposed and self-imposed) and they are robbed of their childhoods before they have a chance to know/experience them, and they are terrifyingly vulnerable to continuing and other forms of abuse. In short, many of these girls who are victimized by sexual abuse become the ‗living dead‘. With exception to the mass amounts of suicides committed by sexual abuse survivors (actual death), child

33 sexual abuse kills a girl's insides—her identity, sense of self, her self-esteem, her ethics- morality, her ability to build healthy relationships, and so on. Child sexual abuse has been labelled as 'soul murder', and its survivors describe themselves as the ―living dead‖ or as ―walking automatons‖ (Halliday 35). What is even more tragic is that the traumas of abuse do not cease when the actual sexual-physical abuse finally ends, but the effects may continue on for the duration of a girl‘s life until she acquires the educational tools that may assist her to overcome the effects of sexual abuse (Blume 15). Again, sexual abuse, unlike physical injuries, is not something that time alone can heal.

Some readers of this thesis may wonder why I did not enter into this enquiry within the Faculty of Social Work or a Department of Women‘s Studies or a Department of Psychology where most work on child sexual abuse has been centred in recent decades. Let me unpack some of my thinking in this regard. I believe that while counselling is the most effective method for working through the after-effects of child sexual abuse, counselling, itself, is only useful or effective if the sexual abuse victim seeks it out. Unfortunately, as we know, and as the literature and research has indicated, the majority of child sexual abuse survivors do not disclose this vital piece of information

– that they were sexually abused – and either get treated for the manifestations of abuse

(anger, rebelliousness, self-mutilation, promiscuity, eating disorders, and so on), but instead fly under the radar unnoticed by the authorities (MacMillan, Jamieson, and Walsh

1402). Moreover, I do not feel that child sexual abuse is a topic to be confined to the science of psychology or the practices of social work or the work of cultural or radical feminists; and, I feel that child sexual abuse is an educative issue. The one common link that almost all girls who have endured child sexual abuse share is the space called school.

School is the place where teenage girls spend the majority of their time, even more so than the home in some instances (Huggins 3). More importantly, when the home is ruled out as the primary safe place for children/adolescents, then school automatically becomes an alternative place (Phasha 304). Therefore, school, in my opinion, is the place/space to raise the possibility of educating adolescent girls, indeed, all students

(male and female) on the after-effects of child sexual abuse. While public schools have made good progress in recent years in the teaching of abuse through preventative awareness programs to primarily elementary school children in particular (Gentles and

Cassidy 7), what is lacking in most school programs are informational spaces for those who enter the education system as already being sexually abused survivors. In other words, what may educators do, pedagogically (in a curriculum and instructional sense) for/with female students, who are abuse survivors, and who remain undisclosed? How might a sexual abuse pro-active public school curriculum assist those girls who have endured child sexual abuse to connect with their post-abusive behaviours and to themselves, to find a voice, and to initiate a path towards healing? Therefore, in this enquiry, I want to turn towards an educational focus—specifically on curriculum and instruction—in order to examine how education/schooling may be a place/space where sexual post-abuse education may provide a service in addressing this hidden and silent epidemic of female child sexual abuse.

When I speak of educative aspects to abuse, several notions come to mind. What kind of information is needed to help girls who have been sexually abused as children?

Most of the vital pieces of information can seem, to the educated adult, as obvious truisms. But this information, to the plethora of girls who have been abused, is often

35 absent from their meaning making capabilities. Simply, the variety of ways that information about sexual abuse and how its effects manifest themselves through young and adult women‘s lives is complex, and the coping mechanisms that can be used to initiate a sense of healing, a healthy sense of self, are often foreign, yet transformative, pieces of knowledge to the undisclosed abuse survivor. This kind or type of information—that educates a sexual abuse survivor—is lacking in our education system.

As learners, we often learn, in elementary school, what to do in case it (sexual abuse) happens, but we rarely discuss what to do after it happens. Schools most often, when the topic of sexual abuse is present, focus on prevention measures, not information- intervention education. But it is information-intervention that is most needed. We know that the plethora of child sexual abuses have already occurred or have been occurring by the time that children reach school (Gentles and Cassidy 6-7). If counselling, which is a re-educative construct, works for those who have disclosed and can avail themselves of counselling, then how might more girls be educated to disclosure so they can be counselled?

My graduate studies focus on this topic has been met with a series of roadblocks that, in turn, have come to shape the thesis you are reading. I find it ironic that in attempting to remove the silence that surrounds this topic that, when I proposed my research topic, I was met with silence from the 'ethics' gatekeepers within the educational institution. Professors warned me not to take up the topic due to its difficulty, and reminded me I was only studying at the Master‘s level. The University ethics review committee rejected my various and numerous re-written proposals to conduct qualitative research enquiring into current educational policies/practices surrounding the topic of

36 female child sexual abuse. In an attempt to gain dialogical/conversational access to this topic, access to dialogue between myself and the teachers and learners regarding what an information-intervention child sexual abuse education program might look like, I was denied access. Instead, I was unofficially recommended counselling by the research ethics committee and asked if I was 'okay'. This advice came from people who had never met me, but who had only read my proposal that contained no information about me or my past. But assumptions were made that I had chosen this topic for personal reasons – I guess my head was right early in this thesis when I indicated how others reacted to my enquiry project topic. Why would you choose such an abhorrent and uncomfortable subject matter? What about the ‗safety‘ of the learners and the teachers? No school will give you access to do this work – it is too dangerous? Are you a certificated psychologist? I thought that it was here, in graduate studies, where the topic of child sexual abuse, from an educative perspective, could be broached academically without barriers. I was wrong. Even here, in this enlightened institution, this topic becomes personalized. Even here, I was met with silences or worse yet, questions about my well- being.

As my proposed attempts to conduct qualitative research were denied ethics approval, my methodological framework has shifted. Originally, what I wanted to do was speak with any high school students/volunteers—girls—who were concerned about child sexual abuse. I wanted to talk with them about their experiences in school with respect to the topic of sexual abuse—when and where and how was the topic 'studied' in a curricular and/or instructional sense? And, then, working with teachers and volunteer students, I wanted to suggest a ‗narrative enquiry‘ approach to the topic and perhaps how narrative

37 could be used to host information-intervention conversations between all learners with respect to the topic of child sexual abuse. I was hoping the volunteer participants could assist me in generating and vetting this material. But that was not to be. So, my enquiry now has become my experience, throughout my graduate studies, in trying to access a voice for the topic of child sexual abuse from an educative standpoint.

From my very first presentation in a graduate seminar on the topic to my experiences trying to get research ethics approval, I felt the discomfort in each and every space the topic was brought up. At first, I did not understand these responses. Stupid of me – perhaps! I did not understand how other controversial topics that were once shrouded in silence; topics such as 'genocide', 'racism' and 'torture' can be studied and brought into the light, except for the one I wanted to advance. I began to think that with this topic—my topic—there is a fear evident that leads to personalization of the topic.

Some might fear that by speaking on this topic that they are implicating themselves or that oppressive constraints are only fought against by the oppressed themselves. I am here to say that that is not true. For, when someone is a child, or an adolescent who has been so beaten down, so stripped of voice that they cannot initiate their own healing, then someone has to initiate that voice, or at bare minimum, provide a space where that voice can flourish. In this regard, advocates are needed. And it is through speaking on this topic, by engaging in socio-political dialogue, that the stigma that surrounds child sexual abuse will begin to dissipate. When other controversial social topics such as racism, genocide and sexual orientation were first presented in educational settings, they were also danced around and rejected, feared and resisted, but eventually over time, they were accepted and became integrated into the curriculum (Alberta Education, Program of

Studies, Senior High 4). Certainly some resistance is still there, but conversations regarding these topics have opened up. That is my ultimate goal for the education of child sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse plagues females all over the world. I want to remove the barriers and the nausea that accompanies the discussion of this topic. I want people to be able to talk about this topic and to support the education of this topic. The silence needs to stop.

Theoretically speaking, if there is any one theory that is capable of tackling the intricacies and complexities of child sexual abuse from an educative standpoint, I believe that it lies in Gadamerian hermeneutics. Gadamer's hermeneutics has been a gift presented to me in my graduate studies. Philosophical hermeneutics as exemplified through Hans-Georg Gadamer's infamous text, Truth and Method, I believe makes possible for a researcher, such as myself, to humbly and openly embrace and emphasize true understanding. I admire Gadamer‘s advancing of the use of the aesthetic and the concept of aesthetic play as conversational invitations that show a way forward regarding information-intervention education regarding child sexual abuse and its after-effects on adolescent girls‘ and mature women‘s educative/mis-educative lives. And because no form of oppression can be liberated without dialogue, I will complement Gadamer‘s theories/practices with Paulo Freire‘s notions of political (participatory action research) dialogue as emphasized in his primary text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

I entered graduate studies because I found that it would be the best way to garner the topic of child sexual abuse the voice it so direly needs and how to offer an educative alternative on such a sensitive topic. I learned a lot about myself through the process.

When I began to talk and present my topic, I was surprised at myself. I have never been

39 known to be shy about my opinions, but when I began to speak about my topic, I started to censor myself. I spoke about 'abuse' instead of 'sexual' abuse. I described my topic as how to educate girls who have experienced childhood trauma, instead of what I really meant which was how to educate girls who have been sexually abused as children. I soon learned that there is no way that I would be able to properly represent this topic if I cannot even say the words myself. I had to confront my own discomfort on this topic before I could be of any help to these girls. I learned that progress cannot be made to break the taboo if I am playing into it. And I learned that that nauseous feeling will never go away unless the taboo is removed, and the only way to remove the taboo of the topic is to talk about it. And talk about it until that sick feeling goes away. It doesn‘t mean that we will become desensitized to child sexual abuse, but we have to be able, as educators, as helping professionals, as those who work with children and youth, as parents and adults, to talk about sexual abuse if there is any hope for the millions of abused girls to attain any form of healing. I used to wonder why girls hid this secret and lived their whole lives in hiding their abuses. Now I wonder why they tell, because disclosure is not encouraged. How can we expect these girls and young and mature women to come forward when we, in a societal sense, cannot even talk about it?

What follows is my work which plays out like this: Chapter Two outlines how child sexual abuse operates as an oppressive constraint in the lives of its female survivors, especially for those who remain undisclosed. Chapter Three details the after- effects of child sexual abuse and how it manifests itself consciously, but most often, unconsciously in the actions and thoughts of adolescent females. Chapter Four focuses on education, and examines the current curricular and program components on the

40 teaching of child sexual abuse and outlines what is needed regarding information- intervention strategies in public secondary educational institutions. Chapter Five centres on Gadamerian hermeneutics, which is what I believe to be the theoretical component best suited for attaining true understanding of child sexual abuse for both its survivors and for those teaching on the topic. Chapter Six focuses on literature as the aesthetic medium most suited, I believe, for conveying understandings about the after-effects of child sexual abuse and, finally, Chapter Seven speaks of the importance of dialogue and speaking out about the topic of child sexual abuse. I conclude with an Epilogue reflecting on my journey as an evolution from silence to voice both within myself and within the topic itself. Thank you for reading on.

CHAPTER 2: THE HIDDEN YET OVERT STRUGGLE:

THE OPPRESSIVE CONSTRAINTS OF FEMALE CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

Too many women in too many countries speak the same language of silence. My grandmother was always silent - always aggrieved — only her husband had the cosmic right (or so it was said) to speak and be heard.

They say it is different now (after all, I am always vocal and my grandmother thinks I talk too much). But sometimes, I wonder......

When a woman fights for power, as all women would like to, quietly or loudly, it is questioned.

And yet, there must be freedom — if we are to speak. And yes, there must be power — if we are to be heard. And when we have both (freedom and power), let us not be misunderstood.

We seek only to give words to those who cannot speak (too many women in too many countries). I seek only to forget the sorrows of my grandmother's silence.

Anasuya Sengupta qtd. in Gilligan, Between Voice and Silence

I have always found oppression, as a decidedly well-exercised human phenomenon, fascinating. Oppression, as I am coming to understand it, as a woman and

42 as a woman working with sexually-abused women, works methodically and systematically to intentionally keep specific groups named as inferior, unequal, lacking or poverty-stricken. Typically, while most oppressed groups are born into their oppression by way of race, class, beliefs, or economics, such is not the case with the victims of female child sexual abuse. Female child sexual abuse, again typically, happens when a child is very young, sometimes at infancy, and she is victimized as a result of the intentional act of sexual exploitation, thus resulting in an experience-defining individual, yet inherently oppressed community. The members of this oppressed community, as a result of the individual violence perpetrated against them, young girls are stripped of voice and often identity just when most children are in the processes of garnering voice and identity. Female child sexual abuse victims, without voice and bearing lost identities, are thus kept in isolation and come to often limiting ways of being present in a world where often one‘s voice determines much.

In the writing that follows, I seek to inquire into the nature of the oppressive constraints of female child sexual abuse and how these constraints, as a result of this unspeakable violence, are directly related to a female child sexual abuse survivor‘s sense, or senselessness, of being. Due to the connotatively defined broadness of the word

‗oppression‘, I will be operating within Paulo Freire‘s definition of ‗oppression‘. Within

Freire‘s work I have found a ground upon which to begin to understand the concept and practice of oppression as it pertains to female sexual abuse victims. Freire defines

‗oppression‘ as, ―An act is oppressive only when it prevents people from being more fully human‖ (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 38-9). I believe Freire‘s definition is at play and helps advance understanding of what lies at the heart of female child sexual abuse;

43 and, that is, the soul murder (to borrow words from Alfred North Whitehead) of a girl‘s/woman‘s voice and identity.

According to Freire‘s definition of oppression, human beings, regardless of race, gender, beliefs, socio-economic conditions and so on, who are systematically and systemically oppressed are unable to realize their potential as complete human beings.

As Freire points out, there is something inherently repressed in the oppressed person‘s becoming due to a forced, or enslaved, dependence on the oppressor. As such, the oppressed person is unable to make authentic decisions. This constraint is evident in the oppressed person‘s thinking, feeling and doing even when they are unaware of the oppressor‘s direct influence over their thoughts and actions (Freire, Pedagogy of the

Oppressed 160). When and where sexual oppression exists or is inherent in relationships, and when this oppression begins for the victim/oppressed at birth, or in the case of child sexual abuse, shortly thereafter, even decisions that the oppressed feel are made on their own accord, are in reality often conformation of the oppressor‘s power. And, ―Thus, the behaviour of the oppressed is a prescribed behaviour, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor‖ (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 31). It is this insidious constraining power of oppression that, often without awareness of her or his own oppression, the oppressed becomes to feel ―like ‗things‘ owned by the oppressor‖ (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 51). Thus, the oppressed are not autonomous or authentic or independent seeking beings in and of themselves; they are not what might be considered ‗human‘ beings at all, but rather are ‗property‘ or ‗capital‘ or ‗chattel‘ of the oppressor.

Obviously, once oppression has taken root, it is difficult to stop or even escape from.

Often, the oppression becomes so internalized that the victims themselves become self-

44 oppressors or/and may even seek to oppress or exploit others. For it is not in the interest, obviously, of the oppressors to stop what benefits them, and often the oppressed themselves are so de-humanized and so constrained by the oppression‘s impact and power they are unaware of how deeply or badly they are oppressed:

Once a situation of violence and oppression has been established; it engenders an entire way of life and behaviour for those caught up in it—oppressors and oppressed alike. Both are submerged in this situation, and both bear the marks of oppression. Analysis of existential situations of oppression reveals that their inception lay in an act of violence—initiated by those with power. This violence, as a process, is perpetuated from generation to generation of oppressors, who become its heirs and are shaped by its climate. (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 44)

Without a targeted and specific intervention, the oppression, often embodied as self- oppression by the victim, will continue indefinitely. Therefore, so much depends, in terms of stopping the oppression, on the oppressed victim‘s ability to recognize educationally and developmentally who she or he has been, and who they could become otherwise.

When it comes to experiencing oppression, history is overwhelmingly evidential that women, throughout the ages, have suffered disproportionately. The oppression of women has a long-standing and ugly history and women are often cited to be the

―original victims of oppressive violence‖ (Cudd 86). Unlike some other forms of oppression, the oppression of women is not culturally specific, nor does it depend on race, class or sexual orientation; it is truly a global issue (Buz, Tortolero, and Roberts

596). It is impossible to pinpoint exactly when the oppression of women was first conceptualized and realized. Some feminists theorize that it commenced alongside the

‗Genesis‘ accounts of human creation and the emergent patriarchal concepts of the Judeo-

Christian tradition. Other feminist-researchers postulate that the oppression of women began long before the emergence of the Bible‘s pro-patriarchal narratives, dating back to approximately to 1700 B.C.E. when in Mesopotamian societies men literally bought women as they did their property (Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin 18-22, 35). Obviously, it is difficult to estimate the origination of male over female oppression because there were no or limited written accounts by women regarding women‘s experiences until relatively recently in recorded history (Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin 1). In pre-modern and modern history, women were literally written into the margins of history by author- men, and what the men had to say about women, for the most part, was to define/name women as otherwise – that is, as NOT male and, therefore, as lacking, or as inferior, or as deficient in all the characteristics and behaviours that were honoured as defining

‗maleness‘. For example, the Biblical Genesis account, which dominates origin-creation narratives in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, illustrates the tragic consequences for women if they were not acting or did not act as required. There had been a plethora of misogynist myths before this, as referenced in both Greek and Roman poems and stories, but the Genesis story and its implications in Christian doctrine has had the most severe impact on Western civilization, with the Genesis account coming to permeate law formation, education and hegemonic thought (Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin 43-83). In the Genesis myth, women were literally created from man, and from his rib; thus, from below his head, and this image of being ‗below‘ reinforces the subservience and submission of women being created from beneath the head of man and from his body.

Therefore, eventually, as if in a self-fulfilling prophecy, ‗Man‘ becomes associated with the all-powerful ‗mind‘ and woman, as a dichotomous necessity, becomes associated

46 with the inferior ‗body‘. As was stated by the Apostle Paul, ―For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man‖ (qtd. in Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin 35). If it was not oppressive enough that woman was created from man, for man, Eve made the tragic mistake, as the male-authored story goes, of biting into the apple of knowledge and, thus, in turn, SHE caused the creation of ‗original sin‘ and, as well, she is responsible for the origination of

‗sexual desires‘. All body evils are brought on or into the world by woman (Bullough,

Shelton, and Slavin 35, 92) – thus, each woman is Pandora-like. Women, then, become connected with the physical/bodied world of the senses and the emotions, while men were equated with mindedness—the rational and the reasonable and the necessary

(Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin 92). Women, throughout history, become over- represented as necessary but indeed ‗troublesome‘, and they are inherently ‗demonic and seducing creatures‘, filled with forms of body evils and, obviously, thus in need of control and punishment; these thoughts and representations have come to dominate

Western society in terms of its philosophy, laws, natural sciences, medicine, politics, literature, societal customs, economics and so on (Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin 35).

Simply, throughout Western history, in particular, the ‗blame game‘ was played out and never forgotten as women were described as ―the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God‘s image, man‖ (qtd. in Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin 96). The resulting impact of the Biblical Genesis account eventually created and became a validation source for the view of women as ‗objects‘, and, thus, women become standing reserve made of man to serve and service man. Thus, women—young and old—must serve their master‘s

47 purpose. Thusly, grand narratives of oppression emerged and grew and in doing so reinforced themselves and portrayed women as body-emotional creatures with smaller brains and who were incapable of rational thought and thus requiring limited education, and as creatures that had to be disciplined and controlled by men (Fausto-Sterling 226).

It is because of these patriarchal concepts, acted upon, told and re-told again and again that has resulted in women being an oppressed community in Western society for century upon century upon century. Women were not even declared ‗persons‘ – human beings – legally in Canada until 1929, and the ‗vote‘ was not granted to women nationwide until

1941 (Cohen 3). When women are seen as, no matter how benevolent the seer, possessions, it becomes easy to objectify them. And once women are ‗objects‘ they can and should be manipulated, because at the core of the oppressive objectification scenario is simply the living belief that when women are perceived as, understood as, subhuman, it becomes acceptable to be controlled, and one of the easiest ways to control women is through controlling forms of violence – and sexual violence is an obvious control mechanism.

Many tactics have been employed throughout the centuries to keep women in a state of oppression. One of the most effective means are systems of systemic violence, such that, ―Violence against women, in its many forms, is thus a large part of the explanation of how women are oppressed, and why we have not succeeded in ending the longest standing case of oppression on the planet‖ (Cudd 96). Fulfilled by the societal enshrined power differential, a history of righteous oppression mythology, and a ‗might- is-right‘ superior physical difference between men and women, violence against women became a common way for men to assert their power over women (Bullough, Shelton,

48 and Slavin 4). In fact, good male-dominated natural science has decreed biological differences, foundationally understood in a patriarchal society, between male and female, and provides a preordained reason that women should be subordinate, and thus, controlled (Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin 293). Just as detrimental to women, beyond the physical determinism of being lesser, are the socialized differences between men and women. Men, in many ways, are thought to be not only the physically dominant species, but moreover the prevailing commander of relationships (Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin

166). This is due to the socializing effects of the Genesis account where women were needed to be controlled, even through overt violence, which was until recently an acceptable method of control. Most overt violence against women is inflicted by their partners or spouses and this violence may include instances of physical, emotional, mental and sexual violence as well as marital rape, which is often ignored, even today, by the legal system and the courts (Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women 25).

Today, ironically, while the media often focuses on the perils of the city or the streets as a venue of violence or danger to women; it is often the male dominated ‗safe‘ spaces such as the home and the bedroom where the most acute violence against women ensues

(Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women 26). It is within the locus of these supposedly safe places where the most damaging cases of abuse most often happen. And, as with many cases of abuse, they most often occur at the hands of someone the victim knows (Nichols 1). But because of the privatization of sexual abuse in particular that centres in the home, and the home as a man‘s domain or castle, most of these abuses go unreported and, sadly, unnoticed.

One of the most effective and common ways a patriarchal self-validating culture seeks to oppress women yesterday and today is to control them via sexual abuse when they are young – often very young. As vulnerable children, little girls can be verbally and emotionally manipulated, often with ease. And, although sexual abuse against children does cross gender lines, it is the sexual abuse of girls, by men, that is over three times higher than the abuse of boys by women (Cudd 94; Ullman 90). In one precedent study on reported incest cases, 97% of the offenders were male and 87% of the child survivors were female (Butler 5). Moreover, girls are more likely than boys to be abused in their homes and to be abused by someone within their families (Magalhaes et al. 456).

The effects of this violent abuse, when combined with the existing oppressive mind frame of patriarchy, are, obviously, uniquely experienced mostly by females. Because women are oppressed on the basis of their sex and sexuality, to abuse them sexually is to reinforce their basic overall inferiority in the world. Sexual abuse, then, has been used, indeed is often the mechanism of choice, throughout the ages to keep women down, to remind them of their physical, emotional and mental weaknesses and to keep them submissive and under control.

Oppression operates via systematic empowering-disempowering processes, in which the procedures of violence allow for and perpetuate a cycle of violence/oppression to continue for generations. One of the first steps taken to perpetuate the oppression of another person is through isolation. Segregation has been used over the centuries to ensure the propagation of oppression: black male and female slaves were separated from their families and continuously moved around; Jewish families were split up into different sections of the concentration camps, native children were removed from their

50 families (Blume 178). All of this separating was done in an attempt to dissolve larger units into smaller units that lack reference and, therefore, to reduce their existence into dependencies in a new submissive way. To keep people isolated is to keep them weak.

To isolate is to take away the humanizing togetherness of the social beings we are. To isolate is to take away the norms and references to the ‗good‘ and to reduce communication about what is or should be true. Like most forms of oppression, the sexual abuse of female children operates in a covert manner (Cudd 4). If the to-be- oppressed child is removed from her community and kept isolated and pushed down, the likelihood of submission is increased and the likelihood of rebellion or resistance is kept to a minimum. Thus, child sexual abuse victims are an invisible minority of persons.

And, we know that female children who are being sexually abused are isolated and they have almost no where to go for help—that is, if they are able to recognize the situation and somehow gain the courage to disclose and then heal (Halliday 44). Unlike most visible minorities, child sexual abuse survivors, due to their oppressors‘ systemic control mechanisms, including isolation, have no recognizable community. Isolation reduces the child to a state of oneness—I am the only one and I am voiceless in this oppression.

Because the physical signs are most often indiscernible and kept shamefully silent by the victims, survivors have no communal support between other survivors, especially when they are young. Young children‘s communities usually only extend to their families, school friends, teachers, coaches and neighbourhood friends. Not only is there no ‗other‘ community—the victim community—there is often, no or little access to resources that would invite such a community to exist. (Oppenheimer 6). Silence is the companion of isolation.

Another most successful and often used way to perpetuate oppression is through the use of actual violence or the threats of further violence (Cudd 85). Although physical violence itself is almost never needed in sexually abusing female children, because of their age and general powerlessness, resistance is often rendered futile and threats of violence are used by the abuser to enforce children to keep quiet about the abuse (Butler

32). Threats—physical, emotional, mental, economic, familial and so on—are a powerful way to oppress children and just the mere threat of violence to self or those they care about can cause the victims to live in constant fear of being attacked or being the reason for others being attacked (Cudd 90). Merely threatening abuse has powerful results and threats work in the oppressor‘s favour, and there are often no physical signs of abuse to alert authorities, so the abuse continues and it is invisible to the larger world (Butler 29).

Other common pressures to oppress victims include threatening children that if they tell about the abuse they will be removed from the family, or that no one will believe them, or that everyone will think they are liars or sluts, or that it is their fault that the abuse happened in the first place (Ullman 96). These threats are very effective on children, especially the threat of abandonment by caregivers (Courtois 23). For most young children, the family unit, no matter how dysfunctional, is their whole world and the basic fear of losing this unit on account of revealing a secret often is enough to keep them quiet

(Blume 65). Unlike physical abuse, the threatening of violence is further complicated through its sexual nature and often, the perpetrator‘s relationship with the child. Unlike the stereotype of the masked rapist lurking in the bushes, most perpetrators of female child sexual abuse are well known to the child, primarily being family members or friends of the family (Courtois 22). So, although it may be easy for adults to see female

52 child sexual abuse as a form of violent oppression, that is not always the case for children. And when the lines are blurred, disclosure becomes even more problematic.

And disclosure is the only way to recover connectivity to the humanizing potential of the social community.

Statistically, men are by far the largest perpetrators of sexual violence on both girls and boys (Courtois 22; Magalhaes et al. 456). The men who force sexual acts upon children are not only perpetrators of violence, they are oppressors. In terms of a ‗normal‘ profile, most men convicted of female child sexual assault do not hold any prior criminal records, nor do they have a psychiatric history of violence, and most are of average intelligence with steady jobs (Butler 79). These abusers are not the ‗crazy‘ or ‗deranged‘ men hiding in the bushes waiting to dispense violence against women; rather, they are our family members, our neighbours and our co-workers (Nichols 4). Many abusers live alongside their victims in the same house (Hawkesworth 62). Most men who sexually abuse children are not crazy and, in fact, to classify them as such actually removes a sense of responsibility or understanding of what it is that is being done to the victims.

Abusers of female children know exactly what they are doing, even if they build walls of excuses and denial; they know. And even if the ‗story‘ of abuse does come out years later, the story is often kept as a family secret and is seldom made public. But most perpetrators also know there is little chance of them getting caught as long as they keep the child segregated and stripped of voice and oppressed (Hawkesworth 63). The perpetrators of such violence do not need to consciously be aware of their oppressive natures, or their needful intent to oppress, but they do engage in the functions of using oppression which, in the end, denies a person‘s full humanity (Cudd 90).

With female child sexual abuse, where the perpetrators hold immense power over their victims, there is little merit in children‘s voices, or protests, or resistance, even in the rare case that there are any. Predators know this, and they know that sexual abuse is hard to prove, and at the end of the day, if the issue gets into the legal realm, then it usually becomes one‘s (male) word against another‘s (female). Predators know the societal situation and how it works to their benefit and often the situation reassures the perpetrator that he can act without repercussions. Simply, most predators are not afraid of the law because the law seemingly works in their favour, and ―the politically oppressed are often sexually oppressed, while the oppressor consciously or unconsciously uses sex, directly or indirectly, as a weapon to sustain oppression‖ (Oppenheimer 30).

Indeed, it is this sexual component of abuse that furthers the oppressive constraints on female children.

Of all forms of sexual abuse perpetrated on female children, incest, or intra- familial abuse, is the most insidious form of abuse, and it is defined as being perpetrated by someone in the victim‘s family (Magalhaes et al. 455-6; Courtois 22). Although the term intra-familial abuse overrides the term incest as being more current and accurate, for the sake of brevity and to coincide with the literature, I will use the term incest in reference to intra-familial abuse. It is difficult, indeed impossible, not to talk about incest when referring to female child sexual abuse, as incest cases are documented to be proportionally higher among female victims in comparison to males (Maikovich-Fong and Jaffee 3). Indeed, incest is the most complex form of abuse perpetrated upon female child sexual abuse victims and the results of abusive incestuous relationships bear the most damaging consequences, such that, ―Of all forms of child abuse, sexual abuse has

54 the potential for the most damage to the child, and of all forms of sexual abuse, incest is by far the most damaging‖ (Courtois 95). Precedent studies indicate that those child sexual abuse survivors that are related to their perpetrators are more likely to delay disclosing their abuses and tend to have more serious consequences (Ullman 93-4,

Magalhaes et al. 455). Because incest cases are lower in visibility and involve higher incidents of secrecy than sexual abuses that occur outside the family, the abuses can continue longer in duration of occurrences than with extra-familial abuses (Magalhaes et al. 455). Because of the dependence on her attacker and the now broken trust bonds, incestuous attacks can permanently repress a girl‘s ability to emotionally and cognitively function at a ‗normal‘ level, more so than any other form of abuse (Courtois 96).

Child sexual abuse is, in the end, not so much about sex really; rather, abuse is about ‗power‘ and ‗control‘ (Butler 66). Thus, perpetrators of female child sexual abuse use sex to actually extort female children and bind them in oppressive relationship constraints in order for the predator to garner a sense of renewable power (Berrick and

Gilbert 10). Female sexual abuse is the result of a sadistic and controlling drive to dominate and reduce girls, as human beings, into objects of lust, of control, of power, and,

The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other animate creature) is the very essence of sadistic drive. Another way of formulating the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism is to transform a [girl] into a thing, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life—freedom. (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 45)

Female child sexual abuse attacks a girl‘s voice and sense of identity when she is the most vulnerable, when she is trying to understand herself, others and the world and what

55 it means to be a human being in the world (Blume 13). The perpetrator can easily use the child‘s age and wonderment and trust of adults and her inherent vulnerability as a weapon to continue to oppress the child throughout and long after the actual sexual abuse takes place. Again, normally, the perpetrator is a commonly central figure in the child‘s life.

Therefore, the predator can exploit an existing trust bond and the child‘s need for dependency on him in order to get what he wants and to be reassured that the victim child will not tell and will, in fact, remain silent (Blume 2). The child‘s secrecy—her need to keep the abuse a secret—regarding what is happening to her is directly linked to her isolation and the oppressive constraints placed on her by the abuser. For a child being abused in her home, which is as far as we know where most child sexual abuse against females takes place, there is nowhere to go. Again, the real act of oppression here is that the child is abused by a person she needs, depends on, and usually loves (Ibid.). As well, we know that the closer the relationship between abuser and abused, the least likely she is to report the abuse (Blume 6). This dependency traps the child into an early life of secrecy where to tell usually means to be taken away from one of her main caretakers, or worse, to take her away from her family and home.

As an abuse crisis worker, I have heard many women say, when courageously speaking of their childhood sexual abuses, that it was simply easier, actually less threatening, to endure the abuse than to take the risk of disclosing only to lose their family or a network of friends or a defining community. Despite numerous educational, health, and wellness attempts to teach children to say ‗No‘ and tell an adult, those who come forward to name abuse are still a rarity among children, and this is especially so when the perpetrator is a parent or closely involved with the family, because the potential

56 consequences of not being believed or taken away from their family are just too great a risk for a child to take on (Ullman 98).

Since incest abuse by a close family member or family friend reigns as most complex and insidious form of female child sexual abuse that results in fewer or delayed disclosures in comparison with extra-familial abuse, there is, in the girl‘s life, ever increasing oppressive constraints (Magalhaes et al. 458-9). An important element of abuse that should not be forgotten is that abuse does not necessarily have to be directly violent and terror-driven and, in fact, sometimes the act of abuse can elicit feelings of love, pleasure and care intertwined with abuse (Courtois 95). Many children do not realize that the acts they are being asked to engage in are anything but normal; that is until they interact with other families or start school and realize that these abusive behaviours are not evident in every loving family (Blume 41). The result of this discovery is often mass confusion and devastation for the child, especially the female child who already carries certain historical and contemporary requirements regarding her sexuality. The result is that often girls who are being abused become riddled by self- blame and guilt for doing things they now realize are morally-ethically-legally wrong

(Butler 31). Not only does this complicate female children‘s feelings of abuse and what constitutes abuse, but it also serves as a living, and very powerful, oppressive constraint.

All humans have a basic need for love and care, and children are among the highest for that need, and in the perversion of abuse, children learn to connect love with inappropriate sexual advances which they have neither the experience nor the teachings to refute (Butler 48). Often there are accounts of abuse survivors hating the actual abuse but still loving the perpetrator (Halliday 46). As such, this shows the degree of the

57 distortion evident in the young child when the referent for what is good and healthy is the abuser‘s lies (Halliday 46). Simply, the love learned by female sexual abuse survivors is perversely distorted (Ibid.).

As bell hooks reminds us, ‗love‘ is a verb, an action word (49). Love should be defined by the actions of a person, not by verbal declarations. But sexual abuse, of course, is not love at all, but a guise of abuse hidden behind the label of love (Blume 15).

For someone to abuse a child and then label it love results in life altering effects for young female children and the women they will become. Abusive love teaches female children that love has sexual requirements and expectations (Blume 14). This is not the unconditional love that is supposed to be given to children; it is instead extremely conditional. And most adult survivors of incest cannot fathom a relationship without a sexual component or sexual obligations (Blume 14). By harbouring secrets to protect a loved one, the result is a mass amount of internalized guilt and shame for female child sexual abuse survivors.

Simply, a by-product of secrecy is often shame, both of which the child learns to live with at an early age (Blume 6-7). Secrecy, then, becomes a key mechanism for controlling the child and keeping her quiet and, therefore, oppressed (Courtois 95).

When children cannot say ‗no‘ or resist or are locked into a cycle of abuse, it is oppression that rules their lives. Again, imagine how much more complicated the situation becomes when the abuser is someone that the child loves.

When child sexual abuse occurs, the majority of victims do not initially disclose, and child sexual abuse disclosure rates are often described as being at the ‗tip-of-the- iceberg‘, a phenomenon indicating that there are much higher rates of undisclosed cases

58 that will never be brought into the open in public or to the courts; perhaps, there is more abuse than we can ever postulate (MacMillan, Jamieson, and Walsh 1398; Berrik and

Gilbert 4). While the term ―disclosure,‖ can be used several different ways, I comply with Ullman and use this term to mean the telling of abuse to anyone (91). While relatively few empirical studies have been conducted in this area specifically, research indicates that very few victims disclose their abuses to anyone in childhood, and often do one of two things: ―(1) fail to disclose the abuse or (2) delay telling others for years‖

(Ullman 89-90). Most child sexual abuse survivors delay disclosure until adulthood, where they have an increased sense of agency, while some do not disclose at all or recant their abuses after an initial disclosure (Ullman 93, 100). In a recent study of 100% proven sexual abuse cases, only 11% of abuse survivors actually disclosed to the interviewers (Fieldman and Crespi 154). In one of the few Canadian studies to inquire into disclosure rates among adult child sexual abuse survivors, only 8.7% of sexual abuse and 9.2% of severe sexual abuse survivors ever self-reported their abuses to child protection services at any point in their lives (MacMillan, Jamieson, and Walsh 1402).

Unfortunately, disclosure is the primary evidence that abuse has or is occurring, and without the victim‘s voice, and often with no physical signs of abuse, those who wish to help simply cannot (Fieldman and Crespi 154). Again, it seems that the closer the initial relationship with the perpetrator to the victim, the less likely the abused child is to tell

(Courtois 26; Magalhaes et al. 457-8). Sadder yet is the belief among researchers and sexual abuse workers that genealogical lines of abuse run in many families, with the cycle of abuse being passed on from generation to generation. In a 1984 study on child sexual abuse, the researcher discovered that it takes an average of three to four

59 generations of abuse to take place before someone discloses (Halliday 9). If twenty years is the time span assigned typically to define a generation, that means between sixty to eighty years of abuse is endured and perpetuated before someone breaks the cycle. That is not to say that abuse is hereditary, but as is often the case, with shameful secrecy as the oppressive condition, the abuse is able to continue across time and place and persons

(Halliday 17). Ironically, the most important thing necessary to break the cycle of sexual abuse is the very thing abusers take from the child first and foremost; and that is, their voices. What is important for female child sexual abuse survivors to know is that disclosure is a crucial element of the healing process, and that ―if sexual abuse is not talked about for many years, the abuse becomes a growing cancer that grows larger and uglier as time goes on. Only when the victims have cut the cancer, can they have the hope of feeling healthy again‖ (Halliday 49). It is crucial to note that one of the main ways to instigate resistance to the oppressive forces of sexual abuse in the history of female oppression is to disclose about the abuse—to break the silence. As well, disclosing is the instigation in healing, and, ―The denial of an incest history must be broken through in order for healing to begin; one cannot recover from what one does not acknowledge and ‗breaking the secret‘ helps the survivor to acknowledge that she was unfairly harmed and not a bad person‖ (Blume 106). And the sooner that child sexual abuse survivor discloses her abuse, the better chance she may have at getting help and living a normal, healthy life and reaching her full human potential (Pipher 220).

