MAKING SILENCE KNOWLEDGE:TOWARDS THE EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONSOF INTIMATE CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ASSAULTbyJOANNA WISEWOOLFB.A., The University of British Columbia, 1972Dip. Ed., The University of British Columbia, 1976M.Ed., McGill University, 1984A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OFTHE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OFMASTER OF ARTSinTHE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIESDepartment of Administrative, Adult and Higher EducationWe accept this th is as conformingto the required standardTHE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIAOctober 1993© Joanna Wisewoolf, 1993Department oIn presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanceddegree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make itfreely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensivecopying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of mydepartment or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying orpublication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my writtenpermission.The University of British ColumbiaVancouver, CanadaDateDE-6 (2/88)iiABSTRACTHow can l know what! know if I don't know what you have done to my body?I am a woman victim, survivor, and healer of intimate childhood sexual assault. I rememberedthese assaults when I was in my early thirties, but did not deal with the assaults, family denial ofthem, or the emotional, intellectual, physical, sexual and spiritual consequences of the assaultsand denial until writing this thesis. My own knowing -- my thinking, confidence, memory, and mysense of being able to speak and contribute to the truths of the world -- has been contaminated bythe assaults, the family denial, and my lived consequences of the assaults. In this research, I workto make my silence knowledge through intimate reflective autobiography. First, I explore theliterature of intimate assault from the perspective of silence and knowing. Then, I explore theeducational literature of women and knowing from the perspective of intimate assault. Then, Irelate my crone/ology of making silence knowledge. Then, I testify to my experiences of intimateassault and healing in a series of narrative poems. Finally, I conclude with theoretical frameworksof assault, silence and healing, and with implications for educators' personal action andeducational praxis. We are all implicated in the oppression and betrayals of intimate childhoodsexual assault. Our silence as assailants, witnesses and victims protects and condones theassaults. When we develop our felt sense of intimate assault, we become knowing witnesses,survivors and healers able to resist intimate assault and other forms of emotional, intellectual,physical, sexual and spiritual abuse and create knowledge based on the truths of women'sexperiences. This work of making silence knowledge stretches from individual personal awarenessto the content, processes, relationships, structures, and goals of educational institutions. Makingsilence knowledge is the work of educators committed to naming and resisting women'soppression and the related oppressions of race, culture, class, age, and sexual orientation withinour educational praxis.TABLE OF CONTENTSAbstract^iiTable of contents^iiiAcknowledgement ixPART ONE: INTRODUCTIONLET US BREAK SILENCE^ 1Weave WomanPURPOSE^ 2Knowing witnessREADER'S GUIDE^6Fury, terror and powerI, IIKnowing languageOVARYVIEW^ 12PART TWO: BACKGROUNDINTIMATE ASSAULT, SILENCE AND KNOWINGLEXICON^15Silenceintimate:child:sexual assault:silence:know:knowing:About knowingAnd ohknowledge:INTIMATE ASSAULT, SILENCE AND KNOWING^ 21THE LEXICON OF INTIMATE CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ASSAULT^26INTIMATE ASSAULT AS THE TERMS OF MEN'S ENDEARMENT^31SILENT WITNESSES: RESISTING KNOWLEDGE^ 34BREAKING SILENCE^ 35ivPART THREE: METHODMAKING SILENCE KNOWLEDGE^ 37Crone/ologyTOWARDS MAKING SILENCE KNOWLEDGE^ 38RE/MEMBERING KNOWLEDGE^ 49conceive:January 16, 1990May 16, 1990May 27, 1991Re/collectionWinter, 1991/92February 27,1992April 3, 1992April 8,1992April 12, 1992April 14, 1992May 10, 1992May 21, 1992 #1May 21, 1992 #2May 24, 1992May 25,1992May 28, 1992June 4, 1992June 7,1992July 7, 1992Thread, July 8, 1992September 20, 1992October 9,1992November 21, 1992December 6, 1992December 6,1992December 26,1992December 27, 1992February 8, 1993Our healing is our re/memberingPART FOUR: TESTIMONYFROM SILENCE TO KNOWLEDGE^83testimony:SEALED IN SILENCE^ 84Uncon/souled1,11,111Secrets1,11,111Suc/courlIntestateintestate:1,11,111Sports day cupFamiliarfamiliar:111, IIIREBETRAYALS^91Was! a virginTrussed, sealed, and deliveredSou!violation1II, Ill, IVV, VIDetaching1, IICunt notes: questions to another survivorRE/MEMBRANCE^98Bodyhome1,11Sub/mergedTremourknowingtremour:knowing:If passion/atePassionfusion1,11IIIIVV, VIVIIVIII, IXXviI testifyremember:test:testes:testicles:testify:I, IIIIIIVV, VIVIIRe/membered innocenceI, IIIII, IV, VVI, VIIVIII, IXXremembrance:to put in remembrance:book of remembrance:KNOWLEDGE^120We find speechIII, IIIIV, VNot a luxuryI, IIIIIIVVviiPART FIVE: IMPLICATIONSA HOST OF WITNESSESTOWARDS THE EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF REMEMBERING SILENCE127If... then, what?MODELS TO RE/MEMBER SILENCE^129The silent patriarchal screwI claim silenceDrawing: The Silent Patriarchal ScrewThe howling feminist springTo live, to witness, to re/memberDrawing: The Howling Feminist SpringWriting for my lifePERSONAL SUPPORT FOR RE/MEMBERING SILENCE^136Paid helpFriendsProtectionDomestic nourishmentPlaceDeskComputerBulletin boardClose byOn my bodyOn my breaksIn my lifeBodyspirit strengthResignationresign:RageSolitary womanEDUCATIONAL SUPPORT FOR RE/MEMBERING SILENCE^150Teachers and teachingThe AdEd "Girls"University supportI wondervi i iTOWARDS A WORKING AGENDA FOR RE/MEMBERING SILENCE^156Wart dreamPersonal actionEducational theory and practiceOur physical educationSupporting the healing processFARE WELL^163NautilusBIBLIOGRAPHY^166ACKNOWLEDGEMENTI acknowledge here the strength and perseverance of women who struggle for thephysical needs of their families, and of Canadian feminists who continue tostruggle for our social, intellectual, sexual, economic, legal, educational,vocational, political and spiritual well being.I acknowledge the fragility and pain of men, who, like the men before them, havefound refuge in power and denial. I acknowledge the courage of men friends whoare beginning to take emotional account of their pain and women's oppression.I acknowledge the love, respect, advice, and encouragement of my friends, andthe playfulness and affection of my nieces and nephews, who have all nourishedme throughout the four years of this work and the many years leading up to it.I acknowledge feminist sisterstudents at the University of British Columbia whoshared their resources, hearts, and intellects; faculty members who providedinstitutional support; and university administrators who provided legal support forthis work.Finally, I acknowledge my Aunt ^, and my research advisor, Dr. KathrynMcCannell, who at different times in my life have seen, loved, and helped mere/member my soul.I dedicate this work to my aunt and my godchild.ixPART ONE: INTRODUCTIONLET US BREAK SILENCEWeave womanListen, then, as I weave for youmy soul squirming, body crawling, mind striding, heart leapingperegrine dance ofblood tracks across the desertseadeep immersionfingernail/held ascentfrom disembodied silence to fullbodied voice.Icluster enfleshed tableaus, sound clips, tactile resonances;unearthing memory remnants, dream scats, emotional jolts;tenuous braids of silence, rage and loveto heal, Fimo style:colourful plastic doughembedding, encasing, enwombing broken watch faces andunprecious crystals;transmogribaking soulshards to passionart.I,evocatrix story weaver,speak tight-woven talescalling up dark/sodden spirits toearth-warming seed-sprouting life-engendering light.My truth and protestation.1PURPOSECentral to feminist theory, research, and educational praxis is the unnegotiable belief that the personalis political; that by telling the stories of our private realities we create knowledge of the social andpolitical context in which women live. This long process of making visible the experience of women(Adrienne Rich, 1979) includes the integration of the private, secret dimensions of women's oppression,silences, resistance, and re/membering and knowing within public realities; it is the process of makingwomen's private silence, public knowledge.My goal in this work is to create a document that creates a passionately felt sense of the educationalimplications of intimate childhood sexual assault; a written work that is advocate, witness, andtestimony to women's entangled, entwined, enfolded, in/twisted experiences of intimate childhoodsexual assault, silence, knowing and knowledge. I do this for myself and other victimsurvivorhealerswho are laying claim to their own re/membering of memories, passion, and integrity. I do this forabusers in hopes that they might confront the consequences of their actions and begin their ownprocess of breaking silence. I do this for all of us living within patriarchy as silent witnesses implicatedin our protection of abusers and betrayal of their victimsurvivors through our denial. I do this forfeminist educators and, in fact, all learners, teachers, researchers, administrators, andtrustee/governors who recognize that a commitment to education for social justice is a commitment tore/member all forms of oppression within our private and public lives.2To re/member abuse and oppression isto simmerresist/intuitignore/senseto feel the numbsilence and complicityto call to mindto name, to witnessto resist, reshape, reform, transmuteto create frameworks of theorybodies of knowledgequalities of relationshipsto support and empower all of usas agents of resistance, creation and change.In this writing and thinking,I focus on my own experience, which is alsothe most common form of intimate childhood sexual assault;that of a young female being sexually assaultedby one or more family patriarchswhom she knows, relies on, trusts or fears:father, step-father, grandfather,uncle, older brother, "family friend".I trace the blood tracksfrom silence and betrayalto re/membering and knowingthat have been my healing.Many of us victims feel we have no choicebut to cope, carry on, and forget;festering chaosmurky painpussscabsealed.Growing numbers of usare breaking silencedescending into the matrixof secrets and survivalspeaking our truths.The consequences of this betrayalof trust, love, dependence, sexuality, and knowingare unimaginably profound, complex, and interwovenwithin each survivor,and greatly varied amongst us all.3In our schooling, for example:for some of us, our formal educational progress was "enhanced"by our experiences of intimate sexual assault,as we funnelled our denial, shame, and powerlessnessinto academic achievement.For others, our educational progresswas muffled, compromised or haltedby our crazed silence:our fears, depression, disassociation,split personalities, suicidal desires, substance abuse,health problems, absenteeism, sexual promiscuity, and pregnancy.For most of us, the cost of breaking silence is enormous.Those of us with the personal and financial resourcesthat enable us to risk breaking our silenceare speaking and writingof our memories of the moment-by-moment realities of intimate childhood sexual assault,and of denying, compensating for, forgetting, recalling, confronting,and healing from these assaults.Doing so is reshaping our knowledge of women's experiences,and our understanding of the dynamics of the patriarchal societywhich creates, maintains, and protectsintimate childhood sexual assaultas a first and essential lesson in women's subjugation.We are all implicated.We are all silent witnesses, victims, or assailants.We can begin to break silence.We can all heal and resist intimate childhood sexual assault.We can begin to know the silencesin our stomachs, our hearts, our souls.4Knowing witnessIn your reading of this work, I invite you to become knowing witness to the embodied intellectual,emotional, sexual and spiritual resonances of intimate childhood sexual assault and healing. Byparticipating in this work as observer, companion, or soulpartner, you may attune your felt sense ofintimate assault through explorations that will include:the realities of intimate childhood sexual assault and its emotional, intellectual,physical and spiritual consequences;the connections among intimate childhood sexual assault, silence, knowing, andknowledge;intimate assault as womenchildren's first lesson of patriarchy;personal, academic, and legal pressures that mitigate against the process of makingsilence knowledge;how language and academic forms need to, and can be reshaped to help makesilence knowledge;my ongoing process of making silence knowledge; a spiralling journey from silencethrough rebretrayals through re/membering through knowledge and, sometimes,back to silence;the importance of creating knowing language and knowing witnesses;the connections among the silence of intimate childhood sexual assault and thesilences of other oppressions based on race, culture, class, age, and sexualorientation.I hope that this felt sense will enrich your personal development and educational practice regarding theindividual and collective work of making silence knowledge.The focus of this work is my personal process of re/membering silence; from this personal explorationI suggest implications for educators which may reverberate into the work of counsellors and healthprofessionals and, more widely, the social and political action for us all. More particularly, I focus on56my experience as a woman victimhealersurvivor of intimate assault and other forms of abuse, mostlyby men. This in no way detracts from the reality and personal experiences of those of you who arewomen who have been assaulted or abused by women, and men who have been assaulted or abusedby women or men. I hope that this work will contribute to your explorations, healing, analysis andaction.READER'S GUIDEFury, terror, and powerI.Powerful.Leading edge.Groundbreaking.Of no value as academic research.Raw data.Lacking analysis.Not sufficiently academic.If you can't say this, who can?II.Maybe I should have knownwhen she showed me her journal:wallet sized, to fit into her purse,her only private place.Surely I should have known from the look in her bodyas she shrunk at the sight of my thesis when I offered it.Like a canvas tent holding taut against torrentslightly touched from the inside,I bleed and bleed and bleed.7As I thrust my hand deeper into the swirl of this stream -- history, nightmare, accountability -- I feel thecurrent angrier and more multiform than the surface shows. There is fury here, and terror, but there isalso power, power not to be had without the terror and the fury. We need to go beyond rhetoric orevasion into that place in ourselves, to feel the force of all we have been trying -- without success -- toskim across.Adrienne Rich, 1979, p. 310.There are many reasons why we -- you, reader, and me, writer -- find this work challenging. Thecontent is emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually disturbing: most of us have recognized thefrequency of intimate childhood sexual assault, but few of us have come to emotional terms with itsvisceral realities. The autobiographical approach and spiral poetic format are unconventional.Researcher and respondent are one; the terrain of experiences includes early memories, currentexperiences, dreams, visions, body tremours, critiques of literature and roughsketched models. Thespiral framework of this exploration may be more felt than understood, more resonance than reason.Language has been condensed, rejoined, and reshaped; formats include poetry, journals, personaland editorial comments, and artwork. Rigour is reshaped from objective measure of reliability,replicability and validity, to cohesion, adhesion, tightness of weave.My friend Ian Alexander commented, near the completion of this text, on its radical politics of contentand radical aesthetics of form (telephone conversation, July 8,1993). I have come to understand thatthe struggle to make silence knowledge is largely the struggle to speak the unspeakable to witnessesable to hear. To do so requires new language, new forms, and the courage to feel, then understand,the darkness of silence and the power of healing and resistance. Our reward in doing so can beprofound.Each reader will bring not only their own experiences and understandings to this work, but also theirown silences, denial, and self-protection with regard to their own abuse, witnessing, and abusing. I8forgot my own abuse for about thirty years, tried to ignore it for ten more, wrote of it, then took anotheryear before I could read of other women's experiences. Participating in this work, as reader or writer,is like picking at a scab of an abscessed wound. We can be sure of two things: things will get messierbefore they get better, and we may help the healing.This is feminist research. This is intimate reflective autobiography, which explores the explicit physical,emotional, spiritual realities of intimate childhood sexual assault, and the implicit interplay of assault,silence, and knowing. It is intensely emotional. Readers' experiences of this work may be similar tomy experiences of reading the literatures of incest, sexual assault, and sexual abuse: I wanted toknow about it, but I didn't want to feel it. Approaching completion of this work, I am absolutelyconvinced that the only way to know about this is to feel it. When we feel the disgust, anger,helplessness, emptiness, pain, troubled sexual arousal, muffledness, fog, terror, betrayal, trappedness,abandonment and silencing, we begin to witness the reality, consequences, and implications ofintimate childhood sexual assault in our personal and working lives. From my experience of thisresearch, I believe that we need to venture beyond knowing the numbers regarding the frequency ofintimate childhood sexual assault, beyond even understanding dynamics of assault, to actually feelingothers', and our own silences, betrayals, rememberings, and knowledge. Within that flow of thought,feeling, and spirit, we are empowered to create educational theory and practice grounded in ourdarkest individual and collective truths.Knowing languageI have created a variety of forms of text and language to make my own silences knowledge. Wordsand forms had so long failed me in claiming my experiences; now the creative power ofthe chant; the incantation; the kenning; sacred words; forbidden words... the ritual telling ofthe dream... words gouged or incised in stone or wood... or traced in sand (Adrienne Rich,1979, p. 248)held me, danced with me, en/couraged me to name and feel lost experiences and developunderstandings of them.I have created new words to conveying feelings, qualities of experiences and ideas. Compound wordsjoin or embed parts of conventional words (feverenfeebled, expelloding, in/twisted, crone/ology,textwork) and flowing clusters of words (simmerresist/intuitignore/sense). Divided and spelling-altered words (in/testate, re/memberance, un/consouled) serve notice of rethought, or refeltmeanings of conventional words. A few (ovatyview) are mostly for fun.I have also altered a number of other language conventions. I have punctuated quotes in italics, ratherthan quotation marks. Somehow, italics help others' textwork flow with mine, rather than standingapart from it. I like the flow. If I am referring to conventional expressions, ("unencumbered"). I do so inquotation marks. Discussing the process of breaking silence, I have used the plural pronoun (we) withsingular referents (our family, our child's...). I didn't think about the reason when I wrote this section,but, again, it sounded right; probably because when one woman is assaulted and remembers,somehow we are all assaulted and remember, and still, it is all an acutely solitary experience.9Academic poems are sections of text which I originally wrote as academic prose, for example,In this writing and thinking,I focus on my own experience, which is alsothe most common form of intimate childhood sexual assault;.While rereading these as prose passages, usually some time after having written them, I realized that Ihad embedded a number of ideas into one sentence. When I had read other feminist authors with thissame style, I'd had to map out their ideas, phrase by line, to make full sense of them. I wanted topreserve the connected, embedded flow, but also wanted to provide some space for the reader topause and ponder. Spacing the prose into poetry seemed to accomplish this. Because these poemsare a part of the flow of the academic prose that precedes and follows, I have not titled themseparately.I have felt intimidated by the idea of presenting formal