© Melina Magdalena 2006
Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.
(Margaret Atwood, 2001, "The Blind Assassin,pp.311,Virago Press,London.)
The misrepresentation of love and sex in popular culture has warped relations between the sexes to such an extent that most human beings in Western society are deprived of their needs to be touched in a loving way. Touch deprivation leads to perversions which are acted out as crimes against other human beings, many of them children and babies, as well as adult women, most of whom will experience some level of abuse during their lifetimes.
Selfish, violent and abusive acting out does not solve the central issue for abusers and perpetrators. Even after committing their crimes, they are not satisfied, but remain driven to seek what they cannot have, to take by force what they can get, and perpetuate the cycle of abuse and criminal behaviour.
Survivors of sexual abuse and sexual trauma are in a position where we can only seek to answer our needs through the filter of having been abused. There is no way we can free ourselves of our experience. Some element of distortion, even at a cell-level memory will always remain, lurking beneath the surface and affecting the way we relate to others. This is the direct manifestation of the so-called loss of innocence.
One of the most tragic consequences of this perversion in our societies is the idea that all touch must be sexual. It is an idea to which many of us subscribe and out of which many of us act, even whilst knowing in our minds, that it cannot be true. The fear that our touching of any kind will be misunderstood to be sexual when this is inappropriate, criminal, or simply not the case, has led us to live under a cloud of fear and suspicion of any kind of touching. The teacher touch taboo in schools is one symptom of this fear.
At the same time, in politically correct Western culture, the belief is instilled in us from our earliest days that we can only get our needs met through speech. Unless we learn to put into words, what we want and desire, our needs will go unacknowledged and unmet. What this says about those of us who rely solely on verbal communication is that we are condemned to be abused unless the person with whom we are attempting to communicate, listens deeply to us. Wordless forms of communication such as body language and touch, are rendered insignificant except when we are using our awareness of them in order to manipulate others. It’s ok to lie with our bodies in job interviews, but is it like the boy who cries wolf? Does it mean then, that our bodies never tell the truth?
The horror we feel when babies and young children, people with dementia and disabilities are found to have been abused results partly from our knowledge that these are the most inarticulate and therefore voiceless members of our culture. However, anyone who lives or works with such people knows how effectively many can communicate without words.
Clearly, there is something lacking in our education, when children are not instructed in communication strategies which go both ways – not only in the expression, but also in the reception of what is being communicated. Children at primary school are given only half the picture, which is to “use words”, rather than violence, in order to get what they want. Children are encouraged to report bullying and harassment to the adults in charge only after they have stood up to their bullies and told them with words, that they do not like what those bullies are doing to them. The corollary for adults is enacted in countless workplace grievance procedures.
It is another manifestation of the victim-blaming culture that unless we have been heard to have cried out in assertive protest that we did not wish to be abused or assaulted, the assumption is that we did not protest loudly enough. Therefore, we are to blame for not having been able to persuade our attacker to cease abusing us. Nowhere is there an assertion that the person who has assaulted us did not listen hard enough.
Since they have not learned that this is necessary, bullies, abusers and perpetrators must be taught to pay attention and to listen with their ears, eyes, minds and bodies to what their victims are expressing. Someone who continues to abuse as well as paying attention is a sadist who derives pleasure from hurting others. I don’t believe all perpetrators are sadistic, even when they choose to ignore what their victims are telling them in so many ways. They are acting out of unmet needs. It is convenient for them not to listen. It is defeatist to insist that they are incapable of listening and responding appropriately. Entrenched abusive behaviour is as difficult to shift as any habit, requiring a shift in perception and an acceptance of personal responsibility before change can be effected.
The apparent inability of abusers and perpetrators to express their needs acceptably with words is reflected in our society’s belief that little boys are less verbally astute than little girls. Little boys and little girls grow up to be big boys and big girls. If the experience of boys is that they are unable to express themselves adequately in order to get their needs met, and if boys are not taught to listen to what girls tell them, how can we expect that men will talk and listen to the women in their lives? If girls are taught to express themselves only with words, rather than actions, how can we expect women to take action against the wrongdoings of the men in their lives? There is little room for growth and change in this scenario.
Furthermore, girls and women know that touching doesn’t always involve physical contact. When we walk anywhere in public, we feel eyes upon us just as tangibly as if someone were running his fingers up and down our arm to make the hairs stand up. When we hear crude remarks and rough jokes made at our expense, we cringe inside, just as if someone had put his hand inside our chests and pinched off the blood supply to our hearts. When we are confronted with the images of degraded women on billboards, magazine covers and staff room lockers, we feel as though someone has stripped us naked, and we shudder as the bile of humiliation and fear rises in our throats. The only way to survive such everyday experiences is to try and become numb, or to win a hollow, but dangerous victory by flaunting our sexuality in order to disguise our fear and revulsion at the mindless beings we have been turned into.
It feels as though what men want of a woman is some kind of animated dildo with a mouth to suck, hands to pull, having breasts to be fondled, and a hole into which men can thrust and ejaculate. Important too, is the ability to make wordless sounds of pleasure, whilst remaining incapable of speech, which renders the woman a walking womb to bear and raise the children without ever making any kind of demand on the men who father them. Certainly, this kind of woman has no needs of her own. She is barely human.
Where in popular culture is the exchange of ideas and the communication of needs expressed in any other way? Where do we see young men and young women relating to one another in any way that is not sexually charged? And now, as the taboo on homosexuality is gradually being prised off, we are also given the vicarious thrill of watching sexually charged relations between girls and girls, and boys and boys. Where are we taught the necessity for people to take care in the way in which they touch one another? Where is touch ever represented as being anything but sexual?
The distortion at societal level of the cycle of touch deprivation that drives our cultures is the belief that our needs to be touched can only be met through sex. It elevates and prioritises our sexual drive to the detriment and neglect of anything else that is part of being human. All that other stuff – the drives to create, to build, to wonder, to invent, to teach, to beautify, to discover, to relate, to move, to learn, to nurture – is not nearly as important as the need to be sexual.
We feel the wrongness of this in our bodies. We strive to not succumb, but many of us make ourselves ill with our efforts to deny that this is the only way in which we have learned to be human. Or we cut ourselves off from others, to dwell in the hell of a self-imposed isolation. Better that, than to have our intentions continually misinterpreted.
The clues which lead me to make this assertion are found within the language I use to describe being touched, being moved and being affected by what goes on around me and within me, when these words are used as metaphors and when the events I so describe involve no actual physical touching.
I find clues in the comfort I take when holding and caring for a baby. I hold and touch the baby touches me, and seeks comfort from physical contact that is in no way sexual.
I find clues when I move through wild places, and places that are not filled with other humans. I take pleasure in touching leaves, bark, stone, earth and water, and in feeling the touch of the sun on my back, the rain on my face, and the wind in my hair.
I find clues in relating to the animals and pets in my life. I stroke them and pat them and they respond with kindness towards me.
All of these things show me that there are different kinds of touch, and that touch is not only sexual. To be truly human is to also recognize and act upon the many other things that drive us in our lives.