Disclosure also helps to break the isolation of self and may model a way out for others. As one incest survivor stated after disclosing, but only well into her adulthood,

―What happens when you tell the truth is that you find out that there are so many other

60 people that have the same experience and they can help you . . .‖ (qtd. in Maher and

Tetreault 120). But sadly, as we know, and as the statistical iceberg informs us, many female child sexual abuse survivors do not disclose out of fear and they go on to keep harbouring this secret well into adulthood, and often, for the rest of their lives (Courtois

122). Often, these women are living out the consequences of the abuse over and over again.

Silence is Golden! Children should be seen not heard! Only speak when you are spoken to! Is it any wonder that when a child attempts to speak that, as is most often the case, her first verbal pleas for help are often ignored or dismissed (Halliday 41)? For those who question children‘s honesty in this regard, Butler writes, ―In all my experience with victims, never once have I known one to lie about the assault having taken place. In fact, it most often is the opposite. Kids will lie to convince people that it didn‘t happen, just to protect their family‖ (161). Disclosing sexual abuse is an extremely difficult thing for young female children to do; it is difficult for females of all ages and the longer each child-woman harbours the secret, obviously, the harder it becomes to say anything.

In my professional work and within this thesis, I have chosen to focus on female adolescent child sexual abuse survivors. Why? I believe that this period of growth— being an adolescent, between childhood and adulthood—could prove to be the most significant post-abuse opportunity space for information-intervention, and possible disclosure and, thus, could provide opportunities, for the girl-becoming-woman to move forward with a renewed and recovered sense of personhood. The tension between self- silencing and the lack of knowing what disclosure could accomplish only becomes more complicated in adolescence. Girls, adolescent girls, are old enough to know what is right

61 and what is wrong and may no longer deny what happened to them, but they are also old enough to know the consequences and costs of disclosure actions. Indeed, many things – mentally, emotionally, and physically as well as socially – happen to girls in transitioning from elementary to junior and senior high school. The collective of the elementary school is replaced by the clichéd individualism of the secondary school and this movement is often accompanied by fear of judgement by peers which is dramatically increased (Pipher 23-4). Few girls want to stand out, that is, in the wrong way; whichever way that is deemed required in the flux environment of the school. And, for the individual student this is a time when image and self are being constructed and reconstructed during these years. The desire for conformity is high in adolescence. This conformity is evident from fashion to opinions, and few girls would risk the gossip or stigma that would result from any disclosure that had anything to do with child sexual abuse (Olafson 142-3). For those girls whose lives and experiences do not conform to the

‗normal‘ mutating identity status quo, they often psychologically isolate themselves as victims or attempt to repress their abuses in order to just be seen as conforming (Taylor,

Gilligan, and Sullivan 5). Still, all adolescents, if in school, occupy a space where there is often little or no educational dialogue or information naming female child sexual abuse as an issue. With limited representational voices being provided to indicate to adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors that what they have and experience is a much more common occurrence than they imagine, they have no opportunity to cognitively or emotionally connect to others who have also endured abuse. There is no evidence available in most educational settings that allow sexual abuse victims to know that they are not alone. Imagine if female child sexual abuse were given the same status currently

62 as ‗bullying‘. There is silence in the home regarding sexual abuse, and then there is silence in the institution of schooling and so why should girls break their self-imposed silence when it comes to perpetuating the isolation that is in favour of their perpetrators?

Instead, many, most even, remain silent in the hope that the experience and/or the memories will all just go away. What is encouraging about adolescence, as time of discovery and wonder and change, is that it is also the time, where a sense of empowerment may come into being in child sexual abuse victims, often for the first time.

That is, if they only knew information about the issue. Adolescence is a growth time when children develop into youths who are not completely dependent on their adult guardians for survival. Moreover, adolescence is marked by a time of self-identification and awareness as well as parental separation (Pipher 65; Maikovich-Fong and Jaffee 3).

This, according to Freire, may also be a time for rebellion against oppressive forces:

If children raised in an atmosphere of lovelessness and oppression, children whose potency has been frustrated, do not manage during their youth to take the path of authentic rebellion, they will either drift into total indifference, alienated from reality by the authorities and the myths the latter have used to ―shape‖ them; or they may engage in forms of destructive action. (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 153)

For adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors, to rebel against their oppressors is to rebel against their perpetrators. And, to beat the drum again and again, the primary way to become free of abuse, if that is possible, is to disclose; even if it is just to a counsellor or therapist, and to give voice to the oppression that stole and will continue to steal one‘s personhood until is it addressed. Survivors who have not disclosed their abuses as children, and who do not disclose during their adolescence, then run the risk of being enslaved to the after-effects of their abuse long into adulthood (Ullman 100); I wish to

63 advance the possibility that adolescence is a time to make the best of the worst; if one is a female child sexual abuse victim, then it is a time to disclose, or at the very least, receive information that could initiate a path of healing and a decrease in isolation:

We can educate our children, but not merely by telling them to say no to strangers. To expect a child to say no to somebody she needs or to a person with authority over her, to expect her to know how and when, to expect her to have the ability to do this, is unreasonable. Certainly we should empower our children with support for their ownership of their bodies and lives. But let us beware of the message that this gives. First, it is not up to a child to stop incest. Second, she may run away from a stranger, but she cannot run away from Daddy. . . . warning kids about strangers may make them suspicious of just the wrong people: We end up with a schizophrenic nightmare: surrounded by potentially friendly strangers, we live with people who may actually be dangerous. (qtd. in Blume 296)

In child abuse prevention there is always an emphasis on saying ‗No!‘ Unfortunately, often, even when the instruction is provided in early elementary school, it may be too late for some girls. The abuse has already occurred or is occurring. And for female children, who have been socialized since birth to be passive and submissive, saying ‗no‘ is often easier said, like most things, than done, and ―saying no takes an extraordinary amount of strength. It is a word that women are not comfortable saying to their men, children to their parents and these men to their damaging impulses‖ (Butler 93). As recent studies have shown, even those children who do gather up the courage to say ‗no‘ still have little success in stopping the abuse, as the adult often will use threats or manipulations to persuade the child into not reporting or disclosing the abuse (Fieldman and Crespi 152).

In a 1984 study on child sexual abuse survivors, a researcher discovered that, ―For the majority, the abuse happened in their past and was never acknowledged or dealt with‖

(Halliday 4). When the possibility of disclosure is ruled out, or not responded to, young children resort to adapting to the abuse and use survival mechanisms to help them endure

64 the abuse (Courtois 26-7). These survival mechanisms, in turn, often come back to haunt the children through a vicious set of cyclical after-effects. These after-effects will be discussed more thoroughly later, but what is important to note now, is that victims, at a young age, are under severe oppressive constraints that work to perpetuate the historical and current silence phenomena of child sexual abuse.

The conditions of child sexual abuse and all of its after-effects work systematically in preventing these girls-women from experiencing their full humanity.

Not only are survivors oppressed for being women, perpetrators exploit the fact that they are children, and women and children have always had an intertwined victim-to-victim related relationship. Child sexual abuse happens so early in girls‘ lives that its effects become almost inherent in their being and they, in turn, live out a life catering to oppressive forces, wherein ―sexual use and abuse is used to sustain oppressive systems‖

(Oppenheimer 27). Combine this context with the automatic oppression that comes with being born female, along with the stigmas associated with race, religion, class and politics and economics, and the result is multiple levels of oppression. Victims are abused when they are at their most vulnerable state—especially when they are female children; the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. Perpetrators thrive on the fact that these female children are inherently vulnerable, physically weaker than them and most often dependant on the perpetrators for their basic survival needs (Butler 30). Moreover, perpetrators manipulate children by possessing more knowledge than the female children they are abusing and thus they may state that: everyone touches this way, or they must check for disease, or that ‗this‘ is good for them and so on. Often, children believe these manifestations told to them until they are old enough to realize that this is not the case

(Butler 30-1). Unfortunately, after realizing that their relationships are abusive, the abuse has already gone on for so long that most children will reside themselves to silence rather than disclose what has been happening to them. Therefore, they transition from thinking that this abuse happens to everyone to thinking that it happens to no one, except them, an epiphany which, in turn, only furthers isolation. And, as is most often the case, young women remain silent in the face of awareness of self, others and the world and yet it is this silence that allows the abuse to continue.

Like most oppressed peoples, female child sexual abuse survivors yearn for freedom, and yet fear the consequences of what will occur alongside that freedom:

―Women have a long relationship with oppression. Even without having been abused, women are used to being the second sex and to conforming their lives to meet unequal roles, and thus giving up their right and hope for freedom‖ (Cudd 224). There is a high risk for those girls who choose to take a stand and identify themselves as being oppressed, disempowered, or controlled by child sexual abuse. There is a fear of being singled out, of creating a stigma for themselves, or worst—that they may be rejected from their existing family and community, and so often it becomes ‗easier‘ to remain silent

(Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 32-3).

Simply, ―Female children who are being sexually abused by someone in the home, as is most often the case, cannot flee the confines of the prison, as it is her home, nor can she flee the oppressive forces of her captor, because most likely, he lives there too‖ (Cudd 161). Thus, the concept of freedom becomes so unattainable that it becomes difficult to conceptualize such a possibility. Thus, silence rules for female sexual abuse victims, and unfortunately in their silence the only person who is being protected is the

66 perpetrator (Halliday 9). By keeping silent, as a victim, the perpetrator is able to continue his abuse on not only one child, but perhaps on next generations of children, without worrying about being caught (Butler 140-1). Children‘s silences can become so ingrained in family contexts that it results in denial or forgetting about the abuse that has occurred (Butler 142). By enforcing secrecy and silence and denial or compliancy or complacency at an early age, the possibility of disclosure becomes extremely unlikely because the children have been taught that what is happening is so bad that it should never be discussed; the children are made to feel responsible for partaking in this badness

(Butler 142). Often, this is when they begin to take on the abuse as their responsibility and fault.

Guilt and shame are often by-products of abuse when left undisclosed. Guilt is the feeling that one has done something wrong, whereas shame generates feelings of unworthiness (Cudd 176). Shame and guilt are typical reactions to experiences of abusive trauma, and, ―Shame is a response to helplessness, the violation of bodily integrity, and the indignity suffered in the eyes of another person‖ (Cudd 177). Even though just a child, she feels that she could have done something, yet failed to ward off her attacker, and, ―No matter how brave and resourceful the victim may have been, her actions were insufficient to ward off disaster. In the aftermath of traumatic events, as survivors review and judge their own conduct, feelings of guilt and inferiority are practically universal‖ (qtd. in Cudd 177). The amount of shame and guilt felt by abuse survivors cannot be emphasized enough; even those who do not remember, or have blocked out their abuses feel a sense of shame and guilt for doing something wrong

(Cudd 176). Without knowing why, they feel unworthy (Courtois 96). There is shame

67 around not saying anything, which can be perceived by abuse survivors as ‗letting it happen‘. Thus shame and guilt are responses to oppressive forces because they later stunt the survivors‘ abilities to function normally in social situations as well as when alone with themselves (Cudd 178). The oppression of women will only end when not only the direct forces of oppression are eliminated, in this case the sexual abuse of female children, but moreover, when all the indirect forces and results of oppression, like feelings of shame and guilt and unworthiness, deformed desires and all other self- oppressive forces are also removed (Cudd 227). The result of feelings of guilt and shame are often accompanied by the self-destructive force of self-blame.

Hand in hand with guilt and shame comes the feeling of blame. Many survivors feel that deep down they are to blame for what has been done to them and that they could have prevented it somehow or that their actions caused the abuse to happen (Halliday 46).

They come to accept what has been told to them: that they are no good, dirty, shameful little girls who wouldn‘t be anything without ‗him‘; and, that is how they will continue to view themselves for the rest of their lives, without getting help (Cudd 176). Blame is an essential component for continuing the oppression of female children. By perpetuating feelings of guilt, shame and self-blame for the traumatic events that took place, the perpetrator is exonerated (Courtois 83). And, again, when disclosure is not an option, and secrecy is born, self-blame can work as an oppressive constraint. The concept of self-blame works to further oppress by keeping its victims silent: ―Those who are oppressed by such violence often find it hard to even name their own terror and lack of material success as due to oppression, and instead find reasons to blame themselves‖

(Cudd 118). Because children are often not provided with the vocabulary to name what

68 is happening to them, they blame themselves when they eventually do learn that what was happening to them is wrong.

In a time in our society that is marked with political, economic and social upheaval and a fight against many different kinds of terrorism is so evident, it seems ridiculous, to me, that the sexual terrorism of our nation‘s girls can continue without a war being raged against such abuse in their name. These girls-women are real victims.

After a lifetime of being submissive to oppressive forces, it may seem impossible for child sexual abuse victims to imagine life any other way (Cudd 234). But by talking and removing the taboo of silence that surrounds this force of oppression, the oppressive restraints can loosen a bit, and we can then postulate the possibility of imagining a future without such oppression (Ibid.). For without education, disclosure and dialogue, abuse can easily manifest itself into an array of self-defeating, and often very self and other destructive, after-effects.

In conclusion, let me remind the reader of my status . . . when I enrolled in a graduate program, although my post-secondary background was in literature and

Women‘s Studies, I applied to the Faculty of Education. Simply, I believe that more often than not, if the abuse is located in the family or the family home, then where is the other place/space that a female child spends a significant amount of their time? The school! If abuse is an issue that cannot be brought up or resolved in the home, and if disclosure is the only true way to get help – through counselling or support groups, and so on – then the school, which is required ethically and legally to be a safe place, must be/become a space where the issues of female child sexual abuse must be raised.

Perhaps, schools could be a space where there is an opening of the possibilities for

69 conversations regarding the ‗real‘ situations facing most female children with respect to sexual abuse. It is this possibility that grounds this thesis inquiry. And, what I mean here is how the topic of sexual abuse – especially female child sexual abuse – might become a curriculum and instruction engagement in the schools such that all learners and teachers actually turn to address the taboo topic. And, where is the harm in that?

What follows next is an attempt to crystallize descriptions of the effects of female child sexual abuse and how they can come to control female child sexual survivors‘ lives, with or without them knowing it.

CHAPTER 3: SILENTLY SCREAMING:

THE AFTER-EFFECTS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE ON THE LIVES OF

ADOLESCENT GIRLS

The past isn‘t dead. It isn‘t even past.

William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

One cannot truly understand the present without acknowledging the past.

Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method

Child sexual abuse when left undisclosed and untreated can manifest itself, for the victim, into a myriad of self-destructive long-term effects. The longer the actual sexual abuse continues, the more traumatic, and the longer and more severe are the child's self- destructive manifestations realized (Cudd 160, Ullman 95). What follows is an attempt to locate what is known-to-date, specifically regarding the after-effects of female child sexual abuse and the toll it takes on victim-girls as they move from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. It is important to understand that child sexual abuse affects a girl long after the actual act of abuse has ceased.

Not every girl who has survived child sexual abuse has a vivid memory of that experience. It is common for sexual abuse victims, especially young girls, not to remember the abuse at all:

Many, if not most, incest [and child sexual abuse] survivors do not know that the abuse has even occurred! Even if asked, they say—quite sincerely—No, nothing

happened. Or, if they know that something happened, they cannot remember exactly what. This surprising phenomenon is the rule, not the exception, of the post-incest experience. (Blume xiii)

Studies have shown that the more traumatic the events of sexual abuse, the stronger the correlation occurring in victims to delayed memories or even complete memory lapses

(Fieldman and Crespi 154). There have been recent studies that have proven a correlation between 'secrecy' and 'forgetting' and these studies indicate that 83% of sexual abuse survivor study participants, who did not disclose in childhood, reported memory lapses (Fieldman and Crespi 155). These same respondents remembered if physical abuse had occurred, but their remembering of events/images became hazy regarding sexual maltreatment. By harbouring the secrets of sexual abuse for so long, which were initiated when the victim was at such a young age, it is not surprising then that the end result for the child, as she grows, is to hide it—the sexual abuse—from her own self as well as others. Not remembering the abuse, generally nor specifically, that happened in their pasts, however, does not rule out, for the victims, post-manifestations of child sexual abuse, because ―memory haunts and hovers like ghosts. Distance in time from these memories does not bring psychological distance for many. In fact, the reverse may be true‖ (Morris 150). It is crucial to note that even if memories are rendered absent, the effects of the abuse will still come to control a sexually abused girl's life even if she is unable to consciously recall or remember the details of the abusive events. Not remembering the actual traumas of the past does not cease the manifestations of sexual abuse; it may only come to enhance these traumas' effects until the trauma itself is fully acknowledged and, indeed, dealt with. Female child sexual abuse survivors‘ minds and bodies, in meeting the need to forget as a form of self-protection, actually induces a

72 running away from the abusive pasts that they may or may not remember exactly. The connections between these present avoidances and often self-abusive behaviours are most often not recognized by the abused girl for what they are. Simply, in the self-contained actions themselves, the girl often finds herself alone and, therefore, there is no reflective space or opportunity for a child sexual abuse survivor to garner information regarding as to why she is engaging in self-abusive activities. It is important to note that abuse will affect its survivors and even if the girls do not remember, there are often many signs that demonstrate that sexual abuse has occurred. Even if memories are not there or remain fragmented or buried deep inside, what female child sexual abuse survivors do often acknowledge is that they are driven by feelings and behaviours that seem to be out of their control. When abuse happens to children so early in their development, that abuse often shapes them permanently, unless the abuse at the source is dealt with constructively. This is not to say that every child or adolescent that 'acts out' or is

‗rebellious' or 'dangerous' or 'weird' and so on or who demonstrates these signs is a child sexual abuse survivor. This is not to say that a sexually abused female will even live out all of these symptomatic expressions (Steele et al. 786). But there is often a correlation between self-and-other-abusive behaviours and child sexual abuse (Halliday 10). So, what are some specific 'after-effects of abuse' and how might they come to 'control' female adolescent child sexual abuse survivors‘ lives?

To say that child sexual abuse results in a form of death for the survivor is not an overstatement. As Blume states, in her work around incest, as the most sinister form of child sexual abuse, that,

Incest is probably the most crippling experience that a child can endure. It is a violation of body, boundaries, and trust. Unless identified and dealt with, the emotional and behavioural aftereffects [sic] can stay with the victim. The very defences that initially protect the incest survivor later lock these problems into place, interfering with adult functioning and preventing healing or change. (xiv)

The traumatizing consequences of being sexually abused by someone that you most likely know or depend on for survival cannot be overemphasized enough. Child sexual abuse has been labelled as 'soul murder', a term used by Shengold, (who borrowed the term from A.N. Whitehead and applied it to child sexual abuse), and its survivors describe themselves as the living dead—walking automatons (Halliday 35). While people around female child sexual abuse survivors see these girls as appearing outwardly

‗normal‘, on the inside most of these girls are in critical mental-emotional-social-physical condition. A number of studies conducted in the late 1990s have shown that 40-50% of people seeking mental health services are child sexual abuse survivors, and the majority of these people are women (Courtois 24).

Unless specifically dealt with, child sexual abuse can, and probably will, control the lives of survivors, with or without them being aware of the deep-rooted reasons for their present-day behaviours. And, if child sexual abuse survivors come to know the source of their 'issues', they must come to understand that time alone will not heal the effects of abuse (Blume 15). If anything, the abuse, even if acknowledged, but not dealt with, will fester inside these girls as they mature into women until the patterns of their coping behaviours come to dominate their lives. Recognition and time alone is not a response to the connection between a victim‘s behaviours and her abusive past: ―The future depends so much on the past, and we must heal our memories. We must open the wounds to cleanse them, because if we just close them up and pretend they‘re not there,

74 they will fester‖ (Brendtro, Brokenleg, and Van Bockern x). Therefore, it is imperative that child sexual abuse be acknowledged certainly, but it must absolutely be addressed as soon as possible in order for healthy lives to be attained. If the abuse is left unattended to or unacknowledged, the traumas of child sexual abuse will eventually explode and have devastating consequences.

Child sexual abuse survivors learn skills early on as basic survival mechanisms to help them get through the periods/times of abuse. Unfortunately, it is these same mechanisms that come to command their lives in negative ways at a later age, most often at an unconscious level (Blume 27). Once victims begin to self-protect in abusive situations, that form of being and doing becomes a way of living; this way of being and doing is all they come to know. The most common survival technique, used by victimized children that enable them to live through their abuses, and to survive, is to

‗block out‘ the abusive experience. Having limited or no support from other family members, children often resort to self-hypnotic mechanisms to get them through the abusive moments/experiences (Fieldman and Crepsi 155). The result, especially if there is no early disclosure, is for the victim to repress memories to such a degree there is an actual hypnotic forgetting of the traumatic events. Although the task of removing one's self from emotional harm in the face of unbearable physical threats work in that moment, it takes considerable effort, conscious or unconscious, to keep effectively blocking out the memories of abuse (Halliday 36). The effort outcomes of such a powerful form of blocking for abuse victims usually results in a complete overt memory loss of most of their childhoods or, at least, those parts of the childhood where the abuse occurred.

Often, the sexual abuse victim constructs other 'possible' scenarios/stories for those

75 abusive moments. Many sexual abuse victims became so good at removing their

'spirits/souls' from the abuse that most often they also remove all conscious memories of the time/body/space/relationship period in which they were being abused (Courtois 28).

These victims cannot, literally, remember anything about the abuse, and depending on the severity of the abuse – often much of their childhoods. It has been estimated that half of all child sexual abuse survivors do not remember the actual abuse (Blume 81). But not remembering the events does not decrease the impact of what actually happened to them

(Blume 122). Not being able to remember what most people can—details of their childhoods—can make sexual abuse survivors feel crazy, panic-stricken and abnormal

(Halliday 46).

In some cases, even though many memories are repressed, memory fragments provide the victim with a sense that something is wrong with them, or that something is in them trying to push its way out, but they are unclear as to what it is (Blume 68-9).

And, push ‗it‘ does. We know what Freud said about repression and that which is repressed, consciously or otherwise, will always, always, seep outward. Abuse wants, perhaps needs, to come out of the body. Perhaps, this is the body‘s way of forcing healing. Seemingly, experiences of abuse actually try to physically assert themselves in

'night terrors' or 'panic attacks' that may result in seizures, as well as in frenzied 'thoughts' and 'sensory flashbacks' and so on, all of which are the actual re-living/remembering of the traumatic abuse as if it were occurring in the here and now moment (Butler 48-49).

Abuse, and its after-effects, will come out even though survivors often, consciously or unconsciously, dedicate their lives to keeping the actual memories of sexual abuse pushed down for as long as possible. For to remember now, after keeping it a secret for

76 months, years, decades or generations, will simply be too painful. So, instead child sexual abuse survivors often become controlled by the after-effects of abuse, which are mechanisms put in place to protect the victim by the body/mind itself and yet it is these very mechanisms that manifest themselves also as after-effects of abuse (Blume 69).

In direct connection with a sexual abuse victim's 'memory repression' is the act of

'splitting'. Splitting is what happens to a victim as a result of years of blocking out sexual abuse memories. Often female child sexual abuse survivors learn how to 'split off' or

'disassociate' from their bodies during the sexual abuse in effort to survive the abuse and to numb themselves from the pain (Johnson, Pike and Chard 180). Unable to prevent the abuse from happening, the disempowered child victims retreat deep into the recesses of their emotional minds until it feels like they have left their bodies (Courtois 83). By removing their souls or spirits from the abusive situation, then it is only their bodies being abused, while their core selves are safely removed from the traumatic events.

While this is an instinctual survival technique for children, and most human beings for that matter, who are currently being abused, this state of being both present and absent, here and there, has detrimental effects on the victim after the abuse finally ceases

(Johnson, Pike, and Chard 180-1). For even though mentally disassociating is what allows most children and adults being abused to psychologically survive the abuse, the art of splitting off does not cease when the abuse finally ends. Forms of disassociation and repression are extremely common in child sexual abuse survivors (Calam, Horne,

Glasgow, and Cox 902). Besides not being able to remember what happened, as they grow up they will find that they cannot control their splitting or disassociated repression

(Blume 83). Whenever something that they find emotionally threatening or perilous

77 appears, they will split off from the situation so their inner selves are no longer there.

Situations that require abuse survivors to split off are often intimately or emotionally risky, requiring the barriers that enclose the heart to be broken down, which is the ultimate threat for child sexual abuse survivors (Courtois 83).

It is important to note that the phenomenon of splitting off has a double bind effect for adolescent girls. Virtually all girls, abused or not, split off between authentic and false selves as they move into adolescence (Pipher 22). This dichotomous tension between 'authentic' and 'false' is a bi-product of patriarchy‘s foundational dualistic dichotomous tension regarding male-female identities and the real-unreal tension is also forced forward by the conceptualizations of femininity. Adolescence is the time when most girls confirm the realization that males have more power. That includes power over females and that a female‘s power is determined in relation to, and may only be asserted in, being adored 'objects'; often, as with most objects, objectified in a passive and submissive state: ―Girls who were the subjects of their own lives become the objects of others‘ lives‖ (Pipher 21). Adolescent girls learn that there is a need to split off from the beginning attempts at 'authentic individualism' they manifest in childhood in order to conform to what—culturally, politically, socially and so on—it means to be 'feminine'; namely to be: attractive, accommodating, compliant, non-complaining, lady-like, never overtly angry, compromising and at the constant service of men (Pipher 39). These cultural implications of femininity and what it means to be a 'girl-woman', contain a plethora of mixed messages, such that,

Girls have long been trained to be feminine at considerable costs to their humanity. They have long been evaluated on the basis of appearance and caught in myriad double binds: achieve, but not too much; be polite, but be yourself; be

feminine and adult; be aware of our cultural heritage, but don‘t comment on the sexism. Another way to describe this femininity training is to call it false-self training. Girls are trained to be less than who they really are. They are trained to be what the culture wants of its young women, not what they themselves want to become. (Pipher 44)

It is in adolescence when girls learn, are taught, that it is more important to be nice than honest with, or true to oneself (Pipher 39). And sadly, most teenage girls submit to the pressures of conformity instead of being authentic, and most often because they have not been taught an alternative way of being. This educational process is conveyed to young women through images, words, performances, behaviours, sounds and so on—and, I believe, this comes with tragic consequences: ―To totally accept the cultural definitions of femininity and conform to the pressures is to kill the self‖ (Pipher 44). Adolescent girls, then, become evaluated by society on the basis of appearance and accepted female roles instead of being valued for their uniqueness and intelligence (Pipher 23). My point is, if this is generally the case for the induction of a young woman's identification into womanhood, and that identity is formed in relation to sanctioned relational models with men, then what if the young woman in question, has been a victim of child sexual abuse?

Obviously, a sexual abuse history, repressed or not, complicates adolescent-to- adult transitions for girls who have been sexually abused as children. While many victims struggle with their own repressed feelings, the socialized 'false selves' of a patriarchal society also reinforces emotional repressions that further deny the sexual abuse victim's authenticity:

Authenticity is an ―owning‖ of all experience, including emotions and thoughts that are not socially acceptable. Because self-esteem is based on the acceptance of all thoughts and feelings as one‘s own, girls lose confidence as they ―disown‖ themselves. They suffer enormous losses when they stop expressing certain thoughts and feelings. (Pipher 38)

When adolescent girls who have been sexually abused as children experience society's pressure to operate under 'false selves', they will continue to deny their own emotions at a proportionally larger rate than other teenage girls who have not been sexually abused.

Adolescent female sexual abuse survivors already have enough problems acknowledging and accepting their darkest feelings. Then, to be asked to re-define themselves in relation to the defining power structures of a patriarchal-determining culture, actually serves, in many cases, to unearth the issues of previous childhood abuse. Moreover, for many girls who have been sexually abused as children, adolescence only then confirms what they have already had instilled in them since childhood; that is, they are 'objects' to be used for male sexual gratification, and it is their bodies, not their minds, that men seek and place value on and this, in turn, only comes to complicate their already deformed visions of identity and identity relationships.

To say that child sexual abuse affects girls‘ future relationships is an obvious understatement. And, again, at the risk of over emphasis, I must report that exhibiting classic examples of low self-esteem, child sexual abuse survivors are ready made victims for a future of possible abusive relationships. They have been brought up as victims both by being victimized and by victimizing themselves and often resign themselves to a life of further victimization, as they don‘t feel worthy or deserving of anything better

(Fieldman and Crespi 153). It is these girls who will perpetuate the original abuse, their own self-abuse, and other-abuse into abusive relationships, and follow the patterns of victimization that they are familiar with because they know of nothing else:

The incest survivor‘s self-blame, shame, guilt, and destroyed self-esteem become a double bind. She doesn‘t feel she deserves to be treated well, so she tolerates

abusive or neglectful behaviours that further reduce her self-esteem. And she often doesn‘t feel good enough about herself to pursue the help she needs to feel good about herself. (Blume 119)

Not having learned to trust or receive healthy affection, many of these girls need to

'unlearn' the traumatic information they have been taught by their abusers in order to prevent themselves from possibly entering into other abusive relationships. Such unlearning may involve information including understandings of the difference between love/affection and sex and that the latter is not a requirement for the former, and that their bodies are not mere objects to be possessed by another, and the removal of emotional isolation of post-abuse shame and other unlearning that becomes the standard for moving forward in a healthy way with self, other and world (Cudd 160). Most female sexual abuse survivors have little faith in others, especially men. They have learned, been taught cruel lessons, not to trust, or rely on others, in fear that others will also end up hurting them (Courtois 24). They have learned through their abuses that words mean very little or perhaps nothing, and that things are not what they appear to be and that what at first seems safe often really is not (Blume 247). So such young women usually build up an impenetrable wall around themselves that is almost impossible to knock down, unless the abuse is dealt with directly.

Another obstacle in attaining healthy person-to-person relationships is how many of these sexually abused girls view 'sex'. Female child sexual abuse survivors see sex as an integral part of relationships; however, they often cannot distinguish between liking someone in a Platonic sense and liking someone romantically because they sexualize their relationships with others (Calam, Horne, Glasgow, and Cox 902). Even those who just seek friendship become sexual threats to many child sexual abuse survivors, because

81 they do not understand nor can envision relationships without sexual requirements. And yet, in relational practices, many sexually abused girls appear to be quite sexually liberated and ironically, considering their abuse, often may move quickly into the sexual domain of relationships. But it is important to note that this is often because they feel, somehow, obligated to do so; not because they ‗desire‘ sex. Sex, then, validates a relationship and victims become sexual whether they really like that person or not because that is how female child sexual abuse survivors give meaning to relationships

(Blume 246). Sex has been taught to them to be a requirement for closeness and they will use the physicality of sex as a key component in their romantic relationships, even though emotional closeness is rare (Senn, Carey, and Vanable 729-30). Still, most child sexual abuse survivors have never had 'honest relational' sex in their bodies, even though they may have engaged in numerous sexual acts, because their tendency to split off during the act and this disassociation continues in their adolescent and adult romantic relationships.

Simply, effects of abuse often come to control most abused girls' lives and their romantic and other relationships (Halliday 17). What is most terrifying, in this regard, is that many abused girls are engaged in destructive relationships, but they are also often resistant to healthy, affectionate relationships, especially in regards to sex.

This state of relationship affairs is a result of a lifetime of disassociating in sexual situations. Victimized girls are almost incapable of having emotionally fulfilling and healthy sexual relationships because of the mass confusion that surrounds the concepts of affection, sex and love (Senn, Carey, and Vanable 729). Because sexual abuse was a key element in the perpetrators‘ emotive use of affection, it is only natural for abuse survivors to see sex as the gateway to love and affection (Senn, Carey, and Vanable 729-30). And,

82 because the abuse happened so early in these children‘s development, being sexual objects is often a key component of their identities (Blume 216). As such, for many female sexual abuse victims, affection without sex is often a grotesque concept. Sex they know, but affection and trust are foreign concepts to them (Courtois 67-8; Senn, Carey, and Vanable 729-30). So while they are often quite capable of having sex, it is not for their own pleasure but to appease what is projected as demands from their partners: ―She may have sex, but while her body is performing she is up in a corner of the ceiling, watching, detached‖ (Blume 226). Most of these abused girls have never experienced affection without the sexual component; therefore, all affection has a sexual cost. To have sex while simultaneously experiencing feelings of healthy love and safety is a foreign concept to most sexually abused girl survivors (Senn, Carey, and Vanable 729-

30).

Sexual confusion, then, is often heightened during a female‘s adolescence

(Maikovich-Fong 3). At a time when sexual experimentation is usually first initiated and thought about, abuse survivors have already had sexual experiences most often attributed to adults. They may have never held someone‘s hand romantically, but they have experienced clitoral stimulation before the age of ten; they might not know what it‘s like to rest their heads on a boy‘s shoulder, but they have had someone touching their bodies in an act of secrecy and shame. Sex is seen as something that is done to them; it is not part of a consensual act (Berrick and Gilbert 5). Ingrained in such victimized girls, while still children, is the sense of shame that surrounds the issue of sex; and, whether told to them by their abusers or assumed by themselves as children, they often feel an intense amount of self-blame and guilt along with shame surrounding sex (Blume 210). Often

83 after having sex, girls who have been sexually abused, usually feel very little or, indeed, nothing. Sex, as they have learned, is not about their pleasure but about pleasing or appeasing others. They have learned that the only way to receive affection and love is through sexual obligations: ―When a child has been sexually abused at an early age, sex becomes a survival skill, a way to get what she or he needs‖ (Butler 40). Their bodies are seen as weapons or lures for 'love' and the only way, eventually, to get what they want, which might be as simple as being left alone.

However, again, ironically, many abused girls often come, in adolescence and beyond, to act as the ultimate seductresses. They know how to use their sexuality to lure men and can do so easily by separating themselves from their bodies while in the act of seduction (Blume 212). Again, these girls see sex as an obligation, not a choice, and they often cannot fathom why someone would be interested in them for reasons besides sex

(Ibid.). Sex is a temporary affirmation of worth and power (Senn, Carey, and Vanable

730). And the cure for temporality is to re-engage, often. All of these messages the sexual abused girl/woman receives and omits serves to reinforce an image of women, abused or not, that is already ripe in our society, and that is: beauty is power and ‗sexy‘ bodies dominate attractions, and that access to privilege and power in society is driven sexually (Butler 36).

As well, as with most manifestations of abuse, victims are also attempting to regain one primary thing that was removed them, as sexually abused children, and that is

– control. When children are sexually abused, almost all of their life world control was taken away through sexual abuse. Whilst being abused they experienced no control over their bodies, their safety, their needs or wants; everything was out of their command

(Blume 43). It is then extremely common for female child sexual abuse survivors to spend time, energy and resources seeking out ways of feeling 'in control'. Even when unaware of their abuse, survivors most often seek out deviant and harmful behaviours with the same underlying theme of control and power (Senn, Carey, and Vanable 730).

One of the scariest feelings for female child sexual abuse survivors, at whatever age, is to feel out of control (Courtois 24). This rampant need to control anything possible is an attempt to regain the power that was removed from them early on in childhood (Blume

49). Because their bodies were the site of the entire superseding trauma, it is only natural that their bodies often become the locus of focused control. As children, their bodies were not their bodies; they were at the hands of their abusers and often their bodies were a mere extension of ‗him‘ (Blume 194). So, it is extremely common for adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors to spend most of their time trying to control and reclaim what was taken from them—essentially, their bodies (Courtois 84). Because of the survival mechanism that allowed them to split off from their bodies whilst being abused, abuse survivors often feel that the self or the soul is separate from their bodies; they couldn‘t control what happened to them but they feel certain that they will not let the abuse affect their entire beings (Blume 194). For adolescents, this often results in teenage deviance, with their bodies being the main sites of rebellion (Blume 51).

