15.7 Betrayal
Ruth tells Sally about girls who
experience "physical pleasure" while having sex with their fathers. The resulting
shame was probably the worst form of shame that the participants talked about
in the interviews. This is because the body betrays the person being abused.
They are aware of their shame, but feel that they are active participants in
the abuse and do not try to stop it seemingly because they experience physical
pleasure. Linda also speaks of abused girls who have experienced orgasm during
the abuse. Their bodies enjoyed something their minds did not want.
Ruth: Umm ( ) I’m ashamed of my body. It’s horrible. What kind of things has it been
through? Some girls say that their bodies even enjoyed having intercourse with
their fathers.
Sally: Christ. That’s something to think about.
Ruth: The body has betrayed you so much that it even enjoys having sex with
your dad.
Ruth and Sally seem in my opinion
here to be talking about feeling shame and the betrayal of one body. They seem
to say that as soon as shame shows itself one understands that one always
already have been shamed; it becomes clear that one has been shamed all one’s
life. Shame is a destiny of the self. It relates to the indefinite and
therefore has something indefinite in its dialectics. Shame is not only
dialectically different from sickness, but in relation to shame all signs
become dialectical. Shame is, because it is completely dialectical, the
sickness that it is the greatest misfortune not to have. It is at the same time
the most dangerous sickness to have when one does not want to be cured of it. Linda
says that this is also something that boy’s experience. Having sex with a woman
as a child, even if this woman is ones mother can lead to a feeling of
pleasure. The boys’ penis may become erected, intercourse might be carried out
with ones mother, and ones body might experience orgasm. Men have been said to
“like it” says Linda, but after a while it becomes disgusting that ones body
has betrayed on.
Linda_1: Umm
first of all you lose control over your life when you lose control over umm
when the abuse happens, because you don’t understand what’s happening, and next
you start to dread that it will happen again. You feel that it was awful and
all that, but when something in your body enjoyed the abuse, especially boys
report that they had erections during the abuse, ((Bites her lips)) (.) then you despair, your body reacts differently
than your head. And then there’s your body, some like it, especially men, young
men have said so. But umm if you had an orgasm, or felt a little excited and
felt that it was ok, and then it’s umm something your mind doesn’t want. But
your body liked it in a way, and then it becomes disgusting that my body
betrayed me. (.) ((Bites her lips))
You have lost control of your body (.). Can
you understand that?
Such experiences of pleasure during
the abuse, which Linda is talking about, might result in not wanting the abuse
to stop. The abuse may not at the moment be understood as abuse, but a form for
recognition from someone one is in a trusting relationship with. This may seem
as contradictory, being in shame and not wanting to be cured from ones shame.
For what is left if one loses ones shame? Not wanting to be cured of shame can
also be understood as having lost faith in oneself (and in others). Why should
one be cured of ones shame and start to have faith in oneself or others? In
many ways the opposite of feeling shame is to faith. The process of belief
involves relating to one’s self, and to be one’s self is to have the self
grounded in the moral foundation the self is built on. Shame is a weakness when
it is shame related to not willing to be one’s self. In this form of shame, one
is ashamed about not willing to be ones self, or ashamed about wanting to be
someone other than one’s self, wanting to be a new self. Shame is strength when
it leads to a self that grows stronger: to a higher form of belief in oneself
and others.
Shame is not only connected to a lack of
resistance (passivity) but also to one’s failure to act (action). Ruth says
that shame has never been a problem for her, but after listening to Sally and
Pia talk about their shame, she becomes conscious of her own shame. She
remembers being abused together with another girl by the same abuser when they
were children. Today as an adult, whenever she meets this girl, it causes her
to blush.
Ruth: Umm shame has never been a problem for me. What I have felt guilty
about…is connected to when I told my parents about what had happened to me. I
was grownup. I lived at home with my son. I was divorced for a period. I knew
that my abuser ( ) and this man here was a ( ) to my
mother. It wasn’t just me; he had abused thirteen other girls as well. It was a
big case. It was very difficult to live at home when I had to talk to the child
welfare office about what had happened. I told my parents to sit down and
listen to me. I felt guilty in a way that I have never felt before, not even
after the abuse, but then I felt guilty because I hadn’t told my parents
before. Umm the way they reacted, they reacted in a way I’d never seen before.
They had never shown any emotions before. Never such care as those days after I
told them…Umm but ((Gazes up at the ceiling)) I can’t (.) remember ever
feeling shame about being abused…I don’t feel shame towards him, I’m completely
indifferent towards him.
Sally: Uh-huh ((Nods her head)) Yeah
(.) I remember being ashamed of myself
the day he died, because I was so happy.
Kaare: Were you ashamed of being glad?
Sally: No…He was my stepfather. I wasn’t ashamed at all. I was only glad that
he died. But I was so afraid even (.)
when I was 34, it was Christmas, ( )
was six years old, she was the same age
as I was when my (.) abuse started. (.) Umm I was visiting my brother when I saw my
stepfather walk past on the sidewalk, and I just folded up in a foetal position
on the sofa. And I was 34 and I’m not ashamed of it.
Pia: Yeah, I felt a sadness and shame over never
being good enough when I was there. If I was there and did what I was supposed
to, it wasn’t (.) ever good enough ((Shakes
her head)). No, at home I just didn’t fit
in, I was never good enough.
Ruth: When we’re talking about shame now, something popped up inside of me. (.)
Not in relation to my abuser, but to his
daughter. (.) Most of the abuse
happened to both of us together ((Looks over towards Sally)) and when I meet her, something we do very
rarely, ((Holds her hand in front of her chin)) then I feel it (.) I felt
that now. When I meet her, then I remember what we have experienced together.
We’ve never talked about what happened. I’m blushing ((Waves her hands in
front of her face and looks down)) I
don’t know. It’s such a long time ago. At least a year.
This little dialog between Sally,
Pia and Ruth show some of the positive usages of focus group interviews. They discuss
shame from different perspectives, almost without any involvement from my side.
Ruth speaks of not feeling ashamed from being abuse, but changes her perspective
after listening to Sally and Pia. After saying that she doesn’t feel any shame
toward her perpetrator, only indifference, she receives a recognizing nod from
Sally with an extra confirming “yeah”. Then Sally tells how she felt happy when
her stepfather who had abused her as a child, died. Something she first says
she was ashamed of and right afterwards corrects herself by saying she wasn’t
ashamed. For this she receives recognition from Pia with her confirming “yeah”.
And she leads the conversation further by saying that she never felt good
enough at home. Even when she did what was expected of her, she felt it wasn’t
good enough. She felt she didn’t fit in at home. The stories given by Sally and
Pia seem in one way or another to function as a “looking-glass” for Sally so
that she re-evaluates her previous statement remembers something she had
forgotten, and a blushing feeling arises and she looks down, which might
indicate a non-verbal marker of shame (appendix 20).
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