self harm
I'm doing a presentation on self-harm, including cutting, burning, eating disorders, and so on, on women in prison for one of my soc classes. And I have a couple questions:
Do you feel that women (and men, for that matter) who self-harm are using their bodies as a sight of resistance to patriarchy and prison? Are they self-harming because of the circumstances they are in, their psychology, both, other, etc? Does it redirect anger in ways society finds acceptable--e.g. instead of blaming patriarchy, racism, and so on, they blame and punish themselves?
I was trying to articulate to my group that self-harming behaviours were actually encouraged in women, esp. eating disorders, because they served to make women focus on themselves and their bodies as the problem, as the one worthy of anger, not society.
Do you feel that women (and men, for that matter) who self-harm are using their bodies as a sight of resistance to patriarchy and prison? Are they self-harming because of the circumstances they are in, their psychology, both, other, etc? Does it redirect anger in ways society finds acceptable--e.g. instead of blaming patriarchy, racism, and so on, they blame and punish themselves?
I was trying to articulate to my group that self-harming behaviours were actually encouraged in women, esp. eating disorders, because they served to make women focus on themselves and their bodies as the problem, as the one worthy of anger, not society.