theoretical models since I started this work. Thisis a gabalash of moveable quilt frame, tacking, basting, and sketched outlines which suggest designsfor tighter stitches and firmer designs to come. I have drawn my frameworks by hand, rather than oncomputer, so that they feel more inviting of further input/ enrichment/ adaption... perhaps by me, andperhaps by you!Metapoems such as Silence, Weave Woman, and Healing is not a luxury reflect on the creation andimplications of this work. I wrote Silence and Weave Woman near the beginning of my narratives, andthey are still two of my favourites. Poemdefinitions explore key notions such as assault, knowing, andtestimony. The title of each poemdefinition ends with a colon (:). I have formatted them on the rightmargin. Unless otherwise indicated, I have created poemdefinitions by extracting, usually in the exactorder they were presented, words and phrases from definitions in the Oxford Enolish Dictionary (1980).1 011I have included a number of personal commentaries throughout this work (And oh, it is not thissimple.) These are thoughts and feelings that came to me while I edited a section of text, often monthsor years after I originally wrote it. These are all in italics. In narrative poems I explore, ruminate,confess, and celebrate telling moments of my pain, darkness, warpedness, hope, and healing. Thesenarratives are distilled discrete events -- memories, images, interchanges, and dreams -- which haveslowly settled themselves into four stages of silence, rebetrayals, re/membrance, and knowledge.These spiralstages are both progressive and recursive. Generally, my life and healing has been a slowprogression from silence through rebetrayals through re/membrance to knowledge. Many times inthis research process I have experienced intellectual, emotional and legal rebetrayals that havetumbled me right back to the depths of silence. Over this time, I have been increasingly able to name,understand and recover from these experiences, and have included some of them (Fury, terror andpower II, for example) in this work. As this work wends towards completion, I am becoming lesspersonally engaged in this spiral processes, and more aware of its possible usefulness as aneducational model.I wrote these poems in the order they came to me. During the writing process, I felt like an aircontroller at a hectic deep consciousness airport, with poems stacked and circling six or seven deep,waiting to be called in to land. As I wrote one poem, I could sense its soulsisters waiting to descendinto my fingers and taxi onto the computer screen. My final organization of the narrative poems in PartFour and throughout the rest of this work has been on the basis of a blend of chronology(Un/consouled I, II, Ill), theme (Intestate, testimony:), and quality of experience (Secrets,Detaching, Re/membering innocence).Journal passages are taken from my personal journal. In them, I reflect on my personal life, feelings,dreams, and research/writing progress. I have included dates for each passage, and written them in12italics. I include a miscellany of documents in Re/collection at the end of Part Three to chronicle mywork during 1992 and into the beginning of 1993. They are all in chrological order and include twomemos, a long narrative poem, a letter, journals, drawings, an advertising poster and a prayer ofconfession. The drawings from my sketch book portray daydreams, visions, and real life problemsdrawn with my dominant and non-dominant hand. Some also include text. The originals were done incolour, with no intention of publication, so that their reproductions lost detail and clarity. I did them allfor my own healing, but decided to include some of them in hopes that they will add insight into thehealing process, suggest alternative sources and formats of knowing, and perhaps encourage othervictim/ survivor/ healers to explore their own drawing processes.Finally, I have whited out specific names and relationship references regarding assailants, witnesses,childhood neighbourhood friends, teachers, relatives, and my current church affiliation. For you,reader, the physical blanks in the text may be distracting and even annoying. For me, they are verypainful testimony to the years of censored knowing within my being.OVARYVIEWPlease find your own way through this text. For some readers, this will be a path that follows the pagenumbers from beginning to end. Others may start by reading all the academic text and coming backto the poetry; others may read the poetry then return to the academic text; others may read thebeginnings of each part, then the middles, then the ends; others may first read all of the poetry in PartFour; for others, the implications of Part Five will be their first read.13In Part One: Introduction (Let us break silence) I have invited you to join me in making the silenceregarding intimate childhood sexual assault knowledge. I have explored some of the challenges of thisundertaking, discussed some of the ways I have created language that helps us know the resonancesand realities of intimate assault, and shared my hopes for you in your reading of this work.In Part Two: Background (Intimate assault, silence and knowing), I measure and fasten the parametersof lexicon that frame this work (intimate, child, sexual assault, silence, knowing, knowledge). I thenexplore the realities of intimate childhood sexual assault in poemdefinitions, discussions of silence andknowing, and the adult consequences of intimate childhood sexual assault. I discuss intimatechildhood sexual assault as womenchildren's first lesson in patriarchy, and the process ofre/membering.In Part Three: Method (Making silence knowledge), I summarize three approaches to researchingwomen's experience in education: women's knowing, a critical feminist framework, and the integrationof intimate experience. I then narrate the crone/ology of this research: how I came to the topic, wrotepoetry, developed a series of conceptual frameworks for my poems, prepared to disclose the abuse tomy family, did so, revised this work in anticipation of legal action, and worked towards completion.This process, undertaken with the financial support of my teaching career, the emotional/intellectualsupport of friends and my research advisor, and the institutional support of the university, illustratessome of the ways women are silenced, and some of the ways women and educators can begin toresist silence and come to knowledge of their lives. I discuss how claiming language and form hasbeen important to my claiming knowledge, and conclude with the difficult issues of rigour and ethicswith regard to intimate research and knowledge.In Part Four: Testimony (From silence to knowledge), I narrate, in poetry, some of my experiences ofsilence, betrayal, re/membrance, and knowing. Most of these poems are arranged in chronological14order. The first experience was when I was an infant; others progress through my childhood,adolescence, young adulthood, and my current life. One exception to this sequence isRe/membering innocence. All are my own personal experiences; a few describe my experiences ofother people. Towards the end, in the Knowledge section, I shift from narration to reflection onimportance of healing, resisting, and generating knowledge.In Part Five: Implications (Knowing witnesses), I conclude by exploring how we can implicateourselves in witnessing, healing, and resisting intimate childhood sexual assault in our personal livesand educational praxis.PART TWO: BACKGROUNDINTIMATE ASSAULT. SILENCE AND KNOWINGLEXICONSilenceSilencenot knowing that I knowknowing, but not knowing to speakknowing not to speakknowing to speak, with no one to listenknowing no one to speak on my be/halfnot hearing when some one does.Silencecrazy glue that binds; papier mache that castsdis/membered tissue to a life/death maskwhich imprisons the abusedand shields the abuser.How was I,robust body/heart/mind/soul creation of goddesecreted into silence?Why did I, betrayed/abandoned/exhausted/defeatednot break silence earlier?I feared my truth, rising from lungsthrough throat, mouth, tongue, and lipswould rip/slit the soft warm dry/moist underbellyof our swollen union:my complicityyour power-braced vulnerabilityyour terror of my passion.I feared the expellosion ofpussy tumours, acrid infections, pungent cyststhrough that unsutured slit.I feared my blood would cover the earth.Then.The slow tide shift from fearthe peregrine dance from silence.Radically accompanied and essentially alone,breaking and diving, floating blind in the coldseadark,homing back to the matrix, retracing the nautiluschamber by in/spiralling chamberre/membering myself.1516intimate:essential, intrinsic,pertaining to or connected withinmost nature or fundamental character of a beingproceeding from, concerning, or affecting one's inmost selfentering deeply or closely into a mattercharacterized by familiarityinvolving close connection or unionone who intimately belongs to something(verb) to make intimate, to familiarizeeuphemism for illicit sexual intercoursechild:Newly borne human being; fruit of the womba young person of either sex below the age of pubertyDescendents; members of a tribe or clanOne of the spiritual or moral progeny of a person;One who inherits his spiritand hands down the tradition of his influenceExpressing relation to a circumstance or characteristic quality,eg. children of light, of wisdom, of truth,of darkness, of disobedience, of adultery,of shame, of tears, of sorrow,of prayers, etc.17sexual assault:Kissing,fondling,sexual intercourse,anal intercourseand oral sexare all examples of sexual assault,if done without consent.Consent to sexual activity must be freely given.You did not consentif you were afraid to fight backor if you were frozen with fear.Your lack of resistancedoes not meanthat you consentedto the assault.Watch, allude, exposeplay, pressureposition, stimulatepersuade, demand, threatenarouse, kiss, lickfondle, rub, vibrateurinate, masturbateejaculate, penetratebreastnippleclitorisbottommouthanusvaginamindheartsoul.(With extracts from Liz Hall & Siobhan Lloyd, 1989, p. 12)18silence:the fact of abstaining from or forbearingfrom a speech or utterance;muteness, reticence, taciturnityin silence, to put to silenceto keep silence, to break silencethe state or condition when nothing is audible;absence of all sound or noise; complete quiet or stillnessomission of mention, remark, or notice in narrationfailure to communicate or replyto cause to compel to cease speaking; to overcome in argumentto cause (an animal or thing) to cease giving out its natural soundto suppress, restrain, prohibit, repress, disable, stopto leave unmentioned or unnoticed, to pass over, to omitto get rid of (a thing) by maintaining silenceto cease speaking, to become still19know:wissen, kennen, erkennensavoir, connaitre(there is much difficulty in arrangingits senses and uses satisfactorily)to know with the sense;to know with the mindknowing:acknowledgement, recognition, personal acquaintancethe action of getting to understandbeing aware or informed of anythingsomething known; an experienceAbout knowingWe believe ourcells; trust our underthoughts.Casting off the soulchilling veilof lies, lunacy, and invisibility,we begin to bear witness.20And ohAnd oh, it is not this simple.You will need courage in your solitude when no one can hear it; you'll need to en/courage others whoneeds brace for your long draws of bitter rage...and you'll need time and money and not even courage or determination but some quality, someassumption, some unseen visionsense that you have no choice but to keep on through the pain,depression, and not knowing if things will ever get any better.I can't tell you when and how it will end, only that! slowly became accustomed to seeing a little light,then a bigger light, then the rock scree that I'd be soon clambering up to the end of the tunneldark;that my vision got clearer and my energy stronger and my humour deeper and my loneliness moreprofound, pure, and resilient, and that if I'd ever known what all this would require of me, I would havenever have started it all, and if I'd never started it all, I wouldn't now be truly alive.knowledge:confessionacknowledgement or recognition of the position or claims (of anyone)to take cognizance or notice of; to observe,personal acquaintance, friendship, intimacysexual intimacyacquaintance with a fact; perception or certain information of a fact or matter, consciousness (ofanything)acquaintance with facts, range of information,intellectual acquaintance with, or perception of, fact or truth;clear and certain mental apprehension;to one's knowledge: as one is aware, as one can testifyto come to one's knowledge: to become known to oneto come to one's own knowledge: to recover one's understanding, to come to one's sensesinformation, intelligence, notice, intimationa sign or mark by which anything is known or distinguished; a token.to own the knowledge of, to confess or recognize or admit as trueto own as genuine, or of legal force or validityto make oneself known to, or bring oneself in acquaintance with a personto recognize, to identify (a disease); to diagnoseto take legal cognizance of (a cause, etc.)INTIMATE ASSAULT, SILENCE AND KNOWINGI was "lovingly" seduced, violated, discovered, and disappeared;invisible and voiceless.It never happened!They acted as if it never happened.Where did that leave me?Violated to my core, by something that never happened.If I didn't know that; if I was wrong about that,how could I know anything?How could I connect with anything or learn anything or trust anythingI thoughtI thought, or understood, or experienced, or felt, or did?The consequences have been profound.I have spent much of my adult lifealone, isolated, detached, undeserving, compliant, foggy, hazy, hollow, empty, mildly depressed;vulnerable to sudden deep depressionunable to connect with much of twenty-two years of formal educationbelieving, profoundly, that I was stupidrepeating myself when speakingunable to try to persuade others of my views, to disagree, to say "no"permitting men to approach me, touch me, and penetrate me without resistingaroused by degradationin abusive relationshipshaving made and lost dozens of friendsmoving homes thirteen times in twenty adult yearsunable to follow current eventssabotaging my professional workhollow and useless after visiting members of my familyunattached, marginal, unheard, unrecognized, unconnected, unbelonging tofamily, friends, school staffs, churches, neighbourhoods, organizations,even a sexual abuse support group,chronic participant in personal growth courses, counselling, and/or therapy.Nothing was ever true that I learned or did.My first masters degree:my course work, my monograph, my papersat the Canadian Council of Teachers of Englishand the American Educational Research Associationwas all just stuff I thought about, applied, analyzed and synthesized,like controlling robot arms that reached into a plexiglass boxand manipulated the substance of my intellectual and professional work.2122Intellectually, personally, and sexually, I never knewwhen I was safe, or when I was being invaded;I had only a vague sense of gut feeling or intuition.I was powerless to verbal, psychological, physical, and sexual violation,which I could not sense, protest, or resist.This is not easy to say;I've rewritten this section to make it less self-disclosing.I had no boundaries, and therefore, no integrity;not integrity/conscience with regard to harming others,but integrity/wholeness with regard to protecting myself.It is very hard for me to acknowledge this to myself,let alone make it public.I feel so ashamed of all this.It wasn't until I began writing my poetryand reading other women's experiencesthat I began to believe that this wasn't me,who was chronically troubled/ disturbed/ "having problems",but me-living-through-the-consequences-of-abuse.Silence is a response of the vulnerable to abuse and betrayal. At times, we have all been vulnerable,abused, betrayed, and silent. For some of us, silence is a temporary state; for others, it is the stonyreality of her knowing and being. The silence surrounding intimate childhood sexual assault of womenis profound and pervasive. The truth of intimate assault is denied, and the silence maintained, byvictims, assailants, accomplices, witnesses, other members of a household, close family and friends,and others who have regular contact with them, for example, educators.How has my knowing been implicated/ insinuated/ penetrated by the violation and silencing ofintimate assault? I want to stop feeling stupid, to be conscious and creative in addressing intimateassault and other social justice issues within own teaching practice, and I want to help others developtheir understanding, awareness, and intuition regarding intimate assault.23As chronicled in the bibliography, I gained a general understanding of intimate assault and itsconsequences through reading the personal stories of adult survivors of intimate assault, narrative/prescriptive/ research accounts of healer/clinicians, and research by social scientists. I had someproblems with these works. Most of the accounts were of assaults that seemed much "worse" thanmine, in being more violent, involving other obvious forms of abuse, being repeated more frequentlyand/or over longer time periods than my own. No one examined experiences of intimate assault on afine enough scale to help me account for my feelings of complicity and loss. Beyond mentioningfeelings of stupidity and uselessness, no one explored the interweave of silence, denial and knowing.Few writers developed a feminist analysis that explored intimate assault within patriarchal oppressionof women.Over time, I was able to integrate my !earnings from these readings with my own experiences andreflections to develop the synthesis that follows below and in the next sections, The lexicon of intimatechildhood sexual assault, Intimate assault as the terms of men's endearment, and Silent witnesses:resisting knowledge. This process of creating an analytic framework of the literatures and an analyticframework of my intimate experience, then integrating the gaps of one into the spaces of the other,was one of the many large challenges of this work. My research advisor, Kathryn McCannel!,continued to be confident in my ability to accomplish this emotional and intellectual task, even thoughneither of us knew exactly what the task was when I was in the middle of it. I see this section of text asa testament to the importance of academic advisement that nourishes courage and confidence in theface of the unknown, and academic programs that budget enough time and resources for suchexplorations.The personal consequences of intimate childhood sexual assault are different for each survivor. Theseconsequences are influenced by her dealing with many realities, pressures, and threats, including the24nature of her relationships each assailant, the nature and duration of their assaults over her infancy,childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and the responses of others if and when she discloses herexperiences.No part of the victim is untouched. Her childtrust, boundaries, physical/ intellectual/ spiritual integrityare violated. During the assaults, she may savour the rare "special" attention being given her, enactroles her assailants assign to her, numb herself, or split her consciousness, leaving her body for a saferplace, such as the ceiling or doorway, until the assaults are complete. She may create a "normal" lifebetween attacks, by depressing all knowledge of them. This depression may also envelop hercreativity, joy, spontaneity, resilience, confidence, intellectual clarity and curiosity. If she retains anawareness of the assaults and tries to tell someone else, she may not be heard, believed, defended, orprotected.She may block, fog, depress, or dissociate her awareness of the assaults during and/or between theiroccurrences. As verified in the literature regarding adult survivors of intimate childhood sexual assault,many victims suddenly and traumatically recall assaults after years or decades of having silenced allour knowledge of them. Even when other children or adults witness her being assaulted, or confrontphysical evidence of the assaults, they often deny any awareness of them. The victim's coercedsilence during and after each assault can serve to reinforce these witness' denials.She may be intimately assaulted in many ways, from visual spying or exposure, to verbal seduction/harrassment, to sexualized touching and fondling, to masturbating her or having her masturbate theassailant, to having her give or receive oral sex, to vaginal or anal intercourse, to sex performed in frontof others, to ritual abuse.2 5The assaults may be coupled with degrading emotional, mental, spiritual abuse and violent physicalabuse. The actual intimate assaults may be a more extreme and privatized version of other forms