Cara Delevingne in “Love Out of Lust” by Annabel Mehran for Lula #14
I want to have her for breakfast.
😍😍😍
norskvalkyrie
I am beyond inspired by all the women speaking out against sexual harassment/assault. It’s disgusting to me how common it is. Nothing infuriates me more than victim blaming, which is what the patriarchy does to keep us down. Men are groomed to adopt this same mentality as being “normal”. I am sick to death of hearing: “you shouldn’t have had that much to drink”, or “you shouldn’t have worn that”. NO. How about don’t rape or sexually harass people?? Why is that not the mentality?
The patriarchy goes so deep that people do not understand how accepted these atrocities have become. It all gets swept under the rug. They cover your mouth and smother you to death with silence. It goes back to the metaphor of Adam and Eve, how Eve is the reason we fell from God. Women are the seducers, they are easily susceptible to the devil and his charms, their bodies are inherently sinful.
This implies that a woman’s body (by its very nature of existence) is evil and tempts men into evil. That is total bullshit. To quote Tori Amos: “In the garden I did no crime”.
I have survived sexual abuse since I was three years old. It is the reason I live halfway in a fantasy world. It was the only way I could survive what was happening to me. You begin to experience this parallel reality, a parallel perception. The abuser will often gaslight you into thinking: a.) it did not happen b.) that it is your fault that it happened or c.) that it is normal for this to happen. They threaten or intimidate you into silence. They use shame as a tool to modify/control you and your behavior. As a result you be him to doubt yourself and question your reality.
As a child (age 2-3)that is when we first become aware that we have an impact on our environment. Therefore, everything that happens to them they internalize as being their fault. I have struggled with self esteem and self worth all my life because of the abuse. The people who hurt me told me that I was dirty, that I was bad, that there was something evil inside of me that made them want to do things to me. No child asks for this. No child is responsible for a predators actions–yet the child ends up feeling responsible.
Because my virginity was taken from me, I regard sex as something sacred. When I saw girlfriends of mine growing up, throw it away on some random guy without meaning, my bones would break bitterly, my teeth would clench. I would give anything to have mine back, how can anyone just throw it away?
It’s the reason I developed sexual aversion disorder in adolescence. I associated sex with punishment, and ultimately a sense of loss. Every time I was subjected to anything remotely sexual, I felt like a piece of me was being taken away. As though someone took a bite out of me. I am so full of holes now, it’s hard to imagine how to mend.
Sex was something that I was subjected to, like getting a shot at the dr., or performing a tedious chore. I learned very young to go limp and endure what was happening quietly, because resistance only made it worse. So many women carry this secret with them. I call this Endurism. This applies to all kinds of unpleasant situations, not just sexual, though sexual Endurism is the most traumatizing.
Apart from the instances where I was actually full blown assaulted (more than once in my life sadly) I can’t tell you how many times I have been cornered by men trying to get me to kiss them. Pawing at me, feeling me up inappropriately without my consent. Trying to make it okay by telling me I am beautiful and they can’t help it.
I told you no. I said I don’t like it. I asked you to stop. “Stop please”, “please stop”. Telling me that you enjoy the way I look does not justify invading my personal space and stepping on my boundaries.
The sad thing is: every girl I know had some sort of experience with sexual harassment. Even if they have not been abused as a child (though many have) they have experiences as a teenager and adult.
I remember being 14 years old, and an upperclassmen just walked up to me and grabbed my breasts like that was a perfectly okay thing to do. Numb as I was to people just grabbing my body and doing what they wanted with it, I just stared back at him with cold dead eyes. Unmoved. The look in my eyes startled him. I remember him letting go and backing away from me, mildly unnerved.
I can’t count my experiences. This is not one isolated incident where I was date raped, this was an ongoing thing for most of my life. I still struggle with it now. I do not have healthy boundaries with men, I can’t say no, because I am scared to say no. In the past when I said no, they just got angry and more excited by my refusal. It made it worse. So my spirit leaves my body the second it starts to happen, that way I do not have to feel or be present with what’s happening to my body.
When it’s over. You feel like a disposable thing. Like the wrapper of a candy bar, or the plastic film off a microwave dinner. You feel like a dirty dish rag, or a broken toy on the nursery. Sad, and obscene. You sit and stare at a single point in the room, and try to put all your focus there, because allowing the full force of what happened to sink in at once is too much for your brain to handle.
So you breathe, they get dressed, and you breathe into the carpet. Hoping, wishing with every fiber of your being, that you could melt into the floor and disappear.
To this day, I feel like damaged goods. I feel tainted and unloveable. I feel like those broken eggs that fell off the back of the truck. At the supermarket, a person opens the carton… Sees the yolk melding with the cardboard… And their reaction is: “ew gross, I don’t want these.” So they close the carton, shove them aside, and select a different one with unbroken eggs inside.
These things happened to us, not because of us. That is an important distinction for any survivor. We did not make them happen. It is not our fault. We did nothing wrong.
Even as I write that my brain instantly goes to self hatred. It instantly goes to self destruction. Denying one’s own reality, will cause a fissure in ones reality. You will have the surface reality where you interact with everyone else, faking your way through social niceties and small talk, and the other reality… Your parallel perception. You know what happened to you, but the person responsible refuses to take accountability. Worse: they blame you, or pretend like it did not happen.
One minute you are being abused by this person, experiencing that reality… The next they ask you what kind of condiments you want on your sandwich as though nothing happened. It astounds me how unaware most people are of themselves, let alone other people.
When a person commits suicide, and a loved one says: “I didn’t see it coming”…in my mind I think to myself: “and that’s exactly why it happened”.
People are so disconnected from others, everyone is so terrified to feel real emotions, that they avoid, deflect, deny. It is painful to face the shadow aspects of ourselves. Yet they cannot be healed by avoiding them. Acknowledging the experience, grieving the experience, and having the support of loving friends and family holding the space for them–is the path to true healing.
You can’t let go of what you never grieved. It’s why people get cancer. Swallowing a dark secret, repressing one’s true emotions. Repressing how you feel causes stress and tension in the body, Shame causes stress and tension to the body. It is scientifically proven that cortisol levels contribute to cancer. People make themselves sick with what they are not allowed to feel.
There is so much more I can say about this. I feel too emotional to say anymore right now. All I know, is that I am so relieved for this breakthrough. It is so encouraging to see women standing up for themselves. Finally. If we stand together, we can shift the planetary consciousness. It will take time, but it starts with each of us.