To repeat, adolescence is a crucial age for child sexual abuse survivors. It is a time marked by a sense of power and a search for identity separate from parents and yet in some way is deeply aligned to social norms. Unfortunately, it is also a time where repressed memories often start to seep out into conscious memories and flashbacks

(Pipher 229). Because of their new sense of power they are able to look critically at their

85 parents and for the first time, retaliate against them without fear of having their basic survival needs threatened (Pipher 229). Combined with the adolescent preoccupation with what counts as dating and romantic relationships, childhood sexual abuse memories are often triggered unwillingly at this time. Often, adolescent girls have to relive the trauma of their childhood sexual abuses. For those who do not confront the memories or for those who have yet to make conscious connections with their childhood sexual abuse, the trauma will often assert itself in manifestations of deviant behaviour. In short, they are manifesting a running away from their memories, and yet they experience this running away as a form of control over that object they are running from even if that object is blurred in its realization. For both those that do not remember and for those who do but never told anyone or took steps to heal, adolescence is the time where deviance is at its fullest and ―is the age that the victims also look for someone to tell‖ (Halliday 45).

It is also the age where manifestations and all the after-effects of abuse are safe to come out: ―No longer the defenceless, overpowered children, some [girls] may rally their developing sense of self into ‗acting out‘ behaviour‖ (Blume 133). They have been holding this anger inside for years, waiting for an opportune time to let it out and often adolescence is that age.

But no matter how angry these girls are they are still ‗girls‘, and learned concepts of acceptable anger for females still rules their unconscious and conscious behaviour.

Because they are female, direct forms of anger are still not often socially or culturally accepted (Pipher 68). For women of any age to show anger is still looked down upon and it is these young girls who are most susceptible to being placed on anti-depressants, or, as was depicted in the introductory narrative, institutionalized and then sedated. It is here

86 where gender does distinguish outcomes of abuse manifestations because it is girls who are more likely to turn their anger inward at themselves, while riddled with self-blame, whereas boys are more likely to be outwardly demonstrative of their anger (Finkelhor

326). Girls have been socialized since birth to deny and internalize anger (Butler 36-7).

Girls have also been taught to be sexually available to men and when sexual advances are unwanted, they submit to it anyways and, in turn, blame themselves after the event

(Butler 37). Their bodies are never their own. For even though often seemingly mature for their age, abused girls tend to be emotionally stunted, remaining fearful little children on the inside and obey the rule that ―good girls don‘t make a scene‖ despite their growing anger (Blume 133).

Adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors try to disassociate from their anger like they do with their abuse, but it is still right there under the surface, waiting to come out. Anger that is not properly dealt with will manifest itself into rage. While anger is able to be discussed and processed, rage is a paralyzing feeling that takes over their whole bodies (Blume 139). While often incapable of anger expression, adolescent female abuse survivors are quite capable of rage. Survivors often describe this feeling as an overwhelming sensation that takes over their whole bodies until they are often unable to speak or move; they are literally paralyzed with rage (Buz, Tortolero, and Roberts

595). Rage is an important after-effect of child sexual abuse: ―Rage is the emotional consequence of entrapment, abuse, and a lifetime of protests that couldn‘t be made, of anger that could not be let out‖ (Blume 141). But the rage does often start to seep out in adolescence; and, often in the form of teenage deviance.

Although deviance is often attributed as normal behaviour that is a part of being a teenager, this is not the case for female child sexual abuse survivors. They may consciously choose to deviate or rebel, but there is also something deep inside them which is pushing its way out, and the only way to avoid the deep seated awareness of abuse is to run from it; it is not a temporary time of rebellion but more like a response to the weight of their pasts (Courtois 24). Because of the ingrained feelings of worthlessness and self-hate, it is no surprise that they become almost obsessed with self- destructive behaviours (Halliday 44). These behaviours are most often an attempt to get back at their abusers by reasserting forms of control whilst reaffirming what they have been taught: that they are worthless, no good, dirty little girls who have nothing to offer but their bodies (Ibid.). They want the world and everyone in it to verify these ingrained thoughts and to confirm what has been embedded in them from since childhood. They also set out to get back at the world that has dealt them such an unfair hand; in short, they want pay back (Ibid.). The term 'deviance' often has an overt connotation, but not all deviance is so noisy. Abuse survivors usually operate between two extremes, and the way they deviate or cope with their abuse also works in polar opposites (Blume 45). To help distinguish between the two types of deviance, I will use the terms overt and subtle deviance. Regarding adolescent girls, both forms are common, although overt deviance is easier to detect.

To begin, I will focus on adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors who display overt deviant patterns. The overt deviators seem extremely focused on being

‗bad‘ and rebelling against authority. But this is not simple teenage angst, this is the abuse trying to come out and the adolescent trying to keep it pushed down. These girls

88 are angry and rage-filled. They grew up feeling constantly bad on account of their abuse and the secrecy that premised it, so to them it is only natural to manifest these feelings of badness into extreme rebellion (Courtois 65). This is also combined with a general anger at the world and at society for not noticing what was happening to them as children, for not helping them when they were defenceless (Butler 38-9). Adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors are mad at having their childhoods robbed, or of not being able to remember, and it is this anger that fuels them until it comes to control their lives. This feeling of innate badness often manifests itself into risky and deviant behaviours during adolescence (Butler 39).

Overt deviators have little respect for themselves or personal boundaries (Blume

47). As children, their bodies were objectified and taken away from them, yet the abuse was often declared by the abuser to be normal behaviour, so it is no surprise that this will come to affect their sexuality as they grow older (Berrick and Gilbert 5). What happens is that the oppressive forces that were used against them as children come to be ingrained in their thought and lifestyle patterns (Cudd 181). In the case of child sexual abuse, the female victims were nothing more than objects for sex, so as they grow older they cannot fathom a relationship where sex does not become a determinate factor. Precedent studies have shown that girls who were sexually abused in their childhoods are significantly more likely to engage in early and risky sexual activities (Buz, Tortolero, and Roberts

595; Senn, Carey, and Vanable 713). So although they may have sex often or be labelled

‗sluts‘ in schools, they are only living out their pasts of being seen as nothing but sexual objects (Blume 217). As precedent studies demonstrate, girls who have endured child sexual abuse are significantly more likely to have sex at an early age, have multiple

89 partners and are at an increased risk for sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancy (Buz, Tortolero, and Roberts 595; Senn, Carey, and Vanable 720-1). It is not surprising that after the trauma of being sexualized at a young age that these girls have little respect for their bodies. It is these girls who become sexually promiscuous in their late childhoods or early teens, not because they desire sex, but because they assume it comes with all relationships. But it is the conditions of abuse that direct these desires, so even when they think it is their choice to be sexually promiscuous, it is a direct result of the oppressive forces that constrained them as children (Cudd 182). They set out to be seductresses, but after they have sex, the feelings of worthlessness and guilt return to confirm what they have already known: that they are nothing but objects for sex and that they are worthless (Cudd 182-3). Thus, these deformed desires derived from abuse are self-defeating (Cudd 183). To others, especially the people that they have sex with, this may appear as a legitimate desire, but as it is controlled from deep within their internalized oppressed consciousness, it clearly is not (Cudd 193). Besides reinforcing the only role that they know, sexual seduction can also be a form of power and revenge

(Senn, Carey, and Vanable 730). While in the act of seducing men, abuse survivors feel a sense of power over any other emotion. Sex to them is not about being sexually satisfied, as most are not, but is more importantly to give them a sense of acceptance and power.

By having a sense of power over men, abuse survivors are often, though mostly unconsciously, seeking revenge on their abusers (Butler 41). They are having sex in the dirty, emotionally void way that they are used to, but this time, they are the ones in control. They are calling the shots. It is these girls who are most likely to be sexually promiscuous or turn to a life of prostitution, pornography or stripping (Buz, Tortolero,

90 and Roberts 595; Senn, Carey, and Vanable 720-1). And as is often attributed to this lifestyle, drugs become a key component to allow this sexual behaviour to continue.

It is not surprising that many adolescent girls who have drug and alcohol addictions are child sexual abuse survivors (Fassler et al 271; Silverman, Reinherz, and

Giaconia 718). It is the perfect way to numb oneself, to forget what happened and most importantly, to temporarily not be in their ‗right‘ minds. It is in the euphoric state of a high where girls can finally feel no anger, no sadness, no pain and, for once, no fear

(Courtois 84-5). It is not simple teenage experimentation, for abuse survivors it is a survival mechanism. While on drugs they are more able to split off from themselves and can, therefore, do the things ingrained in their subconscious. As Butler states regarding female child sexual abuse survivors,

We create our own denial system. . . . We erect a wall between us and what has happened. There are lots of ways to build that wall—drugs, alcohol, whatever brings immediate oblivion will serve. If people could only find a way to look past that wall, they might understand that many of our choices are the only ways we know to survive. (44-5)

Overt deviators often rebel in other high risk behaviours such as drinking and driving, running away, prescription drug use, risky sex and physical fights with other girls and so on (Calam, Horne, Glasgow, and Cox 907). This is their rage speaking. But what is interesting, is that although their physical actions are loud and powerful, they are still very timid emotionally and often lack verbal assertion when addressed directly (Blume

51). They act out what they cannot say. This is an amalgamation of being abused and being female. Still, today, assertiveness is not a prevailing feminine quality as it is not behaviour for ―nice girls‖ to espouse. The abuse cripples their assertion by filling adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors with shame, guilt and self-blame, and

91 most of these girls lack the self-esteem to be assertive and express their voices (Blume

114). But bad behaviour does not require assertiveness; it merely requires the amalgamation of anger, action and opportunity.

The second form of deviance operates under subtle deviance. Girls who have been sexually abused as children who display subtle forms of deviance are much more difficult to detect than the overt deviation practitioners. They deviate in a different way because the way they feel on the inside is different. Not all survivors are rage-filled and act out in overt ways; others feel dead on the inside and withdraw inside themselves. The control they seek is of their emotions; in order to deal with daily life they have to numb themselves so past emotions do not come to control their current lives (Blume 46). By controlling or numbing their emotions, they can seek unconscious revenge on their abusers; no one past or present can hurt them ever again (Ibid.).

Unlike the overt deviators, who have no respect for personal boundaries, subtle deviators guard themselves fiercely (Blume 47). Like the overt deviators, they also refuse to let anybody inside them emotionally, never revealing feelings, personal information or needs (Ibid.). Unlike the overt deviators, who are in a constant state of uncontrollable anger, to the subtle deviators, anger is their worst enemy. They are afraid of anger and what it does to them. As children they associated anger with their abuser and anger is equated to being out of control, their other worst fear (Blume 131).

Adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors who display forms of subtle deviance have learned that with anger come bad things, threats of abandonment, or further abuse

(Blume 132).

One of the ways that adolescent girls deviate subtly is by trying to become invisible in the world (Blume 115). As children, filled with guilt and shame, they often felt innately bad, and as abused girls grow up they carry this sentiment with them.

Adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors are in a constant state of covering up the past, consciously or unconsciously. And the best way for subtle deviators‘ sense of their inherent badness and worthlessness as human beings is to not be noticed by others and to stay out of the focus of attention (Butler 37). But the desire to be invisible extends beyond that. As children, it would be their greatest wish to be invisible, thus their perpetrators would not see them and abuse them again and again (Blume 115). And even when the details of abuse are blocked out, the threat of danger and the need to go unnoticed are very real and present (Ibid.). Girls who deviate in subtle ways do so because they cannot directly or verbally express their anger, and moreover, it is the feeling of anger that scares them. They want to feel numb because it exercises an element of control, whereas to be angered is a lack of control (Blume 187).

These subtle deviant girls, more than overt deviators, are masters of control. It is common for subtle deviators to appear extremely shy and they, often, will not return phone calls, or they leave social situations unexpectedly or without telling anyone, or they do not speak or raise their hands in class or contribute to classroom discussions

(Butler 37). It would be their worst fear to be in the centre of attention, preferring to be on the sidelines. But this is not mere shyness; it is a dire need to slip through the crowds unnoticed in protection of their senses of selves. As one child sexual abuse survivor stated about her experience in school,

I felt so different from the other kids in school. I was sure that if I wasn‘t careful they would be able to tell about me. I was sure I was going to give it away by something I might say or do in school. I was very careful to be quiet, never raise my hand and not draw any attention to myself. I never even laughed out loud until just a few years ago. I tried to be invisible. (qtd. in Butler 37)

Unable to confront their abuse themselves, it is their worst fear that they will be ‗found out‘ or that their behaviours will give their pasts away. Unlike the overt deviators, who appear more destructive and are usually more frequently in detention or in trouble in school, these subtle deviators often appear nothing but perfect in the eyes of adults, which is where the true danger lies, as they often go undetected in the school system and with social agencies.

It is not uncommon for abuse survivors who show signs of subtle deviance to try to do everything in their power to try to be perfect. This is an extension of their past, and in regards to female sexual abuse survivors, it is an extension of their sex. Such girls have an almost obsessive need to please because they think that if they keep everyone around them happy, they will never be abused, or worse, have their secrets revealed.

They are also attempting to remove their feelings of innate badness for tolerating the abuse without disclosure (Courtois 96). Although subtle deviators may often appear perfect, if not infallible on the outside, on the inside they feel anything but (Blume 116).

They take their need for control and make their body the locus of control in an attempt to manage their lives. Generally, they control their grades, always have to have the right answers, and never want to appear foolish or do anything that would be embarrassing or draw attention to themselves; they are often the perfect daughters, girlfriends, friends and students (Courtois 96). But the goals of control they set for themselves are impossible to attain, and when they fail, they reassert their worthlessness and always feel at a loss of

94 control (Blume 116). It is these subtle deviators who are more prone to quiet deviating tactics like obsessive compulsiveness, self-mutilation, alcoholism, and eating disorders.

Eating disorders are one of the most common effects, for girls, of child sexual abuse. It is a quiet, often unnoticed way for female sexual abuse survivors to exert control over their bodies, which is perfect way to manifest self-control, and thus, very common for subtle deviators, especially those in their teens who have the added pressure of maintaining an unrealistic feminine body ideal as it is (Calam, Horne, Glasgow, and

Cox 902, 907). There is a huge correlation between eating disorders and child sexual abuse. As one eating disorder specialist stated, ―At this point, I‘m surprised when I don‘t find sexual abuse in the past of a woman I work with‖ (qtd. in Blume 145). Eating disorders are already disturbingly common among teenage girls, but for child sexual abuse survivors, the source of their starvation is an attempt to control their emotions through their bodies. As such, 'anorexia nervosa' and 'bulimia' may become examples of rage turned completely inward (Courtois 84). The outward perfection that these girls strive towards serves as a façade of distraction to what happened behind closed doors; it is also a physical attempt to remain as invisible as possible (Blume 152-4). It not only serves as a form of control, but eating disorders are also a focus point: they feel so ugly on the insides but, unable to process the vast amounts of pain on their own, they turn to the beautification of their bodies (Halliday 32). By focusing their lives on eating, or not eating, or controlling every aspect of their bodies, they distract themselves from their inner pain and the past that they are desperate not to face. But what results instead, is not more control or decreased pain, but increased guilt over what they are doing to

95 themselves; it is simply another problem to focus on with the same results as the one they are trying to avoid.

Also known as cutting and self-mutilation, 'self-injury' is one of most common results of child sexual abuse used mainly by subtle deviators as a main way of control and a way to safely express pent up anger (Calam, Horne, Glasgow, and Cox 907). It is now stated to be one of the highest indicators of child sexual abuse, specifically for girls

(Blume 270). Although most often associated with the cutting of skin with sharp objects, self-injury can also include, purposely burning the skin, pinching the skin, inserting or ingesting foreign material into the body, picking scabs, pulling out hair, punching or hitting oneself, and even breaking one‘s own bones (Halliday 35). And, like eating disorders, cutting is highly addictive (Blume 184). For female child sexual abuse survivors, self-abuse is the perfect amalgamation of mental and physical control, a distraction from their pasts, a form of numbing and a controlled release of anger (Berrick and Gilbert 5). Most acts of self-mutilation are coping mechanisms for anger, not suicide attempts. Like other addictions, it also keeps taking more and more 'efforts' to be effective and its triggers less and less, until the cutting becomes frighteningly frequent

(Blume 184). Because most abuse survivors cannot even bear to begin to process the massive amounts of emotional pain that has accumulated inside them, they instead focus on the physical aspect of pain, which is more easily managed (Blume 185). Because of being born female and being sexually abused, these girls have not learned how to express anger and cutting becomes a controlled and quiet way to express themselves. Abuse survivors also use their almost inherent knack for splitting off—or retreating deep inside themselves—to numb themselves from the physical pain; and, combined with all the

96 inner rage, it is not uncommon for abuse survivors to state that they 'feel nothing' when cutting themselves (Blume 185).

What results after cutting is a rush of adrenaline produced by the body, a defence mechanism that makes the cutter feel a temporary high or an often unfelt state of release and relaxation (Blume 185). It is a silent form of screaming. Female child sexual abuse survivors often feel a hatred for their bodies and themselves for allowing the abuse to happen, which allows them to mutilate themselves easily and often (Courtois 99). Unlike overt deviators who are rage-filled, subtle deviators often feel numb, until they cut themselves. As one self-injurer states, ―Seeing my own blood makes me feel alive when

I feel so dead on the inside‖ (qtd. in Blume 187). But unlike accidental injuries, the key element of self-injury is the control that these girls feel. They can control how deep the cut goes, where to place it on the body and how often; it is a desperate attempt to regain control over their bodies, in any way possible (Blume 187). Although most acts of self- mutilation are surface wounds, sometimes the cuts can go too far, making adolescent females at risk for medical complication. However, the need to cut deeper can lead to consideration of suicide.

For both overt and subtle female sexual abuse victims, death by suicide is the most extreme after-effect of such abuse. Child sexual abuse survivors are more likely to commit suicide than those who have not been abused as children (Halliday 35; Fassler et al. 270). In Halliday‘s study on sexually abused children, 79% reported feelings of extreme depression and suicidal tendencies and 61% had been admitted into psychiatric wards (35). In another precedent study that focused on adolescents who had been sexually abused as children, 87.5% of females had contemplated suicide by the time they

97 had reached the age of fifteen compared to 25.9% of their peers (Silverman, Reinherz, and Giaconia 718). The same study concluded that it is not just thoughts of suicide that reign high among female child sexual abuse survivors, but suicide attempts, with more than1 in 4 survivors having attempted suicide by the age of twenty-one in comparison to

1 in 42 of their non-sexually abused peers (Silverman, Reinherz, and Giaconia 719).

To summarize, what these girls who have been sexually abused have in common, despite the different ways they processes their abuse, is that they have limited or no

'authentic' voices. They have no voice in the contemporary society as presently constructed and they have no 'identity' voice of their own. Female child sexual abuse survivors learn early on, via the abuse, that their voices are useless as a form of resistance

(Blume 43). If they tried to say ‗NO!‘ and their perpetrators continued to abuse them anyway, then they will often shut down their voices and grow up, more or less, silent.

This deafening silence (not) coming from the victims is only compounded and enhanced by the lack of dialogue by adults and authorities in our contemporary culture surrounding the topic of child sexual abuse itself. Our own, that is adult, discomfort with this topic is perceived by and felt by, and experienced by children and youth. If we, as adults, cannot talk about 'IT', it is unrealistic to expect our children to be able to.

In conclusion, what happens to these girls who have either erased their memories of abuse in order to survive, or who have resigned themselves to a life of abuse after- effects and secrecy? Usually, they go on and exhibit abuse after-effects, but what seems to remain evident is that even if some behaviours are addressed socially or emotionally, or physically, the root of the problem is seldom addressed until the child-girl-woman is in deep, deep trouble on many levels of her existence.

In the next chapter, I inquire into how a public education system does and could relate directly to girls who have suffered through the trauma of child sexual abuse. And, why? Simply, educational institutions—schools—are places/spaces where sexual abuse victims spend, more or less, 12-13 years of their lives (and if they have early childhood institutional experiences that may mean 14-15 years of being in a deeply-located society induction institution). Schools are curriculum places where learners are invited to ‗learn‘ about self, others and the world. Schools are pedagogic places where ‗skills‘ of literacy, communication and inquiry are taught. And, schools are places where ‗attributes‘ regarding what is right and wrong and truth and justice and equity should be exercised.

How does a sexually abuse child, a young girl, come to experience, be acted upon and act upon, this educative place/space that seeks to induct her into being a good girl, person and citizen?

CHAPTER 4: SHIFTING THE PRIVATE INTO THE PUBLIC SPHERE:

THE EDUCATION OF A CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIM

Education is the key in deterring sexual abuse.

Linda Halliday, The Silent Scream: The Sexual Abuse of Children

Students‘ lives need to become a part of the curriculum.

Patricia Reynolds, ―The ‗Pedagogy of the Oppressed‘: The Necessity of Dealing with

Problems in Students‘ Lives.‖

I ask:

What does female child sexual abuse have to do with the public institution of education/schooling? And, with schools chalk full of curriculum planning and preparation, teaching and learning activities, and assessment/testing exercises, how might teachers be actively engaged with the incorporation of information about, knowledge of, and understandings of the after-effects of female child sexual abuse as a content topic, a health and wellness issue, and a socio-political matter? If the topic of child sexual abuse were to be invited in to public secondary schools at an information-interventionist level, what might that curriculum-instruction look like? How could the topic be most effectively taught?

Here, in this writing, I am not targeting teachers or administrators or even curriculum designers or implementers, or assessors, or others associated with schooling as those primarily not doing enough regarding the topic at hand in this thesis. Moreover,

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I do not claim to be a curriculum or instruction or education expert; I am myself a new learner about curriculum and instruction theory and practices – and I really want to know more about education/schooling as it relates to my topic of child sexual abuse. I wish to understand the teaching – learning roles possible within education and the institutions of schools regarding female child sexual abuse and how information-intervention might just enable some girls, in secondary schools, to begin to understand the after-effects of abuse and how these affects-effects may come to manifest themselves in the educative and non- educational lives of adolescent females.

The most basic reason why I think it is integral that the topic of child sexual abuse, including the severity of its oppression and all of the after-effects that abuse can take, be dialogically incorporated into public schools is because girls who have survived abuse most often do go to school. When the home is ruled out as the primary safe space for victimized children and youth who have been sexually abused, school automatically becomes the next safest space, as it is in that place where they spend most of their time outside the home (Huggins 3). Teachers, next to parents, spend more time with children and youth than any other adult professional, thus making them the primary adult safe persons when parents are not an option (Phasha 304). Even in today‘s society, where schools are not exactly synonymous with child safety, considering the ‗anti-bully initiatives‘, these spaces are still better off for abused girls than being elsewhere, such as the street or in their homes where most of the past abuses have taken place, and,

―Although multiple victim homicides in schools have increased, schools are the safest places for children to be‖ (Leone et al. 2). Therefore, schools may be the safest environments for female youth to learn strategies which could provide information and

101 dialogue about child sexual abuse, and, ―In the schools, both teachers and administrators can play an integral part in the development of resiliency in youth exposed to multiple risks. Schools help students develop resiliency by providing positive and safe learning environments. . . .‖ (Christle, Jolivette, and Nelson 3). When children and youth are grouped together in mass, generally age determined, numbers in institutions such as schools, those groups should provide opportunities for information-intervention forums for a relevant social topic such as child sexual abuse. But before moving forward with any suggestions regarding how education and schools may actively—pedagogically— assist adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors, I think it is important to frame public education‘s current stance towards the topic of child sexual abuse itself.

I decided to specifically explore the province of Alberta‘s curricular Program of

Studies Guides. That is, I currently live in this province so I thought it important to begin here with my learning. The province, via the Ministry or Department of Education, posts programs of studies for every teachable subject in the province. I thought I would explore what is currently available, in terms of curriculum, regarding child sexual abuse and how this information (if any) is conveyed to learners. Also, I sought to explore what classes/grades could potentially be most accessible to the teachings of child sexual abuse at an information - interventionist level. The two subject classes that I thought would be most conducive to the teaching of child sexual abuse and its after-effects in senior high schools are secondary English Language Arts (ELA) and Career and Life Management

(CALM). I feel that both of these curriculum subject matter areas provide a possible space to discuss and convey understandings of the complexities of child sexual abuse.

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So, it is secondary schools – primarily the senior high school where I focused my curriculum research.

Starting with the CALM curriculum/program of studies, I noticed that one of the currently stated aims of CALM is to enhance student/learner knowledge of themselves in relation to their decision making and behaviour (Career and Life Management, Program of Studies, Senior High 1). Moreover, there is a stated emphasis on ‗sexuality education‘, and, ―Schools share with parents a responsibility for ensuring that students achieve adequate sexuality education to assist them in making healthy lifestyle and behavioural choices in relation to sexuality‖ (Alberta Education, Program of Studies: Career and Life

Management 1). The program guide states that because of the discussion of sensitive topics, that CALM classes provide a safe and caring environment for students to open up and share feelings (Career and Life Management, Program of Studies, Senior High 3).

The general learning outcome, as stated by CALM in the Program of Studies, Senior

High Schools, is for students to apply ―an understanding of the emotional/psychological, intellectual, social, spiritual and physical dimensions of health—and the dynamic interplay of these factors—in managing personal well-being‖ (4). Moreover, the Alberta

Ministry of Education states that sexuality education should include an ―acquisition of knowledge, emphasizing the physical, psychological, emotional and cultural aspects of human sexuality‖ (Career and Life Management, Guide to Implementation 9). This sounds like a perfect platform for the discussion of child sexual abuse and its array of after-effects and manifestations. Unfortunately, I could not find any directive or invitation to address child sexual abuse in the whole CALM senior high curriculum.

There are general outlines on how emotions affect behaviour and what constitutes

103 mismanaged feelings, but nothing specific to abuse (Program of Studies, Senior High 8).

Moreover, obviously, then there is no curricular work illustrating any connection made between the root problem of child sexual abuse and a victimized student‘s current – possible – abuse affected/effected behaviours.

So, I decided I had to look further into the health and wellness program of studies, but this time at the junior high level where the senior high CALM curriculum is called the

Health and Life Skills curriculum. Still disappointment – there is no descriptions, and no discussion of child sexual abuse. In fact, the only place where child sexual abuse is discussed, in a curricular sense, at all is at the early elementary school level where the discussion is kept at a preventative level (Gentles and Cassidy 7). While I do think that preventative teachings against abuse, such as determining understandings between a good and bad touch, and instruction on disclosure, are helpful in fostering child assertive behaviours and self-empowerment, there has to be something more taught on an informational-interventionist level. The prevention instruction topic, at present, in my opinion, neglects the complexity of abuse and incest in regards to disclosure and puts too much emphasis and responsibility on the child to stop the abuse (Ibid.). In abuse settings, children are being threatened in a very real way that often scares them into silence. The only real way for child sexual abuse to stop is for the perpetrators to stop sexually abusing children. Putting the onus on the child, the victim, while helpful for some in gaining disclosures and creating awareness around the topic of child sexual abuse, this prevention teaching cannot be the only measure taken to address the serious issue of child sexual abuse (Daro 206). There has to be something more than ―go and tell someone,‖ which is the slogan taught and fostered as post-abuse advice. This teaching also assumes

104 that intellectual understandings of abuse will transfer to behaviour, and while sometimes it does, most often, because of the dependency on the adult and the young age of the child, it does not (Gentles and Cassidy 6).

There has to be something in our public education curriculum about what to do after sexual abuse takes place, and I wish I could find it in the health and wellness curriculums, but currently there is very little or at the secondary levels – nothing. Sexual abuse education needs to be reinforced again at a later age at an informational- interventionist level to ensure that deeper and broader understandings of the topic itself ensue. What I noticed most throughout the entire public school curriculum surrounding

‗sex education‘ per se was the palatable discomfort in the writing around the topic, and the fact that synonyms are used so the word ‗sex‘ is used as little as possible. Moreover, anytime there is a topic related specifically to ‗sex/sexuality‘ the type is bold and italicized for easy detection and those topics highlighted can be opted out of for any child by a simple parental request (Program of Studies, Health 3). I understand ethical obligations and moral restraints, but I worry that even well-intended parents will simply reinforce the code of silences around sexual abuse by insisting the ‗class‘ which their child is part of not deal with the topic of sex-sexuality-sexual abuse. This goes back to the xenophobia – chauvinism that surrounds the topic of child sexual abuse and the discussion of sex in general. This absence of something so present needs to end.

Also touting itself to be an inclusive program of studies and open to subjects requiring discussion of sensitive and diverse topics is the English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum. I reviewed the ELA Program of Studies to see if there indeed was space or a place for the discussion of child sexual abuse. I think we all are aware of the fact that

105 literature has been used throughout the centuries as a way to broach sensitive and often taboo topics. Most ELA curriculums seem to seek to honour this tradition within a literature-philosophy approach. And sure enough in the Alberta ELA Program of Studies this focus for using literature is written right into the English Language Arts curriculum

(3). Also, the power of literature and literary study is written into one of the five general outcomes of ELA – and the General Outcome One is a request to learners that they explore thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences as they relate to the student and the larger world (Program of Studies, Senior High 14). Also, there is a strong emphasis on personal reaction and understanding through experience to texts read in the ELA Program of Studies (Program of Studies, Senior High 12). Through the use of literature, students are taught to create meaning from texts and to use their personal experiences to create meaning from texts (Program of Studies, Senior High 21). The goal, as stated in the

Program of Studies, Senior High, for reading literature is to ―reflect upon the human condition and develop and refine their understandings of themselves as human beings‖

(4). By definition, and if honoured in practice, this seems like another ideal space for teachers and students to come together to talk about, read about, view and write about child sexual abuse.

Upon reviewing the ELA curriculum of authorized novels and non-fiction texts – the Ministry of Education provides text guidance for its teachers – from grades four to twelve; I was stunned at what I found. First, I was pleasantly surprised at the depth and richness and, indeed, quality of social awareness books selected. What I really noticed, however, was that books were selected to illustrate a variety of human experiences, to frame a broadening of reader social understanding, to support appreciations of diversity,

106 and to encourage students to develop a sensitivity to and understanding of individual differences (English Language Arts, Authorized Novels xiv). Also, I noted the importance of intentionally selecting controversial issues and discussing with learners regarding the importance of classroom sensitivity and how to facilitate such difficult readings (English Language Arts, Authorized Novels xv). One of the reasons for including controversial topics is to ―reflect the neighbourhood and community in which the school is located‖ (English Language Arts, Authorized Novels xv). So, despite a remarkable diversity across the novels – fiction and non-fiction selected – child sexual abuse is NOT a relevant topic. As was offered in the second chapter, child sexual abuse happens amongst all classes, cultures, ethnicities and social standings (Daro 37). So, despite the ELA curriculum indicating that if controversial or sensitive topics are noticed, one assumes by the teacher, in the classroom or suspected of a particular student that the teacher should draw on this as an opportunity to formally address the topic in the classroom (English Language Arts, Authorized Novels xv). So, there is an instructional imperative to explore feelings and to use student experiences, and the literature is diverse, but child sexual abuse is simply the ‗hidden‘ curriculum of the ELA program of studies.

In the ELA authorized list of literature that should/could be used in classrooms there are numerous controversial social topics, such as: the Holocaust, poverty, learning and physical disabilities, slavery, bullying, murder, addiction, HIV-AIDS, suicide, genocide, drugs – hard and soft, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, arranged marriage, adoption, infidelity, religious and racial differences, murder and death, just to name a few (English Language

Arts, Authorized Novels). It seems like there not are very many topics unnoticed or

107 unaddressed by the literature recommended for ELA except, that is, for child sexual abuse.

In the over two hundred and fifty recommended books, only two contained the references to the topic of child sexual abuse, or any form of sexual abuse for that matter.

The English 10-2 authorized text Children of the River by Linda Crew briefly touches on adolescent sexual abuse (English Language Arts, Authorized Novels 150, 165). And the

English 30-1 authorized text, Barbara Kingsolver‘s The Bean Trees, addresses child sexual abuse (English Language Arts, Authorized Novels 242). While some may see two texts referencing sexual abuse as adequate or ample as informative readings on sexual abuse, there are over twenty-five authorized books centred on the ‗Holocaust‘. If we are able, comfortable and qualified enough to discuss such horrors such as the events that occurred under Nazi occupation during World War II, or difficult current social topics such as racism, then we surely can handle topics such as child sexual abuse. Controversy should not be an obstacle to education. Moreover, these are merely authorized lists and one really does not know if teachers are actually using the two referencing books of child-adolescent sexual abuse in their classrooms. I guess the good news is that there is ample space available for more educational resources on the topic of child sexual abuse.

From my schooling experience and from those I have informally spoken with about the topic and in my readings, child sexual abuse is rarely discussed in classroom settings, but the topic is, at times, brought forward in a large gathering format – like an assembly, where most often special presenters or local experts are brought in for a single day session (Hawkins 18). The problem with school-wide presentations on sexual abuse is that they do not lend procedurally to dialogue. Even the bravest of girls, or boys for

108 that matter, will rarely stand up in front of the whole school and ask a question about sex, sexuality, or especially sexual abuse, during the usually allotted question period. And, with the uniformity of conformity pressures that are so prevalent in junior and senior high schools, few would risk such social jeopardy to ask any question – at least out loud

(Taylor, Gilligan, and Sullivan 5). And, if a student regrets not asking a question, that opportunity is lost for another year or until that presentation is given again. Moreover, most assembly format lectures generally transmit an uncomfortable atmosphere.

Normally, students are ushered out of their classrooms and rumours may swirl across the hallways about what the assembly is about, and counsellors and school administrators are placed at the front of the gym or stand guard at the doors; all of this sends messages to the students that what is about to happen is procedural and consumptive.

Moreover, if and when a school does have a large meeting format regarding the topic of sexuality and sexual abuse – which seems to be happening less and less – and because of the nature of the discussion most schools, operating within politically correct legal mandates, send home a parental form authorizing their child‘s attendance (Huggins

5). Most sexual abuse occurs in the home, by at least one knowing parent or family member, so why would they not withdraw their child from the presentation? Of course, that is not to say that every child who is withdrawn from watching assembly presentations is a victim of child sexual abuse, as children and youth may also be withdrawn from assembly presentations due to cultural or religious reasons. I am not trying to indicate that assemblies and large group presentations about child sexual abuse do not have a purpose or a place in secondary schools – I think we should have them, please. But while school assemblies and presentations could be a forum for conveying

109 information on awareness and prevention of sexual abuse they offer little in information- intervention strategies, such as what to do if or where to go if you have already been abused. As well, larger order presentations may convey the importance of getting some form of professional help for the abuse, but most of this ‗help‘ is in the form of contact lists, help phone numbers, hotlines, and so on. Again, these help spaces/places/persons are there – I am just not sure about the effectiveness of large-order disseminations of information. Still, everything in this regard helps.

At the secondary level of schooling, if larger-order assemblies are held, they often target date rape as the most pressing form of abuse. Date rape is similar to child sexual abuse, but it is not the same as child sexual abuse, as adolescent girls have more power than children, and often their assailants are around the same age, thus making for different consequences and effects than those resulting from child sexual abuse (Ward and Lundberg-Love 48). I believe that in order for true emancipation from the binding constraints of abuse to be absolved, educators need to move the discussion of child sexual abuse from the depersonalized settings of large-order assemblies, into the forum of the classroom where there is more opportunity for questions, dialogue and true understanding.

The problem with preventative and information-interventionist teachings regarding sexual abuse is that, most often conversations surrounding sex and abuse have been for too long confined to the realms of the private sphere, namely the home. There is still a belief held by most parents that they are responsible for sex teaching and the topic of sexuality is often cited as a domestic educational topic, which causes many other adults – educators – to not want to interfere (Pipher 207). By not openly talking about

110 sexual abuse, the dialogical isolation is only enhanced, and when discomfort is detected on the part of the teachers around even the discussion of this issue, the rate of victim well-being and possible disclosure becomes even less. Why? Simply, the child- adolescent has no adult referent – no safe role model who might just understand and not leap to judgment. The only way to counteract the dialogical isolation of child sexual abuse – that is it takes two to talk – is to push the tragedies of the private sphere into the sensitive enlightenment of public realm. By shifting the discussion of sexual abuse from the confines of the site of difficulty – often the home for the abused – to the larger, public sphere, educators can aid in decreasing the isolation felt by victims and truly address the taboo-power associated with this topic. As Giroux, in his article, ―The War

Against Children‖ writes,

Focusing on the social position of children opens up an ethical and political space for oppositional forces to translate private trouble into public considerations and public considerations into private concerns, particularly as progressives grapple with questions of politics, power, social justice and, public consciousness. The plight of young people must play a central role in re-articulating the promise of critical citizenship and reaffirmation of a social contract that embraces and confirms democratic values, practices, and identities while challenging the limitations of those individualizing relations and identities produced by neoliberalism. Making visible the suffering and oppression of young people cannot help but challenge the core ideology of neoliberalism. (20)

The concept of teaching about the complex and often difficult issues that occur in the private sphere has long been touted by radical feminists in their slogan that ―the personal is political‖ (DeVault 226). This means that what happens to someone personally, greatly shapes their political and social lenses, often determining how one sees the world and functions within it. It is outdated thinking and simply not true to assume that what happens in the home must remain in isolation from public education. When these

111 personal accounts are brought into contact with diverse and larger discourses, both the private and public spheres benefit and private and public change can occur (DeVault

226). In the case of sexual abuse, I believe it is only when the personal is brought into the public realm that the political and social sources of abuse‘s silence can be addressed.

