There is always so much to talk about and discuss that I sometimes feel paralyzed in trying to choose what to actually write about in a given week. But today I thought I'd say a few words about women and introception.I didn't know that word for a long time, but I've been thinking about the concept for quite a long time. In fact, I imagine every single woman from puberty on has been forced to wrestle with it.
What prompted my current ruminations was this article. Let me set the stage by quoting from it:
"Most people tend to avoid, despise or criticize the things they don’t like. This allows them to separate and disconnect themselves from these loathed things. But when you think negatively about and try to avoid your body, you end up disconnecting from it and losing the ability to understand what’s going on inside your body. You start to see it not as your body but as an object.
"That ability to recognize, interpret and respond to internal signals in your body actually has a name: interoception, also known as the sixth sense. It refers to your ability to recognize, interpret and respond to a variety of bodily sensations, such as emotions, hunger and fullness, temperature and pain."
"My research over the past decade has found that the worse your interoception is, the more disconnected you are from your body and the less aware you are of what’s going on inside it. And the more disconnected you are from your body, the easier it becomes to harm yourself, whether that be through an eating disorder or suicidal behaviors.
"Interoception is crucial to understanding and caring for your body. For instance, you need to be able to perceive hunger and fullness in order to properly nourish yourself. If you were unable to perceive pain, you might end up hurting yourself. And you need to be able to understand the emotions you’re feeling in order to respond adaptively to different situations.
"Research suggests that interoception is integrally related to mental and physical health, and impaired interoception is considered a risk factor for various mental disorders. For example, if you are unable to sense when you’re hungry or full, that could lead to restrictive or binge eating. Conversely, if you are hyperaware of your internal sensations, such as your heart rate and breathing, that could lead to panic disorder symptoms.
"As you lose connection with your body, it becomes easier to harm your body as an object you’ve grown to loathe. Research from my team has found that people who have attempted suicide have worse interoception than people who haven’t, and people who have attempted suicide multiple times have worse interoception than those who have only attempted suicide once. People with more recent and lethal suicide attempts have worse interoception than those with more distant or less lethal attempts.
"Impairment in interocepton is more strongly associated with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts than other risk factors like hopelessness, gender and post-traumatic stress."
I've always had terrible interoception. Even as a very young child, I would routinely ignore the signals my body was giving me until my body had to overwhelm me to get itself heard. Of course, at the time of puberty, I was fairly distressed about the changes my body was undergoing, as most women are. It is when their body changes, and one realizes one's body has made one into prey, that a real horror can be felt.
Sexual abuse and sexual harassment can also trigger a desire to dissociate from the body that has brought this awful attention. It is reported that many women involved in prostitution cultivate the art of dissociation so as to survive their ordeal and to enable them to keep going in such a harmful activity. And, of course, ideals of feminine beauty can also catalyze dissociation from a body that cannot meet those ideals (which is what the original article discusses with relation to eating disorders).
Those that want women to dissociate from their bodies do not have women's best interests at heart, for such dissociation harms women. While it is obvious that practices such as prostitution thereby harm women, we might overlook other things that promote it, such as surrogacy, which is surely a profound dissociation that can only be felt by women.
What other seemingly neutral practices dissociate women from their bodies? Hurtful clothing, such as stiletto heels or corsets. Pornography, which sears images of female bodily harm in the minds of all who view it. Promotion of formula feeding or being insensate while in childbirth. Promotion of sexual practices which hurt the female body and cause her to dissociate, such as anal sex or strangulation or slapping.
Lately I've been hearing in my heart suggestions like, "Come back to your body. Bring the body." Only we can do the work that's required to heal our pummeled sense of interoception. Only we can start rejecting any practices or mindsets that encourage women to dissociate from their physical bodies, or that causes us to see our bodies as a collection of parts.
True feminism is an embodied feminism. We cannot make peace with men until we have made peace with our own female bodies. Men dominate us in part by forcing dissociation upon our female bodies. To begin to fight male dominance, we must begin with reversing that dissociation, which in turn will give us powerful means to turn the tide towards peace with men. Women do not need liberation from their female bodies, they need liberation with and through their female bodies. Healing our sense of interoception, making peace with our female bodies, protecting the integrity of our female bodies, is and always will be square one in any feminist project.