ofabuse, such as excessive tickling, sexualized touching, comments, or visual contact which occurwithin the presence and knowledge of other family members. They may be the only form of individualcontact, attention, or "affection" victims receive in an emotionally, physically, and verbally barren familysystem. In whatever particular constellation, the web of guilt, shame, complicity, coercion, threats,fear, denial, and apparent permission regarding intimate assaults can silence not only the victim'stelling, but even her conscious knowing of the assaults.The emotional, physical, and sexual consequences of these assaults have been documented withregard to violent, systematic, frequent, or extremely degrading assaults, and to those extended over along period of the victim's infancy, childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. The abandonment,confusion, guilt, terror, pain and fear may take the form of super-achievement in areas of the victim'slife, in the abuse of drugs, early and extensive sexual involvements, and withdrawal from socialorganizations. The intellectual consequences for victims include depression, feelings of stupidity,amnesia, and the development of split existences or multiple personalities. Academic consequencesthat range from sporadic schooling and early dropping out to withdrawal of attention andunderachievement, through to pleasing/ proving/ finding refuge/ excelling in academic pursuits.My knowing is my sense of who/what I trust as sources of truth; my soul/soil of consciousness,awareness, and sense in which all my learning and creativity and exploration takes root. As a victim ofintimate assault, this soil was contaminated by betrayal and leached by denial. How could I know whatI knew, if I didn't know what had been done to my body? I couldn't believe my self, and I had tobelieve the words and actions of others; everyone else seemed to. I can remember many times in mylife when I have believed peoples' words in the face of their directly contradictory actions; I have putenormous stock in others' language. My knowing is the base of my confidence in my thinking,26memory, knowledge; my sense of being able to speak and contribute to the truths of the world. Themore I heal from my experiences of abuse, the more I reclaim and recreate this knowing as acomposite of my own intuition, feelings, values, insights, and boundaries, and the less willing I am tobrook the contradictions between others' words and actions; the more able I am to discern theknowledge of use to me.THE LEXICON OF INTIMATE CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ASSAULTThis section and the one that follows have been among the most intellectually difficult parts of thiswhole work to write. I am completing them quite close to the end of my writing process. Here, Isynthesize my understanding of the terminology, or lexicon, of sexual assault; the body counts of thefrequency and extent of sexual assault; the dynamics of intimate assault that I have come to learn ofthrough my own reflections and my readings of other survivors' accounts; and my, and others',analysis of sexual assault as the wounding/wounded matrix of women's oppression in patriarchy.After many attempts to summarize specifics with appropriate references throughout, I finally deletedalmost all specifics and references, writing from my insides. Doing so, I am climbing without a rope; Ifeel vulnerable, exposed, excited and strong. I give shape and substance to the silence thatsurrounds all aspects of our knowledge of intimate childhood sexual assault, from the victim's ownnot knowing, to the denial of witnesses, to the embedding of men's oppression of women within oursocial structure and our living bodies.Among the writings of survivors, practitioners, researchers, educators, and lawyers, there is muchconfusion regarding the lexicon of sexual assault, including the realities and dynamics of what I havecome to name intimate childhood sexual assault. The sexual assault of a baby, child, adolescent, oradult by a trusted, older, or more powerful individual has been variously termed incest, rape, childabuse, sexual abuse, and sexual assault. Each of these terms both emphasizes and muffles some ofthe nuances, dynamics, and realities of intimate childhood sexual assault. I have found all of themunsatisfactory with regard to the naming of my own experiences, and have therefore created the termused in this work, intimate childhood sexual assault.27Incest describes, very badly, any sexual relationship between people too closely related for legalmarriage: anything from the sexual flirtation of cousins to father-daughter rape. Just as the term itselfnames the sexual trespass of boundaries within a family system, the current usage of this term crossesboundaries of connotation/ denotation that I find very disturbing. First, incestuous relations may beconsensual, coerced, or extremely violent; having one term for all is the equivalent of having the sameword for mercy killing, accidental death, suicide, and ritual abuse murder. Second, incest is oftentoggled with taboo to make incest taboo. A taboo is something that isn't supposed to happen, or, if itdoes, holds dire consequences for the perpetrator. As many have noted, the only taboo against incestin our society is against its disclosure.Rape is the term used by some writers focussing on the outrage of father-daughter sexual assaults.This word carries enormous power in its recognition of the terror, violence and degradation; however,this same power overshadows the subtleties of seduction, love, reliance, and compliance in whichvictims of intimate childhood sexual assault may be enwebbed.According to the British Columbia Inter-Ministry Child Abuse Handbook (cited by the British ColumbiaTask Force on Family Violence, 1992), child abuse is the term for a child's on-going lived experience ofphysical, sexual, emotional, verbal, spiritual, mental/intellectual abuse, and neglect is thefailure of those responsible for the care of the child to meet the physical, emotional,or medical needs of a child to an extent that the child's health, development or safetyis endangered... Society has a responsibility to detect, to intervene, and to protect.Such a societal response can occur only if enough people are aware of the signs anddynamics of abuse, know of their responsibility to report, and care enough to getinvolved. (p.133)Child abuse is the distorted, spongy, warped, tainted, unsafe context of relationships in which specificacts of sexual assault may be planned, perpetrated, denied, and protected. These assaults occur in2 8the normal, daily, routine locations of the victim's life: in the bathroom, bedroom, classroom,basement, garage, or yard of her home, her neighbourhood, her friends' and relatives' homes, herdaycare, her religious center, and her school. Each instance of sexual assault or other forms of abusemay be located along a continuum, from sanity- or life-endangering acts, to the quiet corrosion of herconfidence, dignity, privacy, safety, and integrity. At every point on this continuum, witnesses neglectto recognize and respond to intimate assault.Perpetrators of extreme forms of abuse have been protected, in spite of the clear verbal and physicalevidence of their victims, by the literally unimaginable nature of their acts. Sexual abuse of largenumbers of children by religious, sports, community, and educational leaders, and the sexualperversion, spiritual destruction, physical assault and even deaths of children by ritual abuse have onlybegun to be acknowledged.Conversely, and somehow similarly, the closer child sexual abuse comes to overlapping the bounds of"normal" behaviour, (observing, teasing, hugging, kissing, bathing; sibling rivalry, manipulation by olderpeers, child sex play), the more difficult it may be for victims and witnesses to identify the abuse asabuse. The less visible the scars or bruises, the more difficult it may be for both victims and witnessesto recognize, name, and respond to abuse.I name myself as a survivor of child sexual abuse because I was sexually assaulted by my ^ andmy^. However, I have come to recognize that these assaults took place within a constellationof intermittent intellectual abuse, spiritual abuse and chronic emotional neglect. I have come to believethat this whole constellation is important with regard to my experiences of silence and re/membering,and that a fine scale examination of others' experiences of intimate childhood sexual assault, as well asother forms of child abuse, would reveal an equally complex constellation. I realize that thisconstellation of abuse violated my fundamental sense of what I did and did not, and what I could and29could not dare to know of the truth of my own experience. These "relatively mild" assaults have hadprofound consequences in my life.While I feel very strongly that outside measures of the severity of intimate assault and attendant abuseare inappropriate and unhelpful, I want to note here that my experiences were less extreme thanvirtually all the survivors' stories of physical, sexual, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual abuse I haveread and heard about: I don't remember being directly threatened with physical harm, there were fewassaults, and I was penetrated orally, not vaginally... and these assaults and their attendant silenceshave profoundly altered my life.During this research process, I have been confused about the difference between sexual abuse andsexual assault. In many articles and books, the terms are used interchangeably, but I developed thesense that abuse was soft tissue damage to the broken bones of assault; that children were abused butwomen were assaulted; that abuse was unfortunate, and dealt with by a social worker or counsellor,but that assault was a criminal act. I eventually learned that sexual assault is the legal term for non-consensual sexual activity which violates the sexual integrity of a person. It includes a range ofbehaviours from verbal comments to assault with a deadly weapon. This term lifts assault out of therealm of interpersonal and family dynamics and places it unequivocally within the framework of the law.However, with regard to sexual assault within the intimate sphere of a child, something is lost with theuse of this term: like rape, this term denudes recognition of the intimate nuances of terror and love thatmay be embedded within intimate assault.My memory of my^ 's sexual assault of me is framed in the mist of my five year old's longing tolove and be loved, my need to be seen, valued, touched tenderly, my desire to please, mychildcomplicity... and it was sexual assault. My memory of my^ 's luring me into the back seatof the car in the dark garage, and doing something like sitting on me and shoving his penis into my3 0mouth, is filled with vagueness and confusion and profound isolation; he was an older kid and I was ayounger kid, and it, too, was sexual assault. Today, I could initiate an investigation and lay chargesagainst both of them. I would probably not be successful in proving these charges, because I have nowitnesses and no proof, other than my memory and the lived consequences in my life. Most of themembers of my immediate family deny even the possibility that I could have been abused by them. My^ has threatened to launch a civil law suit (slander and libel) to prevent any publication of thiswork. Although I have legally changed my name to publish this work, and eliminated all specificreferences, the only way I could be totally safe from this lawsuit would be to wait until both assailantsdied, or to successfully lay criminal charges against them.I developed the term intimate childhood sexual assault to recognize that the sexual assault of childrenis perpetrated by those whom they love, trust, or are dependent upon; that it is both private betrayaland criminal offence; that, like other forms of assault, it ranges in degree from leering to squeezing tokissing to rubbing to penetration to intercourse and worse; that a victim's compliance may be achievedthrough threats of harm to others, threats to reveal past compliance, emotional manipulation,seduction, emotional or economic power, the assistance of a co-assailant, and/or physical power.It is the intimate, private, secret nature of this crime that is so hard to imagine and so easy to deny.Intimate childhood sexual assault (or intimate assault) locates sexual assault both within the legalsystem and within the victim's private sphere; in her own bedroom at lights-out, in the basementbathroom when the washing machine is on, or on the living room sofa on Thursday afternoons whenothers are out. The victim usually lives, and continues to live, under the same roof as the assailant.The assaults may be fleeting or prolonged; they may be tender, degrading, or vicious. The victim maysurvive through denial, resistance, or emotionally entangled compliance. The necessary constant forintimate childhood sexual assault to continue is that victims and witnesses who could, should, or do,know of the assaults, remain silent.INTIMATE ASSAULT AS THE TERMS OF MEN'S ENDEARMENTThe confusion of terminology in discussions of intimate childhood sexual assault reflects the dearth ofcoherent analysis regarding men's sexual aggression, and more particularly, their sexual aggressiontowards women, in Canadian and American society. The arithmetic of men's violence towards womenis staggering. Boys and men abuse babies, girls and young women with impunity. Given thedynamics of silence, we do not yet know the full extent of intimate childhood sexual assault in terms ofnumbers of victims, numbers of assailants, and the frequency and the nature of the assaults. Sexualassaults of all types are among the least reported and prosecuted crimes; intimate childhood sexualassault may be even more so. I hesitate to include any statistics regarding intimate assault in thiswork: given what I have learned about the dynamics of personal, family, and social denial, I believe thatthese estimates dramatically underestimate the numbers of women and children of both genders whoare victims of intimate assault.The recently published Report of the British Columbia Task Force on Family Violence, is AnyoneListening? (1992) summarizes the incidence of men's domestic violence towards women. Theirfindings, citing a range of submissions to the task force and other government documents, include thefollowing.Regarding wife assault:At least one in eight Canadian women is (physically) assaulted by her husband or live-inpartner.62% of women murdered in Canada in 1990 died as a result of wife assault.95% of the victims of °spousal assault' are women.It is likely that between 50,000 and 75,000 school-age children in B.C. have witnessedviolence directed against their mothers. (p. 73)3 1.3 2Regarding sexual assault:In 1989, 26,868 sexual assaults were reported to police in Canada. This was a 68% increase inseven years.It is estimated that only one in ten sexual assaults is reported to the police. A Winnipeg studyfound that for date rape, only one in a hundred cases is reported to the police.90% of victims of sexual assaults who come forward are women; most of the offenders aremen.80% of sexual assaults happen in the victim's home. (p. 111)Regarding child sexual abuse:At some time in their fives, about one in two females and one in three males have been victimsof unwanted sexual acts. About four in five of these incidents first happened to these personswhen they were children or youths.98.8% of child sexual abusers are male.The number of reported adolescent sexual abusers is growing, currently constituting aboutone quarter of all child sexual abuse offenders. (p. 133)The invasive looks, words, fingers, hands, mouths, and penises of fathers, stepfathers, brothers,uncles, grandfathers, neighbours, and family friends are the first lesson in men's oppression forvictimized women infants, children, and adolescents. It is both seed and microcosm of the sexualharassment, wife battering, acquaintance rape, prostitution, violent pornography, and spousalhomicide which maintain men's power and women's silence.To trace the indelible trackfrom intimate childhood sexual assaultto the vocational and financial and socialand economic and cultural oppression of womenis to recognize this:The lexicon of intimate assault isthe primer of men's terms of endearment.Not their endearmentfor women,but their endearmentfor the power they exert over womenthrough sexual assaultand the threat of sexual assault.33Non-consensual sexual activity is neither intimacy nor pleasure nor ecstasy; sexual assault of anydegree is, as song writer and survivor Shari Ulrich has testified, a humiliating, controlling act of powerand cruelty and hatred (Task Force, 1992). To trace these connections from private to publicoppression of women is to recognize that our society is not only silent regarding men's intimate assaultof women, but structured on the embodied wounds of women's fear, pain, denial, and silence.Men sexually assault women and less powerful men. Many men have not, do not, and will not sexuallyassault women. Some child men, adolescent men, and adult men assault other men who are smalleror weaker than themselves, very likely with a frequency we have yet to recognize. Men who assaultusually do so more than once, and to more than one victim. Although many men who have beensexually assaulted do not assault others, the majority of male sexual assailants are child or adolescentvictims of sexual assault, usually by other men (see Vanderbilt, 1992). Homophobia and fears ofperceived complicity make it even less likely for young males to disclose assaults than for youngwomen to do so; I can only speculate from my own experience about the other forms of abuse,betrayal, and denial in which a male victim could be enwebbed.Recognizing assailants' background experiences of abuse, however, in no way absolves them ofresponsibility for the horror of their actions or detracts from the larger social context which protectsand maintains their victimization of women. It is men who directly continue the cycle of sexual assaultthrough their assaults, and it is their physical, social, and financial power that allows them to do so.Women are sexually assaulted by men, and become victims, not assailants. Women who areassaulted are usually assaulted more than once, and by more than one assailant. Women victims ofsexual assault rarely assault others; they may self-abuse through depression, substance abuse,prostitution or suicide attempts; they may marry abusive spouses and they may parent children who3 4will, in turn, be sexually assaulted within their homes (Task Force, 1992, p.111). Women contribute tothe generational continuation of intimate assault and other forms of abuse through their denial, silence,powerlessness and fear.SILENT WITNESSES: RESISTING KNOWLEDGEThe victims are not the only ones who remain silent about intimate assault. Silent witnesses ignoreclear physical evidence as well as more subtle changes in a child's demeanour, unexplained absencesand upsets, unusual responses, comments, drawings, or resonances. Many know the statisticsregarding intimate assault; very few of us choose to take the next step of daring to make the visceralunderstanding of how these staggering numbers people our daily lives. Responsible adults, bothwomen and men, choose to be unaware of the reality of sexual assault embodied within baby, child,adolescent, and adult women whom they parent, live with, teach, work with, care about, and love.At leastone in four womenfriend sdaughtersn iecesgoddaug htersgranddaughtersneighboursstudentscolleaguescommitteememberssupervisorsdepartmentchairsinstructorsprofessorsresearchersadministratorsministryofficialsboardmembersgovernorsonetwothreefouronetwothreefouronetwothreefour...Silent witnesses allow the assaults to continue. We could sense it, feel it, hear it or about it, seeevidence in body and behaviour, understand the possibilities of abuse, denial, knowing, speaking, andhealing, be versed in the pragmatics of support, intervention and legal action; largely, we choose notto. The result can be that the assaults, or the denial of past assaults, persists.35The fear, experience, and consequences of men's sexual assaults of women is the keystone topatriarchal social organization. It is the wound that keeps on bleeding with women's silence andvictimization, and with men's pain and power. We must all feel this wound, see it, sense it, and know it,if we are to heal it.BREAKING SILENCEBreaking the silence of intimate childhood sexual assault is as complex and terrorladen as the silencingitself. Women keep silence for good reason; to speak our truth is to collapse the intimateunderpinnings of our lives. As we re/member the truth, we may destroy our world.For survivors, intimate childhood sexual assault insinuates itself in every aspect of our lives, includingour self concept, sexuality, the dynamics of our