It is also outmoded thinking to assume that what happens in the private sphere is for the well being of the child, as often it is not:

Holding onto the by now discredited perception of the home and family as ―natural‖ institutions, retaining the outmoded custom of assigning women primary responsibility for running them, and persisting in the mistaken belief that whatever knowledge and skill are needed are either innately female or will be picked up informally by girls and women as they mature, they assume that these things will take care of themselves. (Gaskell and Willinsky 161)

There is nothing innately female about being sexually abused and it is not something that will rid itself purely with time, and the effects of abuse need to be communicated about in order for sexual abuse to not take the toll it does. As Pinar states, ―The reconstruction of the public sphere cannot proceed without the reconstruction of the private sphere‖ (21).

Educators need to bring the once private realm of child sexual abuse into the public forum of the classroom to help end the isolation of this taboo topic.

Though many parents are the primary purveyors of sexual information to their children, many adolescents – abused or not – do not feel comfortable going to their parents to discuss issues of sexuality, and, instead, turn to peers, or popular culture such as movies or the Internet for their sexual education (Butler 132). This phenomenon is only enhanced when parents, or close relatives or family friends, are the perpetrators of sexual abuse (Taylor, Gilligan, and Sullivan 102). When parental information is given to

112 children and adolescents about sex and sexual abuse, studies have shown that such information is not always accurate:

While parents are the main purveyors of information to children of child sexual assault, recent studies have shown that although 59% of parents surveyed reported discussing child sexual assault with their children, they often leave out critical information like stating that the main perpetrators of child sexual assault are people that the child knows, not the strangers that parents warn their children of. (Fieldman and Crespi 158)

By convoluting basic information about child sexual abuse, like that of the stranger myth, instead of indicating that most abuses against female children happen in the home and by someone that the child knows and loves, children feel even more at war with themselves when what has happened to them seems to contradict the information given to them by their own parents (Nichols 5-6). The 'dangerous stranger' as the most common type of abuser is a myth that needs to be overturned. Incest is documented to be the most common form of abuse, with fathers, stepfathers or the mom‘s boyfriend representing over 50% of all child sexual abusers, while the majority of the other half is comprised of other family members or close family friends (Huggins 1). Who, then, are victims to turn to? When parents, guardians and close relatives are the perpetrators of abuse, the likelihood of confiding in them or receiving accurate information on coping with the traumas of abuse becomes even less likely.

So, if a school‘s curriculum was to include such a topic as child sexual abuse, what might that curriculum and corresponding instruction look like? Waks and Rustum, in a study of curriculum goals, state that each educational regions‘ curriculum guides normally states that ―the stated goals of education in modern democratic societies remain constant: the development of each person as (1) a worker, (2) a citizen, and (3) an

113 individual‖ (24). Yet, there is a tendency, in the operational curriculum (that curriculum which comes alive from the mandated, or government sanctioned, curriculum as the classroom operational – taught and learned – curriculum) to accept as standard that the education of the nation‘s children and youth may achieve such goals, if and only if, the teaching and learning, is more or less academically-focused and knowledge-based. And,

I concede, indeed, academic learning is an important component of education, but it does not comprise the full notions of what it means to be an educated and good worker, citizen and individual. As Pinar states,

If public education is the education of the public, then public education is, by definition, a political, psycho-social, fundamentally intellectual reconstruction of self and society, a process in which educators occupy public and private spaces in- between the academic disciplines and the state (and problems) of mass culture, between intellectual development and social engagement, between erudition and everyday life. While the education of the public draws extensively upon the academic disciplines, it does not necessarily coincide with them. (15)

And, McDermott writes, ―School ignores too much of the child. We are wrapped up in

‗performance-based acceptance,‘ responding to cognitive needs but not emotional ones‖

(94). As well, Brown and Finn note that educators need to reinforce the notion of ―teach the child, not the subject‖ (55). The disciplines of the world, that become distilled into school subjects such as mathematics, English, social studies, and so on, should be present to provide social-historical contexts for a learner‘s personal and social and intellectual experience and learning. However, it is my position that educators and curriculum designers need to also reinforce the definition of and the applications of education to include the teaching of critical social topics such as the topic of this thesis—child sexual abuse. Moreover, educators must be more aware of the patterns of abuse that manifest themselves in the lives of adolescent girls and are often overtly and covertly manifesting

114 themselves in the classroom. As such, Pinar notes that educators need to put the student back at the centre of public education, and he writes,

The point of public education is not self-abandonment nor the suspension, until adulthood, of satisfaction too many—including ―successful‖—schools require. The point of public education is not to become ―accountable,‖ forced through ―modes of address‖ to positions of ―gracious submission‖ to the political and business status quo. The point of public education is to become an individual, a citizen, a human subject engaged of intelligence and passion in the problems and pleasures of everyone else in the nation, on this planet. ―Through education,‖ Megan Boler reminds, ―we invite one another to risk ‗living on the edge of our skin,‘ where we find the greatest hope of revisioning ourselves.‖ (249)

Social topics and issues should not be ignored in any teaching and learning space or left for students to handle themselves before or after school has finished. Instead, schools could and should be that excellent forum within which workers, citizens and individuals may engage and converse about important social issues such as child sexual abuse. I know a response at this point will be, ―Yes, most curriculum and most schools already have such spaces or personnel or agencies in place to 'deal' with this issue of sexual abuse.‖ But, I just feel, for the most part, 'dealing' with sexual abuse is not the same as

'understanding' sexual abuse. In understanding, there is agency—understanding bridges

'knowledge of/information about' and 'taking action' as a result of active understanding.

Simply, there must be a pedagogic space that is available to provide a voice to the topic of female child sexual abuse, because such a need exists in the lives of abused female children and adolescents. Currently, in some school jurisdictions, we may point to

'health' or 'life skills' curricula, but do they really open up spaces for conversations; that is, safe places for conversations about the topic of abuse itself? And even if spaces are located in such curriculum as a mandated, there is always the question of who makes operational the curriculum and teaches it? I feel a great deal gets lost, or what gets

115 gained depends on the teacher‘s sense of personhood, in interpretation/translation of any curriculum that seeks to open up a space for conversation about this topic in particular.

When speaking of child sexual abuse, there is some specific information that, I believe, needs to be taught to girls who have been sexually abused:

Some survivors are able to recover within the context of good adult relationships, but almost all need education and therapy to assist them in working through their feelings of shame and isolation. Through therapy and education, survivors learn that sexual abuse did not happen only to them and that they have much more in common with other victim survivors. (Courtois 20 emphasis added)

Most of this information can be garnered through good counselling, but the only problem with counselling is that you need to either seek it or be referred into it for it to begin to do its good work. And, for many of these sexual abuse secret keepers, who are in denial about their pasts, who may not remember, who put on false fronts or who cannot even admit it to themselves, they will often not seek counselling or reveal their secrets without the invitation of some basic information. But if the topic was included in an educational context, it could lead to an increased awareness about the severity of abuse‘s effects on survivors‘ lives. And, one of the primary pieces of information needed to end the isolation of child sexual abuse is that survivors must know – become aware – that they are not the only ones that have suffered through child sexual abuse. At what first seems like an obvious truth, many girls, even those who are well into their teens, are not aware of the plethora of sexual abuse. This is exemplified in DeBlase, Trzyna, and Miller‘s powerful study on the education of minorities. The study followed an adolescent girl named Kris who was a child sexual abuse survivor. Having her voice stripped at an early age, she was literally silenced and spent years refusing to talk to anybody but her twin sister, who had also endured the same abuse. It was only when she entered a historical

116 literature class and happened upon Maya Angelou‘s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings that she began to retrieve her lost voice. It was only then, at sixteen years of age, where she learned that she and her twin sister were not the only girls who have been sexually abused as children. It was here that for literally the first time in her life Kris realized that there were others, and as she states, ―That knew what we knew, felt what we felt . . . that was the first time‖ (9). Although at first it seems rather unlikely that someone would be unaware of the plethora of sexual abuse that occurs to women and girls all over the world, if that information has been isolated from you, or is held within you, it is not that difficult to believe. It was only through having that representational voice provided for her and by learning basic facts about child sexual abuse that gave Kris the courage to disclose about her abuse and start on the path of healing.

In another example, provided by Butler, in her research of adult female child sexual abuse survivors, she revealed that ―the victims were able to express grief, shame and sometimes rage once they knew that there were others like themselves—thousands and thousands of others‖ (8 emphasis added). Knowing that it is not only them, that it is not their fault, that they are not to blame, and that they are indeed worthy of love are all facts that these girls need to know, and most often, without education, they do not.

Therefore, such information is crucially needed to ensure that they develop the social and personal skills needed to live healthy adult lives. Other information, such as the proliferation of child sexual abuse and how deeply it can manifest itself into the lives of survivors, also needs to be voiced to child sexual abuse survivors. It is also important to know that time alone cannot heal the wounds inflicted by child sexual abuse. One cannot ignore away the effects of abuse hoping that it will all just go away. Direct action needs

117 to be taken, usually in the form of counselling or therapy, to work towards leading healthy lives that are not driven by the effects of abuse. Once they learn that they are not the only ones, that it happens and it happens frequently, and how deeply it can come to affect every aspect of child sexual abuse survivors‘ lives, they might be more prone to disclose or seek therapeutic treatment for their abuses. I must emphasize here that forced disclosure is not the aim of including the topic of child sexual abuse in an educational setting. It is, instead, to provide a public forum for the topic to arise so that girls who have endured sexual abuse can gain knowledge and awareness of the topic. Such awareness should decrease the isolating component of oppression, and it may help those not being abused but living within the contexts of such abuse, and it will help everyone understand how knowledge about some aspects of our darkest human behaviours can be brought to light and voice. Disclosure should be emphasized as the primary step that needs to be taken in order for healing to ensue, but when that disclosure should happen is dependent on when the survivor is ready to disclose and the legitimate professional help available.

Simply, education matters. And, education regarding the manifestations and after- effects of child sexual abuse is crucial for adolescent female survivors. Conservative estimates approximate that there are at least three to four child sexual abuse survivors in every classroom (Huggins 1). Also, it is estimated that most experiences of sexual abuse remain a secret either until the child has enough independence from the abuser in order to ask for help, or they hold on to the difficult secret throughout their entire adult lives

(Huggins 2). Although, hopefully, most child sexual abuse has ended by the time the victims reach secondary school, the effects, as discussed in previous chapters, are very

118 real and require immediate attention. As Pipher states, ―By late adolescence, most girls today either have been [sexually] traumatized or know girls who have‖ (205). How, then, are such girls to garner information that could potentially lead to healing, when disclosure is an immediate threat to their family situation and their own livelihood? Most of these girls are isolated. They are isolated within themselves, from a larger community of abuse survivors, isolated from their voices, and worst, from information—simple information— that could help them begin a healing process (Halliday 77). Education, therefore, matters and it is needed so that the effects of the abuses, which happened in childhood, do not continue to affect and effect girls as they move from adolescence into adulthood, and,

―Given the prevalence of child sexual abuse and the extent of its impact, it is critical that intervention strategies for adolescent females address the issue of abuse and help them adopt self-protective sexual behaviours‖ (Buz, Tortolero, and Roberts 595). Again, simply, adolescent girls who have survived child sexual abuse need to recognize the effects of abuse and the toll it can take upon their lives. Moreover, a connection needs to be made between their past abuses and their current behaviours. It is only then that emancipation from the shackles of abuse can even be fathomed and, ―In knowledge there is power, and empowerment is necessary for the incest survivor to overcome the effects of her victimization‖ (Blume 269). It is only through education, by learning about others who have endured and survived child sexual abuse that the isolation felt by its female victims can be overcome. As one doctor who worked at a centre for sexually abused children and teenagers states,

I came to realize that that one of the major sources of psychological trauma for children and adolescents is sexual abuse, most often incestuous assault. I believe that the psychological scars of the abuse are so deep that a victim‘s chances for

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living a positive life are indeed small . . . It is the responsibility of all of us who care about children to listen to their pain, seek out its source and provide the help necessary to allow these children to resume normal lives. (qtd. in Huggins x)

In order for adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors to have their best attempt at attaining healthy lives and relationships, education and dialogue surrounding the effects of child sexual abuse must be provided. Public schooling has to include educating these girls and, indeed, all students so female child sexual abuse survivors can undo what they have been taught since early childhood. It is only then that they can become truly productively functioning members of society (Giroux 20-21). It is here where we must remember that when it comes down to it, education is not about grades or regurgitation of information, but about preparing our future generations in the best way we can so that they can be contributing members of a well adjusted society and, ―We must remember that education is not a business, that it cannot be measured by test scores, that it is too important to be left to either politicians or parents‖ (Pinar 61). The emotional well-being of our youth is the emotional well-being of our future leaders. Moreover, we have to protect and stand up to the educational forces that deny our youth opportunities to understand self-other-world. These victimized girls are in desperate need of information of the after-effects of abuse and need to be educated on positive coping strategies in order for them to end the self-destructive patterns derived from their pasts.

In order for curriculum to be truly effective, it has to relate to the present lives of students. As Pinar states,

Such a commitment [to education] means we value academic knowledge and knowing, the ―life of the mind,‖ as these enliven and enrich the concrete lives of our students, their lives as individuals and as citizens. Of course we teach ―basic skills‖ and ―core knowledge,‖ but always in lived relation to those whom we teach. (252-3)

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If core texts were included in the curriculum that provided child sexual abuse survivors, and all learners, with a relational and representational voice to their lived experiences, how would that negatively affect them? Schools need to end their isolation of sexual abuse information from learners who are very much in need and, ―That is the isolation of the school—its isolation from life. When the child gets into the schoolroom [s]he has to put out of [her] mind a large part of the ideas, interests, and activities that predominate in

[her] home and neighbourhood‖ (Dewey, The School and Society 67). As Dewey goes on to write, ―Instruction in subject-matter that does not fit into any problem already stirring the student‘s own experience or that is not presented in such a way as to arouse a problem, is worse than useless for intellectual purposes‖ (How we Think 198-9). This is to reassert the idea that problem-posing education, a concept developed by Freire that centres on issues and problems that face students, has the potential to create more lasting meaning and application in students‘ lives (Foote, Vermette, and Battaglia 15).

Therefore, instead of being seen as mere facts to memorize, the topic is presented as a relevant problem in our society and in the lives of students, to be analyzed and solved

(Shor 30). As mention before, adolescence is a time of extreme personal growth and identity formation (Blume 133). For abuse survivors, it is a time where memories often surface and when for the first time, they have enough social and personal power to confront their abuse (Pipher 229). This is the time to link education with the larger world around them. As Pinar states,

Why are teachers not permitted, indeed, encouraged, to show students that academic knowledge is not self-contained, that it often reaches out toward and back from life as human beings live it? Why is not the school curriculum a

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provocation for students to reflect on and to think critically about themselves and the world they will inherit? (186-7)

Simply, curriculum writers and implementers could do with incorporating more materials that are relevant to students‘ experiences, including child sexual abuse.

For curriculum to meet its true developmental potential, it has to be seen, as Pinar states, as ‗currere‘ – ―the infinitive form of curriculum‖ (4). So what is ‗currere‘?

Currere puts the action back into curriculum, reconnecting academic knowledge with self-understanding and life history (Pinar 35). According to Pinar:

The method of currere is not a matter of psychic survival, but one of subjective risk and social reconstruction, the achievement of self-hood and society in the age to come. To undertake this project of social and subjective reconstruction, we teachers must remember the past and imagine the future, however unpleasant each domain may be. (4)

And, slowly, this is happening. Curriculum has taken an exciting turn recently in regards to inclusive education. With the rise of anti-racist and multicultural education and social justice education, more and more difficult personal and social topics are being discussed in schools (Solomon and Levine-Rasky 7). Moreover, anti-oppressive education is bringing attention to minorities and the issues that plague them into school classroom conversations (Pinar 235). But when educators and curriculum theorists speak of minority education, certain words come to mind—words like: race, class and gender.

What if minority education expanded the definition of ‗minorities‘ to include survivors of child sexual abuse and the social injustices that they face? This is not the first time that difficult discussions have made their way successfully into the classroom, only to enlighten and empower students. If curriculum can tackle horrific life events such as genocide, racism and child slavery and child soldiers, it surely can become inclusive to

122 topics of child sexual abuse. I understand that it is often easier to deal with horrific topics and issues once they have been resolved—in hindsight—but this is a topic that has shown no signs of ceasing; a topic that needs to be discussed now.

Alongside progressive curriculum changes, social issues that plague teens have also began to be discussed in schools. Topics such as teenage suicide, drug addiction, bullying, alcoholism and other social problems have found their way into classroom settings (Butler 15-16). While this is a giant step forward in the way of making education more relevant to students‘ lives, these are often symptoms of a larger root problem, which, for adolescent girls, is often child sexual abuse (Butler 16). And that is what needs to be discussed – this cycle of cause (even if there is limited awareness or significant blocking of the cause) and its every real effects. Not just the symptoms of the problem but the actual problem itself must be faced, and,

We are collectively faced with long-term problems that demand complicated solutions and ongoing attention. Too often, in our hunger for certainty, we grab for simple and inadequate solutions to these complex problems. We fall for slogans of ―just say no‖ and treat symptoms rather than address root causes. Then when these solutions fail, as they must, we blame the victim or the system rather than acknowledge our own short sightedness. (Berman 127)

Or as was discovered by Silverman, Reinherz and Giaconia in their study on sequelae on childhood physical/sexual in adolescents,

Overall, the deficits in mid-adolescent functioning at age 15 and current functioning at age 21 faced by males and females who were physically and/or sexually abused before age 18, stress the urgent need for timely prevention and intervention strategies to forestall or minimize the serious consequences of child abuse. School-based personnel and community caretakers must be alerted to the serious short and long-term effects that both forms of abuse have on children and adolescents. When psychopathology develops, one must examine the root causes, and consider physical and sexual abuse as possible precipitating factors. Prompt intervention must be provided to these children and adolescents in order that additional problems and psychopathology do not emerge later in life. (721) g

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at age Moreover, in the discussion of ‗root social problems‘, such as child sexual abuse, and by making education more relevant to such a problem and issue that deeply affects/effects students‘ lives, an increased interest could be fostered in academic subjects. I believe by making literature/texts and school initiatives more relevant to students‘ lived experiences

– both positive and negative – schooling could also prove to foster more interest in what is being taught. As John Dewey states, in his influential text Experience and Education,

―Education, in order to accomplish its ends for both the individual learner and for society must be based on experience—which is always the actual life-experience of some individual‖ (89). Relation to our own concrete lived experience – even the lack of them – draws us in more than abstract information ever could: ―Students need to see their past, present and future reflected in the curriculum‖ (Gaskell and Willinsky 199). As one student put it, ―In twelve years of school, I never studied anything about myself‖ (qtd. in

Gaskell and Willinsky 199). This need to address experience becomes especially crucial for adolescent learners, because adolescence is often a time of personal scrutiny and ego- centrism (Spruiell 311-12). Adolescence is known as a developmental period when becoming a young adult encompasses a search of a formative self and a separation from parental figures; this is especially true for girls (Rosenbaum 234). Often teachers make the mistake of attempting to foster understanding of self-others-world through the teaching of facts, which seem so set apart from the lived experience of the child being taught (Foote, Vermette, and Battaglia 85). It has been proven that connecting lived experience to related facts result in more meaningful and lasting understanding (Foote,

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Vermette, and Battaglia 85-6). By relating what is taught in schools to their immediate lives, learners engage in increased attention and deeper learning ensues.

There are cognitive benefits to inclusive education that includes teaching about child sexual abuse and its after-effects. Precedent studies indicate that adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors display poorer cognitive and intellectual performance compared to those female students who have not endured child sexual abuse (Daignault and Hébert 103; Calam, Horne, Glasgow, and Cox 907). As mentioned before when writing of experience, students are more drawn in when the information being offered relates to their own personal experiences or dilemmas and, ―Children, in essence, feel their way into the world. The degree of connectedness that they experience determines their interest and participation‖ (Berman 118). The cognitive benefit is:

The extent to which emotional upsets can interfere with mental life is no news to teachers. Students who are anxious, angry, or depressed don‘t learn; people who are caught in these states do not take in information efficiently or deal with it well. When emotions overwhelm concentration, what is being swamped is the mental capacity cognitive scientists call ―working memory,‖ the ability to hold in mind all information relevant to the task at hand. (McDermott 83)

Put simply, many students who are wrapped up in their own angst do not learn and,

―Many child victims, labelled as having learning disorders, expend little concentration on their class work because keeping their secret takes so much of their energy‖ (Butler 37).

And as mentioned previously, girls who have endured sexual abuse are often rage filled, or numb, which means they are either in a state of constantly stewing upon their own anger or they are often in a zoned out state. Both states result in difficulties with concentration and retention of information. As Reynolds discovered in her study on student-centred learning, those children and youth whose lives are absorbed by cultural

125 and familial conflict simply do not learn nor achieve high test scores (57). Also, as often stated by abuse survivors, compared to what is on their minds or happening at home, they simply do not care about the academics being taught. Abstract and symbolic symbols of mathematics, to them, may seem trivial compared to the very tangible reality of abuse survival. But, for me, the possibility of expanding inclusive education to include sexual abuse is not just a question of enlightened schooling or connectivity to learners‘ experiences, or enhanced and aware curriculum design, but also a question of educator commitment and subsequently the ethics and tact of their practices. If it were possible to include a curriculum, to include instruction that would allow for the education of child sexual abuse as a critical social topic, then how might teachers be invited into what Pinar has called ‗a complicated conversation‘?

Berman writes that educators need to have courage as they are not only vessels of learning but also the vessels of ‗unlearning‘ and ‗mis-learning‘ and as such they must set aside their own possible fears regarding presenting on the topic of child sexual abuse for the sake of the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of girls that live with the silence of child sexual abuse and its aftermath, and also Berman goes on to indicate that,

We live in a complex time. There are few simple answers to the complicated issues we face. Children become aware of the trauma in the world around them at a far earlier age than we would like and often lack the skills to deal with its complexity. In our efforts to preserve their childhood, we often allow important issues to go undiscussed and attitudes of cynicism, hopelessness, and powerlessness to develop. (117)

Attempting to protect adolescents by not discussing difficult topics that are relevant to their lives will only serve to jeopardize their identities and well-being in the long run, and to reinforce the adolescents‘ beliefs that schooling and adults (teachers) are basically

126 irrelevant. I believe that there are few ways for private injustices to be dealt with other than in a public forum where the information needed and the application of that information to stop the effects of traumas experienced can be made available. We know that child sexual abuse survivors, especially those who remain undisclosed, are often cut off from any form of community or organization or individuals who may provide them with information that would lead to healing (Halliday 44). Huggins even goes as far to indicate that, often, not only is protection from sexual abuse absent but also treatment often depends on a teacher‘s willingness to act (3). Our fears, our adult and our educator fears, around talking openly about sex and sexual abuse have to be overcome in order for sexually abused adolescent girls to get the education that they need and deserve in order to fully achieve education‘s goals of being a healthy and productive worker, citizen and individual.

Again, I return to the question of: Why must schools be the site for such information-interventionist work? Simply, schools are core cultural and societal induction institutions. Students are constantly learning (through the taught, null, tested and hidden curricula) different sets of personal, mental, emotional, physical and social knowledge, skills and attributes as well as associated values, such that,

School, whether we choose to make it so or not, is fundamentally a place where we teach values. Consciously and unconsciously, we are giving students our take on the world through the things we say and don‘t say, questions we ask and don‘t ask, how we listen, and all the other ―tools‖ we bring to the job. It is often, I think, the lessons of the hidden curriculum that are taught best. (Haas 54)

By opting to talk about the topic of female child sexual abuse as a school and classroom engagement, I believe teachers can demonstrate acceptance of, as well as the importance of speaking out on, this topic. All students can learn, if only by an example set by their

127 teachers that it is okay, indeed necessary, to talk about child sexual abuse and its after- effects. How can we expect adolescent abuse survivors to find their own voice in the discussion of this complex issue, when educators themselves will not talk with their students about child sexual abuse? How many of today‘s children suffered through the

Holocaust – well NONE! Why do we teach about the Holocaust? Simply, because we do not want to ever experience, as human beings, such evil ever again. And yet, everyday – today and for many tomorrows to come – children, little girls, are experiencing unbelievable evil . . . and very few words are spoken, very few voice-texts are brought forward, and very, very few teachers stand up and call this horror what it is – abuse, soul murder, at the most base and deplorable level of humanness:

In this enlightened age, things cannot get much more depressing in terms of our social system‘s response to the sexually traumatized. Those of us who work in the helping professions must start where we are. We are people first of all, and we share with the rest of society certain biases, stereotypes and confusions about sexuality. Therefore, unless we work to lower our anxiety levels through a genuine knowledge of human sexuality and the consequences of sexual trauma, we may remain unable to provide non-judgmental, compassionate and truly therapeutic intervention for the sexually abused. Each of us as professionals must look inside ourselves before we can hope to provide help and guidance for others. We are a nation of brilliant achievers. Let‘s acknowledge our ignorance in this area and begin together to create the kind of intervention that is so desperately needed. (Butler 173)

As with the teaching of any social-emotive topic, personal biases and/or prejudices could arise out of the curriculum. That is, if one actually believes the current curriculum is not already riddled with such biases and prejudices. Acknowledging how little we know or have been taught about female child sexual abuse is a good starting place in the removal of a general standard of ignorance and discomfort. The more we, as those involved in the public education of children and youth, know about female child sexual abuse as a topic,

128 the less anxiety will negate our educative and pedagogic stance on this topic. In a way we are abusing sexual abuse by reinforcing our own silences. I know I do not know enough about teaching as a conservative positioning and I do not know enough about teaching as a feminized profession, so I cannot go there, but we as educators and as adults in the helping professions must take a lead here in educating ourselves. This shift can be done.

Controversial social topics have been discussed in the school and the classroom before, and often with great success and increased social awareness on the part of learners (Solomon and Levine-Rasky 52-56). In this regard, educators need to see themselves, as Freire reminds us, as ―transformative agents‖ that can positively impact students‘ lives (Reynolds 58). Most of my friends and my colleagues that I have spoken informally with about their educational experiences remember at least one teacher who transformed them in some aspect of their current lives. Even as adults, they can look back and specifically remember a teacher, or several teachers, who imparted some form of information, perhaps even wisdom, that actually changed their lives. Let not our fears of revealing a dark side of our culture prevent us from helping a multitude of adolescent girls who are in desperate need of information about what to do when sexually abused, because it is the same culture that continues to victimize these females through its codes of silence and what counts as a ‗proper‘ educational topic.

In conclusion, education is a powerfully inductive cultural force. Education has the ability to liberate or incarcerate, to provide voice for the silenced or to reinforce silence, and to heal or inflict pain. Educators need to refocus the point of education on

129 the student. Doing so will create unlimited possibilities for all learners, and especially abused girls. As Pinar so eloquently states,

To focus on the educational significance of schooling for the culture at large means returning academic knowledge to the individual him- or herself, teaching not only what is, for instance, historical knowledge, but also suggesting its possible consequences for the individual‘s self-formation, allowing that knowledge to shape the individual coming to social form. It means assuming the position of the private-and-public intellectual, especially now that this tradition is so attenuated and defamed. It is to suggest the significance of academic knowledge for society at large. (249)

It is the social responsibility of educators to protect children from harm (Daro 214). If a teacher saw a child hurt and bleeding in the hallways surely he or she would stop to see if the child was okay and to help the child. Adolescent girls who have been sexually abused as children are deeply wounded and hurt deeply; however, their traumas are less visible.

So how can educators be invited into ‗teaching‘ about female child sexual abuse? And, moreover, what might be an appropriate way for learners to learn about sexual abuse?

In the next chapter, I discuss the theoretical concept of philosophical hermeneutics and how hermeneutics, pragmatically and pedagogically applied, may work playfully to invite learners into being educated regarding adolescent female child sexual abuse.

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CHAPTER 5: HERMENEUTICS AS A COMPLICATED CONVERSATIONAL

WAY FORWARD FOR

UNDERSTANDING FEMALE SEXUAL ABUSE

Hermeneutics remembers that we stand in the middle of things long before we take a stand on them, that inquiry is underway before we discover it, before we voice a question. We are not neutral, we are involved.

Ronna Mosher, The Cadence of Listening: Sounds and Silences in Teaching

If there is any philosophical – methodological orientation that could help in advancing understanding regarding the intricacies and complexities of female child sexual abuse, I believe that hope – pragmatically and pedagogically – lives within

Gadamer‘s philosophical hermeneutics. I honestly believe that with Gadamer‘s emphasis on 'experience' and 'understanding', his interpretive philosophical hermeneutics creates a meaning making space wherein the life worlds of adolescent girls and young women who have been sexually abused as children may be better understood. Hermeneutics, as an inquiry methodology, is designed to overcome misunderstanding and understanding alienation through connectivity with the aesthetic (Gadamer 180). Simply, hermeneutics is about the arrival of understanding though interpretive engagements. Hermeneutics is that interpretive space between different and differing individuals. Hans-Georg

Gadamer‘s Truth and Method is the rough determining ground I seek to explore in this chapter, because I have found his work to provide a way to understand the complexities of the topic at hand—female child sexual abuse. And, I move into Gadamer‘s work with

131 my eyes, ears and heart focused on my topic: understanding what it means to be a girl who has been sexually abused as a child, and who is living as that child is becoming a young woman in torturing silence.

One of the most alluring components of hermeneutics regarding my inquiry is its orientation, indeed requirement, for interpretation, understanding and for the application of understanding. Gadamer writes that hermeneutics ―wants to understand everything that will allow itself to be understood‖ (168). And, because understanding lives at the heart of Gadamer‘s work, I ask: What is true understanding? According to Gadamer, to understand is ―to participate immediately in life, without any mediation through concepts‖ (208). True understanding differentiates from learning. For example, because understanding focuses on lived experience, whereas some distorted forms of learning can be seen more as the memorizing and regurgitating of information, true understanding happens when a person brings and connects her or his lived experiences with the topic being discussed, a phenomenon that is not usually captured in learning. As Gadamer states, ―All such understanding is ultimately self-understanding‖ (251). Understanding, as characterized in Gadamer‘s hermeneutics, is about ‗connection‘ or ‗connectivity‘.

Understanding, then, is not an explicit or prescriptive method to be applied, but understanding is a dialogic and communicative event that occurs in our lives as learners and teachers. Mosher writes:

Hermeneutics is concerned with understandings that proceed and exceed method, with understandings that arise from a thoughtful reading of our lives. Hermeneutics is a practice of understanding, a way in which we interpret our world and our lives as we live them out. Hermeneutics charges us as practitioners with understanding not only our topic, but also ourselves, and with action, with the living of our lives well, within our understandings. (7)

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When this form/experience of understanding occurs, it has the power to be truly transformative. We come out of such an exchange changed, because ―understanding proves to be an event‖ (Gadamer 308). Understanding, then, occurs in those moments of connection. Understanding occurs when a person sees her/himself in a way she/he never did before and, therefore, ―Understanding transforms how we discern a situation, and in that transformation, both we and the situation—organically connected—are changed.

That change is not necessarily predictable, but it is inevitable‖ (Pinar 206). This concept of change and transformation is what characterizes the notion of true hermeneutic understanding. Indeed, the word ‗understanding‘ itself is a verb, an action word, and the action that happens is change, such that, ―It follows that understanding automatically leads to change, more exactly, understanding, in itself, is change‖ (Pinar 207). The result of transformative understanding is a form of freedom from previous assumptions and/or pre-held concepts, such that, ―Insight is more than the knowledge of this or that situation.

It always involves an escape from something that had deceived us and held us captive‖

(Gadamer 356). Therefore, understanding—true understanding—is about re-formation and the re-cultivation of one‘s self (identity and being), and not just about amassing knowledge or information.

Still, true understanding is fragile. It can be lost, forgotten, blocked out, erased and, yet, hopefully, found again. According to Gadamer‘s hermeneutics, true understanding is dependent on the use of the aesthetic, and he writes,

Our experience of the aesthetic too is a mode of self-understanding. Self- understanding always occurs through understanding something other than the self, and includes the unity and integrity of the other. Since we meet the artwork in the world and encounter a world in the individual artwork, the work of art is not some

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alien universe into which we are magically transported for a time. Rather, we learn to understand ourselves in and through it . . . (Gadamer 83)

In other words, ‗art/aesthetics‘ playfully leads to understanding of the ‗self‘. So, why does Gadamer explore the nature of the aesthetic in connection to true understanding?

According to Gadamer, the aesthetic is more than just something to observe, but rather, ―Works of art are representations that reveal the essence of truth of their subject matter and therefore enhance the understanding of their audiences‖ (Warnke 70). In other words, the aesthetic makes a claim on us, addresses us and draws us in, whether we intend for that to happen or not. We need something to understand through, and the aesthetic form provides us with an evocative, invitational image of how someone else has lived through whatever we are experiencing (Mosher 9). The aesthetic, in whatever form—art, music, story, song lyrics, drama, etc.—becomes integral to the meaning making and transformative action inherent in Gadamer‘s hermeneutics. Therefore, an aesthetic object, as advanced by Gadamer, is not a symbol of objective truth, as defined/determined by the natural sciences, but rather it is symbolic of life itself, and,

―Rather works of art have a kind of self-sufficiency, they 'stand in their own being' by bringing forth what is essential and leaving out what is not. Their brilliance lies in being able to bring something that, as it were, already has a factual existence, out of its usual hiddenness and into the light of its true being‖ (How 31). As Hegel stated, the nature of art in all its forms is that it ―presents man with himself‖ (qtd. in Gadamer 43). Therefore, art‘s true purpose is not to represent the beautiful or the benign, but to enable human beings to see themselves in both the art work and in the world and to understand the connectivity (Gadamer 43). Simply, art speaks to us, presents to us a world and,

134 therefore, a language of understanding to our lived experiences (Gadamer 45). Art represents and reflects human life, lived experience and transformative understanding, such that, ―The fact that through a work of art a truth is experienced that we cannot attain in any other way constitutes the philosophic importance of art, which asserts itself against all attempts to rationalize it away‖ (Gadamer xxi). When we look at an aesthetic form/piece of art, not only do we respond to it—emotionally, intellectually, viscerally, and so on—but we also respond to our response. That is what makes the connection between Gadamer‘s hermeneutic approach to understanding and to aesthetics so fascinating. Simply, the meaning of each piece of art is dependent on the individual observer, because each individual knower/experiencer subjectivizes and internalizes, consciously and unconsciously, meaning. It is in the connectivity between person, art, meaning and understanding where the object of art becomes humanized and transformatively humanizing. According to Gadamer, aesthetic experience is not just a mere other example of commonplace experiences, but the aesthetic experience is the essence of experience (Gadamer 60). And even though objects of the aesthetic become historically situated to the observer, and these objects are removed from contextual time and space, each piece of art may become transformatively alive through/by the way we place our own subjective understanding and our own experiences onto them (Gadamer

76). This, according to Gadamer, is called ―aesthetic differentiation‖ (Ibid.). This means that the artwork loses its sense of place and time and only to become, to the observer, timeless and placeless.

Tied directly to Gadamer‘s importance placed on the aesthetic is the hermeneutic concept of ‘bildung'. A basic, interpretive definition of bildung is ―cultivating the

135 human‖ (Gadamer 8). Bildung is about cultivating or transforming or growing one‘s self.

And, selfhood, as a true expression of one‘s becoming and being, is an ongoing process, and not a means to an end (Gadamer 10). To be human is to engage in the cultivation of knowledge and understanding and, therefore, cultivating one‘s self, through the transformative aesthetic where the potential for true change lives. We lose ourselves in such a process only to emerge re-covered and changed. By cultivating understanding and knowledge, we form and reform our ‗selves‘. In other words, aesthetics are not about amassing knowledge into quantifiable and discrete forms, but rather about a transformative/cultivating experience leading onwards to perhaps one‘s being compassionately intelligent or practically wise (phronesis). Bildung comes out of the immersion in life‘s especially aesthetic experiences. To be human is to be always in the process of becoming human and even dehumanizing experiences, if understood, can eventually lead to transformative meaning making. Personally, I like this notion of bildung as cultivation and I also like its spiritual elements. That is, that bildung as a historical spirit is ―to reconcile itself with itself, to recognize oneself in other being‖

(Gadamer 12). Theoretically, ‗bildung‘, as transformative cultivation, moves beyond immediate, often quick and sometimes overwhelming, experience to confirm and to acknowledge the possibility that in each lived moment or in each aesthetically held moment, there lives, pedagogically, an instructional moment – this moment lives in what is different and alien or haunting about the self‘s understandings and to those large-order universal viewpoints, which frame ‗ways‘ to deal with the issues of living (Gadamer 12).

