New Scars for Old... more on Heart's trainwreck

Oddly enough, the thread at Heart's that I asploded over has now veered into the topic of self-injury and the damage done there. I recently posted about my self-injury scars, so the topic is fresh.

I'd essentially stormed off in disgust. I'd like to phrase it in a fashion that made me sound a little less prone to hissy fits, but I'm being honest. I was sickened and enraged when I last posted about that thread that I wasn't going to post on it any more. But then, as tends to happen, Ren quoted a particularly nasty chunk o' comment, and I found myself clicking through to the Thread Of Doom again.

I found these comments, by Laurelin:

121laurelin

I think there’s a biological/chemical component too. We know that bulimic women, for example, and women who cut, experience a sense of relief when they do these things that is caused by the release of endorphins.

I was a self-harmer, and although I wouldn’t say (even then I wouldn’t have said) that I ‘enjoyed’ it, it did, as you say, give me a release from intense emotion, no matter how brief. But it was still harmful. My arms, my thighs were still cut up and bleeding. I still felt the pain.

It was harmful.


122laurelin

‘Enjoying’ self-harm has to be seen in the context in which it takes place- in the midst of severe emotional pain or trauma.

While Heart's comments on women deluding themselves into "thinking" they enjoyed certain practices simply pissed me off (as I've said previously on that thread, hearing feminists express the idea that my nervous system and libido is a Trick of the Patriachy is pretty gutwrenching) Laurelin's comments were obviously sincere, and coming from a place I recognised. I didn't necessarily agree with the point she seemed to be making regarding the term "enjoy", however, so I posted this:

129hexy

Laurelin:

I had quite a lengthy period of self-injury, when I first got sick. I wouldn’t say I “enjoyed” it, but I would say it kept me alive.

One of those situations where the person in my head, me, gets to decide whether it was the best choice under the circumstances.

This is a topic I've discussed and debated quite a bit in the years since I started talking and writing about my illness, my brain and my recovery process, and I know so well that every self-harmer has a different perspective on their experiences with self-harm. As I mentioned in the scars post, I had a long and painful road to travel before I could accept that part of my recovery. Now? I own it, as the right decision and the best I could have made.

The decision that kept me alive was the right one.

Laurelin seems to get it:

#
131laurelin

Hexy- I was not trying to say that self-harm is the ‘wrong’ choice, or that one should be prevented from chosing it. I am just saying that the context must be taken into consideration. I don’t agree that self-harm was a ‘free choice’ for me- it was one of a number of what I consider to be lousy choices available at the time.

132laurelin

and also the self-harm I undertook perhaps had some beneficial aspects… as far as my own experience goes, I can’t say for sure. But I do ultimately think that I harmed myself too, in the sense that my body was damaged (however superficially) by it.

Hope that makes sense. This is very hard to verbalise.

I mean, we still appear to fundamentally disagree on certain facets of the self-injury issue, but that's OK.

Heart, on the other hand.... well. Here's her reply to my comment.

133admin

Laurelin: Hexy- I was not trying to say that self-harm is the ‘wrong’ choice, or that one should be prevented from chosing it. I am just saying that the context must be taken into consideration.

The discussion at issue was about what self-harm in the context of male heterosupremacy means for women.

Responding to that by saying, as you basically have, Hexy, “Well, I wanted to,” is not a response at all. It is not in good faith. It’s an attempt at a reversal, a trying to make Laurelin the Big Meanie, as though she was saying fuck-all about you or what you might have chosen, ever. She was talking about HER OWN LIVED REALITY and her thoughts about it, she wasn’t saying ANYTHING about what you may or may not have done sometime, let alone about what you “get” to decide.

There’s been this ongoing ignoring on the part of the pro-sex trade side of basically everything that has been posted here *by survivors*. That’s why there are a whole bunch of spammed comments to this thread that are not going to see the light of day. There will be actual, respectful *engagement* — not this glossing over and just saying, over and over again, well, I like to work out, I like to shave, I chose to self harm, you’re a meanie for bringing it up, as though any of that is even remotely relevant — or comments will not, again, be approved. Ignoring survivors who are putting themselves out there, risking becoming ill because they ARE putting themselves out there, to just assert and reassert, essentially, that their lives don’t matter to you at all, all that matters to you is what you, yourself, might have wanted to do some time, amounts to erasure. It is destructively and triggeringly dismissive. It’s what men do to us 24/7.

Hey, look! I'm wearing my enraged and disgusted face again! This thead seems to do that to me a lot, doesn't it?