intimate, family, and work relationships, and ourfundamental confidence in ourselves as a learners, knowers, and sources of knowledge. Some of usmay have no conscious memory of the assaults and events surrounding them, perhaps losing years ofchildhood memory. Some of us experience fog, confusion, depression, disorientation, anxiety, andpowerlessness as we struggle to keep our memories suppressed or minimized. We may redefine theassaults as normal behaviour, recognize them as sexual assaults but minimize their importance, or tryto bury the conscious memories we do have, and just "get on with life".When women remember being assaulted, we re-experience loss, grief, rage, violation, and pain beyondwords. Uncertainty, denial and resistance are frequent inner companions, as is the feeling that we maybe losing our sanity. The fear is profound: of believing what we know, of others not believing, of nevergetting through the rage, of falling apart and never pulling together again, of losing our job, of neverhaving a healthy sexuality, of not controlling who will hear of our experience, of not being able tocontrol others' responses to us, of losing our family, of our assailants attacking, destroying or killing us.3 6The remembering may simmer below conscious awareness, as random or persistently recurringdreams, daydreams, confusions, doubts, nagging questions, memory fragments, odd associations andinexplicable distresses reconstellate themselves into an unarguable truth. It may be a traumaticbolt/realization, stimulated by a comment, sight, odour, touch, or movement, by learning of another'sexperiences, by our child reaching the age of our own assaults, by discovering our child's having beenassaulted, or by a significant physical, emotional, or spiritual loss, trauma, or death.The recognition of intimate assault may be the experience of "blanking out" all thought and feeling. Itmay be a quiet, clear, unemotional cognitive awareness or a profound shock. Flashbacks, duringwhich the physical, emotional, mental experiences are suddenly seen, felt, and even relived, may occuras the first remembering or throughout the remembering processes. Private journal writing, drawing,painting, claywork, music, rhythm and sound, counselling, group work, regression therapy and bodywork can assist in loosening, freeing and making sense of these experiences. Our realization may ormay not be supported by those in whom we confide.We each choose how to deal with our assailants and family members. We may continue or severcontact with them. We may chose to confront certain selected family members and assailants orperhaps none at all. We may confide in some, and have others be told without her permission orknowledge. We may begin a process of recognition, restitution, forgiveness, and reconciliation withour assailants and witnesses, or we may be met with alienation, denial, aggression, threats. We maydisassociate ourself from assailants and other family members, or, more likely, they may disassociatethemselves from us. We may consider or undertake legal action in the form of a civil suit or criminalcharges, or be threatened with a civil law suit if we continue to speak or write of the assaults.37PART THREE: METHODMAKING SILENCE KNOWLEDGEIn this part, I discuss the readings that most influenced this research, the process of writing, framing,and revising both my poetry and this entire work, the interplay of my intimate, personal, birthfamily, andacademic life over this research process, and issues regarding intimate reflective autobiography asresearch method.Crone/ologyreflective narration of a woman's journey of knowing;spiralling events, thoughtfeelings, and simmering knowingsspun into a raggedly time-sequenced yarn;autobiography of a wising, healing woman.(orig.)Mine goes something like this:moving my home, moving my home, moving my home, moving my home,retracing, letting float, sprouting soultendril/rootlets;silence, isolation, fear, throbs,talking, reading, musing,settling, formulating, recognizing, fearing,borrowing, remembering, tracing,writing, creating, tightening, editing,co-creating, verifying, being believed,reframing, reading, reframing,ceasing writing, confronting, being denied,fearing writing, fearing speaking,finding new advisor,writing, reframing, grieving, drawing, dreaming,paying to be listened to, heard, seen, touched, held, questioned;harassment, fear of lawsuit,hungering for belonging, understanding, acceptance,scorching a legion of friendships,finding new advisor,attempted reconciliations, vague inferences, veiled attacks,slow and tortured withdrawal from my habit of yearning for family.38TOWARDS MAKING SILENCE KNOWLEDGEBeginning in the fall of 1987, and continuing through 1988 and 1989, my entry into the academic world ofadult education included a great deal of reading, most of which I could not connect with on any kind ofpersonal level. I was used to graduate work, having completed an Master (sic) of Education at McGillUniversity in Educational Psychology in the early 80's, and was accustomed to feeling somewhatseparate from the content and processes of formal education. However, in one core course in theAdult Education program, I found that the more personally excited, satisfied and connected I becamewith my written insights, the worse my essay marks would be. This mini-trend climaxed with my AdultEducation M.A. comprehensive examination results. After completing the day-long exam, I felt almostcocky about my originality, fluency and grasp of concepts... and later found that I failed the exam.What was wrong with this picture?Looking back, I now see that even the preliminary research reading for this work was a quest to answernumerous, and largely unformed personal, intellectual, spiritual, theological, educational, and politicalquestions inside me. Why did I so often feel stupid? Why did this academic work make so littlepersonal sense to me? Could I find any written work or lived educational practice that made profoundpersonal sense to me, that fit and nourished me?I began this search in the literatures of popular education and its theological roots in Christianliberation theology, and the literature of Christian feminist theology. Paulo Friere's early work,Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), and the experience of participating in a week-long workshop onpopular education/ liberation theology led by educator/activist Denyse Nadeau and theologian Dr.Ann Greer Ng, at Regent College, at the University of British Columbia, seeded a number of notionsinside me. These included understandings that our personal/ social/ economic realities are, in fact,political realities; that we may break the silence of oppression by gaining language, analysis and39solidarity through education; that within educational praxis we reflect on our actions and act on ourreflections as educators and/or oppressed peoples; that education for social change is also spiritualwork; that drawing, singing, dancing and eating together are integral to education for social change;and that, within the context of Christian liberation theology, God is unequivocally on the side of theoppressed, marginalized and silent.My reading explorations shifted to Christian feminist theology, theological education, and pastoraltheology. The titles of these works reflect the themes, struggles and nourishment embedded withinthem: Shelley Davis Finson's On the other side of silence: Patriarchy, consciousness and spirituality --Some women's experiences of theoloaical education (1985), Rosemary Radford Reuther's Sexism andGod talk: Toward a feminist theology (1983), Carter Heyward's Our passion for justice: Images ofpower. sexuality, and liberation, (1984), Lynn Rhodes' Co-creating: A feminist vision of ministry (1987),the Mudflower Collective's God's fierce whimsy, (1985), Catherine Keller's From a broken web:Separation, sexism and self (1986), Miriam Therese Winter's Women prayer, woman song: Resourcesfor ritual (1987) and post-Christian feminist Mary Daly's Webster's first new intergalactic wickedary ofthe English language (1987).Their analyses of the implications of patriarchal assumptions and structures in every aspect of theChristian church gave voice and shape to much of my chronic questions, pain, and yearning regardingmy own United Church background, and balm to two profound betrayals of my own spiritualpersonallife. The first was my being forced, as an adolescent, to become a member of the church against mywill. The second was about ten years later, when I was forced to marry someone I didn't love. Thiswedding was conducted by a church minister who knew how I had been betrayed and pressured bymy family, and did nothing to intervene.40Towards the end of my Christian feminist reading, I came across Maria Harris' Women and teaching:Themes for a spirituality of pedagogy (1988). In this slim and profound volume, Harris traces themovements of silence, remembering, ritual mourning, artistry and birthing which she names as thesteps in the spiritual dance of women's teaching and learning. From her work, I gained a number ofempowering notions, including an understanding of teaching as the spiritual work that leads to theharmonization of self and body, self and other, self and world (quoting Rosemary Reuther. p. 13), anappreciation of the importance of women's silences and our dangerous remembering, and arecognition that suffering is always a collective act.Around the time of reading Maria Harris, I also read Joanna Macy's Despair and personal power in thenuclear age (1983). Like Harris' work, Macy's is deeply spiritual. She draws on a wide range ofreligious traditions to nourish spiritual strength within our educational practice and lives. Macy focuseson the educational process of breaking the silence of despair regarding the possibility of nucleardestruction of the earth. She sees this as the first step in turning from despair to personal andcollective empowerment regarding personal, neighbourhood, social, and political change.I can't remember exactly when, in this exploration, I read Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule'sWomen's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice, and mind (1986). What I remember vividlyis that all my women student colleagues were extremely excited about it, that it was impossible toborrow from the library because of waiting lists, and that I could hardly wait for this work to account formy many questions, gaps, and silences regarding my personal sense of knowing, voice and authority.I expected that this book would complete the process that the popular education and Christianfeminist, and spiritualeducational readings had begun. I expected it would help me name, shape, andresolve my struggles regarding my own knowing and silences. I hoped it would help me stop feelingstupid.41I was initially excited about their five positions of knowing: silence, received knowledge, subjectiveknowledge, procedural knowledge, constructed knowledge. It wasn't a Bloom's taxonomy or aMaslow's hierarchy of needs, but a notion that could address women's inner experiences of knowing!This excitement was shortlived. I felt frustrated and incomplete when I began to sense that eventhough these positions were offered as non-hierarchical, I could not see them as anything but astaircase that started with silence on the bottom and climbed to constructed knowledge at the top.The authors offer these positions as epistemological perspectives from which women know and viewthe world, and state that they leave it to future work to determine whether these perspectives have anystagelike qualities (p. 15). Hmmm! I found that each position is characterized as additive to theprevious one, and that I couldn't help but see the positions as both developmental and hierarchical.While almost half of the women interviewed were predominantly "subjectivist" in their thinking, theauthors never seem to wonder why so many women have been unable to develop as procedural orconstructed knowers. The page margins of my copy quickly became filled with my scratched andangry annotationarguments including, Development without stagelike qualities? ...ignorespatriarchy!.., traces and threads of truth -- but mismatched!. The authors recognize particular forms ofwomen's oppression, such as poverty, physical abuse, and intellectual domination, but do not grapplewith the intellectual, social, economic and political enstructuration of this oppression within patriarchy.While they say they are part of the ...Zeitgeist... of feminist theory about voice and silence (p. 19), theyseem to view woman as simply different than men, rather than as being silenced, marginalized andoppressed because they are women.It gets worse. The authors quote poet Marge Piercy (1978, p. 38) to describe one of the tasks of aprocedural knowledge woman as,42She must learn again to speak...starting as the infant doeswith her own true hungerand pleasureand rage.Yet, they do not name their own. Aside from the cover jacket's references to their academic positions,I know nothing else about the authors' involvements with the women they interviewed, nor theirpersonal connections with the results and frameworks they generated. I have to assume they havenever felt silent; I don't know if they have been received, subjective, or even procedural in theirknowledge. I agree with the authors' conclusions that educators need to emphasize connection,understanding, acceptance, collaboration, firsthand experience, and the evolution of students' ownpatterns of work. However, I feel no personal connection with these powerful and liberating notions, orthe disconnected research process that led to them. This book left me feeling empty and kind of achy.Be!entry, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule's understanding of women's silences was extremelydisappointing to me. To describe the position of silence, the authors use words such as deaf, dumb,underdeveloped, uncultivated, unable, separated, diminished, cut off, unaware, unexploring, isolated,misguided, and limited. They appear to have had considerable difficulty imagining such a zombie-likestate: In trying to understand the experience of voice for the silent women, we searched their storiesfor all references that had, by the broadest stretch of the imagination, any association with the idea ofvoice... (p. 24). There appears to be a glass wall between their observing and the "silent" women'sreality. The authors note behaviours, but have no sense of the depth, darkness, and resonance of thesilence that traps and even protects oppressed women, nor any appreciation of the courage andtenacity of women who see no alternative to their silent and depressed knowing.As I later explored and re/membered my own silences through the process of writing my poetry, Ideveloped a profound awe for myself as the child and woman who survived intimate assault in herprison and womb of silence. I will never fully understand the braiding of silence, remembering and4 3resisting that has been my healing, but I do know that silence is not passivity. It is tenacious survival.Despite these considerable frustrations and disappointments in reading Women's ways of knowing, thefive positions of knowing, voice and authority did provide me with fathom markers for my own deepdive into silence and knowing in my poetry writing. From them, I took assurance that if I began toremember my own silences, I might not lose my sanity and might possibly progress to otherexperiences of knowing. I used the five positions as the initial organizing framework for my poetry, butI eventually found they could not embrace the fundamental dynamics of intimate childhood sexualassault.In the summer and fall of 1989, I studied descriptions, explorations, and critiques of women learning,teaching, and researching; feminist educators examining themselves as educational agents by siftingthrough the tensions and contradictions of their own educational practices to name the underlyingcommitments and characteristics of their work, and analyze the dynamics of silence, invisibility,marginalization, and empowerment. I found in this literature that writers would speak directly from theirown experiences as educators, students, and researchers: Lewis and Simon (1986), ElizabethEllsworth (1989) and Kathleen Rockhill (1987) all use their own experiences as educator/researchers asthe subject of their work.Magda Lewis and Roger Simon describe and analyze the silencing of women in a graduate seminar inwhich Lewis was a student participant and Simon, the professor; Elizabeth Ellsworth reflects on herown teaching for social change during a period of campus political upheaval. Closest to my heart isKathleen Rockhill's 'The Chaos of Subjectivity in the Halls of Academe" (1987) in which she scrutinizesthe schism between her own subjective sense of self, experience and knowing, and theacademic/intellectual pressures which work to numb that sense. This rich, dark, passionate andanalytic work influenced my own explorations profoundly.44Just as some readers may do with my work, I avoided reading Rockhill's work for months. Eventually, Iread it quickly and filed it away, then returned to it, read, absorbed, and deeply reverberated with thework. This work disturbed, disquieted and encouraged me; it was the first and only work thatembedded intimate childhood sexual assault within an educational context.Over the following years, one notion from this work nourished my own. It was the connection betweenRockhill's theorizing and research and her own history of childhood and adult abuse. Years aftercompleting research on literacy with the Los Angeles Hispanic immigrant community, Rockhill brokethrough an almost forty year cycle of abuse which had begun with her being psychologically,physically and sexually abused by her father. Going back over her personal journals, she realized thatdenial of her own experiences of abuse had made her unable to understand her own personal historybeyond an intellectual framework of being "socially constructed"; / had an intellectual understandingof my oppression that in a very bizarre way made it possible for me to reproduce it (1987, p. 15).About a year later, she reviewed the literacy study interview transcripts and realized that the violencethe women experienced was not peripheral, as she had originally indicated in her research analysis,but central to their struggle for English literacy.Now, weeks from completing this research, I reread this (1987) article and my original notes on it. Irecognize Rockhill's sourcevoice was deeper than these two stories; that her vision has largelybecome my bones regarding breaking ranks with conventional academic form; speaking from and ofthe darkness, of our sexuality; naming the abuse of our sexuality, as the first place of men'soppression of women; and finding new forms of academic discourse, logic, and structures. I nowidentify key passages in her writing which I don't remember having read before, but now resonatedeeply with my own work:.No! Someplace, somewhere you must follow your heart and break out of these forms— at the very least stretch them enough to be mindful of how it/s that they limit, shapeand even jeopardize... (Kathleen Rockhill, 1987, p. 13)And if we do speak from the belly, if we do talk our terror and despair, our hope andour fears, we do so at great risk as we make ourselves vulnerable... (p. 13)45... for if our sexuality is the primary site of our oppression as women, what does itmean when we cannot talk about it in our work unless it is in terms of those womenand children, out there who are battered and abused... If this is the primary site of ouroppression, then it is a central political problem to address... (pp.13,14)How can we move toward developing academic formswhich can take into account the ways in whichour gendered subjectivities are constituted,which allow for the constructionof new educational, political and scholarly forms,and which enable us to open up, to claimand to fight our sexual subjugation? (p. 14)By the time I read the jacket of Stanley and Wise's (1983) standard reference for feminist educationalresearch, which features descriptions of the authors' various "dead-end jobs", including work asgroom, filing clerk, and children's nanny, I was convinced that I wanted to do this, too! It was alive,vital, funny, fun: from the introductory dialogue (... and we were both pissed off...) to the concludingparagraph (... as we are women and people, so will we be researchers...), the authors includepersonal experiences which have informed their passion for research methodologies that generatedetailed analyses of the personal and everyday oppression of women. Undergirding the vitality andcharisma of Stanley and Wise's work is the recognition that women's everyday experience is the livedmicrocosm of our oppression and marginality within patriarchal social, economic and politicalstructures, as well as our experiences of privilege, access, advantage, and