As Gadamer states, ―To recognize one‘s own spirit in the alien, to become at home in it, is the basic movement of the spirit, whose being consists only in returning to itself from

136 what is other‖ (13). But, I know, the essence of bildung is not about alienation, although recognizing alienation is a component. True bildung is about returning home; that is, returning back to oneself, but differently—in a more meaningful and understanding way

(Ibid.). Therefore, the general characteristic of bildung is to be open to the transformative possibilities when encountering the other (Gadamer 15). Hermeneutics is theoretically and pragmatically and pedagogically about connections. Hermeneutics is about overcoming the alien/other in hopes of an increased connection with oneself and, ultimately, with other people. Through the use of aesthetics, and aesthetic experiences, a person becomes changed, transformed, into someone other-wise. A person can never remain the same after losing her or himself to the particular aesthetic art form, because the cultivation of self that happens throughout the process of play is so powerfully transformative. Therefore, education as meaning making is actually an aesthetic movement seeking to cultivate self and character. Why? Simply, because each thing learned changes, transforms one‘s character or identity and, therefore, changes the self or one‘s being.

As modern, natural science-oriented persons, sometimes it is easy to fall into the trap that knowledge is purely academic and intellectual and that understanding comes from the verification and falsification processes of a ‗good‘ natural scientific research method. While there is obvious truth to this statement, it is not the only form of knowledge to be held by people. There is another kind of knowledge; one that is formed out of our experiences in/with the world, and, ―We all get caught up in the idea that because much of our experience is not verifiable in a scientific sense, it cannot be accepted as valid knowledge‖ (How 81). But there is validity to human experience

137 because, ―The ability to persuade others, or to understand the meaning of a text, or indeed to make sense of the social world, does not depend on adhering to a given method, but on the experience gained in life-practice‖ (How 159). Life-experience, as How indicates, is a way to make sense of the world and, indeed, Gadamer has placed experience at the heart of his philosophical hermeneutics methodology and he writes, ―For philosophical hermeneutics, understanding takes place in all aspects of experiencing: ‗the way we experience one another, the way we experience historical traditions, the way we experience the natural givenness of our existence and of our world, constitute a truly hermeneutic universe, in which we are not imprisoned, but to which we are opened‘‖

(xxiv). True understanding, then, comes about when it relates directly to one‘s own experiences. Radical feminists have long hailed this concept of experience since the sixties with their slogan of ―the personal is political‖ (DeVault 226). We know that knowledge is not neutral and neither are the purveyors of knowledge. What is of interest to one person usually comes out of their personal and experiential relationship to the topic at hand and, ―We understand the meaning of a text, a work of art or historical event only in relation to our own situation and therefore in light of our own concerns. In other words, we understand it only in light of its significance‖ (Warnke 68). Therefore, there is connectivity between experience and being uniquely individual, and what we experience determines our perceptions, interests and passions. People arrive here and now with a past of experiences and prior knowledge that, in turn, shapes what they are learning and/or presently experiencing. We are experiential beings. Our experiences are shaped over time. The world becomes subjectively perceived under our own experiences and our own meaning making and truths, such that,

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We can never know the world in a ‗true‘ objective sense, separate from ourselves and our experiences. We can only know it through our logical framework, which transforms, organizes, and interprets our perceptions. In other words, we do not see things as they are, but as we are. As we interact with the environment, we continue to use prior knowledge to tune and reshape understanding. (Foote, Vermette, and Battaglia 25)

Therefore, to be experienced is to have knowledge about how one moves through and within the world. Each experience is highly subjective and even though each experience constitutes a fragment of a person‘s life, it is continually connected to and with life

(Gadamer 60). It is how the experience is preserved and held onto throughout life that gives it transformative significance (Ibid.). Experiences teach and re-teach, and experiences affect life, especially when these experiences are negative and occur at a young age: ―We are situated in a history by the experiences of which we are both constituted and constrained. These experiences make of us who we are and we cannot transcend them to evaluate them according to standards formulated independently of them‖ (Warnke 169). Yes, the inter-play of experiences shapes who we are, but it also connects to our evolving knowledge of life and self, as ―one‘s experience changes one‘s whole knowledge‖ (Gadamer 348). And, indeed, understanding can be easier when a person has an experiential connection with the subject matter (Gadamer 295). It is not a stretch to say that we are deeply affected, presently, by our own personal histories and experiences. Our past determines what we feel worthwhile to study or inquire into

(Gadamer 300). It shapes our interests and our fears. Moreover, our experiences, especially if negative, drive us to find others who have shared in that experience, or something similar, in order to help us come to an understanding, and Gadamer states,

The life of the mind consists precisely in recognizing oneself in other being. The mind directed toward self-knowledge regards itself as alienated from the

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―positive‖ and must learn to reconcile itself with it, seeing it as its own, as its home. By dissolving the hard edge of positivity, it becomes reconciled with itself. In that this kind of reconciliation is the historical work of the mind, the historical activity of the mind is neither self-reflective nor the merely formal dialectical supersession of the self-alienation that it has undergone, but an experience that experiences reality and is itself real. (341)

As human beings, we are always seeking to make a connection, whether it is to other people or to a form of the aesthetic and, as such, we are always trying to validate our experiences. Understanding, then, according to Gadamer is ―applying something universal to a particular situation‖ (308). This means that whatever we experience we also learn and, in turn, we apply to our experiences and our own lives. And, therefore, the purpose of understanding is to guide, if not govern, one‘s actions (Gadamer 312).

And, Gadamer writes,

The interpreter dealing with a traditionary text tries to apply it to himself. But this does not mean that the text is given for him as something universal, that he first understands it per se, and then afterwards uses it for particular applications. Rather, the interpreter seeks no more than to understand this universal, the text— i.e., to understand what it says, what constitutes the text‘s meaning and significance. In order to understand that, he must not try to disregard himself and his particular hermeneutical situation. He must relate the text to this situation if he wants to understand at all. (321)

Experience, then, is a form of 'embodied knowledge‘. When true understanding is achieved through reflexively and dialogically understanding experience, what results is a whole different way of seeing and being, such that, ―Experience teaches us to acknowledge the real. The genuine result of experience, then—as of all desire to know— is to know what is. But ‗what is‘, here, is not this or that thing, but ‗what cannot be destroyed‘‖ (Gadamer 351).

According to Gadamer‘s philosophical hermeneutic thought, there are two types of experience: erlebnis or 'life experience' and erfahrung or 'experience as a journey that

140 one goes through'. The concept of Erlebnis is central to Gadamer‘s philosophical hermeneutic notion of experience. The word ‗Erleben‘ translates to mean ―to be still alive when something happens‖ (Gadamer 53). Hence, the word connotes an emotive or reactionary or impact immediacy evoked by an experience. In its other grammatical form, ―das Erlebte‖ the word then translates to mean ―permanency of what has been experienced‖ (Ibid.). The permanent and lasting content of what has been experienced gives that experience meaning and significance, and,

Rather, the whole value of hermeneutic experience—like the significance of history for human knowledge in general—seemed to consist in the fact that here we are not simply filing things into pigeonholes but that what we encounter in a tradition says something to us. Understanding, then, does not consist in a technical virtuosity of ―understanding‖ everything written. Rather, it is a genuine experience (Erfahrung)—i.e., an encounter with something that asserts itself as truth. (Gadamer 483)

Both meanings of 'erlebte' lie behind the more popular grammatical form of Erlebnis: the immediacy of experience and the permanent result of that experience (Gadamer 53). As

Gadamer states, ―Something becomes an ‗experience‘ not only insofar as it is experienced, but insofar as its being experienced makes a special impression that gives it lasting importance‖ (Ibid.). It is, then, the lasting result of Erlebnis that gives experience its meaning, and, ―What can be called an experience constitutes itself in memory. By calling it such, we are referring to the lasting meaning that an experience has for the person who has it‖ (Gadamer 58). However, not every act in life constitutes an experience; it is only those events that stay with a person that Gadamer refers to as

‗experiential‘. It these meaningful experiences, then that make up life‘s journey

(Gadamer 59). With respect to ‗erfahrung‘, experiences acquire heightened status when coupled with the aestheticism of art, and, ―The work of art is not some alien universe into

141 which we are magically transported for a time. Rather, we learn to understand ourselves in and through it. . . . The binding quality of experience (Erfahrung) of art must not be disintegrated by aesthetic consciousness‖ (Gadamer 97). It is through the use of the aesthetic where the observer becomes ripped away from life through the concept of play, and comes out of the experience changed (Gadamer 60-1). The meaning of art transcends its objective status and instead comes to represent life in relief (Gadamer 61).

Therefore, aesthetic ‗Erlebnis‘ represents the whole of an experience, which is what makes it so significant (Ibid.). Aesthetic experience is an example of Erlebnis, which becomes a determining feature of artful sense and meaning making (Gadamer 60).

Therefore, if art is a symbolic representation/reflection of life, then ‗Erlebniskunst‘, which translates to mean ―art based on experience,‖ is life (Gadamer 61). But not every experience is purely subjective. Sometimes, there is more going on beneath the surface of what we perceive to be subjective thoughts. Sometimes, what we think is subjective opinion is really a product of the tradition in which we live.

Another important and core component to Gadamer‘s philosophical hermeneutics is the concept of 'tradition': ―Every act of understanding is embedded in a historical context that conditions, determines, and guides the inquiry at hand; it is conditioned by the effects of ‗tradition‘, that is, a normative, historically and linguistically mediated framework that is never fully transparent to the interpreter‖ (Hoffman 82). Gadamer claims that tradition is what makes understanding possible (Steele 343). There is more going on in hermeneutics than mere subjective understanding. Gadamer sees understanding as ―the interplay of the movement between tradition and the movement of the interpreter. The anticipation of meaning that governs our understanding of the text is

142 not an act of subjectivity, but proceeds from the commonality that binds us to the tradition‖ (293). Some things that we might initially see as subjective opinion come to be, when understood in a hermeneutic light, concepts that have been ingrained in our subconscious via tradition. Traditions go beyond mere subjectivity and it is important to know the difference between subjective choices and other choices that have been embedded in our society through tradition: ―. . . the interpreter remains subject to the hold of effective history, to the way in which the object has already been understood to the tradition to which he or she belongs. For this reason, the act of understanding is no longer to be conceived of as a subjective act but rather as an aspect of effective history‖

(Warnke 79-80). Long before we can understand ourselves through self-examination, we learn to understand ourselves in relation to others, to society, and to our family (Gadamer

278). That being said, we are always living within a tradition, and whether we are aware of it or not, it shapes how we think. What we might see as a subjective opinion may be formed by our relation to our tradition: ―This means that we never assess the beauty of a painting or worth of an action in light of a suprahistorical standard of rationality but are always indebted to the various aesthetic, scientific and ethical-political traditions to which we belong‖ (Warnke 169). This is important, as most traditions run so deep that we are unaware of how they effect and affect the way we live in the world (How 208). In fact, they are often way ahead of our own conscious connections. However, according to

Gadamer, tradition is not an obstacle to understanding (Warnke 75), but rather, ―We find ourselves thrown into a world we did not create, yet this is our world in a strong sense.

We cannot ultimately detach ourselves from it in that we live in it by projecting the possibilities that we find there. In fact these possibilities constitute who we are before we

143 can reflect on them‖ (How 45). And, ―Tradition does not simply stand off in the background; it asks us questions, nourishes, and oppresses‖ (Steele 344). Seeing things as a product of tradition can offer a possibility of solutions. As well, ―Understanding something means understanding where it came from, how it arrived, and to whom we owe its arrival. The fact that understanding is possible at all is due to that history‖

(Mosher 8). And, ―This means that the issues we bring to the process of interpretation are not our preoccupation alone but rather refer to issues and concerns that have developed within the historical tradition to which we belong‖ (Warnke 78). Before we attain true understanding, we understand what we know through the concept of tradition

(How 9). This occurs because we live in a world of tradition. There are social codes, acceptable and non-acceptable ways of behaving and seeing the world:

. . . the knowledge we have of the world and ourselves, the issues we find significant, the things we find acceptable or unacceptable, rational or irrational, those that seem desirable and those that raise our ire, are all generated from within the changing historical field of our tradition. This claim entails more than just the idea that history provides an external context for our lives, it means that we and our knowledge emerge only through, and by virtue of, the ideas and practices that make up our historical tradition. (How 37-8)

Therefore, whether we know it or not, we are steeped in tradition, we are formed by tradition and tradition can often assert itself as truth.

Tied directly to the hermeneutic concept of tradition is the notion of 'horizons'. A horizon is a perspective that we each have, born out of our traditions and experiences in the world (Jantzen 293). According to Gadamer, ―The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point‖ (269). How we interpret the world is dependent on our horizons, as well as fusing with other horizons.

To properly understand the aesthetic, in whatever form, we must enter as much as we can

144 into the world when the art piece was formed (Jantzen 293). In other words, we must attempt to acquire the horizon of the aesthetic: ―The task of historical understanding also involves acquiring the particular historical horizon, so that what we are seeking to understand can be seen in its true dimensions. If we fail to place ourselves in this way within the historical horizon out of which tradition speaks, we shall misunderstand the significance of what it has to say to us‖ (Gadamer 269). This does not mean, however, that by acquiring the horizon of the art piece that we leave our own horizon behind as remnants of the past. According to Gadamer this is merely impossible, for wherever we go, we always bring ourselves (Jantzen 293). So in order to understand the aesthetic, we must combine our horizon with that of the expressed piece of art: ―Aesthetic experience, like historical understanding, involves a mediation of meaning with one‘s own situation, or what Gadamer calls a ‗fusion of horizons‘‖ (Warnke 69). Moreover,

Understanding is always interpretation and meaning is always a ―fusion‖ of the ―horizons‖ of the interpretation and the object. It follows that one‘s historical and linguistic situation presents no barrier to understanding but is rather the horizon or perspective from which understanding first becomes possible. As we have seen, one has to have some way of approaching the object; one has to place it within some context. (Warnke 82)

To fuse horizons, then, is to integrate one‘s own personal understanding of life as based on one‘s personal experience and placement in a tradition and amalgamate it with the meanings derived out of the aesthetic (Warnke 69): ―When our historical consciousness places itself within historical horizons, this does not entail passing into alien worlds unconnected in any way with our own, but together they constitute the one great horizon that moves from within and, beyond the frontiers of the present, embraces the historical depths of our self-consciousness‖ (Gadamer 271). To fuse with the horizon of the

145 aesthetic does not mean to jump naively into accepting everything that the piece of art has to say, ―Such fusion, then, does not entail any concrete agreement. It means merely that we have learned to integrate a certain point of view and have thereby advanced to a new understanding of the issues in question‖ (Warnke 107). The result of this fusion is an increased form of understanding such that, ―Our own prejudices are challenged; our world becomes larger; our perspective more acute as the historical horizon of the text fuses with our own, so that our standpoint shifts and our view expands. Such fusion is how learning takes place; it is what education is all about‖ (Jantzen 294). When we fuse horizons, we expand ourselves in all ways; we expand our understanding, our empathy for other situations and most importantly, for ourselves. Unlike the traditions that we are born into, our horizons are never so fixed and hard to change: ―The historical movement of human life consists in the fact that it is never utterly bound by any one standpoint, and hence can never have a truly closed horizon. The horizon is, rather, something into which we move and that moves with us. Horizons change for the person who is moving‖

(Gadamer 271). Our horizon can easily shift and expand with new experiences and new knowledge (Hekman 195). But in order to understand, we must take risks. We must be willing to temporarily, leave ourselves behind in the play of understanding.

Art achieves its true meaning only when being played. Or, as stated by Gadamer,

―The work of art has its true being in the fact that it becomes an experience that changes the person who experiences it‖ (103). Art, or the aesthetic, facilitates play (Gadamer 46).

There is play in art. There is something profound going on within the context of art. It demands something of the observer. Play is not to be confused with mere subjective taste, for that is not play. Play demands something of us as the player; it stakes a claim

146 on us. What draws us to a particular aesthetic is its appeal to truth: ―The extent that the player recognizes something and also oneself in the art‖ (Gadamer 113). Play is successful when the player loses her/himself in the play going on in the aesthetic

(Gadamer 102). When truly lost in play, subjective responses become temporarily suspended, and it is only when play fails, where the player can return to her/his subjective state again (Ibid.). Therefore, in order to achieve the understanding that comes out of play, we, as players must be willing to lose control over the experience had in art

(How 27). But engaging in play is often not a conscious decision. We are instead, pulled into a certain form of aesthetic, often unexpected. Therefore, according to Gadamer‘s interpretation of philosophical hermeneutics, we become who we are out of art, out of play. Our identity is formed out of experience in relation to art, in relation to the world.

In other words, it changes who we are. True understanding comes as a result of the immersion of self into play. True understanding as facilitated through play leads then to a transformation of self:

The work of art is not something that we experience subjectively, i.e. something which is just a private and temporary enjoyment, it has its ―true being in the fact that it becomes an experience changing the person experiencing it.‖ It changes our usual relations to the world, it transgresses our customary ways of observing, evaluating, knowing and acting in the world. In short, in a more than subjective sense, we are moved by it, and as a result we no longer know ourselves or the world in the same way. In giving ourselves to the play of art we do not remove ourselves from reality but find ourselves absorbed into it more deeply. (How 29)

What existed before the encounter with the aesthetic exists no longer and instead is now something else (Gadamer 111). As Gadamer puts it, ―The transformation is a transformation into the true‖ (112) and, ―The being of all play is always self-realization, sheer fulfillment, energeia which has its telos within itself. The world of the work of art

147 in which play expresses itself fully in the unity if its course is in fact a wholly transformed world. In and through it everyone recognizes that that is how things are‖

(Gadamer 112 emphasis added). When presented to us, the aesthetic, in whatever form, allows us to recognize something in its essence (Gadamer 113). Play, by definition is not to indicate strain, otherwise it would not be play: ―The structure of play absorbs the player into itself, and thus frees him from the burden of taking the initiative, which constitutes the actual strain of existence‖ (Gadamer 105). But it is not a one way monologue; play has a to and fro movement occurring within it (Gadamer 104). Play is active. It is not a goal orientated movement, but just happens naturally, as though by itself. And truth is shown to us in the aftermath of play. It is also interesting to note, that while art is historically situated, when in play it transcends time and place. Therefore, not only do we become lost in play, but the aesthetic also loses its historicity. We see it as now, as the original, as the first time. Every reading, every performance is the original performance. But play is not a random occurrence; it does follow a sense of order and structure, which only allows us to further immerse ourselves in it. For in order for play to be effective, it needs a player.

What play requires in order for it to work is a person and an object of the aesthetic. If art is the subject of play, then the observer of art is the player (Gadamer

102). Art does not exist for or by itself, but is dependent on people to show its true meaning (How 28). As How states, ―[Art] is not a thing in itself, but has its being, or more accurately, comes into being, when it is viewed, read, or listened to by us‖ (Ibid.).

Play is not there to argue something, but is there to show itself to us. But, of course, it cannot show itself without an observer; therefore, play is reliant on someone to

148 participate in the play. The role of the player is to participate in the essence of play: ―The fact that the aesthetic being depends on being presented, then, does not imply some deficiency, some lack of autonomous meaning. Rather, it belongs to its very essence.

The spectator is an essential element in the kind of play we call aesthetic‖ (Gadamer

125). This means to be present. For if understanding is to occur, the player must actively participate in the meaning making that arrives out of the aesthetic: ―The audience of a work of art is not as much a mere receiver of information as a catalyst of content‖

(Warnke 68). But aesthetic participation is often not a conscious choice. We do not, as art observers, make a decision to be open and allow meaning to come in. Instead, the artistic participant is drawn in, sometimes unwillingly, into the play of the aesthetic. And what is meaningful to one person can be irrelevant to another. For the player always relates the aesthetic to her or his own situation:

Gadamer suggests that the view of reality accepted in aesthetic experience is contingent upon the interpreter‘s own situation. In other words, the truth that an audience sees in a work of art is one that is relative to their own concerns. Hence, as I already noted, the audience does not simply submit to the view of reality contained in a work of art but rather participates in what its truth is. (Warnke 71)

The player needs to lose her/himself in play in order for true understanding to occur

(Gadamer 122). To be present in play is to lose oneself or, in a way, to forget oneself and give in fully to the art form being presented (Gadamer 122). As Gadamer notes, art presented as play is not momentarily forgotten, but makes a claim of permanence on the participant‘s life (123). In other words, its effects are lasting. It is only through this participative self-forgetting where one can grasp the full meaning of what is being presented in art.

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Of all forms of art, the tragic can lay claims, cause after-effects and is seen by some scholars as being extra-aesthetic (Gadamer 125). Tragedy has a special effect on the player. According to Aristotle, the reason why the tragic has such an effect on people is because it stimulates the emotions of ‗elos‘ and ‗phobos‘ (Gadamer 126). Loosely translated to mean 'pity' and 'fear', both of these emotions can sweep someone away

(Ibid.). Elos is the misery that consumes us in the face of tragedy and phobos is the fear that runs down our spines in tragic events (Ibid.). And according to Aristotle, as cited in

Gadamer, tragic play effects these emotions, unifying them:

Being overcome by misery and horror involves a painful division. There is a disjunction from what is happening, a refusal to accept that rebels against the agonizing events. But the effect of the tragic catastrophe is precisely to dissolve this disjunction from what is. It effects the total liberation of the constrained heart. We are freed not only from the spell in which the misery and horror of the tragic fate had bound us, but at the same time we are free from everything that divides us from what is. (Gadamer 127)

In other words, the tragic causes a form of reflection that returns us to ourselves only with increased perspective. The emotion stirred up by the tragic is not pity for the character or sadness at the world‘s injustice, but more so, is real pain felt profoundly in our core that we tap into. There is also a connection made by bearing witness to a tragedy that reflects our own state:

The spectator recognizes himself and his own finiteness in the face of the power of fate. What happens to the great ones of the earth has an exemplary significance. Tragic pensiveness does not affirm the tragic course of events as such, or the justice of the fate that overcomes the hero, but rather a metaphysical order of being that is true for all. To see that ―this is how it is‖ is a kind of self- knowledge for the spectator, who emerges with new insight from the illusions that he, like everyone else, lives. (Gadamer 132)

To bear witness and to connect with tragic events similar to our own is to remove the isolation of our own lives. No longer do we feel alone in our plights. We see now that

150 tragic events are not rare, but in reality are common elements of life. It adheres to the

Buddhist mantra that 'life is suffering'. This is not meant to depress or overwhelm people, but is instead a concept meant to free them from their misconceptions that life is supposed to be fantastic all the time. By including examples of the tragic in the classroom, we are able to demonstrate that suffering is everywhere, and that no one is alone in her or his pain. Another positive aspect of the tragic is that we can see how someone else deals with a specific problem. Watching someone else come through her or his pain gives hope to our situation, no matter how tragic the events might be.

Participation in the tragic is not a choice and neither are the effects. By losing oneself in the play of the tragic, the player deepens her/his continuity with her/himself (Gadamer

128). Or, as Gadamer puts it, ―He finds himself again in the tragic action because what he encounters is his own story‖ (Ibid.). For even when encapsulated by play, the aesthetic is never another world, but always relates to the world of the player which becomes more clear and true through the art of play (Gadamer 129). Thus, by suffering along with the characters we learn about our own situations in the world: ―What we acquire through suffering is not knowledge of this or that, but self-knowledge‖ (How 82).

We learn about ourselves and our own limits and finiteness in the world through watching others suffer (Ibid.). For often, those who suffer in art, reflect all too precisely, our own pain and suffering.

A result of play and immersion into the aesthetic is often a form of reflection.

After coming out of the play of aestheticism, as mentioned before, we often come out of it transformed. This period of transformation is often followed by a period of reflection on this new found understanding. What does it mean to reflect and how can it help girls

151 who have been sexually abused as children? As Knapp states, ―The word reflection comes from the Latin root reflectere, meaning to ‗bend back‘‖ (58). It is through reflection where we are afforded the opportunity to look back and think about the events that have transpired. Individuals create new knowledge by reflecting on their past physical and mental actions. It is a time to give meaning to actions. A large part of reflection then has to do with memory. Memory is a formative part of who we become.

If that memory is lost to us, so is a part of our core selves. But what is just as important as memory, according to Gadamer, is the concept of forgetting (14). It is only by forgetting that one can remember, and see things with renewed clarity (Ibid.). Memory, then, is not to be seen as a mere capacity of humans, but an essential element of humanity

(Ibid.):

The quest to remember is a quest to retrieve something from the past, something perhaps forgotten in the noisy din of the present. It is a quest to bring something back, something that may have been lost or severed from our understanding in the severance of the now from the past and the future. What has been severed may need to be brought back, replaced, placed again in our understanding, so that our understanding may remain open to both the legacy of the past and the possibilities of the future, so our understanding may be re-opened. (Mosher 38)

Because all life knowledge, or experiential knowledge, is reflective and, therefore, leads to self-knowledge or an increased understanding of the self: ―When we take the time to reflect, we no longer look at things the same way. A new perspective of awe, wonder, and the occasional ‗aha‘ takes place . . . we know that deeper learning is the result of reflection‖ (Douillard and Hamilton 67). Experience is reflective and so is language

(Gadamer 56). It is our immersion in language that connects us as human beings. And when we are connected, the possibility of collective understanding, a true knowing of the world, can be realized.

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Everything is connected through language. Language is the medium in which we experience life. Without language we would not have a world, because it is through the medium of language, in whatever form, that allows us to have possibilities. It is also an inevitable medium in the process of understanding: ―Language is the universal medium in which understanding occurs‖ (Gadamer 390). Language is, therefore, not a barrier to understanding but the medium in which understanding occurs (How 88). Understanding is thus inseparable from language, because we understand in language:

The phenomenon of understanding, then, shows the universality of linguisticality as a limitless medium that carries everything within it—not only the ‗culture‘ that has been handed down to us through language, but absolutely everything— because everything (in the world and out of it) is included in the realm of ‗understanding‘ and ‗understandibility‘ in which we move. (Gadamer 25)

We are born into a world of language and we meet the world with language: ―Language is the fundamental mode of operation of our being-in-the-world and the all-embracing form of the constitution of the world‖ (Gadamer 3). We are not mere objects placed placidly in the world, but are inhabitants of it. We experience the world through language: ―Language is at the same time a positive condition of, and guide to, experience itself‖ (Gadamer 344). When seeking to describe our experience, we seek to find the right language, or the right word to properly convey the particular experience (Gadamer

417). The words we use do not merely represent our life experiences, but more so shape and give meaning to them (How 86). Language is what characterizes our experiences of the world in which we live (Gadamer 452). In this sense, language can be extremely participatory:

Rather [language] is the continual definition and redefinition of our lives, in the concrete dependencies of work and dominance as well as in all other dependencies which make up our world. Language is not the ultimate anonymous

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subject, discovered at last, in which all socio-historical processes and actions are grounded, and which presents itself and the totalities of its activities, its objectifications, to the gaze of the detached observer; rather, it is the game in which we are all participants. (qtd. in Mueller-Vollmer 284)

Here Gadamer is emphasizing the total and constant involvement of language. It is not something that stands apart from us demanding to be understood, but encompasses us throughout our lives with and beyond our control (How 170). It allows us to experience events not encountered in everyday life through language (How 169). Linguistic experiences resulting through play can be just as effective as active experiences.

Hermeneutics is involved so directly with language because language drives us; the narration of our lives has to be drawn out of us. Therefore, hermeneutics starts within:

―Gadamer expressly claims that language is what enables us to know the world, and the real one at that. It is language that allows things to be understood in their independence from us, as well in their relatedness to us and to other things‖ (How 96). There is also a fundamental connection between language and understanding: ―From language we learn that the subject matter is not merely an arbitrary object of discussion, independent of the process of mutual understanding, but rather is the path and goal of mutual understanding itself‖ (Gadamer 180). The words we choose to use bear meaning. Language also has the power to make the strange familiar, to make the unsaid, said (How 160). And just as important as what is said is what not is said:

Our ability to understand meaning therefore depends in a strong sense on the speculative nature of language, in that meaning of what is said rests crucially on what is not said but nevertheless implied. What is unsaid gives a point or direction to what has been said, to become apparent. Things said and things unsaid are thus the unity that makes meaning happen. (How 99)

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In other words, what we choose to talk about is equally as important and meaningful as what we choose not to talk about. For what we refuse to talk about can never be brought into light, and therefore can never be truly understood (How 122). For it is through language that we come not only to understand our world around us, but more importantly, ourselves: ―Language operates via distinctions and differences, and thereby becomes a medium by which and through the ‗self‘ is constructed‖ (Pinar 53). Another feature of language, which allows us to understand, is the self-forgetfulness of language. When properly used, language recedes into the background, allowing for the subject to illuminate itself fully: ―Language best reveals the nature of a subject when language is not consciously experienced as such‖ (Hoffman 99). This is what Gadamer meant when he stated that ―being that shows itself, shows itself in language‖ (470).

One important point that was not elaborated on much by Gadamer, but picked up on by Habermas is the politicization of language. Although these two theorists are most famously related for the differences and debates, I find this to be too important of a point to just pass by. That being said, it is not my intent to dissect each of their arguments and differences. To speak hermeneutically, I am interested not in the history of these authors‘ lives or their relationship, but what their texts have to say to this topic. For Habermas, who was more interested in critical theory, language use is highly politicized (How 136).

Habermas saw language to be more than a tool, or a world in which we live through, but more so he saw language as a social ‗meta-institution‘ on which all other institutions rest

(How 144):

. . . clearly this meta-institution of language as tradition is dependent in turn on social processes that cannot be reduced to normative relationships. Language is also the medium of domination and social power. It serves to legitimate

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relationships of organized force. Insofar as legitimations do not articulate the power relationships whose institutionalization they make possible, insofar as that relationship is merely manifested in the legitimations, language is also ideological. In that case it is not so much a question of deception with language as such. (Habermas 170)

What Habermas describes here is the non-neutrality of language and how it can be used to favour certain social groups (How 145). We need to see the non-neutrality of language, how it is used to oppress as well as free. As Gadamer himself says,

―oppressive silences‖ are undeniably part of our hermeneutic universe (qtd. in Hoffman

103). Moreover, we need to examine what kind of language is used, and what is left out:

―There are forces that impose themselves on language, as it were, from the outside, such that one cannot rely on language to be the unfettered medium of being. Language must be thought of not only as the medium of communication, but also of power and domination. It not only brings things to light, but keeps things out of sight too‖ (How

145). If, as Gadamer states, things cannot be realized unless brought into language, then there is work to be done regarding the language and dialogue surrounding issues such as rape and child sexual abuse. Misogynist language use has to be challenged in order to overcome the language and topical oppression of social issues that mainly plague women, namely with the topic of child sexual abuse.

It has only been in the last forty to fifty years that women have had a language to describe their experiences (Rich 35). Words like patriarchy, sexism and new connotations for the word rape are all fairly new in our society: ―In viewing language as a powerful force in the shaping of individual consciousness, it highlights the importance of recognizing the political nature of discourse and of placing the struggle for language high on the feminist agenda‖ (Hawkesworth 125). For if language is the embodiment of the

156 world in which we live, then it must be through this form where change can occur

(Hekman 195). As Rich states, ―Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves,‖ for ―our language has trapped as well as liberated us‖ (35). We need to change the language or at least afford opportunities to discuss the usage of patriarchal language structuring.

Regarding language, Hawkesworth describes a rhetoric of vision, to counter the rhetoric of oppression that has used language as a weapon. This is language for freedom:

Within the interstices of language, there exists sufficient ambiguity to allow reflection upon as well as revision and mutation of dominant discourses. Informed by such understandings of language, the rhetoric of vision suggests that the ideological force of language ensures that liberation is inseparable from subversion and that the very porousness of language renders subversion possible. The task of the rhetoric of vision then involves simultaneous acts of discovery and invention: the discovery of gaps within the existing system of language that provide space for the invention of alternative articulations designed to capture what has escaped or defied encodation. (Hawkesworth 122) For if language can be used to oppress, then it can also be used to free people from oppression: ―Freedom implies the linguistic constitution of the world. Both belong together‖ (Gadamer 444). Steinem states that ―there can be no major [social change] without words and phrases that first create a dream of change in our heads‖ (qtd. in Cudd

201). Yes, we are born into a world of language, and yes language is what we come to understand through, but that does not mean that we have to naively accept the language given to us. We have to challenge it. How could change ever occur without challenge?

Girls who have been sexually abused as children need to understand what has happened to them. It is not enough to learn that 1-in-4 girls are sexually abused as children or to toss out other statistics without connecting this information to the aesthetic experience. Girls who have been abused need to understand their isolation, the reasons

157 for their silence, and why they see the world as they see it. These girls need to understand that they are not alone, that there are others, that it is not their fault and that they are not to blame. Adolescent girls who have been sexually abused as children need to understand what has happened to them and what is still happening to them, and that the effects of abuse remain long after the actual abuse has ceased. That connection needs to be established in order for these victimized girls to live the healthy lives that they deserve. It is only through truly connecting with this information where the possibility of transformation from abuse victim to human being is possible. This transformational possibility is an important component of education. Some female child sexual abuse survivors feel that they are alienated from society and themselves, that they have this thing that they cannot name living and pushing itself out through their bodies. It is something that they often cannot name, but that they can feel. Far too often, girls who have been sexually abused as children live out their whole lives in response to their abusive experiences, whether they recognize it or not. Their experiences make up their whole beings and determine their behaviours even without them knowing it. Girls who have survived sexual abuse need an opportunity to understand the abusive experience itself. Before they can process the effects, they need to understand the event. They need to be able to connect with other experiences of child sexual abuse, to hear others‘ voices, so they can create an understanding of abuse itself. Child sexual abuse is a lasting experience, and while it can never be destroyed, it can be overcome. These victims need to have an opportunity to connect with their experiences. Moreover, they need to recognize that there is a tradition to rape and sexual abuse. Abused girls need to make that connection between their personal histories and the history of this tradition. The

158 isolation of abuse needs to be removed for these girls to see that the abuse is not just their burden. They are not the first ones this has happened to. And, unfortunately, they will not be the last. They need to learn and truly understand how the sexual abuse of female children has gone on for so long, and has been tolerated for so long. They need to know this and get this before they can attempt to reduce blame and reclaim themselves. But they need to be able to have access to the examination of this tradition. This is highly relevant to females because most of tradition has been patriarchal in nature. Subtle patriarchy can have immense effects on female child sexual abuse survivors, for patriarchy dictates what we can say, what types of information will be received and what will be refuted. And if the history of abuse tradition has taught girls anything, it is to be silent and not make a scene. And while there is and always has been a tradition of child sexual abuse throughout human history, what there has not been is an accessible recording of this tradition. Therefore, this tradition often goes unnoticed, and the dangerous aspect of keeping things discrete is that often they can be seen as not happening at all. This creates an adverse effect on its many survivors, who can easily come to believe that there is not a history of abuse, that it was instead, a personalized attack. We need access to this tradition, so we can see that it is a historical and ongoing crisis. What is problematic for women, however, is that they have often been left out of studied tradition:

This is how tradition is formed. A way of thinking develops in this discourse through the medium of the printed word as well as in speech. It has questions, solutions, themes, styles, standards, ways of looking at the world. These are formed as the circle of those present builds on the work of the past. From these circles women have been excluded . . . throughout this period in which ideologies become of increasing importance first as a mode of thinking, legitimating and sanctioning a social order, and then as integral in the organization of society,

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women have been deprived of the means to participate in creating forms of thought relevant or adequate to express their own experience or to define and raise social consciousness about their situation and concerns. They have never controlled the material or social means to the making of a tradition among themselves or to acting as equals in the ongoing discourse of intellectuals. (Smith 281-2)

Women never asked to be a part of the tradition of sexual abuse. We were placed there without our consent or approval. Women have often been alienated and used by tradition. We have historically been written into the margins of tradition, instead of into the privileged core text. In this sense, women may not view the concept of tradition in the positive light that Gadamer held it in. But just because things are located within a tradition does not mean that that tradition cannot be challenged. And, indeed, with regards to the patriarchal structuring of child sexual abuse and the silence that is placed upon its victims that tradition needs to be challenged. Now is the time to gain control, to form a new tradition of inclusion.

One of the ways to do so is to engage adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors in the play of the aesthetic where they can temporarily lose themselves in an aesthetic experience. How freeing it would be for adolescent girls, who are often so isolated in their suffering, to learn of others, to connect with similar experiences and to truly know that what happened to them was beyond their control. By experiencing the play of the aesthetic, adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors can have a safe place to temporarily lose the control that they have sought their whole lives to attain. And while this sounds scary, the aesthetic is often a very healthy and safe place to do this. It also provides space for reflection.

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The concept of reflection may seem almost impossible for child sexual abuse survivors. What has happened was so painful that they often literally cannot bear to think about or process what has happened. And that is when memory repression comes in. It is difficult to reflect on what one does not remember. This is when the aesthetic form – in a Gadamerian sense – comes alive with possibilities. A result of immersing oneself into aesthetic play could result in memory triggers for girls who have been sexually abused as children. Memories would, then, constitute themselves into a language for these girls.

