Note: This post contains rhetoric and generalizations that should be conveyed as persynal experience and convictions. I will be writing a follow up to this post later today explaining what i meant and the reprecussions of using the language i have. However, i have to run right now so i leave you with the post in its original.
An incredible essay by Billie Rain entitled “the healing journey as a site of resistance” has really got my brain dancing. There is way too much for me to address right now because i’m getting pretty tired and i am getting up in the morning to go do some volunteer work. But i wanted to go ahead and put down some words.
The first post i read from the 9th Carnival of Feminists was Women and Patriarchy by the Den of the Biting Beaver. I’m not going to get too much into the actual material of the post. Instead, i want to talk about a trend i often notice in activist and theorist circles; the trend of seperating oursevles from the dominant culture and looking down upon others from a pedastal of self-importance and denial. An example within Biting Beaver’s post is use of the concept of blame. The post asks “should we be blaming women too?”
I don’t want to answer that. I know that plenty of others will. What I want to focus on is blame. When we look to blame others for social ills and institutionalized oppression we seek to seperate ourselves from the dominant culture of oppression. When we begin to recognize the pervasiveness of this culture it becomes obvious that none of us are able to escape the teachings of violence. Billie touches on this in her essay.
When talking about “inter being” she quotes Thich Nhat Hahn:
We all saw the video of the Los Angeles policemen beating Rodney King. When I saw these images, I identified with Rodney King, and I suffered a lot. You must have felt the same. We were all beaten at the same time. But when I looked more deeply, I saw that I am also the five policemen. I could not separate myself from the men who did the beating. They were manifesting the hatred and violence that pervades our society
To insist on blaming others is to deny persynal responsibility in the culture of violence. And when we recognize persynal responsibility, we learn that an effective strategy is not to make others feel shame and guilt but to work on our own issues in solidarity with those struggling in the same oppressive system.
As bell hooks said, “Addressing our individual and collective suffering, we will find ways to heal and recover that can be sustained, that can endure from generation to generation”. For me, healing is not about blame. Like Billie, i am a survivor of childhood sexual assualt. I don’t talk about my persynal experiences so much any more because i learned awhile ago the concept of forgiveness. For years i blamed someone else. I blamed them for what they did, how they made me feel, and the huge impact it had/has on me. But then i realized that they were socialized in the same culture as i was. They had learned the same lessons of domination and violence that i had. In fact, they became an influential teacher. I then realized that they, too, had probably had a similiar teacher. This doesn’t mean that what they did was acceptable. There is no excuse for harming a young child. But what i no longer do is blame. I forgave the persyn, but not the act.
When i learned to forgive i felt a huge amount of power from within. For nearly twenty years i was continuously dominated by the actions that had taken place when i was six. I had allowed the persyn and the act to control me by not letting it go; by allowing the abuse to not allow me to choose to be my own persyn.
Now, through this act of radical forgiveness, i can identify with the abuser. I recognize how i have taken the lesson they taught to heart and used it to dominate others. Now, i am free to choose another world, another reality. I no longer have to be a victim and play the role that i was taught. I choose a more compassionate, empathetic life. A life that allows me to heal through praxis.