agency. Our researchincludes our personal intuitions, conscious thoughts, emotions, and physical responses throughout theresearch process, and recognition of the deep inner play of hegemonic ideas, critical consciousness,resistance and transformation. This, in turn, calls for modes of research writing that integrateintellectual with physical, spiritual and emotional knowledge.Through this reading I became passionately committed to the feminist research goal of makingwomen's silence knowledge; of making the oppressions of women's lives visible and understandable inways that would lead to our healing and emancipation. When we recognize that the personal is46political, when we examine the mundane, daily "quotidian" of women's realities and when we knitconnections between private realities and the social, political, economic realities that press upon them,then we illuminate, as Kathleen Weiler (Women teaching for change: Gender, class & power, 1988)states, ...the dual processes of social and cultural reproduction on the one hand and resistance andthe production of meaning on the other (p. 59). To do so, we describe the particulars of women'slives, analyze the connections with the larger reality of patriarchy and other forms of oppression, andcreate theoretical frameworks that can guide and inform action.My first reading of Weiler was a profound emotional/ intellectual experience. Her resounding analysisof feminist teachers and administrators, their backgrounds, working and social context, practice,theory, and visions was affirming and astounding to me. First, she was writing about something I wasand did -- woman, teaching high school -- as if it were a significant subject of research. Second, shebrought me -- fledgling feminist/ exhausted womanteacher -- home to a critical analysis of feministeducational praxis firmly grounded in both personal and political realities.While Kathleen Rockhill had integrated the intimate with feminist theory and imperatives, KathleenWeiler integrated the daily realities of students, teachers and administrators with critical social theory.Weiler observed and interviewed eleven women teachers and administrators in a number of Americanpublic schools. Her enunciation of critical educational theory, feminist analysis of gender andschooling, and feminist methodology is the fertile matrix for her own exploration of the dialectics ofgender in the lives of these feminist teachers and their students. Re-reading her work after writing mostof mine, I now realize how solidly this matrix has become my own, including her understandings that:... theory articulates the categories, inquiries, and conclusions that give meaning toexperiences, and that if theory is to engender emancipatory change, it must addressboth the reproduction of existing social, gender, and class relationships as well asindividual and collective agency in the production of counter-hegemonic meaning,class, race, and gender identities through resistance and emancipatory knowledge,relationships, and structures;... feminist teachers need to move beyond individual practices of resistance to thebuilding of a counter-hegemonic movement, and that such a movement be basedon a critical understanding of both individual agency and the structural forces actingupon teachers in their personal and working lives;... feminist research methodology begins with women as referent, recognizing bothwomen's oppression and women's agency within patriarchy, acknowledging therelationships among power, knowledge, and language, and challenging themethodology, assumptions, and language of the male intellectual tradition (p. 58);... feminist research emphasizes the connections between the personal and thepolitical and connections between resistance and reproduction embedded withineveryday life;... feminist research is consciously subjective and partial, and therefore calls for newrelationships between the observer and the observed, and acknowledgement andvalidation of all involved (p. 62, citing Renate Deuli-Klein, 1983 and Maria Mies, 1983);... feminist research is politically committed to social change, which includeschanges in social structures, educational practices, and in consciousness, language,and ways of knowing (p.60);... an exploration of women's ways of knowing include our subjective experience andknowledge that lies silent and invisible, prior to expression and conscious knowing,and that new forms of expression and nonconventional topics are essential to theexploration of women's ways of silent and invisible knowing;... we begin a critical elaboration of women's reality by recognizing what one reallyis, and traces of our individual and social history; that the work of revealing women'severyday realities is an almost archaeological endeavour— that of discovering anduncovering the actual facts of women's lives and experiences, facts that have beenhidden, inaccessible, suppressed, distorted, misunderstood, ignored (p. 62, citingBarbara duBois, 1983).My only small problem with this work is that despite all the analytic power of Weiler's exploration ofother women's personal and political educational practices, Weiler keeps her own experience toherself. She summarizes her personal relationship with this work as, My experiences as a woman andteacher have clearly led me to this topic (p.v)! Nonetheless, her work affirmed the importance of myown life and work as a topic of research, established very rich theoretical notions with which I wouldframe my research, and legitimated my explorations of sources, formats, and language.4748Through these, and other feminist writers and teachers,I came to understand that we research women's experience rigourously when wetell tales,publish secrets,and reframe private pain as political oppression;when we integrate ourthoughts, feelings, hearts and souls;vulnerability with passion;humour with profanities;loneliness with excitement;pain with nourishment;constraints with possiblities;cautious care with unbridled rage.I came to believe that at its most essential,feminist research is women doing researchin the manner Virginia Woolf longed for us to write,...rigourously as women,with passion and colour,out of our own experience(Annas, 1985, p. 361);creatingknowledge of self and self in relation to others,the formulation of theories,and the generation of political action and social changeRecognizing the silencing of women in patriarchy,this is research...committed to a politics of transliteration,the methodology of a mind stunnedat the suddenly possible shifts of meaning— for which like amnesiacs in a ward on fire,we must find words or burn.(Olga BroumasI986, cited in Walsh, 1986, p. 1)I came to understand thatwe research rigourously as womenwhen we namethe lies, secrets, and silencesthat have enshrouded us (Rich, 1979),the pain, healing,strengths, vulnerabilities,clarity and fogthat we bring to our work, as women and researchers;when we write in high reliefour !earnings, struggles, limitations,emotional/ physical/ intellectual/ spiritualperegrinations and revelationsas we integrate our own lives with our research.49From this recognition and reflection on our personal involvement,we can generate both passionate theory and vibrant action.I came to know that I could reflecton the tensions, contradictions, and possibilitiesin my own educational work,to generate a fuller understandingof the silencing, contradictions,insights, sparks, and lovethat were my experience.I came to know thatmy most important understandings were lodgedin my deepest silences and fears.I came to know that the topic of my feminist researchis assault, silence, and healing.RE/MEMBERING KNOWLEDGEconceive:of a female: to receive (seed) in the womb, to become pregnantto take or admit to mindto become affected or possessed withto form and entertain (an opinion)to form a purpose, to plan, devise, formulate an ideato grasp with the mind,to apprehend, understand, comprehendto perceive by the senses, to observeto form an opinion; to imagineto think a thing to be so and soto institute an action in lawto form and utter spontaneously a prayerto take an oathIn the fall of 1989, I decided to focus on power in feminist educational practice for my masters thesis inAdult Education. For the previous fifteen years, I had worked in a variety of roles and educationalsettings: as high school teacher in two Canadian provinces and overseas, graduate student andresearch assistant in two Canadian universities, educational workshop leader, course instructor for50university students, teachers, college instructors, health professionals and adult educators, and facultyadvisor for student teachers. I knew that despite having the multi-layered protection of being able-bodied, white, upper middle class, educated, and professional, I often felt powerlessness and silent. Ifelt that by somehow understanding these feelings, I could better understand tensions andcontradictions in my educational praxis. I remember having a vague constant uneasy thoughtfeelingthat it could become very personal. In early January of 1990, I began.I dove deep, recalling and writing events, thoughts, and feelings from infancy, childhood, adolescence,adulthood, and my current life and work. Early childhood scenes came to me most insistently. Fromthere, my recall danced from childhood to adulthood to adolescence in a logic beyond consciouscontrol. These reflections took the form of telling moments; small and emotion-laden memories ofincidents in my life that were significant for reasons I didn't consciously understand. A montage ofmuffled silence and skin-tingling voice developed, vivid in detail, perspective, colour and emotionalnuance.I began to write about these moments, first in prose. I quickly changed to poetry, which I'd neverwritten before; I realized I was slouching towards writing about my earliest experiences ofpowerlessness, being sexually abused as an infant and child. I thought that by writing in poetry, Icould convey the essence of these experiences without revealing the identities of my abusers. Theactual process of dredging, re/viewing, sifting and describing these recollections quickly became oneakin to automatic writing; as I would finish one recollection, the next would begin to press on my mind.The poetry editing process was a fusion of disinterested craft and intense emotion; my eyes were oftenblurred with tears of joy or pain.It was when I wrote the poem Suc/cour that I realized that intimate childhood sexual assault and itsattendant silences was central to my being and knowing. The actual sexual assaults occurred over a51relatively short period; the emotional abandonment and psychological abuse seems to have begun at avery early age and continued throughout my childhood. The consequences reverberated throughoutmy childhood and adolescence as feelings of isolation and detachment, then into adulthoodexperiences of an emotionally abusive marriage, chronic mild depression, and an eventual reactivedepression.Early in the writing process, I realized that the conventions of academic prose and dictionary-validatedvocabulary were failing me. When I shifted to poetry and allowed myself to compound and embedwords, I began to experience the power of my created language to name, describe, and thereforefundamentally re/create experiences and understandings that had been lost to me. The poetry helpedme remember the pain and betrayal, and make sense of it. Heal from it. Healing is as interconnectedand complex as abuse. As I wrote, and was read by friends and advisors, I became more bold. Like agardener tracing the extensive roots of a pernicious weed or a surgeon tracking a web of cancerousgrowth, I traced the reverberations of the abuse in my body, mind, and soul; in my every intimate,working, and public relationship; in my life choices, my sense of myself as a learner, knower, educatorand researcher. Doing so, I named names and described specific instances in my life andrelationships. I wrote through the winter and spring of 1990.The process of generating my framework for the poetry was a natural, integral part of the writingprocess. As I wrote, I became attuned to the themes of voice and silence, power and powerlessness,body and disembodiment, passion and betrayal, protection and abuse. Sometimes, I would be writingfrom my guts and observing myself write, monitoring themes and trying on frameworks, all at the sametime. Other times, I would look through the growing body of poetry and consciously wrestle with the fitand sequence of poems and frameworks.The five positions of knowing developed by Belenky and all (1986) provided the first phantom/fathom52markers for my own deep dive into silence and knowing. However, when I tried to use silence,received, subjective, procedural, and constructed knowledge as the organizing framework for mypoetry, I felt dissatisfied. Only silence, subjective, and constructed knowledge seemed to fit with myown experiences, and I couldn't find any mention in Women's Ways of Knowing of the themes thatwere becoming central to my work, including passion/betrayal, protection/abuse, body/disembodiment, testimony, and re/membering.Refining the framework was a slow process which was, initially, collaborative. In the early stages,mentor Barbara Blakely resonated with, questioned, and reflected on the poetry and framework that Iwas developing, holding them up to the light of her theology, personal experience and educational andcounselling work with other women. A triptych of disembodied silence, embodied voice, andpassionate praxis developed at our fortnightly kitchen table visits. It later evolved to betrayal,remembering, vision, passion, and praxis, and like a house settling over the following three years,settled into the final shape of silence, rebetrayals, re/membrance and knowledge.January 16, 1990Planning and writing this thesisis continuing to bea painful spiralling outfrom the safe center of intellectual analysisinto the vulnerable marginsof personal reflection and disclosure.I now see that this is an essential challenge of feminist research;the process of discovering and constructingwhat! deeply yearn to do,awkwardly and fearfullyintegrating my logic, intuition, and bellydeep feelingwithin public text.When 1 fail, word by phrase by sentence,I consume my seff in anger and worthlessness.When I succeed,I re/conceive the world.53The process of my healing had begun, very slowly, about twelve years earlier, with five years of uselessmarriage counselling and group therapy. It had continued with individual therapy to support myleaving the marriage, during which I had my first recollections of childhood sexual assaults, andcontinued for the next decade with counselling. Although much of this counselling supported me indealing with day to day issues and struggles, I never dealt with the fundamental issue of intimateassault. I don't remember ever being encouraged to do so, and I do remember just wanting to "live anormal life".On entering the graduate program in Adult Education at UBC, I met, for the first time, a vibrant group offeminists. Conversations, exchanged readings, clothing exchange parties, jokes about not shavingunderarms, reports on committees and organizations as well as political actions all contributed to themaking of this feminist over my first years at UBC, until I finally came to my own history. Among thisgroup was one woman who eventually identified herself to me as a survivor and encouraged me todeal directly with the consequences of my own abuse. Although I continued to have some counsellingsupport in this area, I did most of this exploration through my writing. This write/ remembering tookme to depths I had never been; I spent much time doing nothing but sitting, sorting, andre/membering. My silence regarding the sexual assaults had been my prison, womb, protection, andsurvival; this process of breaking silence was often -- no, mostly --extremely painful.By spring, 1990, I had completed my first fifty pages of poetry and text, outlined the conceptualframeworks and identified the key themes in my poetry. My thesis committee read it and told me tocarry on. In the summer and fall of that year, my writing slowed to a halt as I took a new teaching job,bought a house, became pregnant, miscarried. At a deeper level, my writing progress was hamperedby the limits of my own healing process.May 16, 1990Dreamvision:I have a vaginal infection, probably a yeast infection. I go to a medical clinic that I've heard is veryprogressive. lam misdiagnosed and given the wrong treatment. I return for further diagnosis. Thedoctor, a young woman, tells me that I would actually be better off diagnosing and treating myself.She reaches to an open bookcase and pulls a small bright coloured, very robust plastic microscope.It looks like a Fisher-Price toy; one of those indestructibles. She tells me they were developed andproduced for a women's self-help health project which is no longer funded.She shows me how to prepare and examine a slide of my own vaginal tissue. Looking through themicroscope, I see shapes and colours in striking and repeated abstract designs: a test tube/condomshape with a pink ball inside, small cloud/wisps, blue triangles. They are all distinct; I am convincedthat I could learn what each shape in this rich small world indicates regarding my inner health andimbalances.I wake, aware that this is both my thesis and my love life: the work of concentrating, learning toidentify shapes and patterns, taking responsibility, taking control. No mean feat.I realized that I had to confront my assailants and other family members. In preparation for thisconfrontation, I finally had no choice but to read Ellen Bass and Laura Davis' (1988) The Courage toHeal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. I highlighted passages, pencilled inextensive marginal notes, wrote pages in my journal as I devoured its 500-odd pages. Over the springbreak, I confronted one of the assailants; I was too afraid of the other. I confronted other familymembers and told them of the assaults, my thesis, and my intentions to publish this work as a book.Their reactions included astonishment, compassion, disbelief and anger which, for most of them,quickly shifted to vehement denial and withdrawal. Nothing had prepared me for this; it was the mostpainful experience of my life. I eventually found, and was able to afford, two counsellors, a supportgroup for women survivors of sexual assault, a series of women's healing retreats, a massage therapistand a chiropractor/ naturopath.5455May 27, 1991This is so awful. I feel so bad. Lonely. Isolated. Not knowing what to do, who to ask for help. Howto move forward. I dread weekends, I muddle through weeks. lam so alone. Do runes. Garden.Sleep. Write. Haven't read for a week. Haven't jogged much. Don't know how to/who to pray to.Maybe that's the worst. No shell of a family. HELP.I AM DOING INTENSIVE RECOVERY WORK FROM CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE. lam beginning tolose it. I am having nightmares and waking each morning early and worrying. lam mixing up mywords when I am teaching. I am very lonely and isolated because the family has cut off contact withme. I am cracking. I can handle everything but losing my family. I can't stand that. I feel like I caneither back off or I can keep on going. I don't want to back off. I am in danger of becomingdepressed; I can feel the slippage.I trust this process. I have support. I have two therapists and a support group and some weekendretreats and some friends and Don. But not having family is almost more than I can take.In the summer of 1991, I finally felt able --compelled, actually -- to read what I had avoided for over ayear, a collection of popular and academic articles, files and books by survivors, helping professionalsand researchers on childhood experiences of incest, father-daughter rape, sexual abuse, and sexualassault that I had gathered over the previous year. I lived through works including Florence Rush's(1980) study of the historic context and current realities of child sexual abuse, The Best Kept Secret:Sexual Abuse of Children, Ellen Bass and Louise Thornton's (1983) I Never Told Anyone: Writings byWomen Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Women's Resource Centre's (1989) Recollecting OurLives: Women's Experience of Childhood Sexual Abuse. Although this was extremely difficult readingon an emotional level, I found that after going through my own pain so deeply that I could almost planealong the surface of each story or analysis, gathering information without reliving the depths of thepain.Re/collectionIn the year of 1992, I worked through the legal and emotional barriers to publishing this work, as well asfurther separating from my family and mourning the death of my lover. The following re/collectionincludes journal entries, a university memo, a poem, my letter to the Women's Education des Femmesjournal editors, published in the Summer, 1992 issue, a series