It is through this use of language where meaning can be found for adolescent females who have been sexually abused as children. They need to have a language to describe their experiences, and their experiences need to be validated through language, or by being talked about. How can they ever have a chance to understand what has happened to them, when there is no place or space to talk about it, and no language afforded to them? Patriarchal language structuring is so old that it often goes unnoticed in its implicitness in everyday life. But its implications are there: that women are inferior, that the feminine is weak, that subordination is inherent in the female sex, and that sexual abuse is not to be talked about (How 145). The result of this oppressing language is often silence, and, ―For generations women have been silenced in patriarchal order, unable to have their meanings encoded and accepted in the social repositories of knowledge‖ (Spender 181). When we change the language, we change the meanings associated with it.

What is so alluring for me about philosophical hermeneutics is that there is a possibility to achieve understanding and meaning in our everyday lives, even when

161 unintended (How 175). We can open a book or look at a painting or witness a performance for superficial reasons or for instructional reasons, and so on; however, when the aesthetic form is evoked, we come to know the world we live in and ourselves like we never had before. This type of understanding is a connection that happens when horizons meet and the understanding that occurs out of it cannot be attained through statistical documentation or scientific models. When this kind of hermeneutic understanding occurs, an understanding so transformative that you can no longer look at the world in the same way, a form of freedom occurs. Of course, there is no guarantee that true understanding will occur for these victimized girls. But what may be offered – pedagogically and pragmatically – is the creation of a space and time and body and relational experience offered within an aesthetic form in which true understanding may occur. We may provide facilitation for understanding. But as Cudd states, ―Theory reaches few people and so cannot fight oppression alone‖ (202). Therefore, we must make the theories and practices of hermeneutic understanding accessible for adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors, so they may have an opportunity to arise from their oppression. They do not need to understand hermeneutics as a research-inquiry methodology in order to access and live hermeneutic philosophy; all they need is an accessible form of aesthetic offered in a safe, conversational space within which to engage with the text at hand. As Gadamer reminds us all, ―Youth demand images for its imagination and for forming its memory‖ (19). Instead of dictating 'facts' regarding sexual abuse to adolescent girls (although it would be better than the current nothing), it would be more useful for them to arrive at a path of understanding found through themselves, gifted to them through the use of the aesthetic. They need representational

162 and referential—textual images. If they could see/hear for themselves and understand their plight through the use of art, I believe that the understanding achieved would be more transformative and lasting. And, it is here, where the narrative-story text can be used as the ideal form of aesthetic in the education of child sexual abuse. That is why the

‗bildungsroman‘, translated in English as the 'coming of age story', is such a useful tool in self-understanding (Allen 108). The bildungsroman is characterized because of its journey into self-hood.

Therefore, in the next chapter, I will focus on the medium of literature as the mode of aesthetic intended to facilitate true understanding.

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CHAPTER 6: THROWING OUT A LIFE LINE:

THE ROLE OF LITERATURE IN THE EDUCATION OF CHILD SEXUAL

ABUSE

The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.

Muriel Rukeyser, The Speed of Darkness

Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other‘s memory. This is how people care for themselves.

B. Lopez qtd. in Dal Cin, Zanna, and Fong, Narrative Persuasion and Overcoming

Resistance

From the beginning of recorded time, there have always been stories, authored and recorded and shared: ―Stories, like culture and language, have been constant traveling companions to human beings, always and everywhere‖ (Gudmundsdottir 27). Before the printed word, stories were recorded on cave walls through drawings, and passed on orally from one generation to the other (Dal Cin, Zanna, and Fong 175-6). These human stories have been used to teach morals and to conduct, to instruct, to warn and to glorify.

Simply, in human evolution, stories are important representations of what it means to be and become. Moreover, stories, interpretation and meaning are directly linked to hermeneutics as a way of understanding meaning-making. Again, ―hermeneutics is rooted in texts‖ (Gadamer 178). Even the word ‗hermeneutics‘, etymologically, names those interpreted meanings (messages) sent from the Greek gods by the god Hermes, who

164 was the appointed messenger of the gods. It was Hermes who was the provider of interpretive knowledge to the mortal race – humans (How 7). It was through Hermes that, as the mythology goes, human beings could attain divine understanding. However, the rigorous evolution of hermeneutics as an interpretive methodology began through the classical discipline of translating and understanding biblical texts. Hermeneutics, contemporary hermeneutics, has now evolved to encompass all forms of texts – literary, aesthetic, and transactional and so on, but I will remain focused on the use of the novel as a form of aesthetic, which I find to be most useful in understanding the complexities of child sexual abuse.

Even in this modern age of online information sharing and networking and of pop culture, the novel remains a relevant form of aesthetic, and is my chosen medium for attempting to link my topic – female child sexual abuse – with hermeneutic understanding and the curricular use of literature. There are a multitude of reasons why literature, especially the novel, is what I conceive to be the ideal art form to premise the discussion of child sexual abuse. First, reading a text offers a sustained and more personal experience with the aesthetic than other forms of art. Even when silently reading, an individual‘s experience held in literature is more personal than watching a movie or play and, therefore, people are able to be more vulnerable and open to ideas when dealt with alone, because they do not have to worry about conforming to others‘ opinions. Or as Gadamer states, ―Reading is a purely interior mental process‖ (153).

Simply, reading activates the imagination. Also, because it takes several days or weeks to read and discuss a novel, when it is being taught in a class, the length of the aesthetic experience itself is drawn out. Potentially, this gives students more time to grapple with

165 understanding and to transport themselves into the world of the narrative (Dan Cin,

Zanna, and Fong 180). Another aspect of the novel which would be most helpful to students, and especially female adolescent child sexual abuse survivors, is that they can bear witness to characters playing out life‘s themes. Therefore, students can be afforded an opportunity to see how someone else works through a life issue or problem. But even though the novels are about someone else‘s life, readers create images that are akin to one‘s own experience. Unlike films, drawings, paintings or other visual art forms, novels allow one – the reader – to create her or his own contextually-relevant visual imagery, making it easier to insert oneself and one‘s life into the story. Readers of texts are, therefore, able to imaginatively create their own world and images out of the words and narrative worlds provided. This narrative invitation, I believe, can be very beneficial for both abuse survivors and non-abused persons in the facilitation of learning, because, ―As students exercise their imaginative capacities, they gain access to new perceptions and possibilities of human experience. They may discover their potential for new understandings and see new possibilities for themselves and others‖ (Thomas and

Mulvey 243). Through the freedom of imaginative images, students can insert themselves into the narrative at an increased capacity than those invitations afforded by visual aesthetics such as still (paintings, photographs) and moving images (films), where the images are already provided and thus actually may render the imagination passive.

Through the medium of the novel, then, students, and especially girls who have been sexually abused as children, may have a chance of coming to understand the narrative- framed world – past, present and future.

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Novels are not only a way for readers to escape reality, but can conversely engage reality – thus, the novel is naturally a didactically conversational medium. Novels could be a way to avoid pain, but more often they are a way of confronting it (Lesser 21):

Reading is a means of dealing with our most urgent problems, even those we ordinarily shun. The greatest fiction poses these problems in their most essential terms. It gives form to our most fleeting impulses and fully discloses their consequences and ramifications. When we read fiction, moreover, we are ordinarily relaxed and secure, so that we can see things that might elude us at other times. In imagination we can experiment, try out various approaches to our problems, and alter this or that circumstance to discover what results ensue. It would be a serious error to suppose that psychic activity of this sort is without value because it is largely unconscious. (Lesser 55)

In other words, fictional texts provide readers with word-images often reflecting with increased focus on facets of our lives and gives shape to what are most often informative interactions between feeling, thinking and doing, such that, ―Fiction objectifies our problems: it translates what was internal and amorphous, or too close to us to be seen clearly, into something outside ourselves and easy to perceive: a series of images delineating a specific action, its causes and its consequences‖ (Lesser 151). The things we repress, what we try to forget is also often brought to light in the medium of fiction.

And although this exploration and unconcealment may sound scary, there is a sense of safety in confronting issues in this manner. By subjectively objectifying problems, there is a certain amount of distance created in novels by knowing that we, as readers, are but witnesses to the actions happening in a story. This presence of this objective distancing is relevant for adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors, especially those who have repressed memories of their abuses, because,

Conflicts which arouse a great deal of anxiety are often repressed. Objectified, without being acknowledged they can be confronted—a gain of the utmost importance—and the fear they inspire can be cathartically relieved.

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Objectification provides the conditions which must be met for us to ventilate our most significant problems—a degree of detachment, a measure of security. (Lesser 152)

Therefore, most novels provide an examining space and a distancing from life. Although we are bound to the story through the concept of hermeneutic play and an affiliation or knowing of the struggles that the characters are faced with engages us, it is not exactly us, and there is reassurance in knowing that the story, ultimately, is fictitious (Lesser 178).

And if and when the plot becomes too much like our lives, the characters too reminiscent of ourselves, we have the option to put down the novel for awhile and detach – physically and emotionally.

Although the characters and plots of novels may be fictitious, novels are highly didactic with layers of truths and meanings interwoven throughout the plot lines. And even though the premise of the novel is fictitious, it can access multiple layers of truth

(How 25): ―[Scientific knowledge] represents only one possibility for edification and that by taking it as the model of knowledge in general we undermine the cognitive potential contained in history, literature and those human sciences that are not methodologically formulated‖ (Warnke 160). Novels offer a way to learn and it is even stated in the

Alberta English Language Arts Program of Studies, Senior High as one of the main targets of literature use in the classroom. According to the Alberta English Language

Arts Program of Studies, literature is used so students may,

Experience, vicariously, persons, places, times and events that may be far removed from their day-to-day experiences. Literature invites students to reflect on the significance of cultural values and the fundamentals of human existence; to think about and discuss essential, universal themes; and to grapple with the intricacies of the human condition. The study of literature provides students with the opportunity to develop self-understanding. They imagine the worlds that

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literature presents and understand and empathize with the characters that literature creates. (1)

Because of the narrative structure of the novel, as readers we are more able to personalize and identify with characters and are given a glimpse inside the untold story:

Stories invite us to come to know the world and our place in it. Whether narratives of history, present experience, or the imagination, stories call us to consider what we know, what we hope for, who we are, and what and whom we care about. Stories have a certain engaging power—a ring of truth; they enable us to ―become the friends of one another‘s minds‖ in the ever-increasing circles of inclusion. (qtd. in Witherell 40)

There is also something about the nature of fiction, across time that allows its authors to present and discuss the most controversial and taboo topics in a way that non-fiction does not allow. Authors have used the fictional medium for centuries as a way to broach the controversial and to break open topics otherwise avoided in society.

Simply, fiction has often been used as a way to broach controversial topics – yes, such as abuse. Before the separation of church and state, and even after, authors feared having their works of literature censored by ecclesiastical or state authorities, which could result in prison sentencing, a reason why many authors in that era wrote under pseudonyms (Courtney 34, 136). However, writers turned to the novel as a way to express themselves and because the fictional novel was labelled as being ‗untrue‘, authors could use this medium to break open once closed content. Topics/issues that were once too taboo to write about such as racism, miscegenation, and rape were broken open for discussion through the use of the narrative. But it is not only the authors that benefit from the fictitious medium as a form of expression, but the readers as well, as they are afforded an opportunity to bear witness to controversial social topics that are generally hidden from society at large. Before, if a child sexual abuse survivor needed

169 help or had a question to ask about the post abuse effects that manifest in an abuse survivor, she may have had to first disclose the abuse in order to receive the help she needs. Even if she did not formally disclose, posing a question could imply abuse or disclosure, as sexual abuse is often personalized. And as thoroughly discussed in previous chapters, disclosure is often easier said than done. But with literature, there is a way to ask questions indirectly, through the characters: ―One of the advantages of the narrative metaphor is that it opens up fresh ways to talk about the intimate, daily struggles of young people and teachers to create meaningful and satisfying lives in the midst of institutional demands and pervasive social forces‖ (Winslade and Monk viii).

By using the novel and its characters as a metaphor for life—for an abuse survivor‘s life—it becomes an easier way to broach the topic. Of course, as a feminist, I would want nothing more than for a girl to stand up, secure and confident, and to announce her abuse, without having to risk her reputation, but this is often an unrealistic portrayal of high school life or most adolescent lives inside or outside school grounds. So, I am proposing we – caring adults – begin in a safer place – a place where one may grow an inner voice and ask how this or that character survived and healed after being sexually abused as a child.

There is something about the fictitious medium that creates comfort around usually uncomfortable topics. That is not to say that feelings of discontent do not arise in readers, but topics that were once too horrific to even mention, gain a voice through fiction. It can also be an easier way to enter into the topic conversationally for those teachers and students whose lives have not been affected by child sexual abuse yet want to provide a forum for the topic of child sexual abuse to present itself. Often people are

170 afraid of what they do not understand. And it becomes easier to just hate something at a distance than to try to approach it, unearth it, and attempt to understand it. I think that is how most adults feel about child sexual abuse. But stories blur that taboo and awareness line. It is a way to broach the personal without the horrific images that come with true accounts of abuse. After all, it is just a story. Or is it?

In order to find didactic meaning in novels, the reader/learner must be open enough to put the basis of their understanding in another‘s hands. That is why I spent so much time learning to understand hermeneutics – it speaks to the assumption awareness and possibility of conversational understanding. Just as a text‘s meaning transcends its authorship, so does how we, as readers, perceive its meaning. Once a moment, or a glimpse is made aware, in a novel‘s plot, or mood, or imagery or characters, we cannot give it back. No longer is what is written seen simply as a form of expression, but through hermeneutical inquiry, textual representations can now be seen as a form of truth

(Gadamer 296). As Gadamer states, ―A text is not understood as a mere expression of life but is taken seriously in its claim to truth‖ (Ibid.). When we truly understand, truth is revealed to us. So what is truth? As How states, ―Truth in this other sense refers to ‗an event of dis-closure,‘ an occurrence that reveals something in a new light, that opens up to show it in its true coherence‖ (How 30). Not every experience of art/aesthetics is based on purely subjective responses. But the relevancy of the novel‘s topic to one‘s life experience constitutes what actual form of knowledge will transpire since, ―No text and no book speaks if it does not speak the language that reaches the other person‖ (Gadamer

358). Textual experiences, then, are learning experiences where claims to truth are found

171 and confronted (Warnke 66). But the truth revealed depends on the experiences – positive and negative – we have had in our lives:

Rather, if works of art are true they must be true for specific communities of interpreters and thus must speak to their concerns. In understanding a work of art we therefore do not understand its truth as an unchanging representation of what a given object ―really‖ is; we rather understand its truth for us or from our point of view. (Warnke 74)

Therefore, there is no one singular piece of truth buried in a text that we must all try to seek out and agree on. What is true for one person might not reflect relevancy for another: ―We have seen that both Bildung and experience involve the virtue of openness and thus preclude an epistemological concentration on ‗the truth,‘ favoring instead a sensitivity to the multiplicity of possible ‗truths‘‖ (Warnke 159). There is truth in art, and ―its truth lies ultimately in what its audience find there when they are part of the play‖ (How 33). According to Gadamer, ―The truth art provides us with in the end, is true knowledge of ourselves‖ (qtd. in How 33). Texts are lasting expressions of life

(Gadamer 389). When we read to try to understand, when we read for meaning, we are intending to understand the text itself, not the creator of the text. Or as stated by

Gadamer, ―It is the very claim of literary hermeneutics that meaning is brought from the text itself‖ (196-7).

The movement of time in a novel also enhances understanding for readers. The novel allows us the rare opportunity to view a situation, most often, from conception to resolution, something that is rarely afforded in our real lives (Lesser 169). When caught up in a situation, it is common to feel stuck in time, making it difficult to envision the future. It is even more difficult to postulate life without the impending agony that the problem poses on daily living. It is in this seemingly immovable essence of time where

172 life can be most trying. But the swift, telescopically-tuned movement of time in a novel can bring relief and value to those in pain because they can witness a synopsis of life as a concrete whole, instead of in bits and pieces that most often mirrors reality (Lesser 169).

In other words, ―So a story helps us to overcome the limitations of our eyes, minds and memories and see in a single instant the connections among events sprawling over decades of time‖ (Ibid.).

So, why focus on reading? And, moreover, what happens to us as we read? I have already discussed the hermeneutical concepts of play, horizons and the role that language plays in advancing understanding, but there is more. Reading opens up worlds of possibilities and knowledge and information that might have previously been beyond our awareness or capabilities to acquire. As we read, we simultaneously live what we were previously unaware of and, ―Rather, all reading involves application, so that a person reading a text is himself part of the meaning he apprehends. He belongs to the text he is reading. The line of meaning that the text manifests as he reads it always and necessarily breaks off in an open indeterminacy‖ (Gadamer 335). Texts, and the process of reading and experiencing texts, have a special place in hermeneutical theory, because hermeneutics was first created for the purpose of understanding word-texts (Gadamer

393). Texts offer us a world, either familiar or unfamiliar, to experience. Texts speak to us and our situations – real and imagined (Gadamer 467). When we read, we read to experience and inform and to understand ourselves and our situations:

We read to be read, to hear ourselves read back by the text in a new way. We understand the world so we may understand our place within it. What we create in an event of understanding includes a new understanding of ourselves. We are transformed in an event of understanding. We become something in

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understanding the events of our lives. We become someone new, someone more fully ourselves. (Mosher 47-8)

When we read and fall into the movement of play, hermeneutically, we experience a transportation that leads to understanding ourselves in a way in which we may never have before. And anyone who can read can have a textual hermeneutic experience; this is especially true with all narrative texts because of the usually accessible form of writing that appears in narrative-based novels. When reading the written word, the language exists purely for itself, without verbal tones of expression or connotations to taint its meaning (Gadamer 394). Because of its detachment from verbal emotions (except for our inner reading expressive voices), written texts then provide the reader with the authority and agency to make her/his own meaning out of the text (Gadamer 396). And reading is essentially, making meaning with the text: ―Whether resistant to and/or accommodating to the positions offered them, readers are still materially affected by what and how they read‖ (Gaskell and Willinsky 104). The reader takes what is important to her/him (based on learning, experiences, thoughts, feelings, intentionality, and so on), not just as another‘s opinion, but as a possible claim to truth (Gadamer 396). As readers, we interpret the text‘s meaning based on our own preconditions or assumptions, on our own historical experiences; when we do this, and we all inevitably do, the text then speaks directly to us (Gadamer 399). This relationship between ‗I and text‘ creates a place for understanding and as Gadamer states, ―Reading the text, is thus the highest task of understanding‖ (392). If we delve into the subject matter that calls out to us, and we pursue it to attain its meaning, understanding will be brought forth (Gadamer 460). As readers, we are able to select stories/narratives that shed meaning onto our lives and are

174 strangely drawn into the familiar. If there were no readers, there would be no books: ―A story isn‘t a story unless it finds an appreciative audience. The function of an audience is to hear the story as it is produced and to respond to it‖ (Winslade and Monk 96).

Therefore, readers are necessary to novels, and indeed novels are necessary to readers – there exists a reciprocal reciprocity whereby personal meaning and the story interpretively depend on the reader as much as the reader is dependent on the text to illuminate meaning into her/his life world.

In order to make sense of our experiences, we must interpret them. Narrative learning can help people to interpret the world around them:

The basic principle is that narratives help us interpret the world. Values and narratives and interpretive tools that constitute a practical, but also highly selective, perspective with which we look at the world around us. We use narratives to make sense of facts, whether they are various kinds of texts or curriculum or instructional practices, from the moment we first walk into a school. (Gudmundsdottir 29)

As we engage with the novel, and we engage with interrupting the text, we engage in interpreting our lives. All reading requires interpretation and as readers we are the interpreters. As textual interpreters we bring with us our own unique experience, which always affects our reading of a text. It is through interpretation where we may find, or even be found by, understanding (Gadamer 466). Interpretation takes place as a response to the questions asked by the text (Gadamer 467). Or, as stated by Gadamer, ―Thus the dialectic of question and answer always precedes the dialectic of interpretation. It is what determines understanding as an event‖ (467). Interpretation is not stagnant, but is a continual movement between the text and the interpreter (Jantzen 287). Of course all interpretation depends on the interpreter, and in that context, all interpretation becomes

175 speculative (Gadamer 468). As readers, we use our own history and past experiences that factor into our understanding of a text. Interpreting a text is not about finding a singular meaning intended by the author; instead it is to seek meanings that are relevant to us, as interpreters:

We never come upon situations, issues or facts without already placing them within some context, connecting them with some other situations, issues or facts and, in short, interpreting them in one way or another. The parameters of these interpretations, moreover, derive from our circumstances and experience and these circumstances and experiences are always already informed by the history of the society and culture to which we belong. (Warnke 168-9)

The beauty of the novel is that we will most likely always find something of ourselves again and again in the textual reading-interpretive experiences. Someone who understands does so by being drawn into the text and its meaning (Gadamer 484). It is our past experiences that serve as a guide to interpretation. It is merely impossible to expect to remove our past knowledge from our role as interpreters because it is our past that guides our interests to even select a certain text or truth (Gadamer 398). When we understand a text, we search for meaning that is relevant to us and our situation. And when we find it, we are captivated by it, held by it, with the possibility of transformation.

Thus, we may read and re-read or look for other texts that are connected by content, theme or situation and so on. Thus, as interpreters searching for meaning, there is no form of understanding that is separate from ourselves and our own experiences; and, there is no understanding free from our own prejudice (Gadamer 484). For to interpret a text means to bring our own prejudices and truths into play so the text‘s meaning can be brought forth as our meaning (Gadamer 398). Therefore, interpretation is not a way to understand, but instead, plays a part in how we understand: ―Here aesthetic experience is

176 not a question of seeing our lives or an object in terms the work of art offers. We rather bring the work of art into our world and interpret it from the point of view of our own concerns‖ (Warnke 71). And, ironically, as we learn about ourselves via textual interpretation, we are also engaged in the activity of becoming anew – indeed, novel.

According to Gadamer, there is a direct correlation between understanding, interpretation and application (How 132). Although they are indeed connected, they do not follow a sequential order, nor do they always happen one at a time, as ―understanding happens at the moment when we know how something applies to our contemporary circumstances‖

(How 59). Contrarily, the act of understanding is always the act of application, because everything we come to understand, we apply it to our own situation, which is a form of interpretation (How 132). But what do we find meaningful? The answer lies in the question.

Sometimes, the easiest way to tell if a text is meaningful to a person is that it nags at her/him, provoking probing questions in her/his head, heart and soul. Texts address us, which incite us to enter into questioning periods (Gadamer 298). Questions are truly opportunities. Questions open doors that were perhaps once closed. Questions are that playful invitation to wonder and wonderment that is the cornerstone to philosophical reflection. And this is where the previously discussed concept of play comes in:

Hermeneutics is concerned with all human experience of the world including the concrete factors of power relationships or politics, work or economics, oppressive silences, desires, and sensuality. We cannot, as Gadamer writes, have experiences without asking questions; thus hermeneutical inquiry, which is the art of asking questions, encompasses all human experiences. (Hoffman 98)

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But when questions arise about a certain topic, the topic then becomes broken open by the very act of questioning itself: ―The emergence of a question opens up, as it were, the being of the object‖ (Hoffman 89). For to pose a question indicates an otherness or a different way of doing things other than what was being done. When we ask a question we invite openness into the topic. When we ask a question, it is because we want to know something. Therefore, questions always foreground knowledge. Or as Gadamer states, ―Only a person who has questions can have knowledge‖ (359). And this is where understanding can truly begin. In order to change, we must question what it is we want to change. For the posing of a question always indicates that there is another truth, perhaps a better truth or a different truth than what we had been taught. And when we can learn of an alternative way of doing something, we can gain access to a form of freedom never felt before. We learn that things are not fixed or written in stone, but that there is another way. But if we ask questions in order to seek an end to questioning, we will not get the response sought. Questions always result in further questions, and it is through this constant state of questioning, where we can most greatly learn about ourselves. Moreover, questions guide our experiences: ―We cannot have experiences without asking questions‖ (Gadamer 356). Asking questions breaks open our experiences, or the topic itself, giving way to the possibility of understanding self-other- world (Ibid.).

So what of these periods of questioning and our negative life experiences?

Negative experiences stay with us, bother us, and keep us up at night, asking ―why?‖

These questions that arise out of negative experiences are important and there is power embedded in the need to discover deeper understandings regarding a particularly

178 bad/negative experience. Asking questions of negative experiences also takes great courage, for it is often harder to ask the questions than it is to answer them (Gadamer

356). And if knowledge is a result of a question – regardless of one‘s relational positivity or negativity – we just have to ask the good inquiry questions. Or as stated by Gadamer,

―To understand a question means to ask it. To understand meaning is to understand it as the answer to a question‖ (Gadamer 368). But in order for questions to be truly answered, they must be asked in a state of openness; we must really want to know the meaningful (full of meaning) answer, and not just to hear our own preconceived notions.

When first presented with a text or piece of literature, we enter into it with our own preconceived notions of meaning. But in order for hermeneutical understanding to transpire, we must, not necessarily put aside all of our beliefs and ideas, but be open to other meanings that may come up out of the text (Gadamer 271). For if we are not open to the text and its meanings, the possibility of deeper and richer understanding will be lost: ―We hold our opinions open to disconfirmation and place them at risk not because we are neutral but, quite the opposite, because we too are interested and invested. The hermeneutic task is to understand the text in terms of its subject matter because it is something that concerns us too‖ (Weinsheimer 167). But being open to new forms of truth means relating them to what we already know or have experienced (Gadamer 271).

We cannot be so blinded by our own opinions and beliefs that we are closed to new ideas and interesting thoughts. The hermeneutical stance, then, is one of constant questioning.

As Gadamer states,

This kind of sensitivity involves neither ―neutrality‖ with respect to content nor the extinction of one‘s self, but the foregrounding and appropriation of one‘s own fore-meanings and prejudices. The important thing is to be aware of one‘s own

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bias, so that the text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one‘s own fore-meanings. (271-2)

The warning that Gadamer is making is that by being mentally or emotionally or conceptually or imaginatively closed, we hinder ourselves from true understanding. Still it is impossible to leave our pasts behind us. As much as our personal history drives us presently, we must be open to new meanings and to give in to the context of play in hopes of better, richer, or different understandings. In order for understanding to occur, we must transpose ourselves into the text via our questions. But this is not a transposition of our ideal selves, the selves we wish we were; no, we must bring our ‗real‘ or present selves, as we are, into the text (Gadamer 304). If we are so sure of our own – that is our ownership – ideas and biases, then understanding will not occur. No, we must bring ourselves as we are, but still be, hopefully, open to change due to the newness or novel- ness of the text. It is the challenge, then to put ourselves into another‘s shoes. By trying to understand others, we will end up understanding ourselves. For all understanding is essentially, self-understanding. When presented with a text, if we have hopes of attaining true understanding, then we must be willing to be open to the ideas that the text asserts.

For when we are open to new ideas and concepts, is when we truly begin to listen. As

Gadamer states, ―Anyone who listens is fundamentally open‖ (361). Therefore, anyone who is open enough to listen has the opportunity to achieve true understanding: ―Anyone who listens makes room for understanding. Listening works to open up understanding and to further it‖ (Mosher 17). We must then listen to the texts that we read, not only as a form of escape, but moreover, as a claim to truth, and as at least an interruption to us offering a new awareness or consciousness.

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I have been playing out the possibility of literature – the novel in particular – and the invitational and interruptive nature of reading, but now I must turn to wonder about what literature and reading could mean for educators to teach or foster openness in their students regarding the topic at hand – child sexual abuse. One of the wonderfully ironic things about adolescents is that they seem inherently, dare one write naturally, for the most part – open. This may seem contradictory considering the high amounts of judgment and the need to conform among teenagers, but at the same time they are on a quest for identity and connection (Pipher 65). Adolescence is mostly marked by the desire to recognize the possibility of individuality, but just the same, they are also seeking a connection, via persons, media, or texts to help them understand what they are going through (Pipher 23-4). But for adolescent girls who have been sexually abused as children, this concept of openness might initially be difficult. Simply, in a hermeneutic sense, to be open is to be vulnerable and not in control, which is a particularly difficult place for child sexual survivors to linger in. But what I am indicating here is that there is something different and differentiating about reading a text – a novel – such that vulnerability and openness is a relative safe place for these girls to experiment with feelings of vulnerability. In the text-reading-question relationship, these girls may learn that it is not always bad to feel vulnerable and they can play around with notions of control and vulnerability by having a dialogue with the text itself. In order to achieve understanding, one has to enter into a conversation based on the questions provoked by the text. But one does not need another person in order to have a conversation because the text speaks to a person – the text/novel invites in a complicated conversation. There is little opportunity, in a text/novel for independent monologues between reader and text.

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It is only through the reader/interpreter of these words scribed, that infuses meaning back into the text (Gadamer 389). The text‘s purpose is to communicate – to open up a certain topic or subject matter into language such that a conversation may develop. The reader‘s job is to be open to the text‘s meaning, and again open may not be the same as vulnerable.

Of course, it would be impossible to talk about textual openness without mentioning the concept of prejudice. Interestingly enough, prejudice is neither the antonym nor the barrier to being open to textual meaning. In contemporary society, the word prejudice has a negative connotation. But before the Enlightenment, the word simply meant ―a provisional judgment that is made before all the components that determine a situation are fully examined, and carried with it both a positive and a negative sense‖ (Hoffman 89). Or, as Gadamer states, a prejudice is ―simply an anticipation of meaning, a foreunderstanding that constitutes the basis for any understanding whatsoever, and that is then reconsidered and confirmed, or altered, in the very process of understanding‖ (qtd. in Hoffman 91). Prejudices can have a positive benefit as well, as they most often determine and direct our topical interests (Hoffman

92). Just because one has endured child sexual abuse does not mean that they do not have prejudices that have been shaped by our patriarchal understandings of abuse combined with the tradition of abuse that we all live in. Some prejudices are so ingrained within our culture, tradition and our subconscious that we are not even aware of them: ―It is impossible to make ourselves aware of our forejudgments as long as they operate unconsciously and unnoticed; however, any knowledge-seeking encounter that is to yield genuine knowledge requires that we open up possibilities and thus put our prejudices at

182 risk‖ (Hoffman 89). And it is often the most hidden beliefs and prejudices that curb our ability to understand: ―It is the tyranny of hidden prejudices that makes us deaf to what speaks to us in tradition‖ (Gadamer 272). Moreover, hidden prejudices towards the unknown often arise out of a reaction to newness: ―Prejudices thus condition our understanding both in what is accepted immediately because it is familiar and in what is disturbing because it is new. In both cases, what one generation believes and assumes is grounded in—as a continuation of or reaction to—what a previous generation has formulated and suspected‖ (Warnke 78). But we all have our prejudices; we just need to be open to challenging them and meeting them with reason in hopes of the liberation ignited by true understanding. For the goal is not to eliminate all prejudices, as that is impossible, but to understand how they come to affect our understanding: ―Thus there is undoubtedly no understanding that is free of all prejudices, however much of the will of our knowledge must be directed towards escaping their thrall‖ (Gadamer 446). Notes

How on the concept of prejudice,

It is something we undergo, something that cannot be finally controlled by us because our prejudgments are not our possessions. They are not things that, as it were, we could get round the front of us in full view. They are what we are before we know it, and in being so are also the positive prerequisites for all our actual understandings and interpretations. We don‘t really know our own prejudgments till we bring them into view in the process of furthering our tradition. (47)

And that is one of the gifts of the written word. The written word enables us to see our prejudices that before were so intrinsic in ourselves that they went unnoticed (Gadamer

298). The only way we can become aware of our hidden prejudices is to continually expose them for what they are, and to challenge our previous ways of thinking (Jantzen

289). For even during the event of play in a text, our own personal history still shapes us:

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―The prejudices of an individual, far more than his judgments, constitute the historical reality of his being‖ (Gadamer 276-77). We cannot forget that. Our history determines what compels us, what drives and interests us into picking up a certain text (Gadamer

300). We are drawn in by the story, by what it has to say to us, to help us in our lives.

One of the intrigues of the novel‘s narrative format is that it most resembles the way we live out our ordinary lives. The capacity to narrate and tell stories is a natural human capacity: ―Each of our lives is a story, a living narrative of existence‖ (Lauritzen and Jaeger 36). Humans are narrative beings, and our lives are told in story: ―Humans are storytelling organisms who individually and socially lead storied lives. Stories are fundamental structures of the human experience dating back to preliterate cultures, and are still retained as a primary mode of modern communication‖ (Lauritzen and Jaeger

35). We all have stories—our lives are made up of a compilation of stories, and it is important to be aware and respectful of that: ―Their story, yours, mine—it‘s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them‖ (Coles 30). Therefore, narrative structure is the natural human structure. But beyond our own personal stories are other stories, steeped in a tradition, that become worldly narratives, a form of status quo (Winslade and Monk 3). These meta-narratives often go unnoticed because they were socialized into us at such a young age, but just because we do not remember the day that we blindly accepted them, does not mean that they do not run rampant in our minds. Often what we think is an individual thought, is a product of these meta-narratives (Winslade and Monk 22). For example, if a student is labelled a problem child, a difficult or unruly child, it can be of no surprise that

184 she will structure her life line to conform to the label given to her, with or without questioning the reasons why she behaves that way. As Winslade and Monk state,

. . . the stories we tell about ourselves, and that others tell about us, actually shape reality. In an important way, stories become the reference points for living. Another way of saying this is that stories do not just describe what we see. They construct what we see. Thus, in schools, stories about what constitutes a successful member of the school community (and, just as powerfully, stories of failure) do not just describe children‘s lives. They actively shape children‘s experiences of themselves and of school. (22)

Therefore, the narrative structure that lies in the novel is a good start in attempting to unravel some of these culturally dominant stories. And the narrative structure also lends itself to minority writers to open up topics often mandated as closed by the dominant group. This opening up of topics may not be something that they intended to do; however, the narrative structure they use is inherently dialogical and conversation- invitational. And as explored previously, I consider female child sexual abuse survivors to be a non-visible minority, who lack a community, and who are shrouded, often, by their own and by this culture‘s topical silences. As those who have historically been silenced and disenfranchised through their early years, child sexual abuse survivors need narratives/stories of survival and they need images of survivorship, and they need models who have found a way to speak out, thus providing these victims with a sense of community, even if that community is fictitious. They need to see that there are others – other victims and other survivors. It is always beneficial to go back to the narrative/story because it is in the narrative structure itself where we as humans best come to understanding and action (Winslade and Monk 3). Or, as Barbara Hardy states, ―We dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate and live by narrative‖ (13). By

185 conveying crucial information in a narrative format, students are best able to understand the meaning of the text, because they do not have to grapple with the structure. This structural-functional relationship appeals to me when working with youth at risk because the structure and language of the narrative is our lifeblood.

When I first entered university and began taking Women‘s Studies classes, I spent the first two years with my jaw hanging open. I started reading about patriarchy and the historical silence of women, and I could not help but wonder why I did not know of this before, and I wondered where this information was when I could have really used it, like when I was a teenager. Of course, the answer was that this knowledge and associated exclusionary practices against women were held in academic essays and articles that are generally not for public consumption. But by the time I was educated enough to take on the language and the format of the academic essay/article I had already lived out a very informed, but very much felt life. I had already learned the hard way about sexism; my university learning was preaching to the converted. So across my early university education, I often wondered if only there was a more accessible way of conveying this much needed information to women and men in a more understandable medium. And there is—the answer lies in the narrative – the story – and the novel. One of the lures of the novel for my topic is that it is an accessible format for youth:

What makes us prize [fiction], however, is not solely its capacity to see our problems more honestly and completely than we usually can ourselves but its capacity to present what it sees in the very language in which we tend to formulate our problems. It offers us something toward which a great deal of our own psychic ability is directed: a faithful, clear, readily-understood view of our actual experiences and the experiences which would be the natural expression of our proclivities. (Lesser 151)

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Children have grown up with stories. They have lived out inherited stories, and they are often storied into existence via grand or large narratives – stories operating at the cultural or societal level. Before children learned to read stories, they were told stories. They saw stories come alive every day. Therefore, the narrative form is as familiar to them as the air they breathe. Children are born into existing narratives with a beginning, middle and end, and the narrative structure also helps children remember the lessons embedded in stories, because they just know and understand the narrative structure (Lauritzen and

Jaeger 36). The novel is an accessible way to educate the young about themselves, others and the world – and with every topic imaginable – because of its structure and functions but also because of its accessible language conventions. That is, the language of the novel is overwhelmingly narrative – dialogical and conversational. In order to follow the flow and structure of life, novels often use ‗real talk‘, or language used in most peoples‘ daily lives. Such language is already inherently playful and this then makes it easier for a reader to give in to the ways of playfulness, to be transported into the text, because the reader, unlike in academic-non-fictional-expository-argumentative-persuasive texts, does not have to grapple with every second word. But it is not only the language that is more accessible in novels, but there is also an accessibility issue with topics when they are held in a fictional way. For centuries, fictional literature has been used to probe into numerous controversies, or to offer utopian solutions. It has often been through the novel, where controversial issues can be best understood, and where those who live in the margins of society can find a representational voice (Lincoln 30). The power of the novel is its ability to engage the reader in vicarious experiences and to transport the reader through time and space and, of course, situations, environments and issues.