Here's my reply to both Laurelin and Heart, still stuck in mod and probably destined to stay there:

136hexy
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Laurelin:

Hexy- I was not trying to say that self-harm is the ‘wrong’ choice, or that one should be prevented from chosing it. I am just saying that the context must be taken into consideration. I don’t agree that self-harm was a ‘free choice’ for me- it was one of a number of what I consider to be lousy choices available at the time.

That I do agree with. Context is vitally important. I think you and I may just differ on how we see the best of a crappy selection of choices: to me, the ability to make that choice is still an act of power, however slight. I could choose to harm, or I could give in and die. The alternative made it a strong choice for me.

and also the self-harm I undertook perhaps had some beneficial aspects… as far as my own experience goes, I can’t say for sure. But I do ultimately think that I harmed myself too, in the sense that my body was damaged (however superficially) by it.

Hope that makes sense. This is very hard to verbalise.

I understand the difficulty. When I first began to try and vocalise my experiences of self-injury and what the experience meant to me, it was near impossible to put those feelings into words.

I wrote about my relationship with my SI scars recently. It sounds like you and I see the damage done to skin very differently. Those scars to me are now proof of a battle won, not proof of damage. We all prioritise these things differently, though, and I in no way mean to imply that your understanding of your scars and your experience is wrong or bad… I am simply pointing out that, like everything else we’re been discussing, the internal experience varies wildly from woman to woman even when the external experience looks similar.

Thank you for addressing me courteously, btw, it’s something you’ve never failed to do.

Heart:

Responding to that by saying, as you basically have, Hexy, “Well, I wanted to,” is not a response at all.

“Well, I wanted to”? ?

That’s how you read what I wrote? Laurelin seemed to recognise my experience. Your ability to recognise suffering and trauma in women seems firmly wedded to how closely their ideology resembles yours.

I didn’t self injure because I “wanted to”, Heart. I self-injured because if I didn’t find some way to ground the riot of pain in my head, to vent it and connect it to my body, I was going to kill myself. That you can read the words “[self-injury] kept me alive” and translate it to “well, I wanted to” really explains so much of the apparent understanding going on here. Talk about denial of lived reality!

Oh, and as for “what you may or may not have done sometime”? Such dismissive language, even as you accuse women of using the same. I wish I could show you my skin right now… years of using self-injury as a coping mechanism certainly, as Laurelin pointed out, leaves its mark on your skin.

And my next reply to Heart:

137hexy
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

As for the words you’ve quoted from various prostituted women? I haven’t commented on them apart from saying that they’re important and should be heard because, well, I think they’re important and should be heard. What else would I say?

Women expressing their experiences = not something I’m going to argue with. Women denying mine, however? Well, see above posts.

Apparently, in addition to not caring how stressful and harmful it might be to those of us not on "Heart's side" (I reject the label "pro-sex-trade" quite vehemently) to have no respectful engagement regarding our experiences, to have our experiences ignored when we put ourselves out there and risk our mental health to be beaten down and erased by women who only care about the lives, stories and pain of women who fit the right narrative, it's now entirely acceptable to dismiss, minimise and erase the experiences of women who have battled serious mental illness and experienced self-harm and self-injury. I'm stuck wondering if there is any female experience Heart won't co-opt as her own.

To put it in context, when I first joined the feminist blogosphere, I did so quite openly as a non-neurotypical woman, a disability rights campaigner, and someone with a lengthy and painful struggle behind her dealing with the onset of serious mental illness in the wake of domestic violence and rape. This was the identity attached to "hexyhex" in the blogosphere, the experience of me that Heart and other feminist bloggers, had for years... right up until I outed myself as, incidentally, also being a sex worker. This is what is erased when an external decision is made that that final chunk of my identity not only outranks those previously known facets, but apparently (according to Heart's assessment, at any rate) negates them. This is what happens when a group of women decide to stick a bunch of labels on me that don't fit and aren't mine, and then use them to mark my experiences irrelevant, my perspectives wrong, and most painfully, my authority on my own life null and void.

I'm still proud of my scars and my choices. To someone else, their skin may be proof of harm. For me, it's proof of strength. It may not look like the "best choice" from the outside, but each one of those lines is part of the reason I'm still here. Once again, I find myself wondering why I can look at another woman's experiences and perspectives that are so different from mine and say "Hey, we went through some similar but wildly different shit, and both our stories are vitally important" when that basic communication skill seems lacking in others.

ARG.