of drawings from my sketchbook, and aposter and prayer for a church service commemorating the December 6th Montreal massacre. Thesection concludes with my letter to my thesis committee regarding the selection of an externalexaminer for this work.Winter, 1991/92Now, in the winter of 1991/92, I move towards completion; the task of making linear themultidimensional intuitive organic weavespiral of writing, remembering, feeling, analyzing, healing,slipping, empassioning and envisioning which has been this work. I find this extremely difficult to do,particularly with regard to the settling of research questions, claims, territory, and limitations, astandard intellectual process that for me is charged with fierce healing, pain, fear, and vulnerability.What does it mean to speak my personal truth with intellectual care?Even though a lawsuit is very unlikely, given all the publicity it would generate, lam still very afraid.This fear has also eroded my confidence to discuss my work in an academic oral defence; maybethere will be other men like them who will want to destroy me. 1 need another five or ten years ofhealing to be able to publish my poetry in its complete form.56Administrative, Adult & Higher EducationFaculty of EducationUniversity of British ColumbiaVancouver B.C.MemorandumTo:From:Date:Re:Dr. J. HillsDr. K. McCannellDr. A. McCleanDr. L Peterat February 27,1992Meeting of February 19,1992Because of the subject and the source of data of^ 's M.A. thesis and because of threats oflegal action against her and the university which have been made, her thesis committee requested thismeeting with the university's legal advisors and the Head of the Department of Administrative, Adultand Higher Education.The thesis is an examination of the educational implications of intimate childhood sexual assault andthe primary data to be used in the thesis is^'s own experience of intimate childhood sexualassault in her family. The data are presented as prose and poetry descriptions of the experience andare linked to feminist and other analyses of the impact of childhood sexual assault and theories ofpower and powerlessness.The committee (with the exception of Linda Peterat, who is on sabbatical) met on February 19,1992with Jean Hills and Bertie McClean to seek their advice, ^ provided an outline of the thesis, thebeginning pages of the introduction to the thesis and examples of the type of poetry that would beincluded in Part 4: Testimony.Bertie McClean made it clear that the thesis' clear naming of specific individuals as assailantsconstituted defamation in the sense that "if this was said, it could lower the accused in the eye of right-thinking people." It is also clear that the use of a pseudonym in presenting the thesis might reduce thepossibility of a lawsuit by making the accusation less clearly directed to^ 's family but that itoffers no certain protection against a lawsuit nor protection in the defense of such a suit.In defense against a libel suit, the responsibility for proving the allegation lies with the person makingthe statement. Because the incidents described in the thesis occurred so far in the past, there is nopossibility of proving their truth. Some evidence can be offered in terms of^ 's 10 years oftherapy for recovery from sexual abuse, but in Bertie McClean's view, this would be a difficult thing toprove. Another possible defense lies in a claim of "academic privilege," but such a defense has not yetbeen used in the Canadian context, so its strength cannot be judged.5758Essentially, if members of the family choose to pursue a libel suit against the university, the committeemembers, and herself, the issue will be focused on the extent of the damage and the exposurethe thesis has brought rather than on the truth of the claims of the thesis.The meeting then turned from a description of the legal situation of the thesis to a discussion of BertieMcClean's advice to the committee and ^ on writing the thesis. He voiced his extremereluctance to advise against the writing of the thesis, citing the importance of not having work in theacademic community distorted by the threat of a libel suit. The central question in obtaining the [legal]insurers' coverage and in hoping for a judgement in our favour in the event that a suit was pursuedwould be that of academic judgement: is this a piece of work which is academic and which theuniversity is prepared to accept? The defense of the thesis in a lawsuit would very likely rest on ourability to demonstrate that the methods used and the topic chosen are regarded by at least somemembers of the academic community as valid. Kathryn McCannell and^ expressed theiropinion that the thesis is a valid and important piece of work and that, although critics of such workcould undoubtedly be found, very strong and reputable support for such work could also be found.The specific issue of the practicality and usefulness of writing the thesis under a pseudonym was thenaddressed. A number of practical questions were raised in terms of future uses of the work and theneed for^ to continue to live a life restricted by the use of a pseudonym for her work. Theadvantages and disadvantages of the use of a pseudonym, of legally changing her name andwriting the thesis under that name, and of her writing the thesis under her own name were discussed.It was left to , in consultation with the committee, to decide whether writing under a pseudonymto reduce the chances of a lawsuit was a reasonable and workable notion for her personally.Both Bettie McClean and Jean Hills supported the notion that writing the thesis as proposed was areasonable academic and legal risk to take.SO AApril 8, 1992ft is two days before the submissions date for Women's Education des Femmes special issue, and it's10:30 at night. I've known about this call for contributions for at least six months, and I've knownwhich part of my thesis I can rework to send in... and have put it off for as long as possible, so thatmaybe I'll miss the deadline.I don't know if I'll ever know all the levels of fear within me regarding this writing. So far, I have dealtwith the fear of not being believed and of being rejected by friends, family, the university, and with thethreat of a civil lawsuit. I'm afraid of colleagues at school discovering me; I'm afraid that somehow thepublishers will forget to use my pseudonym. I can't think of what else I fear, but! know there is more.I wonder if! will ever stop feeling afraid.5960April 12,1992Editorial boardWomen's Education des FemmesSpecial issue on violence and learningDear Sisters:Your call for contributions to the Women's Experience of Violence issue of Women's Education desfemmes has had a stronger influence on me and my writing than I could have anticipated. I am,therefore, not sending you my originally intended contribution, but a brief recounting of my experienceof trying to send it to you. I think this experience shows what may be one of the most profound waysthat violence affects women's learning: its making us so afraid to tell the truth that we do not.I have been working for over two years on my MA thesis in Adult Education, exploring connectionsamong power in feminist educational praxis, knowing, and experience of intimate childhood sexualassault. This work is autobiographical. I had planned to send you part of the thesis introduction, inwhich! weave connections among these issues in the literature and in my own life as a child, woman,student, researcher and educator.I put off final preparation of this contribution for as long as I could (until two days before the due date)when I finally realized how afraid I was to send it in. Over the past two years, I have dealt with manylevels and forms of that fear: fear of not being believed, understood or academically supported, fear ofbeing rejected by my family, of a threatened lawsuit against myself and the university. I had, I thought,resolved these fears by adapting a pseudonym, gaining unequivocal academic support from mydepartment and the university administration, and dealing with the loss of most of my family throughnaming my abuse and abusers to them. So I thought that I didn't have much else to fear.Through preparing this contribution for possible publication, I realized this was not so. The largest fearnow is the very small possibility that one of my assailants would make good on his threat to sue me,destroying my financial security. The protection of a pseudonym in no way allays this fear.On a more immediate scale, when using the printing facilities of my school (where I teach), I feared thatsomeone would come up and start reading the computer screen and I wouldn't be able to clear it fastenough, that I would leave one stray sheet on the xerox machine, paper cutter, printer, or fax machinethat contained a detail of the abuse with my name on it, that I would inadvertently leave an identifyingdetail on my work, or that you would mistakenly use my real name. At 5:30 on your deadline day, withno one else in the school, I tried to fax my work to you. I couldn't get the machine to work. I drovehome, sobbing and screaming, railing my pain, fear and anger that I should feel this precious, beautiful,powerful lifework to be illicit and dangerous.One day later with the help of my friend Shauna, I realized that if I ignore or try to tough myself throughthese fears, I am abusing myself. I have invested enormous time, money, and spirit in my healingprocess over the past number of years in group work, private therapy, art work and mostly in mywriting. This past week's experience has brought me a new respect for the depths of the abuse andthe time and protection my healing still requires. So, for now, I must remain silent. I wish you all well inyour important work.Sincerely,Morgan McClungCII-.6365cr)-4choo0July 8,1992ThreadHis eightieth birthday party,at the country place.All the functioning family would be there:sisters, complete with men and children,down from the interior,and the gang from here;trampoline laughter, swimming,walking through woods, admiring gardens,comparing spring achievements and making summer plans.I would not.Sister, with her kidz whom I love passionatelypacked in the car and ready to head out"I'm phoning to ask you again if you'll come.The kidz will be really disappointed if you don't.His health is failing;we don't think there is that much more time."I finally saw it, clearly,the forest of the lie:warped, gnarled, twisted, thick-maned bramble,bats and flying black ants,brownslicked snakes and wispy veilsthrough which I havesidestepped, ducked, bellycrawled;alert on every side, in every senseto every word spoken and anticipated.All I'd wanted was enough space for my small bodyand my thread of silver truth.But the lie kept pressing,deep and dense and dark.7172They have all done so well by me,repositing their pain on my soul.I don't know how we made the agreement,nor how very long ago;I know that it was sealed in a silence strongerthan the adhesion of barnacles to seaboulders.Over the years, they have watched with some pityas I lived out their dividends:my forced, abusive marriage,depression, divorce, herpestherapy, counselling, therapy-and-counsellingsidelined career, sidelined writing,sidelined living, sidelined intimacy.They reeled in horror when,from within the muffled, muzzled, fogdenseforest of the lieI stood and said:"He sexually abused me, he sexually abused me,she knew, and did nothing."Doors slammed, telephones died, postbox emptied,unless I'd recant voice, sanity, and selfin resealed silence.I reeled in pain.Over seasons, reached out and receivedtentacles, rootlets, resonancesof news, contact, or caring;alluded only to my pain and "our" problembut staked no claim on my truth.He, vicious, cocky with his threat of lawsuit,if I should try to publish, enquires, solicitously,"Oh, is she going to come to our Christmas party?I'm concerned! Should I phone and invite her'?"She, whom I love deeply,who refuses to see me without him,"Easter is the time for new beginnings.Come out and have a meal with us. Come out for a visit.We don't know what you're doing anymore!"Healing survivor,feeling the sludge and excrement squeezecleansing,pore by pore by pore, from my soul, replies:"No, I cannot come. I've tried. It makes me crazy.You couldn't understand unless you were me.If you want to help, please start dealing with the problem.I appreciate your calling. I hope we can talk again.Good bye."73Thread!--.1.P.75,^iLl+P77*./Oli?'77December 6,1992Prayer of confession:Service of Mourning and HealingUnited Church,Vancouver, B.C.Writing this prayer has been particularly challenging:^and 1 have written it together, blending ourdifferent perspectives, understandings, and concerns. We share this prayer with you in the verydifficult recognition that within our midst, we have been, and we arevictims of...perpetrators of...silent denying witnesses to...men's violence to women and children.Please silently join us in this prayer of confession.Dear God, who feels our pain and longs to protect and nourish us,"We are not alone",yet we are terrifyingly alonein our fear, our anger, our helplessness, our memories;we have had no one to protect or defend usin the barren wilderness of our denial.We sense out friends and family to share our painand their fear resonates in their quick reassurances;if they cannot hear us, we cannot speak.We are sealed in silence.Our pain and experience isunspeakable, unacceptableunimaginable, unsupportable;we remain your silent victims, abusers, witnesses.When others cannot hear and respond,how do we keep faith in the womb of your nourishing, healing, and radically empowering love?78...)toDecember 27, 1992As I near completion, I find it very difficult to describe the matrix of relationships among my self, myknowing, my healing, and my writing. 1 cannot separate this writing from my healing from my self.Every word of it is me, transmogrified from blood and flesh to text and paper; every word. My writinghas necessitated my healing by forcing me to confront my family regarding the assaults (which I couldhave otherwise put off forever); / needed to do so in order to complete my poetry. My writing hasbeen an ongoing affirmation of my clarify, pain and growth. My feelings about each piece of this workhave been amazingly consistent over the past three years; I love some (Silence, Weave Woman) as Idid right after! first wrote them, and have felt incomplete about others (I testify) until I could finallyedit them, years after the original draft.February 8, 1993Memo to:^Thesis committee membersFrom:^Joanna WisewoolfRe: Follow up to January 28/93 committee meetingI am writing to request your consideration and action regarding the selection of the fourth reader, andthe timeframe for completion. These issues are very upsetting to me and are impeding my writingprogress. I request that the committee meet as soon as possible to take action on these issues.I am concerned that the choice of the fourth reader for this work be finalized as soon as possible. Anumber of factors, I believe, are complicating this process, including the number of changes in themembership of this committee, the unexplained resignation of my former committee chair andresearch advisor, the absence of participation of an Adult Education faculty on this committee, and thefact that the research advisor is in Social Work, not Education.Before the January committee meeting, the coordinator of graduate students' work within AdultEducation told me that a specific professor from the Adult Education department should be the fourthreader. At our meeting, I understood from Jean that the choice of this fourth reader was theresponsibility of the committee and the faculty of graduate studies. Last week, Jean told me that thecommittee decision needed to be supported by the Adult Education department.8081I am not clear. Could you please bring clarification of the selection process to our next meeting -- ie.,exactly who chooses? What are the criteria Adult Education will use for the selection of a reader forthis specific thesis? What exactly happens if the committee and the department are not in agreementwith regard to selection criteria for this fourth reader?At our upcoming meeting, I request that this committee finalize its criteria for the selection of thisreader, and the name of the reader her/himself. I request that the following considerations be includedin this decision:This is research strongly informed by feminist perspectives and analysis: the reader shouldhave a solid working familiarity with educational research and practice from a feministperspective, and with feminist theory.This is intimate reflective autobiography, which explores the explicit physical, emotional,spiritual realities of intimate childhood sexual assault, and the implicit interplay of assault,silence, and knowing. The reader should have solid grounding in both the method and topic ofthis work.This thesis integrates traditional academic text, poetry, journals, editorial comments, andartwork. Narrative poetry provides both the story of my own experience and the implicitconceptual framework of this experience; this poetry is not analyzed and theorized in anexplicit manner. The reader should be familiar with post-modern academic text.Within the autobiographical approach, this thesis explores educational implications within theauthor's own reflections and experiences of the research process, text, and practice. Thereader should be versed in feminist, or related approaches to such implications.This research is grounded in the author's personal history, life's work as an educator teachingin the public school, college, university, and adult education contexts, and in readings in adulteducation and feminist educational praxis. The reader should be versed in adult educationliterature and practice as well as broader educational and feminist realities.In order that this decision is made as soon as possible, I would ask that everyone also bring names ofavailable and appropriate individuals to our next meeting.I am very concerned about the time frame for spring graduation. I am getting mixed messages fromcommittee members. I have already taken a very expensive unpaid leave from work, and am preparingto take another in order to complete for spring. My own personal resources, both financial andemotional, are becoming extremely limited with regard to this project. I need a very clear timeframewhich also recognizes the realities of my working schedule.Thank you for your ongoing support.Our healing is our re/memberingOver the process of remembering my own experiences, and reading of others', I have come to knowthat to be a woman is to experience assault, silence, and the possibility of healing. The assaults may bevague wisps/minor annoyances floating on the margins of our consciousness, a numbing reality overlong periods of our lives, or soulsplitting traumas from which we might never expect to heal. Theassaults are of our body, being, integrity, mind, spirit, heartwholeness. They are breathed, looked,insinuated, implied, threatened, anticipated, depicted, eroticized, enacted, ignored, condoned,emboldened, encultured, and enshrined. They may be initiated by intimates, familiars, or strangers.Our silence is our inuring, muffling, depressing, bending, warping, fearing, preparing, cowering,seducing, accommodating, submitting, resisting, defending, revenging. Our healing is ourre/membering: our knowing, naming, proclaiming, protecting, connecting, organizing, envisioning,resisting, creating, and acting.My commitment to this undertaking was shaped by reading the literatures of feminist literary theory,research methodology, and educational praxis before beginning my own writing. It was nourished bysisters evocatrix, advisors, and further readings during my research, and soulaffixed by myexperiences throughout the research process. Making secrets knowledge has had profoundconsequences in every aspect of my life: my fears, depression, writing, creativity, sexuality, clarity,strength, courage, determination, integrity, joy, and power. I never could have imagined how muchthis process has demanded, nor how strongly I now feel about this textwork: it is my sometimessouljewellry, babychild, and activated bomb.82PART FOUR: TESTIMONYFROM SILENCE TO KNOWLEDGEtestimony:Testimony, in the strictest sense of the term, therefore,is the communication of an experience made to thosewhose own experience has not reached so far.1838 Sir W. Hamilton Logic )oodii II. 177Personal or documentary attestationin support of a fact or statementany form of evidence or proofany object serving as proof or evidenceexpression of disapproval or condemnation of errora protestation.83SEALED IN SILENCEUncon/souledI.I can't tell the earliest parts.I know that now, I feel trappedwhen a lover places both hands over my ears.I know that then, there was someone sitting on my chest,his knees nudging against my splayed underarms,his hands covering my ears, his cock shoving into