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One aspect of literature that was touched on in the previous chapter, but I think needs to be made more evident here, is that the novel provides representational, sensory images of experience. Fictional texts have the gift of often operating as forms of experiential reflections; that is, as a mirror to one‘s own experiences. The power here is that your situation may be mirrored and reflected back at you, but the reflections requires interpretation and understanding: ―Literature is such a mirror. We see personalities reflected there in a myriad of forms. They are of all types and ages; and they live in every conceivable situation. Therefore, we cannot avoid seeing ourselves, our families, and our neighbours reflected there from many perspectives‖ (Porterfield 3-4). So, the power of what I have explored above, again, lives in a reader‘s opportunity to see – to witness – how a representational character lives out a context – and in this case, I am claiming that the trials and effects of abuse could, indeed should, be a context. If, and when, such novels-stories are available to learners in secondary schools, then the topic taboo isolation and silence of sexual abuse may be broken, and perhaps some sexual abuse survivors can be afforded an opening to become aware, vicariously first, then in real time-space later with how they have been used and abused. And, ―The value of stories is that they allow us to enter into an almost infinite number of lives, times, and contexts. They allow us to experience vicariously what we might not want to or are unable to experience in our everyday lives‖ (Gaskell and Willinsky 89-90). In this way, the novel becomes a questioning reflection of life, ―Because story reflects the real world, the conflicts, dilemmas, puzzles, mysteries, and dramas depicted are authentic‖

(Lauritzen and Jaeger 41). One is almost guaranteed to find at least one book or novel that is akin to one‘s experience in the world. And because we are historically theme

188 creating and re-creating beings, the themes that get attended to are deeply human themes.

The abundance of topics that can be checked out of the library or bought gives readers many ways into exploring a particular experience. To have an experience similar to one‘s own, reflected in literature, validates that very experience merely by having it written down (Gadamer 394).

The novel also moves an experience out of the private and into the public realm, confirming its status of importance. The novel may break the isolation of persons by providing a topical voice. This engagement possibility can be empowering. By telling and retelling stories of abuse survival, adolescent girls may have the opportunity to grapple with what has happened to them – ironically, a public story about private abuse wherein a girl may make her private story public. The mere fact that the abuse story is written down and recorded and publically available makes the story less of a personal and isolated issue/problem and instead shifts the topic itself, along with the survivor, into the realm of social importance (Chase 79-80). What might the survivor of sexual abuse learn from a novel? It may be something as simple as – this is just not you; this terrorism and violence and abuse has happened before to many others, and,

Literature, in the main, cuts slices of life from many kinds of patterns of raw experience. It portrays the way in which the writer perceives, imagines, feels about, and reacts to specific situations and relations as he experiences them, and affects the reader only in so far as it strikes a kindred note in the latter‘s experience of similar relations and meanings. The likelihood is very great that the reader does not command the means of expressing what [she] feels, of symbolizing the situations and clothing them with meaning to the same extent as, or with the clarity of, the writer; and for the reason that [she] is not able to present the picture to [herself] as clearly as the writer does, [she] gladly accepts the literary symbols presented by the latter. (Porterfield 105)

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Seeing one‘s life experiences represented and reflected back through literature brings meaning to the experiences. No longer is the experience isolated and controlling, but one‘s commonality is validated.

Again, I have written about the importance of the secondary school as a site of learning and as a site of identity formation for adolescents. Educators and helping adults must not assume, even though secondary students may seem vibrant and self-confident, that they have enough of a self-concept as to properly articulate their stories – especially if those stories are riddled with pain. Self-realization is often a rare gift for most of us, and may be especially illusive for adolescents. But I truly believe that when adolescents are afforded an opportunity to read about someone who has reflected on experiences similar to their own, they can at least have the possibility to imagine a life different and differentiated. And for sexual abuse survivors, there may be an opportunity in the recognition and the invitation of that reflective recognition to exercise an agency previously stolen from them as authors of their own stories. It becomes irrelevant to the reader that the characters they are engaged with are fictitious—this awareness does not impede any connection with the characters. For even if the characters are not real people, the stories are quality-real and the problems or issues that the stories come to represent and open up are often all too real. So even though the reader is aware that the events in a novel are fictionalized, they very well could engage with the events as real to them (Dal

Cin, Zanna, and Fong 178). And it is this identification with and through the characters and their situations and contexts that readers often come to understand. If readers are provided with not only situations, but also characters that are relevant to their experiences, their ability to attain understanding is increased:

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A visceral bonding occurs between ourselves and the characters. As the characters in the story are confronted with circumstances, trials, and epiphanies, we share in their emotions: we triumph in success, cry in grief, feel joy in accomplishment and fear in anticipation. We take ownership of their story as our story. Through stories, learners can experience other lives vicariously and develop an awareness and understanding of their own lives in the process. (Lauritzen and Jaeger 36)

But this is more than just subjective taste. The reader does not even have to like the characters to identify with them; often it is the darker aspects of characters that are revealed to the reader that come to be the most beneficial in terms of awareness. What we, as readers, try best to hide within ourselves can be brought out through identification with protagonist and/or antagonist characters. Character identification can directly affect the experience of reading: ―. . .identification may not only lead to empathy and cognitive rehearsal of the beliefs, but it may also directly impact behavior and behavioral intentions by changing self-efficacy beliefs and making specific attitudes more accessible‖ (Dal

Cin, Zanna, and Fong 180). By witnessing another character take on challenges and experiences similar to our own we, as readers, are invited to face our isolation:

As spectators we discover, or are reminded, that others share the tendencies of which we are ashamed—many others, not only the fictional characters and the writer who created them but, as we also sense, the faceless others who quicken to his work. If so many understand and share our weaknesses, we unconsciously reason, we are not so different from our fellows as we had supposed and we need not and should not judge ourselves too severely. (Lesser 263)

With respect to child sexual abuse, we may recognize, in literature, that others, even fictional others, have endured what we once thought was our plight alone, and we can in hope, lessen the guilt and suffering that we have placed upon ourselves: ―At whatever age, you may find yourself reflected in one or more of the many personality types, which are enumerated among the concepts of the master index, as depicted by specific pieces of

191 fiction or in dramas. There you are, looking at yourself in the very pages before you—a clear picture drawn by an author who never saw you‖ (Porterfield 7). Survivors now know that others have endured it too. They know now they no longer need to be alone in pain.

Therefore, not only do stories validate experience by representing it in an aesthetic or artful way, but moreover stories help make sense – and through questioning promote understanding – of a particular experience. Often, narratives function as a way to understand an inexplicable experience: ―Narration is a major way in which people make sense of experience, construct the self, and create and communicate meaning‖

(Chase 79). By reading stories of child sexual abuse from the point of view of a survivor, or a witness, adolescent girls may begin to attempt to make sense of what has happened to them: ―Stories are, thus, explanatory devices that help us make sense of the random and inexplicable happenings of everyday life. People aren‘t characters until stories make them so. Events aren‘t grouped in logical chains until a storyteller groups and imposes logic on them‖ (Lauritzen and Jaeger 34). Still, often the abuse was so horrible that these abused girls are unable to begin to process what has happened to them, because they cannot physically or mentally or emotionally or situationally bear that amount of personal pain. But if they are afforded an opportunity to witness another girl‘s struggles with her experiences of abuse, it can make it easier to begin to process such pain, and begin to make meaning out of what happened:

When we listen carefully to the stories people tell, we learn how people as individuals and as groups make sense of their experiences and construct meanings and selves. We also learn about the complexities and subtleties of the social worlds they inhabit. We gain deeper understandings of the social resources

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(cultural, ideological, historical, and so forth) that they draw on, resist, and transform as they tell their stories. (Chase 80-1)

Reading texts and listening to our engaged, often questioning conversation with texts, teaches us something that we cannot learn from ourselves if we are trapped in our fear and isolation. Through a, and I believe this needs to be an educator guided – taught – exploration and immersion into the text, meaning or, speaking hermeneutically—true understanding—can occur. What is so integral to this form of invitational understanding is that it occurs almost naturally in us as learners because of the novels narrative structures and functions and language and, ―Meaning is not conveyed but evoked‖

(Wheatley 11). It is only through grappling with meaning where transformation may occur in the lives of female adolescent child sexual abuse survivors:

Stories, we noted, are often credited with changing us in ways that have relatively little to do with knowledge per se. They leave us with altered states of consciousness, new perspectives, changed outlooks, and more. They help us to create new appetites and interests. They gladden and sadden, inspire and instruct. They acquaint us with aspects of life that had been previously unknown. In short, they transform us, alter us as individuals. (Jackson 9)

Full transformation of a child sexual abuse survivor into a fully feeling, unguarded and healed human being cannot take place by the offering of novels-stories alone. But exposure to such literature, in a secondary school classroom setting, facilitated constructively and ethically and tactfully by an adult educator may ignite the desire, in a victim-survivor to begin the process of life transformation. By providing representational and fictional images of other girls who have survived child sexual abuse, not only may the survivors begin to grapple with what has happened to them, but so will those persons who have not been sexually abused. This transformation needs to eventually happen on several levels – the personal and private, and the public and political.

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The current ominous statistic is that one out of every three children will either experience, be exposed to, or witness sexual abuse (The Canadian Badgley Royal

Commission 175). So, the concern here in this thesis is not just with the current victims of female child sexual abuse. One of the reasons why I selected the narrative-novel as a mechanism, as a transporter vehicle, to enable the recognition of and understanding of this topic is because I believe the novel adheres to my understanding of hermeneutics and, as such, I believe hermeneutics is an ethically powerful means to the ends I covet – the eradication of all female and male sexual abuse. Simply, I believe we are all affected and effected by child sexual abuse. Simply, I believe we are all complicit in this epidemic. And I believe that it is the power of the narrative that will, possibly and potentially, set us all free. Students can be provided with an opportunity to also see how everyone is affected by the current tragic story be they teachers, parents, school peers- friends, or school counsellors. Each and every life has been marked by abuse. By reading and pedagogically engaging with narratives, we may catch a glimpse into an other‘s fictionalized life and we must all become aware – be totally aware of the real – of the realities that exist for many, many girls who, through no fault of their own other than being born female become objectified targets of abuse. Stolen are their identities, their lives, and their voices. They live, daily, stories riddled with silence. Through the emotions, the images, the language and the characters of the novel that arise out of the structural -functional details of the narrative, we are invited to feel – something, anything

– preferably empathy towards what we all, at some level, know but often live in denial of, and thus seemingly do not know. Because the stories of abuse are named by cultural- societal grand narratives as untrue, where are the counter-narratives? Information

194 regarding child sexual abuse is currently not available in the province of Alberta‘s

CALM (Career and Life Management) or English curriculum. But, a cornerstone of the

English Language Arts curriculum in Alberta is literature, generally and the novel specifically. However, even in this literature opportunity, as I have documented previously, almost every contemporary and historical difficulty and atrocity and inhumanity to humanity is present in the literature – except child sexual abuse. It is as if there is operating a built-in form of political correctness and censorship regarding this topic when it comes to selecting literature to address complex and difficult issues. My claim is simple – if only we could, as adults, as educators, as helping professionals include narratives/stories depicting the atrocities and impacts of child sexual abuse, we may save untold lives. Everyone needs to have knowledge of and understanding of this topic:

Many problem-bound stories gather momentum because people adjust to the growing discomfort of problems that increases slowly over time. Because people are so close to problems, they often fail perceive the trends in which their circumstances are embedded. When a problem trend is carefully storied, most people gain a much fuller recognition of the circumstances. They are in a better position to notice changes in the effects of the problem story upon them. Moreover, noticing such changes, even tiny ones, tends to inspire greater willingness to address their circumstances in ways that they were not able to do before. (Winslade and Monk 27)

For those in the classroom and in the world whose lives have not been touched by child sexual abuse, there are benefits for them as well. There is an uncomfortable feeling associated with the topic and the victims of child sexual abuse. And I would not describe this feeling as empathetic. In order to empathize with another‘s situation, we have to bring about a sense of closeness to the topic, the ability to imagine ourselves in another‘s shoes. Because of the personal and horrific nature of child sexual abuse, there is a lack of

195 empathy towards the victims. Because to be truly empathetic implies that we have to really understand about what the other person has undergone, and for a large part of our current society, this is just too difficult a task to undertake. Instead, it is often easier to focus, with intense rage, on the ‗sickness‘ of the perpetrator, with little attention placed on the victim. It seems to be, in a societal sense, just easier that way. But with the constructive use of teaching-learning novels, they may provide us, all of us, with a way to understand and thus to actively engage in acts of empathy:

Narrative allows us to enter empathetically into another‘s life and being—to join a living conversation. In this sense, it serves as a means of inclusion, inviting the reader, listener, writer, or teller as a companion along on another‘s journey. In the process we may find ourselves wiser, more receptive, more understanding, nurtured, and sometimes even healed. (Witherell 40-1)

It is a rare thing for an adolescent child sexual abuse survivor to feel that she has a way to understand herself, others and the world, but by having access to narratives/stories that represent her experience means she feels less personally isolated, and all those people who fear her and her story may also have opportunities to come to grasp empathetically what it might be like to be her. As Lauritzen and Jaeger state, ―No curriculum can be of value if it is not centered on the lives of students‖ (294). Agreeing with this sentiment, I find that narrative learning re-centres the focus on the students:

Finally, it is to encourage the practice of reading production, meaning-making, as the focus of literature and curriculum whereby ‗our reading of the text becomes curriculum,‘ which draws our attention to the variety of reading, the partiality of any one view and our implications in historical social relations. (qtd. in Gaskell and Willinsky 96)

With our human familiarity with narrative structures, contentious or controversial topics can be best handled by through evoking such narratives: ―The curriculum should employ a method for broaching the most essential human questions and beliefs and must be

196 organized in such a way that the learners will adopt these as their own important issues‖

(Lauritzen and Jaeger 67). Past studies of literature used in the classroom conclude with the recommendation that ―students will be more apt to understand the human condition and the significance of events if they become personally linked with the events and characters of the past and present‖ (Lauritzen and Jaeger 39). And that is the goal of using literature pedagogically and that is to try to create some communicative understanding of our ‗human conditions‘. With the topic of child sexual abuse, it is so important that it be truly understood, and considering the barriers to even accessing the topic that I encountered - the issue of access is truly an important one - first and foremost.

There are so many profound essays and academic articles on abuse that I have read throughout my graduate studies; unfortunately, most of the information would be lost to adolescents because of the academic language used. But narratives/stories alive within novels may offer a way towards understanding, and within an accessible format the engagement with meaning-making is essentially available:

Stories are the most effective tools for making their content meaningful. They are also effective ways of introducing the concepts of otherness by building into their structure notions of causality, logical relationships, and the movement of time. The potential of fictional stories for clarifying the concepts of almost any curriculum area should not be underestimated or ignored. (Egan 120)

Janet Miller on the concept of narrative curriculum writes:

There may be no achievement score raised, no journal entry written, no homework assignment or worksheet completed, no behavioral objective met, no Regent exam passed, no ―excellent student‖ certified as a result of a particular teaching and learning experience. And yet something of value has happened in that classroom. (Sounds of Silence 239)

A narrative based curriculum, as it specifically relates to child sexual abuse, offers educators a legitimate way to educate for personal, political and social growth:

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At a time when so much teacher educational research focuses on standards and on teaching as a set of delivery systems, with measurable and predictable ―outcomes,‖ autobiography, biography, and narrative as educational practices and methodologies generate material and processes that we educators can use to dislodge unitary notions, both of ourselves and our voices and of prescriptive systems of teaching and learning. Such work could also enable us to acknowledge that the processes of teaching and learning always interrogate the unknown—that is, the meaningful unknown. (Miller, ―Biography‖ 234)

Obviously, I believe a narrative curriculum is extremely beneficial to the topic at hand, but more importantly to the young women living in silence – voices stolen, identities crushed. Narrative pedagogy links the academic and the lived, and offers an intellectual and emotional way to process life‘s complexities: ―It is such moments of connection, of truthfulness, of wonderful fit, of ‗a long fierce peace‘, that stories can provide, attaching us more deeply to our surroundings, to others, to our own history and future possibility.

Perhaps these moments are the real texts of teaching and learning‖ (Witherell and

Noddings 42). The material, the literature, the novels, could be there, and the pedagogy of a narrative curriculum could be learned and obviously the needs are there embodied in these adolescent and young women. I think I have made a case for how and why sexual abuse needs to faced and voiced into the classroom.

I believe there is a plethora of accessible, age appropriate novels that deal with abuse issues. The three novels that I feel are best apt to result in deeper understandings of sexual abuse, where an experiential connection is at its peak are: Maya Angelou‘s autobiographical I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), Ann-Marie MacDonald‘s

Fall on Your Knees (1997), and Wally Lamb‘s She‘s Come Undone (1992). Maya

Angelou‘s autobiographical tale marks the secrecy of child sexual abuse. Anne-Marie

MacDonald is a Canadian who writes about multiple and lasting accounts of child sexual

198 abuse. Wally Lamb‘s novel centres around the after-effects that abuse has on a teenage girl. However, the problem or issue as I have repeatedly trumpeted throughout the last chapters is that very, very little of the literature available on sexual abuse and especially novels written on the topic of child sexual abuse on females is available in terms of a mandated or recommended curriculum. Most of these novels seem to be part of the null curriculum or that curriculum specifically absent in schools. Some other narratives I think that are worthy of mentioning are Barbara Kingsolver‘s The Bean Trees, which is currently cited in the list of authorized novels for Alberta‘s English Language Arts curriculum, but there plenty of other novels out there, including: The Cure for Death by

Lightening, The Family Secret, When the Rabbit Howls, Tears in the Darkness and The

House with the Blind Glass Windows. Even the required Shakespeare component could be used to teach about child sexual abuse through the tragedy Titus Andronicus. The wonderful thing about fiction is the plethora of perspectives on any and every topic.

Diverse authors with different backgrounds, cultures and childhoods have written about everything imaginable (Porterfield 100). But which books are brought into the light and which remain in the shadows?

We, as human beings, seem instinctually to have a need to connect with something or someone else in attempt to feel a little bit less alone or different in this world. And this feeling, in the contemporary world of flux and change, is increasingly heightened for adolescent girls. This is the time for information-interventionist abuse education. This is the time to provide adolescent girls – those who have been sexually abused as children and those who have not – an opportunity to attend to powerful narratives abuse and survival. In fact, all adolescents need to witness the story of abuse.

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And, I believe a narrative curriculum in the hands of a caring, tactful and pedagogically soulful teacher may begin to break the cycles of violence and abuses that have re-written many lives—cycles of violence that have removed women‘s voices, objectified their identities, and which always seem to serve the masters of control and domination. And why has this situation of abuse against women being allowed to exist? Simply, isolation and the threat of isolation breeds silence. For when you are so beaten down and oppressed that you lose your voice, then someone has to speak for you. And it is our human duty as educators and caring professionals to stop this cycle now and not only attended to the abused, but to educate everyone against the predatory cultures of sexual abuse.

In the next chapter, I need to write about the concepts of voice and dialogue in relation to education and child sexual abuse.

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CHAPTER 7: SPEAKING OUT:

DIALOGUE AND THE TRANSFORMATION TOWARDS FREEDOM

Your grandmother says you read a lot. Every chance you get. That‘s good, but not good enough. Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.

Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

It is only fitting in an inquiry that began with the discussion of ‗silence‘ and

‗oppression‘ concludes with a chapter on the freeing and empowering concepts of ‗voice‘ and ‗dialogue‘. I feel, as if I have come full circle in my inquiry. For it is my greatest hope that the oppressed victims of child sexual abuse become empowered enough to find their own voices, and that this horribly destructive abuse, taken up here as a research topic, might contribute in some small way in advancing a public voice for this topic. I believe, based upon what I have experienced as an abuse counsellor, and what I have researched here, that the only way to break the isolation of sexual abuse oppression is through authentic engagements between 'voice' and 'dialogue'. And, I believe, again, this dialogue needs to be initiated while the victim girls are young. At least, if nothing else, there remains the possibility of diminishing the effects of the violence before they become deeply-seated, and also attending to this issue during adolescence gives these young girls the best chance to regain their stolen voices. As well, I believe the current societal discourses fostering the oppression of sexual abuse victims must also be moved from one of silence to one of voice and ―the earlier dialogue begins the more truly revolutionary will the movement be‖ (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 122).

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Oppression operates and, indeed thrives where there is silence and isolation. This has been evident in the long, often violence-centred, history of the West. Indeed, worldwide there is overwhelming evidence documenting the silencing of women across all socio-economic, racial, cultural and heritage lines and, ―For generations women have been silenced in patriarchal orders, unable to have their meanings encoded and accepted in the social repositories of knowledge. The process has been a cumulative one with silence built upon silence‖ (Spender 74). It is hard in contemporary Western society for many women to garner a voice that is attended to intelligently, let alone the voice of an abused child:

How much conviction as to the importance of what one has to say, one‘s right to say it. And the will, the measureless store of belief in oneself to be able to come to, cleave to, find the form for one‘s own comprehensions. Difficult for any male not born into a class that breeds such confidence. Almost impossible for a girl, a woman. (Olsen 27)

One of the primary ways to address the stigma of oppression, as Freire proposes, is through dialogue. It is important to hear not only what abused girls have to say, but more importantly, of what they cannot say: ―We need, as well, to hear both the voices and the silences through which women engage our social world; to make meaning not only out of what women say, but also out of what women refuse to say and to understand why we might refuse to speak‖ (Lewis 41). Confidence and empowerment can only be gained through communion with others, even if it is only through listening to others speak

(Spender 74-5). Liberating dialogue, then, is needed to overturn the historical discourses of oppression; no matter what form of oppression it is. Moreover, the oppressed need to hear liberating and empowering dialogue as well in order to empower the oppressed into action and liberation: ―Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must

202 be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation.

The content of that dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality‖ (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

52). As mentioned in the previous chapter, humans are essentially narrative and communicative beings that lead ―storied lives‖ and whose ability to tell stories and to narrate is a decidedly human phenomenon (Lauritzen and Jaeger 35-6). By denying a person the right to speak and to, therefore, reduce that someone to the status of an object, means the oppressed person quickly becomes a 'thing' (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

122-3). Once a person is rendered, spoken to as if, imagined as if, institutionalized as if, a ‗thing‘ or an 'object', then any ‗thing‘ may be done to the ‗thing‘ itself. Therefore, it is crucial for the spiritual survival of child sexual abuse survivors, that a sense of voice is initiated, because only when it is possible to have un-concealment of the person as 'NOT'- thing – as not standing reserve for abusive consumption – is there the possibility to become otherwise.

I believe, now, that there is no hope for victims of child sexual abuse to break through oppression without gaining a sense of personhood through acquiring a sense of authentic voice. Voice is the initiator of empowerment and, ultimately, I believe healing.

The silence must be broken – it may take a whisper or a scream; a declaration ('NO …!') or an explanation ('BECAUSE, you have NO right …!') or a narrative ('My story is …').

Still finding and using a voice may be a difficult challenge for many grown women

(abused or not), and for girls it could be very difficult. Now imagine an abused adolescent girl who has had her voice, her spirit, her trust, her personhood stripped away through sexual abuses in her childhood. When abuse happens, the voice is stolen, as I

203 have written repeatedly in this text, and the survivor is left silent (Barringer, ―The

Survivor‘s Voice‖ 4-5). And this silence is overwhelmingly reinforced, because even if the child has some voice left—who, just who—would believe her when she raises questions or even has the courage to disclose? This silence is not the natural occurrence of choosing to be silent, but rather this is an unnatural and isolating silence. As Olsen writes on post abuse silence, ―The silences . . . here are unnatural; the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot‖ (6). It is impossible to accurately describe how difficult it is to speak out when you have had your voice taken from you – obviously. I am not talking about what gets mistaken here for just shyness, but this penetrating silence is an acute inability and fear of speaking and perhaps more importantly of being heard (Barringer, ―The Survivor‘s Voice‖ 9). For, if someone actually takes the time to listen to these abused girls‘ voices, when they find, or are invited or assisted to discover, the courage to speak, the listener might discover a scary truth. And nothing makes the atrocities of sexual abuse more real than hearing yourself speak them aloud or to hear them as someone implicated in the regimes of abuse.

The life of an adolescent female child sexual abuse survivor who has not disclosed the abuse is one of constant ‗masking‘. But such young women need to know that their silence serves only as a barrier not as a safety net:

My silence has not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. . . . In the case of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear—fear of contempt, fear of censure, of some judgment, of recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all I think, we fear for the very visibility without which we cannot truly live. (Lourde 20-21)

Within the realm of public education, via narrative curriculum inquiry, and the use of reflective strategies and dialogue, I believe a victim‘s voice becomes a valid possibility.

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And with the actual voicing of the voice comes a validation—that is, validation of the painful experiences and constant suffering and, ―Woman‘s voicelessness reveals reification as silencing. By giving voice to her experience, by naming the unnamed for herself, woman challenges the reification of the name through silence and she initiates the political project‖ (Mills 208). It is our responsibility as adults, as educators and children and youth activists and wellness counsellors to help abuse survivors and to provide opportunities for young girls who have been sexually abused to 'TAKE BACK' their lost voices.

Of course, creating a safe space for a voice to recover does not mean simply getting adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors to talk. While some survivors do remain literally unable to speak, many of them do talk in social and public settings such as schools. It is not just the girls who do not speak that do not have voice (Li Li 79). But there is a difference between voice and speech-talk. Speech is topical, whereas voice is determined through self-love and a freedom from oppressive constraints; the very constraints that forced sexual abuse victims into silence in the first place. This voice as a representation of identity needs to be reclaimed by the oppressed survivors and, ―Those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right and prevent the continuation of this dehumanizing aggression‖ (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 77). One of the initial ways to garner a sense of voice among adolescent girls, who have suffered through sexual abuse, is to give voice to the topic itself. For to not speak of this topic is to render it and all of its incumbents invisible as well as voiceless, and, ―Nonrecognition or misrecognition can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, reduced mode of being. Beyond simple lack of

205 respect, it can inflict a grievous wound, saddling people with crippling self-hatred. Due recognition is not just a courtesy but a human need‖ (Taylor 25). By simply including the topic of child sexual abuse and its effects and manifestations, both those who have endured abuse and those who have not, may recognize the relevance of this topic. And, incorporating the topic of child sexual abuse into the classroom validates the subject, making it obviously important enough to discuss. And, that in itself is empowering – for abused persons and for the situation of the silence about abuse generally. By focusing a whole class or school on this one issue highlights the dire importance of learning about child sexual abuse for both those who have undergone it and for those who have not

(Jones 60). In more basic terms, speaking on topics that have been historically marginalized reverts the power from the oppressors to the oppressed, giving them a much needed voice:

Thus democratic dialogue is far more than an opportunity for the exchange of ideas, or gathering interesting information about other people‘s lives. It is an explicitly political event because it attempts to shift the usual flow of power in order to un-marginalize the marginalized. Voices that are usually marginalized— which is to say silenced—are to be centered and therefore empowered. (Jones 59)

By including stories about and by the oppressed, no longer are people able to pretend that human atrocities such as child sexual abuse do not exist; and, simply, by being recognized as an atrocious form of dehumanization may thus empower the victims that had previously remained silent and anonymous:

Histories of oppression and suffering must be recounted, including unaddressed instances of domination that take the form of institutional and social practices, universal claims to truth, as well as racism, sexism, and classism. Memories of hope must also be offered that can reclaim the historical agency of the revolutionary subject. (McLaren and da Silva 69)

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As Dewey states, in The School and Society, public school classrooms function as miniature communities (15). In this sense, the classroom can either empower or oppress through education (Shor 25). By including the topic of child sexual abuse, its prevalence and post-manifestations, in the secondary school curriculum, the subject becomes more valid and, moreover, can lead, I believe, to increased disclosure rates on the part of the student survivors. As Barringer notes in her study on incest survivors, when there is increased focus on the prevalence of child sexual abuse there is correspondingly an enhanced ability among survivors to disclose their own abuses (―Speaking of Incest‖

183). The more a survivor is aware that her world is shared by myriads of others, the more empowered she will be to speak her own truth. And, for those who cannot speak, it is imperative that there are people and stories that can lend voice to the topic of her imposed silence.

If a person's voice has been stripped from years of oppression, then someone must speak on her behalf. This is not a relinquishing of power on the part of girls who have been sexually abused as children; it is a much needed lifeline that must be provided by caring adults in order to create topical relevance. It is important to remember that these victims are, for the most part, still children and children will always have less power than adults; therefore, it is essential to have an authoritative representational voice in the classroom to speak for the silenced. As mentioned in the previous chapter, novels and stories are often capable of fulfilling the invitational space of conversation. There are an ample number of novels/stories that explore the topic of child sexual abuse. And these stories can give voice to the topic:

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One reason, therefore, for the telling of stories is that it gives those who have been historically disenfranchised a voice, an opportunity to speak out. The opportunity to speak out does not assure that one‘s voice will be heard, but it does have the immediate effect of providing groups with a potential source of power that can enable them to participate more fully in educational discussions. (Gitlin and Myers 52)

Narratives make silenced voices audible through accessible language, and such narratives are compelling to all readers because the author is sharing a human experience and providing descriptions of an experience that is most often talked about, when it is talked about, abstractly or in impersonal terms (DeVault 226). There is a definite source of empowerment in knowing that experiences of child sexual abuse are not isolated events—that such violence is an epidemic in our society (Barringer, ―Speaking of Incest‖

183). But representational experiences in literature are not enough to break the silence.

There needs to be a living, audible voice of authority to speak on this topic and to gather conversations on the topic. For many adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors, this will be the first time that they have heard this topic voiced by anyone, let alone by someone of authority such as a teacher. This becomes a moment ―where the educator cannot wait for the students to initiate their own forward progress into an idea or an understanding, and the teacher must do it‖ (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 157). And because adults have socially bestowed authority over children and youth, most adult teachers are capable of being this voice. One does not have to have experienced child sexual abuse to teach about it, just as one did not have to experience the atrocities of the

Holocaust or the brutalities of racism to teach about the impacts on society and citizens and persons, and such teaching is often evident despite one's own history and/or subjective positioning:

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Teachers who do not themselves come from the ranks of the oppressed must be ―reborn‖ as educators and join the oppressed in their struggle against dehumanization. . . . This implies renouncing the oppressive elements of one‘s class of origin while simultaneously announcing one‘s commitment to the liberation of the oppressed through dialogue, the problematization of social reality, and political transformation. (Roberts 58-9)

Moreover, it takes a voice of authority to make a connection between personal histories and larger social oppression, as adolescents often lack the social awareness to make these connections on their own. It is imperative that abused girls understand that it is not just they who have suffered through child sexual abuse, but that there is a long standing history of outright abuse and violence towards women and girls. It is not enough that girls—sexually abused or not—read about such violence; they need to hear it firsthand from someone of who speaks with instructional authority:

. . . students‘ personal histories must be linked to the long public history of struggle and sacrifice inherited from an ongoing community of freedom fighters to which students can becomes connected. As they begin to understand critically the mechanisms of social conflict, they can participate in their own way in the ongoing battles that mark their age and generation. (Glass 30)

By linking their personal struggles with the larger social world, adolescent girls who have been sexually abused as children are afforded an opportunity to link the personal with the political, and those who have not can have a chance to learn empathy for those who have been sexually abused.

It is not enough that a novel or short story be read in class; these narratives need to be questioned and discussed in the classroom setting. An actual living, breathing form of questioning voice must be infused into the educational process of reading, listening and speaking. As mentioned in the previous chapter, discussion of and through a novel or story can be a vital way to open up the topic of child sexual abuse, and as well as to

209 initiate a sense of voice for both the topic and for those who have experienced it. One of the benefits of narrative inquiry discussion is that it is often informal and makes the topic accessible (Thomas and Mulvey 243). Students do not, therefore, need to be intimidated by language in order to participate in the conversation because, like the language of the narrative, words are often informal and accessible: ―Informal talk is not just idle chatter but a vitally important stage in developing our understanding of topics that are new to us.

It allows us to put ideas into our own words‖ (McEwan and Egan xi). Because students do not have to focus on academic language configurations, they are more able to concentrate on deciphering the image-meanings inherent in the text (Ibid.). Another important feature, often found in the narrative, as was discussed in the previous chapter, is that it provides a safe way for adolescent girls who have been abused to speak on the subject, as they are able to speak through the characters and the topic without having to personally disclose. And for those who cannot speak in class, writing can then become a powerful form of representational voice and dialogue.

Not all speech has to be audible and not all forms of voice require a direct listener. It is not only the act of reading and speaking, but also of writing and representing that is of use to students in the classroom when controversial or emotional social topics are presented. For dialogue does not necessarily have to be verbal in nature; one can also dialogue with the text and with the self from reactions to the textual content.

For child sexual abuse survivors, journal writing can be a powerful way to come into their own voice by ―reconnecting the self with the self‖ (Barringer, ―The Survivor‘s

Voice‖ 16). What students choose to write down is what is significant to their experience. Also, when the personal voice has been smothered by oppressive forces, it is

210 often easier to write than it is to speak out. Often, people are more candid in writing than in speech. For those child sexual abuse survivors whose memories are obscured, or those who cannot bear to think about the abuse and have blocked it—the horrific abuse experience—from their memories, personal writing in response to a text can be a good place to start to recover and heal their voices, as ―. . . personal writing is useful for exploring the unexpected and thus for bringing to light aspects of ordinary experience that are typically obscured‖ (qtd. in Hertz 226). As Gadamer states, ―We know how putting an experience into words helps us cope with it. It is as if it‘s threatening, even annihilating, immediacy is pushed into the background, brought into proportion, made communicable, and hence dealt with‖ (450). Precedent studies indicate that exposing the

'real' self to the self is a primary step in healing the traumatic experiences of child sexual abuse, for to disclose the truth to oneself is necessary before disclosing to others; as Hays states in her work with incest survivors, ―I think for an incest survivor journal writing is almost mandatory. People who have been involved with an abusive environment—they escape. . . . Writing it down made me say ‗it‘s real‘‖ (127). Oftentimes, child sexual abuse survivors live out their abuses in the present, as the traumas of abuse continue to wreak havoc in their current relationships and life stories. Journal writing can be another way in which to separate their present lives from their pasts:

Only by reconnecting the shattered parts of the self, by unburying, grieving, and forgiving the child she once was, can sexual abuse be placed in the past instead of continuing to be the reality of the present. By freeing the energies devoted to maintaining the defenses of denial, numbing, and self-hatred, the survivor can emerge, empowered, into full adulthood. (Barringer, ―The Survivor‘s Voice‖ 17)

In conventional views, knowledge is created mainly with approaches such as rational analysis and scholarly detachment, which we are taught are not contaminated with

211 connections to personal concerns or biases. But if a student‘s own life, stories and questions become sources of knowledge and insight, it is possible to form new relationships between personal narratives and broader theoretical frameworks such as gendered analyses of society (Maher and Tetreault 57-8). Educationally speaking, I would find it useful to provide classroom space for reflective journal writing and allow students to begin to process their thoughts and reactions to the novels being read. In order for students to become candid, I recommend that the journals not be graded, and only optionally read, if decided so on the part of the student. While both speaking and writing are effective methods in instigating a sense of voice for the child sexual abuse survivor, equally as important is the concept of listening, for both those who have endured child sexual abuse, but more importantly, for those who have not.

Equally as important as the art of speaking is the art of listening. Listening has two very important components. The first has to do with the abuse survivors themselves.

After years of being silenced, I cannot expect every adolescent girl who has been sexually abused as a child, to stand up and speak out. Some might be too frightened to even participate in class discussion, as they may feel that they are giving away their secret. Some are afraid to speak of their own child sexual abuses aloud because it would then make it true (Berlak 138). But they can listen. And merely by listening, they become privy to knowledge that had previously been kept from them, such as the plethora of child sexual abuse and how it manifests itself in so many survivors. Just by listening, they can gain knowledge that will help them in their own healing. Just through listening, they can learn that there are others.

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The second important concept regarding listening comes concerning other class participants who have not been sexually abused as children; they too gain insight from dialogue concerning this topic. By listening, they become witnesses to abuses that had previously gone unnoticed or unacknowledged by them. The result can be a form of empathetic listening that often results from attending to personal narratives: ―Through secondhand witnessing a perpetrator or bystander becomes imaginatively capable of perceiving and feeling the victims‘ trauma in his or her own body—gaining ‗the power of sight‘ (or insight) usually afforded only by one‘s own immediate physical involvement‖

(Berlak 135-6). Empathy is an important by-product of listening. Empathy is described as ―the ability to de-center and take the perspective of another. There is usually a cognitive side to empathy (understanding what another is experiencing) as well as an affective one (feeling what another person is experiencing)‖ (Brendtro, Brokenleg, and

Van Bockern 122.). Once people bear witness to something, either firsthand, by sight, or secondhand, by reading or listening, they are unable to carry on the ignorance previously perceived. In other words, prior world views of detachment become shattered and are replaced by empathy (Felman and Laub 114). Through the amalgamation of reading texts centred on abuse and dialogue, those who have not suffered the traumas of child sexual abuse can decrease their ignorance and assumptions and increase their awareness and understanding. Through empathy and the hermeneutic concept of play, non-abuse survivors can emotionally connect with the traumas of child sexual abuse.

In its ideal form, dialogue can decrease oppressive constraints and can be conducive to increased unity (Jones 57). Dialogue can also be used to decrease stereotypes and assumptions of the oppressed. When dealing with uncomfortable or

213 controversial social topics, the use of the visual might not be as helpful as the written and spoken word, because while we might sometimes want to avert our eyes from the atrocious image, try as we might, we cannot avert our ears (Gadamer 458). Or as Lasch states while quoting Dewey, ―Conversation has a vital import lacking in the fixed and frozen words or written speech. . . . The connections of the ear with the vital and outgoing thought and emotion are immensely closer and more varied than those of the eye. Vision is a spectator; hearing is a participator‖ (172). For those who have not been marginalized or subjugated, this can be a vital shift in attempting to identify with those who have historically been oppressed. Listening and silence can shift the power dynamics and allow the non-abused to feel what it is like to be silenced. For those in power often have too much voice in contrast with those who have none. Self-silencing on the part of the elite can create a re-balance of power:

Silence has an important role to play in communicative relationships. Silence affords participants in a dialogue the space to truly listen to what others have to say. . . . Those genuinely committed to the experience of dialogical communication, and not merely the transmission of information, must, at times, control their urge to speak, aware that others share the same right (and duty) to express their ideas. (Roberts 63)

By focusing on listening instead of speaking, it allows space for the oppressed to create and express their voices. Moreover, by not listening to what the oppressed have to say, or by talking over them, refuting their personal experiences, acts as a form of oppression in itself (Roberts 64). And although the topic of child sexual abuse can be uncomfortable, our discomfort is not helpful to the myriads of girls who have been abused. They also did not want to see or experience it but they did not have the luxury of choice. We must, for their sake, be open to hearing the stories of abuse – their stories.

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By listening to these stories, we have the ability to increase our own humanity, because

―we humanize ourselves through dialogue with others‖ (Roberts 43).

There are also hermeneutic implications here, as I have mentioned previously, regarding dialogue. For the hermeneutist maintains that human beings are necessarily verbal in nature and that no matter what culture or tradition a person is steeped in, the life world of that person is always a verbal world (Gadamer 444). Dialogue is an important feature in hermeneutics. As a search for meaning and truth, hermeneutics does not stop with writing and reading. Dialogue is also such a quest. According to Gadamerian hermeneutics, dialogue ―is understood as the communicative form of linguistic understanding between two subjects‖ (Hoffman 102). Dialogue with other people, begins the same way as does textual understanding, and that is with a question:

We do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy. Information, usually seen as the precondition of debate, is better understood as its byproduct. When we get into arguments that focus and fully engage our attention, we become avid seekers of relevant information. Otherwise we take in information passively—if we take it in at all. (Lasch 163)

Also, it follows the same format in the way of ‗openness‘, meaning that true understanding comes easiest to us when we are mentally open to new ideas and concepts

(Gadamer 361). And as Gadamer states, it is when we question that we are most open: ―.

. . to question means to lay open, to place in the open. As against the fixity of opinions, questioning makes the object and all its possibilities fluid‖ (Ibid.). When we question, no longer do things seem fixed and stagnant, but instead things and concepts open themselves up for us as possibilities of change. This being said, true dialogue cannot work when one person is so set in her/his opinions that she/he is unwilling to hear

215 another‘s viewpoint and remains fundamentally closed to the possibility of difference

(How 209).

In the truest of forms, conversation is not about winning points or one-up- manship, but more importantly, according to Gadamer, a conversation is another way to seek meaning (Johnson 219). Or, as Hoffman states, ―In a genuine conversation, the central aim is not to understand the other‘s point of view as a unique expression of her individuality, nor to describe some objective totality, but is rather to relate the possible truth of what she is saying to the subject matter itself and to one‘s own views and perspectives‖ (102). Genuine conversation is another path to understanding. A conversation‘s intention is to clear up misunderstandings that may occur within the written word by verbally clarifying misunderstandings and by asking questions (Warnke

100). Here there is a difference between genuine conversation as a path to truth and understanding and the debate in which the intention is to win. The point of conversation is not to diminish others‘ opinions, but instead to strengthen the truth as, ―Dialectic consists not in trying to discover the weakness of what is said, but in bringing out its real strength. It is not the art of arguing (which can make a strong case out of a weak one) but the art of thinking (which can strengthen objections by referring to the subject matter‖

(Gadamer 361). Hence, the true focus of dialogic conversation is with the subject matter itself, not with the other people in the conversation – although they are obviously necessary in their presence. When people engaged in conversation can put aside their desire to win, something truly transformative becomes possible; they become able to grapple together with concepts and meanings. And, although dialogue brings individual differences to the surface, there is also a sense of unity (Hoffman 96). Also, in

216 conversations speakers become listeners, and everyone bands together in a search for truth. And the prejudices and assumptions that we enter into the dialogue with are transformed to include a more unified and heightened understanding of the subject at hand (Warnke 101). With the normally isolating topic of child sexual abuse, merging together in dialogue can be an empowering experience. Instead of the child sexual abuse survivor being alone in thought of the topic, there is a whole group of people talking about and trying to understand the atrocities of abuse together. For bringing something out of a text and into a living, vocal conversation brings the being of the topic back into life:

. . . being transformed into spoken language represents the restoration of the original communication of meaning. When it is interpreted, written tradition is brought back out of the alienation in which it finds itself and into the living present of conversation, which is always fundamentally realized in question and answer. (Gadamer 362)

It is not only the topic that gains voice and life in the art of conversation, but also language comes to life in unity of understanding:

Reaching an understanding in language places a subject matter before those communicating like a disputed object set between them. Thus the world is the common ground, trodden by none and recognized by all, uniting all who talk to one another. All kinds of human community are kinds of linguistic community: even more, they form language. For language is by nature language of conversation; it fully realizes itself only in the process of coming to an understanding. That is why it is not a mere means in that process. (Gadamer 443)

Everybody has the ability to have a genuine conversation. Here it is important to remember the hermeneutic concept of tradition that can shape what we may initially feel to be our own private thoughts and perspectives on the world into adherence to a common story and this long history of topics privileged and not – such as child sexual abuse – has been shaped and moulded by our society‘s dominant story featuring a

217 basically violent culture. Conversation can help bring such traditions of abuse formation and confirmation out of the shadows and margins and into the light. And like with reading texts, there is also a sense of freeing play that occurs in conversation, as,

―Conversation is conducted in the dialectic of question and answer, in a movement of give and take, to and fro, in a ‗play between‘ that is oriented to the topic of the text, to the truth it may speak, the understanding that may be created‖ (Mosher 19). The result of dialogue, according to Gadamerian hermeneutics, is a heightened understanding of the subject that goes beyond surface generalizations and prejudices to a deeper level of understanding in the search for truth (Warnke 139). It is only through genuine conversation where people are able to transcend their pre-assumptions and prior prejudices. This is what we need to be playfully open to and both literature and dialogue offer playful openings to turn and face the seriousness of abuse.

Education is and has never been a neutral force; it is always embedded with political, social, economic, and cultural traditions and implications. I believe this

‗banking‘ nature of western education has been dutifully deconstructed by the critical theorist notions of dialogue as worked out in the works and writings of Paulo Freire.

Freire is one of the pioneers of the notion of the political implications of schooling and of literacy education and why dialogical education is needed to balance the conversation between tradition as a form of oppression and change as an invitation towards a movement to become otherwise. One of Freire‘s central claims is in the distinction between his concepts of ‗banking education‘ and ‗problem-posing inquiry education‘

(Aronowitz 8). According to Freire, the banking style of education works metaphorically and literally like a bank, with the teachers ‗depositing‘ information into the assumed

218 blank and open vault minds of the students (Shor 26). This educative process is anti- dialogical, consisting of a one way monologue normally delivered as a deposit by the teacher, with little encouragement for student participation or voice – the student is the recipient of information and when checked, via testing, there had better be a dividend of information returns (Roberts 53-4). Banking style education is by its nature learner oppressive and works to perpetuate the power differential between teacher and student; this style conceals information – the null curriculum – that would aid in learner-victim- oppressed emancipation (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 71). This mode of educating is, according to Roberts, ―inherently oppressive‖ and provides little room for otherwise growth or transformation for either the students or the teachers (54). Indeed, both learner and teacher, according to Freire, are oppressed and captured within roles neither really understands. In contrast, problem-posing inquiry education relies on student engagement with the topic at hand itself and the teacher works with the learner, not against, to advance understanding of the topic and its context. In this sense, teaching and learning is highly politicized in a different way in that education – teaching and learning and assessment – focuses on the agency of the students, and their interests, concerns and problem and solutions, and, ―To this ‗method‘ Freire counterposes ‗problem-posing education‘ where ‗[women] develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality but as a reality in the process of transformation‘‖ (Aronowitz 11).

In contrast to the banking mode of education, which constructs passive learning, problem-posing education is active, and the students become aware of their own sense of agency:

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Through problem-posing, students learn to question answers rather than merely answer questions. In this pedagogy, students experience education as something they do, not as something done to them. They are not empty vessels to be filled with facts, or sponges to be saturated with official information, or vacant bank accounts to be filled with deposits from the required syllabus. (Shor 26)

Therefore, problem-posing education is empowering for students and teachers and decreases the hierarchal power imbalance traditionally framed between teacher and student. When the teacher addresses topics in the form of questions to students, or asks students to formulate questions, it is the subject/topic itself that becomes opened up and accessible to students, because they are using their language and experiential relations to relate to the topic (Shor 31). Integrated this way, students have a better chance of attaining true understanding of the topic, because they are being guided and modeled into how it is possible to have a conversation with the topic. Students come to see themselves as active agents in their own lives, addressing topics meaningful to them and how these topics have been, could be, and more importantly should be, held by the culture/society within which they live. In this sense, this is why I have been across the previous chapters making a case, within today‘s classroom full of identity-forming adolescents, for hermeneutic conversations, a narrative-oriented pedagogy, the voice-generating reading of literature – novels – and doing so within Freire‘s dialogical-dialect of a problem- posing inquiry teaching and learning methodology. Then, I believe there is an opportunity to open up the topic of female abuse, and not only for those girls who have endured it, but for all of us. Then, I believe we may, together, realize the possibility of change regarding female sexual abuse and victimization, instead of ignoring the topic and those victims screaming in their silences. In the words of McLaren, teaching serves a major function of social change and must be or become ―an effective tool in developing

220 critical and unbiased understanding and, thereby, greater educational, political, economic and cultural justice‖ (7). I know, we all know, that sexually abused girls need help – and social agencies and counselling do that and very well, but we also know that very few girls disclose and, therefore, do not receive help and assistance. That is why, in this text,

I am advocating that adult teachers/educators must be involved in the process of re- educating all learners regarding child sexual abuse. And it may be as simple, for learners, as merely as participating in a topic dialogue/conversation, such that learners become active agents engaged in social and political transformation (Rossatto 170). We do this with the environment – how many children/adolescents/young people are active ‗green‘ agents? We do this with gay and lesbian lifestyle orientations – how many children/adolescents/young people are active agents in this regard? We do this with poverty and homelessness – how many children/adolescents/young people become active agents in this regard? Not only do the students come to see themselves as transformative active beings, but the subject/topic under discussion also becomes less stagnant and transforms. Through dialogue and conversation, most subjects-topics in question, in schools, can be seen as open to the possibility of change (Roberts 54). That is why we construct mandated curriculums – so that topics/subjects of historical and contemporary relevance are ‗studied‘, in school, by children/adolescents/young people. And, through this text, I am asking: Where, other than evident as a gapping absence, is female sexual abuse in the curriculum? Or, where is this topic/subject in the school? Or, where is this subject/topic in the pedagogy of teachers? Where? Therefore, I write to challenge, not as a victim, but as an advocate for the voiceless, the powerless, and the victimized who live daily with layers of overwhelming forms of oppression that appear to be dominating

221 forces in many adolescents‘ lives. I know these forces of oppression can be challenged as, ―Problem-posing education reaffirms human beings as Subjects, furnishes hope that the world can change, and, by its very nature, is necessarily directed toward the goal of humanization‖ (Roberts 55).

Perhaps, my claims come down to the concept propelled by Freire within his concept of conscientization or consciousness-raising. Dialogue, I believe, for the purpose of increasing conscience naturally will lead to increasing our humanity (Roberts 149).

Perhaps, that is why most authority figures really seem to fear dialogue or conversation and instead prefer independent monologues or positioning statements or debates.

Consciousness-raising was touted by second wave feminists such as Dale Spender and

Kathie Sarachild as a way to move from self-transformation to group transformation

(Lewis 138). By coming together, as women, as an oppressed class, in order to discuss their personal affiliation with oppressive constraints, women garnered an initial sense of collective identity:

Conscientization, apart from anything else, represents the process of coming to ―know‖ the world in a different way. One dimension of this process is acquiring a sense of oneself as a being among others—that is, a member of a class, or at least a group—such that personal difficulties come to be seen in their wider social context. (Roberts 148).

Through the discussion of oppression – within a topic-subject – among the oppressed themselves, actually faces the sentiments of isolation and disempowerment that may begin to crumble. Whether through engaged with a text (novel) or person (educator), dialogue can contribute to a sense of collective identity – often where, in the past, one imagined herself alone. However, when consciousness is raised, new and alternative ways of looking at the world appear for the oppressed. It is like a light has finally been

222 shone on what it means to have been oppressed. According to Freire, conscientization is a ―requirement of our human condition‖ (Pedagogy of Freedom 55). We all contain within us, consciousness as well as a conscience. Unfortunately, our consciousness is usually formed via social structures steeped in tradition, before we get the chance to enter into a dialogue about it (Roberts 151-2). But we all have the human ability to reconstitute and thus, raise our levels of consciousness and consciences through dialogue:

Being critically conscious implies a continuous process of transformation. People who undergo conscientization are constantly being reconstituted, as they critically reflect on reality, act, change both themselves and the world around them, reflect again on the new reality which results from transformation, carry out further actions as necessary, and so on. (Roberts 152)

It is only when dialogue expands beyond the classroom and is infused with socio-eco- political assumptions that discourse emerges: ―Dialogue needs to be opened so that authentic public discourse becomes part of the arena and there is opportunity to recreate the public space. This discourse should be ongoing about ways to create ways of seeing that are authentic and not ready-made by others‖ (Slater 67). And returning to the classroom/school, for those students in the class who are not oppressed by sexual abuse, conscientization can also prove to have beneficial effects and, thus, they too can have their consciousnesses raised. By learning about the effects and traumatic pain that is inflicted upon child sexual abuse survivors and, moreover, by examining how the phenomenon of child sexual abuse has existed and been maintained in our society, non- survivors can no longer remain ignorant to the plight of its victims (Kent 38-9). Or, as

Kent states,

. . . a liberating pedagogy, whether for underdogs, middledogs, or topdogs, should be based on problem-solving, challenging students and teachers together to examine the situation in which they live. Their work must not be confined to the

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solving of academic puzzles which fragment the world and fail to touch people‘s lives, but should deal with real human conditions in real contexts. And they should examine the realities critically, asking not only how things are, but also asking how things should be. (40)

In this sense, empathy can only be increasingly expanded through the heightening of consciousnesses.

Only when true dialogue is available and met might political discourse emerge.

Discourse is the development of dialogue to encapsulate a particular society or culture

(Winslade and Monk 53). Of course, there is a direct link between discourse and power, in that the current discourses are created by the elites, namely white, male and privileged.

Women, through dialogue, through the refusal of silence must not just transform ourselves, but moreover, transform the current discourses of oppression:

Under conditions of social inequality, individuals have differential access to both ideological and material resources. Power develops from such social relations where for some the possibility exists to control other individuals by naming these relations on their own terms derived from their own experiences. That language, discourse, speaking, and writing are not neutral but political acts becomes clear when we realize that who ―speaks‖ and by what authority their ―speaking‖ is governed cannot be disassociated from those relations of power that mark the social, political, and economic structures within which individuals live their daily lives. Put more simply: it matters who tells the story and what social power they hold to enforce their meaning. In a phallocentric social structure this has particular consequences for the specificities of women‘s lives. (Lewis 115)

If discourses are the ―social phenomena that live in the talk that we hear and repeat‖

(Winslade and Monk 24), then the current discourse on educating child sexual abuse survivors in intervention and coping strategies is what I would label a discourse of silence. For the dominant discourse ‗teaches‘ us to avoid discussion on this topic, to leave it to the confines of the private realm, unnoticed and unspoken. Who would ever speak up under these terms? Dominant discourses often reflect the status quo and

224 influence the masses in ways that seemingly remain unnoticed, but not unfelt (McLaren and da Silva 61). I believe, true hermeneutic and Freire framed dialogue may become a discourse if the pedagogy I have described previously lives in classrooms and schools, as

―. . . pedagogy means the entire process of creating knowledge, involving the innumerable ways in which students, teachers, and academic disciplines interact and redefine each other in the classroom, the educational institution, and the larger society‖

(Maher and Tetreault 57). When our current schooling hegemony moves through our classrooms, it is nearly impossible for any adolescent girl to differentiate between her own conscious thoughts, often ruined by abuse, and those thoughts ingrained in her through the discourses of oppression. For those discourses tell girls ‗keep silent‘ and the acceptable forms of speech and expression do not include accusations or claims of abuse and, therefore, what the girls, at many levels, know must go unsaid. No societal group knows and experiences this discourse of oppression more than women. Feminism was created as a dialogical-dialectical alternative discourse to that of the status quo traditions, in an attempt to recapture those large segments of every woman‘s life obscured, devalued and often riddled by patriarchal hegemony:

In this way feminist politics becomes a challenge, at the level of practice, to a male-defined, male-described social world lived, as it is, not in theory but in practice within the discourse of the masculine that always assumes itself to be all there is to say and hear; that actively de/forms discourse in such a way that huge chunks of women‘s words, ways of being in the world, and experience are not merely discarded but not even noticed as needing inscription, both in the concrete and the symbolic sense. (Lewis 43)

Feminist theory has come a long way in a century, but applying theory into practice among our long standing patriarchal system is still a challenge. As women, many of us are used to living our lives on the sidelines, used to being excluded from theories and

225 history; but it still does not give anyone the right to refrain us from healing and from coming into our own being.

Alternative ways of being and of healing are oftentimes hidden under the current dominant discourses (Winslade and Monk 26). In order for the global outlook on child sexual abuse to change, the traditional discourses need to change. Students and educators alike have to be afforded an opportunity to dissect and examine these grand and powerful and controlling discourses and how they relate to the emotional health of adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors. But challenging the status quo is often met with resistance (Winslade and Monk 25). Change is hard. That is why it is imperative that change, with respect to the topic of this writing, begins in the classroom, and ―if we don‘t transform the classroom, we cannot transform the academy, and then we cannot transform the society‖ (qtd. in Maher and Tetreault 246). To think that there is no such thing as classroom discourse is to undermine the political content of education:

Politics also resides in the discourse of the classroom, in the way teachers and students talk to each other, in the questions and statements from teachers about the themes being studied, in the freedom students feel when questioning the curriculum, in the silences typically surrounding unorthodox questions and issues in traditional classrooms. (Shor 27)

Transformation must begin in the classroom, as ―above all groups, students are subservient to the dominant discourse unless teachers present them with possibilities‖

(Slater 66). According to Rossatto, true transformative changes are based on ―the development of a discourse that unites a critical language with the language of possibility for both teachers and students, enabling them to recognize that they can indeed effect transformations in their schools, communities, and lives‖ (170). A new, more participatory discourse needs to emerge in the classroom that would merge collective

226 voices as, ―Creation of voice is not merely the empowerment of words. An unspoken general sensitivity to needs is required; an outlet and a platform for an exchange of ideas and the reformation of ideals must exist‖ (Slater 66). This is where literature comes into play, because it is an invitational way to challenge and examine dominant discourses and cultural beliefs. Narrative discourse is a powerful way to shift the way we look at ourselves, others and the world. Narrative discourse is impactful because it ―integrates knowledge and subjectivity‖ (Daiute and Fine 61). Everyone is born into, lives through, and exits this world within stories and the narrative format. But the grand stories that have dominated our culture need to shift in order to encapsulate the whole population:

It is a highly radical and subversive act to tell a familiar story in a new way. Once you start to do it you realize that what you call history is another such story and could be told differently and has been. And then the authoritative tradition starts to crack and crumble. It too, it turns out is nothing more than a particular selection of various stories, all of which have at one time or another been believed and told. (Chernin 55)

Simply, we need to change our grand stories by changing our local and small stories- narratives to the point where a critical mass of little narratives transforms the grand stories. Moreover, we need to include stories that provide an alternative discourse to the patriarchal hegemony that dictates the current status quo.

As much as education is not neutral, neither are the educators nor the students. Of course, educators come with their own subject positions, life histories, cultural and gendered background, beliefs, dilemmas and conceptual struggles. But, in difficulty, it is important to remember one‘s political stance and moreover, to be in constant reflection of what kind of politics one is projecting, either consciously or unconsciously, onto their students:

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That is a great discovery, education is politics! When a teacher discovers that he or she is a politician, too, the teacher has to ask, What kind of politics am I doing in the classroom? That is, in favor of whom am I being a teacher? . . . The teacher works in favor of something and against something. Because of that she or he will have another great question, How to be consistent in my teaching practice with my political choice? (Shor and Freire 46)

Of course, educators come from all different backgrounds carrying with them their own political convictions that make it appear impossible for curriculum theorists and writers to write a consistent curriculum that would meld with all teachers differing opinions.

That being said, to be politically neutral is also to take a political stance, one of compliance to the status quo (Roberts 57). I do not think it would be difficult to get a cumulative agreement from educators that child sexual abuse is wrong on every level.

But they need to come out and say it to their students by openly discussing the topic in the classroom setting. Voice and action must be united. Teachers and educators must empower themselves with the reminder that they are not just mere transmitters of information, but moreover, they are political agents and leaders who garner the power to ignite transformation in their students (Fregeau and Leier 172). But the teachers of this topic—female child sexual abuse—will have to carefully mediate every conversation that might arise in the classroom. But, why should that be any different from the way any form of conversation that arises in a classroom is dealt with; teachers are facilitators as well as educators (Roberts 59). Therefore, teachers need to seek to understand the topic at hand, and to actively mediate the dialogue occurring in the classroom, as ―the liberating teacher has a direct responsibility to ensure dialogue does not lapse into either an arena for abusive attacks or an artificially tolerant atmosphere where all views are accepted as relative and thus unconditionally‖ (Roberts 65). Again, the reader must be

228 tiring of my repetitions, but education in today‘s classroom must be dialogically based so that learners may test their assumptions and beliefs within a mediated context and move to understanding regarding the topic/subject of child sexual abuse. Teachers, who are to be transformative agents, must be in a constant state of modeling inquiry and reflection about their own power in the classroom as well as the multiplicity of forms of oppression that run rampant in every classroom, whether it is visible or not (Rossatto 170). I feel, as mentioned in previous chapters, that adolescents are fundamentally open as character- identity builders. Therefore, adolescence is often marked by a sense of questing, for individuality, for a place in this world, for a sense of belonging (Blume 133). This drive to know oneself on a deeper level can coincide with the broaching of the topic of child sexual abuse – this, I believe. Again, as previously stated, an educator does not have to be a child sexual abuse survivor, or even female, to teach on this topic or to learn about this topic. The key pedagogic imperative here is to transcend one‘s personal and professional and societal discomfort regarding the topic and,

To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders. . . . In the revolutionary process there is only one way for the emerging leaders to achieve authenticity: they must ―die,‖ in order to be reborn through and with the oppressed. (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 113- 14)

Educators must remember that doing nothing is one of the primary contributions to oppressive forces, and that by simply perpetuating the status quo does little to advance the social transformation of the way our society approaches and discusses child sexual abuse.

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According to Freire, education is impossible without love (Shor 25). Moreover, he states that educators cannot properly educate without love:

To be a good liberating educator, you need above all to have faith in human beings. You need to love. You must be convinced that the fundamental effort of education is to help with the liberation of people, never their domestication. You must be convinced that when people reflect on their domination they begin a first step in changing their relationship to the world. (Freire, To the Coordinator 62)

In other words, people need to have essential ‗faith‘ in our empathic humanness and our resilient humanity. We need to remember, as educators, as learners, that going to school is a profound social learning experience in and of itself (Shor 25). Students notice things.

They notice one-way monologues of teacher to student; they can detect what is appropriate to talk about and what is not and what to do and what not to do. For communication and dialogue does not just come out in words, it spans all forms of communication including body language and that is why Freire and numerous others call for those educating and learning to be committed to dialogue-conversation with love:

Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. . . . No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause—the cause of liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical. (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 77-78)

It is here in this nexus of teaching and learning where all of us must be continuously reminded that to educate self and others is not merely an act of transmission of information, which is never neutral, from teacher to student, but rather educating self and other is in itself a political act. It is political in what we choose to teach, to include and to leave out. It is political instructionally in how and why and when and where educators turn to face those topics inside and outside of the curriculum. If there is love, if there is commitment to the topic/subject, if there is a commitment to dialogue based on a

230 hermeneutic awareness of the power of narrative, then transformative dreams that once seemed unfeasible, suddenly become possible, for, ―If, today, we have not yet reached the ultimate dream, democracy—the true enforcement of which entails social justice at all levels and degrees—we have come to understand that we can fight for it, since it is, in

Freirean terms, a possible dream‖ (Freire, Ana 12).

Now I stop. I believe there can be no hope for self-other-world freedom without topic-centred, leaner-active dialogue. Dialogue infuses the written and spoken word and the still and moving images and the languages of the body with political action, and this happens, and has always happened, by people collectively gathering to engage with topics at hand. I believe that somewhere along the evolutionary way, we as human beings bastardized this dialogical process and power and control emerged as the governors of thinking and feeling and doing expression. I believe that the collective, via narrative inquiry and meaning making, may also be the mechanism that may open up and, indeed, remove the isolation experienced by those victimized by non-dialogical talk. In the collective, with a topic at hand, there is both, if they are facilitated towards recognition, proximity and distancing at play. In this pedagogic space, the learner may come to understand those traditional discourses which have dislocated and actually split identity and self-formation. With respect to female child sexual abuse, in the playful space of reading hermeneutically and conversing in dialogues of problem-posing, awareness of self-other and world may be recovered and the singularity is relocated into the knowing that ‗I am not alone – there are others‘. With that recognition, with that awareness, silence ends.

231

I believe through dialogue, the atrocities of child sexual abuse become public matters and when that happens, hopefully, female child sexual abuse becomes one of those collective problems that, by necessity, we must all assume a responsibility to solve.

I dream of the day when the silent secret keepers speak against the violence that oppressively victimizes and terrorizes them day and night. I dream of the day when these girls just know that they are no longer alone. I dream of the day when their voice returns and they scream in unison – I am free! We are free!

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EPILOGUE

The fact that sexual abuse, in any form, exists in this world is unfathomable to me. I cannot comprehend how someone can think he or she has a right to declare ownership over someone else‘s body as if it‘s his or her property. Simply, I just don‘t understand. And, I almost refuse to understand how a person could sexually abuse a child. I don‘t understand how a person could do that to their own daughter or to someone they supposedly love and care for. But what I do know is that sexual abuse happens, and it happens often. I believe, regardless of culture, ethnicity, belief systems, value systems and so on, sexual abuse is a hideous universal phenomenon, and I believe it is truly about power and control and, indeed, the objectification of the other. When someone is reduced to or rendered as an ‗object‘ or a ‗thing‘, it becomes easy to see the objectified person as property, chattel and a possession. In North America, I believe this objectification is realized as a result of the patriarchal tradition in which we live.

Moreover, I believe there is fetishism rampant, in particular, played out in media objectifying young girls‘ bodies. In most cases, these bodies are aligned with signs and signifiers associating young girls‘/adolescents‘/young women‘s bodies with youthfulness

– and youthfulness is equated to innocence, virginity and availability. Pornography, a multi-billion dollar industry in North America, propagates images of girls in ‗school uniforms‘ or girls who are ‗barely legal‘ or girls ‗gone wild‘ and so on; images which are consumed in mass quantities. Pornography, fetishism and the objectification of girls‘ and women‘s bodies is an epidemic that needs to be discussed among all individuals, not just those girls who have endured it:

233

Rape is a personal problem that cries out for a political solution. The solution to our cultural problems of sexual violence lies not only in the treatment of individual victims and offenders, but also in changing our culture. Young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is as unthinkable to them as cannibalism. Sex is currently associated with violence, power, domination and status. The incidence of rape is increasing because our culture‘s destructive messages about sexuality are increasing. (Pipher 230)

There must be a cultural shift in how society views women. Otherwise the current patriarchal paradigm will remain stagnant; otherwise, sexual abuse will never cease.

And, who pays the price – emotionally, physically, spiritually, psychologically, relationally and so on – for such outmoded and sexualized thinking? Millions upon millions of mostly women and girls whose bodies are exploited and abused, whose souls are murdered, and often these girls and women go on to live in silence, often blaming themselves. What did I-we, women, do to provoke this? How did I-we, women, ask for this-it? These questions/thoughts are not uncommon for the sexual abuse survivor.

These thoughts are further confirmed through the media and patriarchal institutions – family, church, courts, and so on. Many of us are told in many different ways that ‗no‘ actually means ‗yes‘, or that we secretly really wanted to be victimized. And when violations of personhood happen, we tell survivors not to blame themselves. We tell them that it will be ‗okay‘. But when sexual abuse happens at such a young age, often in repeated occurrences, the victims are most often not ‗okay‘. Their whole personas become shaped by the traumatic events and their effects that often carry on throughout their adolescence into adulthood, often for the rest of their lives, whether the victims are aware of it or not:

Rape damages young women. They become posttraumatic stress victims. They experience all the symptoms—depression, anger, fear, recurrent dreams and flashbacks. The initial reaction is usually shock, denial and dissociation. Later

234

comes anger and self-blame for not being more careful or fighting back. Young women who are raped are more fearful. Their invisible shield of invulnerability has been shattered. Forty-one percent of rape victims expect to be raped again; 30 percent contemplate suicide; 31 percent go into therapy; 22 percent take self- defence courses and 82 percent say they are permanently changed. (Pipher 230)

And still, many, many sexually abused girls and women remain silent.

But disclosure cannot be forced. Precedent studies indicate that those who are resigned to secrecy will not disclose even when asked directly (Fieldman and Crespi

154). Disclosure is not the simple telling of events; as disclosure requires some form of voice and supportive self-esteem and sense of trusting before the voicings of the traumas of sexual abuse may begin to break the silence. But the act of telling/disclosing should not be a barrier to information that could, in turn, initiate a sense of voice empowerment that could lead to getting help or choosing to disclose. Is there a responsibility – out there, or in us here – to inform and to educate these silent sexual abuse victims? I agree when Halliday states that ―education is the key in deterring sexual abuse‖ (71). But education has to move beyond lip-service disseminations of prevention strategies to include interventionist tactics as well. For not all children or adolescents are able to say

‗no‘ in the moment of being disempowered. Moreover, sometimes the prevention lessons come too late, after the sexual abuse has already occurred. Simple facts, such as that child sexual abuse is a common occurrence among a plethora of girls regardless of ethnicity, race, culture, belief – value systems, and how abuse can manifest itself becoming controlling agents in many survivors‘ lives is pertinent information/education that is often unknown to many child sexual abuse survivors. But this information cannot be merely learnt, it has to be understood. A connection must be made between the facts of this violation, its occurrence, and the lives of the survivors. There is tremendous

235 empowerment in just knowing, learning, that you are not alone. I feel adolescent girls, who thought that their traumas were isolated events, experienced only by them, and through education-learning-knowing may now become part of a collective group of girls who have undergone the same incidents. That, educationally, is freeing – that I believe I can claim. I believe, also, that it does not matter if the ‗victim - others‘ are fictional or non-fictional characters in stories or novels; what is relevant is that what was once hidden is now brought to light and brought to voice. By making connections with textual events and experiences, by experiencing the hermeneutical concept of ‗playfulness‘, it is possible for child sexual abuse survivors to come to understand how deeply their abuses may have affected them; and, it is possible for them to understand that there are other survivors out there.

With the amalgamation of narrative understanding and through topical dialogue, I believe there is a good possibility for adolescent female child sexual abuse survivors to receive information in an educative manner that could lead to instigating a path of healing. Talking about, reading about, and understanding child sexual abuse is not easy.

The topic itself is often accompanied by a sense of discomfort or painfulness. Why?

There is guilt by association – topic association that is. We, in our current society, personalize topics, and as such, therefore, fear topics that through ignorance, others‘ personalize. But, I believe, with the medium of fiction and fictional writings, there is a chance to bypass some of the personalized fears of this topic, and that all of us directly affected by child sexual abuse – and it is everybody – can have an opportunity to acquire live-saving information. And for those that are brave enough to disclose, based on new

236 or discovered or re-covered information about the topic, it is imperative that disclosure is seen as a sign of a successful educational intervention.

The effects, consequences and results of sexual abuse have for too long, existed in silence. We, as those who work with children and youth, or those who are interested in personhood freedoms, must be agents to break that silence. We must be noisy when it comes to the topic of child sexual abuse in order to end the isolating confines that have allowed this form of oppression to operate and exist in our world for centuries. We must provide not only a voice, but also a space for the topic to emerge and develop and be heard by those who are effected by it – and we are all effected by it.

I have learned so much as a person, woman and victim support agent throughout my graduate studies. I have learned to recognize and challenge my own fears around speaking on this topic. I have learned that I cannot expect anyone else to find their voices if I cannot develop my own – thus, I tried to write a fictional piece at the beginning of this inquiry. I have learned that change does not come easy, but if a change is really important and necessary, and I believe this topic qualifies, that I must stand firm in my beliefs. I have learned to constructively offer, via education, voices to those who remain silent and who have been rendered silent about child sexual abuse. There are still those who prefer to have this topic confined to the realm of the private sphere, but I am not one of them. I am more passionate about this topic now than I was when I first started this inquiry. Moreover, this inquiry has educated me and has opened up more questions for me that I wish to pursue in further studies. I want, and need, to know more. I want to know about educational policy, curriculum design and implementation, teaching pedagogies, narrative, (even hermeneutics) and above all how to constructively and

237 positively make it possible to position a fiction-based curriculum and related set of pedagogic practices about the topic of sexual abuse into public schools. I must know further: What might school boards, administrators, teachers and students think/feel about this idea? What might girls who attend public educational institutions think/feel about exploring literature about those who have been sexually abused? I feel my present inquiry – although a wonderful educational experience for me – is but a beginning of my journey as a person committed to the eradication of sexual violence against women. And, although I feel I have wrestled with topic as best possible, I still remain apologetic to the reader that I was not able to conduct the research/inquiry the way I initially conceptualized. I am hopeful about this denial; I have grown some as a person and as a beginning researcher. With the humbling expertise that I have now acquired, I hope that responses to my base questions, which still call to me, will be available through advanced research-inquiry at the doctoral level. For it is my greatest hope that this topic could find its way into schools, and it is my greatest fear that it won‘t and that silence surrounding this issue will continue on as the greatest determining gatekeeper to a topic that so direly requires a voice.

I can still remember being a teenager. I remember the judgment and the fear of standing out in the wrong way or of deviating from the accepted norms. I also remember wanting so desperately to connect with anyone or anything - be it song lyrics, role models, novels and so on - that would have allowed me to feel a little bit less alone in the world. Through my recent professional work with adolescents I have realized that not much has changed. But the thing that almost all adolescents have in common is that they attend school, as it is school that is the primary place where adolescents gather

238 educationally and socially. School, remains, more or less a safe space for learners to receive information and grow – emotionally, spiritually, intellectually and ethically. I do not think that providing information about child sexual abuse is inherently risky or dangerous. I see it as a much needed life line for the myriads of female child sexual abuse survivors who are drowning in their own silence.

And so my writing ends … my inquiry ends … what you have read is not what I intended originally at the beginning of graduate studies to be engaged with as an inquiry project. I hope you, the reader, understand and appreciate what I have written here as a choice regarding how to address the topic at hand. I hope you were able to engage in a dialogue with this text as you read. Thank you for your patience with me as I struggle to find my advocate voice for this topic. Although this text may not be originally the way I wanted to become engaged with the topic of female child sexual abuse, I have been humbled by what I have learned about this topic – humbled as a graduate student, a researcher, an abuse responder and as a woman and now as a new mother. By doing this work, in this way, with this topic, I have been fortified with agency and this text – this thesis – is just the beginning of an advocacy journey forward.

239

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