my mouth.I know I gagged in silence.II.I was about two years oldstanding at the topof the chipped cement stairs that led to the basement doorof my friend's housewhen I felt her hands on the small of my backgiving me a little shove.My baby-rounded body bounced down the steep steps.No scrape, cut, or tear. No proof.My soul screamed.Her mother was standing at the concrete sink inside, doing laundry.I ran to her, ragewailing.She looked down from wringing clothesto my up-turned, tear-streaked, thigh-high face,impatiently."Go home to your mother."III.I have no childmemory of comfort;being held, hairstroked,assured, reassured, con/souled.No one gathered upmy heart, body, soul shardssplintered and still bleedingon the tile floor.No one spoke to me, held me, saw me,placed their tremouring, enraged, and tear-wet cheek to minein consoulation and mourning.84SecretsI.Every afternoon during rest time,She would creep into my room, up to my bed,and make me let her touch the whites of my eyes.I'd squirm and whimper, but do it:"Keep your eye open. Wide open. Don't blink."I learned to not blink.I didn't tell.II.I had climbed to the very top of the garage roof,clearly breaking the Climbing the Garage Roof From the Tool Shed Rule,which specified a maximum height of two rows of shingles.Setting astride the peak, masked by the maple tree,I saw my mother come to the back porchand call us home for lunch.She didn't look up. She didn't see me.Invisible!III.Roundfaced kindergarten school girlMaroon blazer and beret; navy tunicOne chubby hand clutching a tin lunchboxwith a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II;the other holding his, as we walkedour secret backlane routeto his bus stop andmy School for Girls.Our special secret backlane route.85Suc/coudHim, shaving.Me, still five, standing on the lidded toiletstirring up the cup of shaving foamwith the ivory-handled bristle brush,moosh-brushing soap onto his face,and on my chubby cheeks,longing to infuse my face, my head, my body in hisby shaving, too.Doorlocked secret time.Warmloving, fusing, merging, submergingwithout boundary/ division/ hesitation;immersing my permeable soul inthe soft diffuse early morning lightof his un/divided attentions.Then.One of us sitting on the toilet seat,the other standing, facing(Was it him sitting and me standingor me sitting and him standing?);joined, connected, coupled,sucking, suckling, succouring his penisin my small soft baby-teethed mouth.His testicles sealing my lips.The door suddenly yanked open."Stop that!"Exposed! Betrayed!Saved?Me, wretched away, shoved into their oldsweatsmelling bed.Silence.86Intestateintestate:that no man will take as a witnessdisqualified from being a witness or giving evidenceI.I had recurring dreams.Of the courtroom:looking up so high my neck hurt;up a towering wooden panel to an unforgiving judgepleading his innocence."How could a man with all these children.., how could he possibly..."Of his return from prison through the back gate:of standing by the porch step and seeing himwalking through the back gate,just walking through the gate, suitcase in hand;dreaming the miracle, fiercely!Then waking to realize that the gate was empty.That he wasn't walking through the gate.That the gate was empty and the yard was empty.Waking, soul aching. Telling no one.II.I was allowed to rest in bedto calm crippling stomach aches before school;I was allowed to "leave the room" whenever I needed to,without Mrs.^ 's permission;I sat endlessly on the second toilet from the sinks,tracing the tiny floor tile patterns of pink, yellow, grey, whiteuntil my bowelknots released.No one came to check on me;no one ever asked what was wrong.III.The day of the la tests in grade twoMy tummy ache was so bad thatMrs.^ sent me down to the nurse's.As I lay in the harsh comfort of a scratchy grey wool blanket,the vice principal showed me, page by page, the "test".I, who later clocked in at one hundred and thirty-something,knew then that I knew nothing.Weak spelling.Slow reading.Poor comprehension.Inaccurate arithmetic.Stomach aches.87Sports day cupJunior sports champion in grade two!Rustling, scratching, smallbillowingmy favourite charcoal and pink cotton skirtwith the crinolines underneathI tore through the back gate, up the porch stepsthrough the green screen door and into the kitchenbursting pride, excitement, joy!She kept ironing, silently.My bliss dried to a scab.88Familiarfamiliar:pertaining to one's family life, on a family footing;extremely friendly, unduly intimate.of animals: accustomed to the company of men,tame, on a domestic footingI.Around the age of ten,I developed blackheadsin the crease of my chin.Sunday mornings after churchhe would lay me down on their bed.He'd find a bobby pin in the bathroom,dip the rounded end in peroxide, lean over me,and squeeze the week's crop from my skin.His head and shoulders filling my vision,his face an amalgam of guilt and disgust.When he was done, we'd join the rest for Sunday lunch;Welsh rarebit or soup or grilled cheese sandwiches.No one asked why we were late, or why my chin was so red.89II.In his office on the second floor, Broadway and Granville,Dr. N., after drilling my fillingswith that horrid thick, slow drill,kept me in the chair, and looked closely at my chin:a crop of pudgy little blackheads nestled in the crease,ready for the harvest.He said nothing, took Kleenex, and began squeezing them.I sat/lay there, on the green naugahyde,imprisoned/ held/ embraced by black bakelite armsthinking,How come he's doing this?They're on the outside of my mouth!He's not allowed!...Is he allowed?I never told.In the spring of first year, hitchhiking from the universityI was picked up by an older man in a grey Austin.As we drove down Broadway he took his right hand from the gear shiftput it on my miniskirt-naked knee, moved slightly up my thigh,and said "I like the feel."I sat there, very still,until he let me out at the corner of Larch.90REBETRAYALSWas I a virgin"Are you a virgin?"I served him old coffee at the arborite counter,Mile 1118, Alaska Highway,and he, road crew, smiling in cocky anticipation,softly whispered, over and over again,"Are you a virgin?""Are you a virgin?"Tent, sleeping bags, and Kleenex;getting down to the businessof penetrating me.After ten o'clock, Yukon summer light.I heard a couple nearbytalking with their kidsas he gave his finalshove.I bled.As I rose to clean myself,he, smirked, soft/mocking,"Are you a virgin?"He joined a midnight cardgame drunkat a nearby cabinand I, viscerated,walked the hollow twilight woods.91Trussed, sealed, and deliveredUniversity "boyfriend":sweaty kisses, grunting, gasping, pumping.Body basics.I remember going to his kitchen to take out my contact lensesbefore having sex; each time, thinking that maybe this timeecstasy might roll them over to the inside of my brainwhere I could never retrieve them.I needn't have worried.One night, tongue beerloosened,he admitted that yes, we were fucking.Father's come/ragenot white, thick, salt/sweetbut clear, watery, toxichosed into every orifice of my being.He ranted of shotguns and murder,then sank into total silence.Hostage to silence, I prepared to marry.The bride's wedding gown was quickly borrowed.During the pre-marriage counselling session,the minister told the young couple thatalthough they had never thought of marriageuntil the father of the bride threatenedto buy a shotgun and kill the young manfor fucking his daughter,and although they didn't really know if they loved each other,he was sure that everything would turn out fine.The mother and sisters and aunts and cousins of the bridearranged flowers, nails, and hair,photos of the bride putting on her makeup,music, hall, and tributes,No one asked the bride, are you okay?Empty, stunned hollow,I met him in the echoing concrete-grey sanctuary.I reached through the gaping air and put my armthrough that space between crooked arm and hip,entered the chapel of turned and smiling heads,and walked down the aisle,trussed, sealed, and delivered.92SoulviolationI.Passionate, committed, fully engaged,humming like a high tension wireI'd come home from classesto find him spirit-sucked, deadman floating, suspended in silty despair.One night, sitting on the bed, as we arguedhe raised his arm poising to hit me,hate firing his eyes.First, disbelief shielded my vulnerability: this could not happen!Then, desire to have him strike, giving meconcrete visible admissible embodied testimonyto soulviolation.Ten years of marriage.The last time I walked out of that house, I swearI drag/crawled like a feverenfeebled serpenton belly, hands and kneessummoning every drop of spiritblood from the deepstores of my beingto shove me, nudge me, slide me, stumbundulate meout the door;peradventure, percase, perchance, perhapsto new life.93II.Barren skin untoucheddustbowl longings in hopevoid heart;the watertable of desireshrunk to the center of my soul.Then, passion immersion.Licking, sucking, stroking, press/penetratingto be/ing beyond thought, reason, fear or protection;permeable, penetrable, scrutable;depths of immersion/submersion,crests of agony/ecstatics;willing suspension of disbelief, judgment, boundaries, identity;I lose my self.Swollen and sated, I jellyfishfloat in anticipationof my next passion immersion.Burning, itching, redness, rash,fever, daze, telephone unanswered.Doctor's office."Herpes... recurrences... emotional trauma...fever, exhaustion, inflammation, constipation...eventually you'll do just fine. Some of my friends haveherpes and they five normal lives..."Betrayedabandonedexhausteddefeated.IV.Dull haze.What is the half-life of healingafter thirty years of numbed and silent dis/memberment?"You are experiencing a reactive depressionfrom an emotional trauma...it will run its course, no matter what you do...this medication will mask some of the symptoms...I prescribe this often for professional women;and they can function normally.Be careful when you are driving."94V.Suddenly, one night, sitting alone,before me and within me,a lion,full-maned, head twisting grotesquely,mouth clawsavaging the air in visceral rage.Heart-racing, brain-throbbing, eye-glazing terror!Another night, flossing my teeth, I fell into darkness:the infinite black vortex coring through the center of the earth,out the other side somewhere between Australia and China,and continuing through the universe forever.Losing lifehope by the nanosecond, I pushed through viscous airand clawed the seven digits of their number.Anita??? It's me!Life line.VI."I'm changing your prescription to something that will dealwith both your depression and your anxiety...I'm concerned that you are becoming clinically depressed...'95DetachingI.I could feel his danger when we first danced;the cold sheen of his eyes.The usual shufflejiving, a few feet apart,then suddenly he moved closer, his eyes steelholding mine, his faceset impassive,raised his right arm, and slowly brushed his hand over my left breast,lingering, just below my nipple.Incursion complete, he dropped his hand casuallyback to his pants pocket and slowly looked away.The music continued, others kept shuffling, he kept shuffling,and I kept shuffling, off balance:Was this some kind of mistake?Did I imagine this?That night, I let him fuck me. I wanted him to fuck me, badly.He did so, badly.The emptiness.II.A.k.a.demic conference.Power currents;Names connecting, exchanging, dueling, clustering.I, silent, witness to the lucrexchange ofcommittees, appointments and grants.Who is that man, the fat older onewho squeaked his chair throughout Sue's sessionand cock-preened throughout his own;who is offering reviews, chapters, and contracts?Oh; that's Jarvis.Noname woman in fading relieffading spirit, fading anger, fading voiceI hover at doorways, all senses alert;thirsty, weakening, detaching.That night I dreamtravel to a southern land, alone.I suddenly weaken, and, in three days, die of jarvis,rapid, irreversible, dehydration of the soul.96Cunt notes: questions to another survivorThe newsarticle was aboutthe foster father who picked his two girls up from schooland fucked them and had them fuck himand gave them money and nice things.Well, you accepted them, didn't you????What were your flashbacks?What did he do to you?How? How often? Under what conditions? Where?Did he take... 'precautions?Against pregnancy?Against getting caught?Did he care about your getting your period?Did you take precautions?Against pregnancy?Against getting caught?Did you think about it during the day?During your lunch period?During the last class in the afternoon?Did your friends ask you how you got the nice things?How did you feel? What did you say?Did you talk about it between the two of you?How did he smell?How did he get hard?Did you make him hard, or did he come to you erect?Did he rub himself as he drove the truck home, talking to you and looking at you?Did he slowly push your skirt up, or brush your breasts, or cup your crotch?Did he talk about it, crooning, threatening, seductive, promising, hinting?Did he pull your pants down, push your bra up, or did you do it yourself?Did you get juicy or stay thy?What did he say to you before, and during and after?Did he call you by name?By endearments?By fuckingnames, by cuntnames?Did he cockpreen after fucking such youngcunt?Were you in fear? disgust? loathing? power? powerlessness? anticipation?Did your mother know? Suspect?How did he look at you at the dinner table?Did he do it before meals, or before you slept?Did you ever ask him to help you with your homework after he had fucked you?My cunt throbs as I write this and edit this.This is so filthy, and so important:the abuse of desire; the desire of abuse.97RE/MEMBRANCEBody homeI.It was a "drug sensitivity".When I lessened my dosage by the normal increments,I became suicidal in forty-eight hours;on the evening of the second day.The psychopharmacologist that Vicky talked to on rounds at her hospitalhad heard of two such cases with that drug; many more with Valium.He said I'd have to get off it very, very slowly.I weaned myself, two milligrams at a time.Alchemist, I crushed tablets,mixed the fine powder with gelatine, did careful calculations,filled capsules with 118, 116, 114, 112, 110 milligrams.In four months I was free.II.Breaking through unfeeling haze to sharp clear views;coming home to my body:body connections body parts, body solid,body tremouring in knowing, knowing in tremours.Breath, skin, and soul: back-country skiing.Anorak, knapsack, knickers, Snickers,ascending, massaging, loosening, squeezing,depression sludge through soulpores,enrobing, then softslipping from me.Speed. Heart. Breathspirit.Body tingling, shivering, arching, arcing, godde moaning.98Sub/mergedTo cross the bayI could go by land,with all in l-sight,curving the well-travelled way.Or I could go by sea, through tidewombed flats,where path sense/wends, unseen, submerged,by quicksand, deepools, undercurrents.The soulsensed way;I choose the sea.99Tremourknowingtremour:involuntary agitation of the body or limbsresulting from strong emotion or excitementtrembling, agitation, vibratory movementcaused by some external impulseshaking, quivering.knowing:acknowledging, confessing, owning, admittingmaking known; disclosing, revealing, manifestingperceiving with the senseshaving experienced, met with, felt, or undergonebeing intimate withhaving carnal acquaintance or sexual intercourse withlearning by committing to memory(more fully, knowing by heart)comprehending with clearness and certaintytaking notice, regard oflooking after, guarding, protecting.The skin, the largest organ in the body,knows intingleshiveringmicroconvulsingnano/orgasmictremours.Tremourknowing.Sitting in a church pew, legs crossed at my knees, I listen to a peace workerrecently returned from El Salvador,describe despair as a luxury of the non-oppressedand hope as the necessity of the oppressedwho endure torture/technologies that leaveno visible testimonyto the rape of their soul.A tremourknowbubbles at my shoulderssheets down my arms and backspills down both my legs.Tremourpathic eyes would seesparkleshimmers.100Body knowing.If passion/ateYou continue to insist how passion/ate I am;I continue to insist how passion/ate I am not;thatmy keening moans,my eyes bulging in astonishment,my mouth gaping open to receive and enclose,my nails deep/indenting your flesh,my legs entwining to entrap,my hair snarled beyond untangling,are not my being passion/ate, butembodied testimonyto my love, your love, our love,to my trust, your lust, our surrenderto anything;I will confess to any thing but passion/ate.If passion/ate is this lusthunger forred satin stretched across undulating assblack leather encupping hairy groin;stolen mid/dayssuspended connectionillicit betrayals and whispered sweet lies,I will not confess.If passion/ate is this ravening desire thatdisplaces containmentdissolves resolvedissembles soulanarchyI will not confess.If passion/ate is this aching appetite thatswells caverns of echoed longing within,spreads soul thin on my upturned hand,and suffers fears gladly,I will never confess.101PassionfusionI.This passion punches fistholesthrough the tarpaper roofof my control, rending it ragged.This passion plummets me beyond thoughtto the unbounded, where,spiritsuspended beyond words,I keen, moan, yelp, whine.I hear my self and wonder.This passion fuses pain with ecstasy,chaos with transcendencesurrender with omnipotence.This passion mocksprecautions, considerations, best-laid plans.This passion slaps my studied, struggled, sturdiedfriendsisterdaughterauntmentorteacher being:I sting with desire.II.With vulva/sprung leap from womb/depthsthrough water, then air, to ground;the serpentcobra-headed, brown/black dreamserpent, passion embodiedpulsates, constricts and stretches sinewed bodyselfinto quarter and counter/quarter moons across the floor,winds around my neck three times(my life suspended on one little squeeze),unwinds, and propels into the closet.I slam the door behind it knowing, as I do,that nothing will impedethis passionfusion.102I return from the unbounded.I lift your limp arms and fold them around me,sounding you to hold me, press me, encase me.I root, ground, embed.Fear subsides, sting cools, aching calms.(take you for granted;leased, ceded foretheseeable future.I expect no more from you than I do from myself.Sharon says the everyday smothers passion;that separations sharpenour savours and tongues,piquing desire.Sharon says the alignment work ofhealing/retuningdiscerning/discardingis passion's daily bread.I wear our passiondepths under my everyday,as permeable lubricant, supplement.I begin to know I could live post-you, post-us, post-lust;I begin to know I am passion.Serpent sensuousselfentwoned, selfenwombedpressing seffiesh to fleshsunthrobbed in spiralsmooth caress:I am passion.Serpent magnumcresting, thrusting, pulseundulating,vibrating, sparking, tremouringin memory and desire:You are passion.Serpent caduceustensionbalanced, groundrooted and passionerectentendrilled, curveunioned, embodied staffof healing and ecstasy:body collective,We are passion.103IV.Naming, claiming my body; exploring, mapping, cartography.How can I learn to say do this here ,and no like this,when we don't have words?We begin to map me, the insides of me.Yoni, jade gate...I'm still not sure which means vagina, and which labia,but they sound so much more spiritualorganicthan vagina, or, in one book, vaginal barrel,like a gun barrel or a rain barrel or a whiskey barrel.What are those ridges,like ripples of hard tidepacked sand on Spanish Banks,on the roof of my vagina?What is their name?I want to see and know and feel,minutely, in slow passionmotion,youpenis knowing me, there.But how can I even say roof and up,when we usually have me lying down?And what is the nameof the place, the space, the moment in timeat which you enter me?I know that labia is door, and vagina is sanctuary,but what, in woman's name, is the nameof my holy place of receiving, joining and parting;my passiongranting, lifecreating, mooncleansing gateway?Vaginal opening?Vaginal doorway'?Vaginal entrance?Vaginal narthexVaginal port?Vaginal gate?Why don't I have that name?How can I claim the powerof my permission, choice, refusal, welcome, and farewellif I don't have that name?104Is it my other...mouth?V.CliTOris.KLETORIS. KLEITE.Long vowel on KLE to reclaim power.How often have I heard the word?I don't know how to say it.Is it only a urban sex legend,the story of the twelve womenwho got to talking girl talkand found that they had each been told by lovers"(using the term loosely)that she had a "smaller than average" size of kleitoris?For years I've gotten uterus and cervix and vagina mixed up,like the outer and inner forks for main course and dessert or salad..And then there's urethra... and then there'sthat space between vaginal opening and anusthat would be cut in an episiotemy...VI.After the doctor's appointmentI stood crying at the crosswalkand a kind woman came up, concerned,and helped me cross the street.She didn't understand when I tried to tell herthrough sobs and tears and unblown nosethat I was pregnant andthat this was the happiest day in my life.105VII.The waiting; the waiting of womenFor birth, for deathFor passings of life,for passings of life unlived.6.5 on the video screen, and no heart beat"Are you sure of your dates?"Yes, I'm sure of my dates.Declining interventionsReceiving vague answers and assurancesI prepare pads, pain killers, schedules of friends.Groceries put away, spaghetti sauce simmering.Gentle cramps, wet flow, and the holy silencethe holy holy silenceof loss, and death, and passing.My mind stillmy soul fullmy body quietly cramping, workingin this warm clean bathroomin this large and empty house.I sat on the toilet seatand held a small strainerto the flow between my legs.No one here butmemy blood flowingmy tiny deadbaby, deliveringGoddepresence.106VIII.The next morning, October 19,I took her, in a plastic urine specimen bottle, to the doctorI was bleeding so heavilyI had to slip an extra maxi-padthrough my coat, under my skirt, slip, and pantiesas I was sitting at my steering wheelparked on Granville at 16th during morning rush hourjust so that I wouldn't walk a river of bloodas I crossed at the light.She dumped out the blood,the liver-like clots with edges and flaps,and a grey brainlike pieceinto a small kidney shaped stainless steel bowl,and rinsed it all at the sinkwhile I watched.I'm used to this because of all my abortion workshe said, not unkindly.She showed me SarahLuke;the size and shape of my silver Haida broach;transluscent red oval sac,and a small dark crescent within.I touched her with my finger.IX.This week's wearing of panties,draped over the lip of a mixing bowlon the kitchen counter.Arranging each crotch downward into the soaking solution,I could trace the slow changesfrom red to brownred to brownyellow to peach to yellow flowas !body slowly cleanses and begins to forgether nested smallchild.107X.Our coming back to oneness...I was writere/membering:meeting my father in the steel light sanctuarybefore he gave me away, and you came to my door.Come in,take off all your clothesget into my bed and wait for me.I escape transfer save,unzip unclasp remove,then smoothslip intomy sheets, your arms, your legs,our holy healing embrace.Then ringsbandscircles of pain as youpenis nudge deeper.We stop, then recommence with tender explorationsof angles, pressures, depths:Blind cartographer divinersdepthdiving oursoul within me.We are one:youpenis, wesoul, alive, inside me,where my smallbaby has passed.Itsalrighticangetpregnantagainitsnature'swaybettemowthanlaterthisgivesmetimetofinishmythesis.I, muddling, guilty at my own relief,logicshield against barbarian pain...until finally, in our oneness,I break through reason to grief.My baby has died.108I testify109remember:to retain, to bear in mindto recollect, not to forget, to think ofto recall the memory with some kind of feeling or intent,to record, to commemorate,to make mention of by way of reminder,to think or reflect upon,to put together again,to supply with a new member.test:an earthen vessel or pota shell of a mollusc or tortoisemeans of trialthat by which the existencequality, or genuineness of anything is determineda witness; evidence which is witness-borne.The action by which the physical properties of a substanceare tested in order to determine their ability tosatisfy particular requirementstestes:the witness or evidence of virilitytesticles:Each of the two ellipsoid glandular bodiesconstituting the sperm-secreting organs in male mammalsand usually enclosed in a scrotum.testify:to profess and openly acknowledge a factbelief, object of faith or devotionto constitute proof or testimonyto display, manifest, express emotion.I.Fears on the prospect of testifying:abandonment, no family, no nieces, no nephews, no babies, no one who has known mesince my beginning, no family meals on holydays, no celebrations, no gatherings, nohomebaking, no canning, no visits, denial, attack, death, you really are crazy, evetyoneelse is doing so well, they only have a few more years to live.II.Over the telephone, discussing school kids cheering a rape scene,I tell her the statistics:how many physically abused, how many sexually abused.Well, I just can't believe it.Do we know any children who...?Do you know any children who...?Yes (I hear myself say), / do know children who...Later, after a dinner visit,the conversation turns to my research.After two years, no one knows its topic or purpose.So how is your... latest program... going?Thesis. Fine. (brightly, firmly)So why are you doing this?Will you get more money?It is important, and I will publish it as a book (PERIOD).Silence.He looked at me. I looked at him.I then looked at her, her eyes. She looked at me.Mostly I saw her silver hair.I couldn't really see her eyes,which are usually brown, brown, deepbrown.They looked dead.Pause.Change of subject.I, blacksheepscapegoatsacrificiallamb, decide.Finally.110III.At the point where granite breaks openand darkness flows out like blood;where language falls away from hot bonesand bones know they are hollow;where the word splitsand doubles in thunderechoes:at that point, my body becomes my mouth.Price of silencing, price of speaking.Seeds crack rock.I speak.111IV.Terrorwet rigid phallusthirsty for touchyearning forlovepower overpower shoved intopower sweatingpower gruntingpower penetratingpower invadingpower gropingpower rubbingpower pushingpower shovingpower inchingpower sneakingpower lookingpower brushingpower planningpower hidingpower paralyzingpower trappingpower distortingpower laughingpower cripplingpower bindingpower warpingpower cankeringpower sludgingpower soilingpower stainingpower bindingpower crippling.I am innocent!112V.The walled city:water, food, shelter, company, trade, help, support,baking, knitting, homemade beer, copies of tapes, help on moving days,fruit brought back from the Okanagan,leftovers from Sunday dinner offered for Monday's lunch,kids naming me in photo albums.The walled city:each word, look, tone, hearing and silenceshaped, placed, pressed to protect the abuser.Leaving the walled city:light cottonweave bag over my shoulder,cool dusk and darkness falling,I begin my desert journey.My soulscars surface;tears, bruises, burns,cracked and spiral-splintered spiritbonesmake manifest.I namethemwritethemdrawthemspeakthemfeelthemknowthemand I begin to knowmyself.VI.The barrenness.I am arid, flat, scorched, granular,razed, uprooted, burned, cleared,untouched, unconnected, unintertwined, desolate.The struggle to believe that I am empty but not barren.The fear of weeds,of torrid leaching floods,of infestation or degradationof this holy empty wilderness place.Barren bed, barren dreams, barren desert where I live.113VII.Too little sleep, too little foodToo few dreams, too few peopleToo little cooking, cleaning, shoppingToo little play, exercise, stretching, breathingToo little meditation,Too few angels and small truthsToo little nature, too little homeToo much loneliness for my selfToo many worries, too much work, too much no balanceMy center off center: fear.114Re/membered innocenceI.Favourite photo:Me, one, sitting on the piano benchbright deep dark eyes alightchubface, blonde hair,pink dress with pink slip,round small fistsopen to receive the world.II.Fondwarm memory:As if standing in the hallway, behind us, I seetwo brown-haired brown-eyed womenironing in the kitchen.Mother and daughter.Mother at her fold-down board,iron steam-wheezing,piece by piece by piecepressing amplerounded baskets of laundryinto tall square piles.Daughter, me, at my little foldup ironing boardwith my little iron,warm to the touch, like baby bottle milk,plugged in to the same socket,sock by sock by sockmatching, pressing, tubefoldinga snakenest of socksinto a mound of claimable pairs.115Crepepaper pink kindergarten ballet butterflywho led the classin marching and danceand sat in the honours desk.Seen, placed, accounted for.Belonging.IV.Just Mrs.^ and me, no one else, after school,making a plaster of Paris impression of my hand.Fingers splayed widewith the webby part taut;square palm pressedto the welcoming white muck.Hand shape, depth, lines, fingers, thumb.Me!V.Flush with red double holsterstied with string around my trousered thighssilver bullets snugfitting in loops on my beltred vest, widebrimmed hat, ready to draw.Best cowgirl in the neighbourhood!116VI.That afternoon,the day before my Grade One sports day races,after you came home from work, and before dinner,we went over to the school field (gravel and grass),so that I could practise my starts and finishes.You OnyourmarksGetsetGeedand I bolted, ran, and kept on runningright through the finish line,just like you told me.So proud and so loved.VII.Walking through deep forestLagging behind on the wetcedarchip trail, alone.Fernfilled hollow enwombed by treesBowels softrumblePants downSquatIntimates exposed to mother groundYellow pee absorbed, splashless, into mossMilk chocolate brown and bumpy pooplopped atop, steaming.Brown on green on brown;me joining earth,nourishing earth.117VIII.I went searching for him at the whalepools.The girls were safely ensconced at the beluga feeding.I found him alone with the killer whales, watchingtheir slow backs arcbreaking the water surface.Holy moment for this aunt who,he says,sits all day writing at her computer,collects geodes, andloves her nephew.IX.Five days in this world.Square flannelette bundle with rounded corners.Unseeing teal eyes.I hold her.Tears, gentle tearsat the meeting of heaven and earthsoftfill my eyes.Wonder.118X.remembrance:power of remembering or recalling to mindpoint at which one's memory of events beginsor the period over which it extendsthe surviving memory of a persona memorial or record; mention, noticea commemorative discourse or mentionreminiscent, reviving the memory ofrituals of remembering healing.to put in remembrance:to put on recordbook of remembrance:a memorandum book, a recordIn mid-September of 1991,I dreamed a new dream with a familiar figure,who is in life, a small, spry, bright-eyed nephew.In my dreams, he has figured as quickness and intelligencethat most other people don't notice.In this dream, he had grown taller, fuller and rounder,and become soulconnected with me.He figures in this dream as my scribe, my memory, my bodymemory,my journal, my thesis. I love this dream:Sept 22/91^ came back -- fuller and rounder and more solid, AND HE HAD ANOTEBOOK IN HIS HAND. HE HAS BEEN RECORDING EVERYTHING, ALL THESEYEARS. Hidden in a recessed doorway, he showed me what he was holding, a stenopad full of his detailed notes. He said nothing, and smiled very knowingly. I wasoverjoyed. I'd dreamed of being physically attacked by a student at school, by somejerky man who held me so I couldn't move my arms and he could do anything hewanted, and had no witnesses of the attacks.Now I saw that everything had been recorded.119KNOWLEDGEWe find speechI.Our kitchen table intensity: comfort and discomfort.I admire you, love you, hopefear reciprocity.Tide shifts.Mentor evocatrix,you now need to tell meabout work, darkbelief, psyche, lover.I fear being sucked intothe dark vortexof your pain and passion.Your now be/ing inthe absence of godthe inviolability of god;the void incarnate.We have no language...and yet, you sculptarticulate your pain,its notions, nuance and genealogywith neural precision.I wasn't ready for this.I'll surely say something stupid or disrespectful;I'll try to con/soul too soon.I don't understand/can't imagine;I have no perspectives/angles/strategies.The migraine in your hip;some days you can hardly move for thedense devils pressing every pore.No white space/white sound/empty possibilities;all text with no margins, but you want no relief."This is my body talking. Body as mouth.I'll listen and wait...I don't know how to say this without sounding dualistic butI am very close to my body. I am very present in my body."When we prepare me to leave, we notice we have the same Italian shoes.Yours are green; mine, brown.120II.Once we were rolling, hadweathered mistrust and fearproposed, now had to produce;Once we were rolling,we'd bring baking to our meetingsmake quips in unisonfinish each others' sentencescall each other by an other's nametalk of men and desireOnce we were rolling, we found speech.Sister No. I: So what about,In this presentation, we explore waysin which the ideology, structures and discourseof the discipline of adult education have...Sister No. 2: ...fucked us around as women!Soulgasmic laughter.Shoulder to shoulder; arm to arma legion, a power of fine womenin full voiced couragetelling our truthsBirthing us softly.!body quiver as I stand to speak.I see/immerse in the cleardeeps of my first comments and poems;I cannot see your faces.You know the silences I will speak.I don't know how each of you readied your selves;bracing/ tensing/ opening/ anticipating.I know your readiness.Reading, I hear my sore throat sound,I feel each phrase anew;I receive the gift of your bloodrich, painrich, knowingrich silence.Finally, surfacing from my immersion,I see your faces encircling, greeting, accompanying me;a power of fine fine ladies.Softpermeable as nautilus,you have taken me into yousoul.Circle of holy silence, we are one.121IV.The lift in your voice on the phone:fresh lipstick, shadow, gel; a date.When our feet met sidewalk, you begin.Expellosions of pain;the gushing and oozing of shame, anger, fear.I recoil, then prepare to accompany you.Not without memory or desire, but with my self;sketching out contours, borders, sign-posts:You are courageous.This is the most difficult.Your courage will grow.You will get supportYou can trust your self.You are... fine.Take my pain as a backpocket guide,but translate loosely;figure me in the distanceas one who has gone before,and take heart.I en/courage; you are courage.V.Neon shimmering, body glimmeringwavering wall of incessant colourmovementoscillating through salt seaquivering in explorationknowing collective presencesensing collective beauty:we are tetra.122Not a luxuryI.unveiling our complicity is not a luxury the truths of our pain are not a luxury poetry isnot a luxury solitude is not a luxury clarity is not a luxury sisters are not a luxury brothersare not a luxury anger is not a luxury safety is not a luxury justice is not a luxury joy isnot a luxury integrity is not a luxury intimacy is not a luxury goddepresence is not aluxury(Resonances from Audre Lorde, 1984, p. 36)II.Sensing and naming our complicity,through our silent witnessing,our disempowerment of girls and women,our failure to releasepurgetransform our own pain,and our failure to honour minutelythe integrity of infants', girls', and women's bodies,is not a luxury.It is essential to our own healing and empowermentas hollering actively-resisting witnessesto the betrayals of patriarchy.123Men are the perpetrators and women the victimsof most intimate childhood sexual assault.Men have created and continue to take full "advantage" oftheir economic, social, and physical/sexual control over womenby touching, fondling, beating, raping, and murdering themin the privacy of women's trusting places;their friendships, family, and homes.Healing, for men,includes a profound recognition of their complicity as menin the social enstructuration of men's power and women's fearin our home, workplace, streets, and bones.124IV.Solitude and poetry are not a luxuryif we are to re/member our betrayals and our integrity.We are trapped, like insects in amber,by the silences we created to protect ourselves.We have kept silencefrom fear of our assailants,from fear of our complicity,from fear of our unspeakable truths.We have kept silenceso long and so wellthat we no longer knowthe secrets encelled within us.We begin to reclaim, reform, reshape our integritywhen we begin to remember how, when, where, and by whomwe have been betrayed.Solitude and poetry offer safe/intimate placeswhere we twingeknow courageto name our assailants, our innocence, and our truth.In our poetrydrawingmusicdancewoodchopping(any of the wildwomanly arts)we softenkneaddissolve our silenceto e/merge our rage, passion, pain, and terror,who are nothing less thanthe children of our deepest integrity.125V.Sisters are not a luxury.We witness, en/vision, and chart the pain;We are food for the wilderness journeyand comfort on the return.Brothers are not a luxury,knowing, naming, and healingthe resonance, hints, shadows, and darknessof their pain and ours.Healingsafetyjusticejoyis not a luxury.126PART FIVE: IMPLICATIONSA HOST OF WITNESSESTOWARDS THE EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF RE/MEMBERING SILENCEIf... then, what?You have no proof.Prove that he put his penis in your mouth when you were five, in the bathroom.Prove how he spoke, moved, positioned, stroked, hardened, dripped, slipped, inserted.Prove it.Who saw? Who heard? Who suspected?Whom did you tell? Who else was assaulted?Wouldn't someone have done something, said something?Wouldn't they come forward now?You must have done drugs in the 70's and imagined this.You are crazy.You are unhappy and made this upto compensate or get revenge because of your bad marriage,or because you don't have any children.You are possessed by an evil spirit.You are mistaken; it was someone else, not me.You have False Memory Syndrome.This is slander and libel. I'll stop publication. I'll sue.IFintimate childhood sexual assaultis women's first lesson within patriarchy,and IFintimate assault is so private, so compromising,so profound in its betrayal,and so deeply embedded within the social enstructurationof men's intimate violence towards womenthat even the victimsurvivor herselfmay not know whathe andor he andor hehas done to her body127128and IFwarrantable, verifiable, tangible evidence-- proof as smoking gun/ drooling penis --is demanded and cannot be suppliedTHEN,what do we do?How do we begin to re/member the silence regarding men's intimate assault of women? We can do so bycreating personal lives, educational practice and theory that dares to take visceral account of men's assaultof women, the silence of abusers, witnesses, and victimsurvivors, the intimate and social enforcement ofsilence, and the lived consequences of breaking silence in all its enquiries and undertakings. We developtheoretical and practical models of resistance, agency, and healing that provide sustenance to womenbreaking silence and educators standing witness to them. I conclude this work with two models, the SilentPatriarchal Screw and the Howling Feminist Spring, which incorporate the principle themes of this work. Ireflect on the personal significance of this research, acknowledging sources of personal and educationalsupport that have enabled me to begin, persevere with, and complete it.My re/membering silence has been supported by a host of witnesses; people, content, processes, andinstitutions within the formal education system, from kindergarten to graduate school, have been essentialto this undertaking. The many faces and facets of this support are a principle implication of this work.They range from moments of kindness, to lives of committed passion, to creative perceptive researchadvisement, to my own employment security as a teacher to the legal support of the University of BritishColumbia.I offer the beginnings of a working agenda for personal action, educational praxis, and the work ofcounsellors and health professionals. I conclude with personal fare well comments and the poem,Nautilus.MODELS TO RE/MEMBER SILENCEThe silent patriarchal screwI claim silenceHow can I know what! knowif! don't knowwhat you have done to my body?I am silence: fissured, scraped, torn, bruised, soul-disjoined.I breathe the stale air of denial.I claim my gentle silence, numb white scar tissuecongealed in every corner of my being,filling soulhollows of betrayal, penetration, terror,freezing the pain of complicity,shrinkwrapping fissured cellwalls.I claim my parasite silence, whose bloating masssucks confidence, creativity, and integrity.Silence, whispers, hollownessand a thin fog of depressionhave been my chronic companions,sapping the passions ofmy academic, professional, community,personal and intimate life.The first model, the Silent Patriarchal Screw, illustrates my understanding of the connections amongstintimate assault as the first lesson of women's oppression in patriarchy and the importance of demands oftangible proof as a drooling penis, embodied silence, silent witnesses and silenced knowledge inmaintaining intimate assault. The fractured sphere at the base of this model represents the intimatebetrayal of childbody, soul, integrity and knowing for each victimsurvivor.My family members' denial regarding my assaults while they were occurring, their denial of my recentdisclosure, and their legal threats regarding this text are lived examples of how these demands for "proofand dynamics of silence work to protect and maintain intimate assault.129As educators our first work as knowing witnessesis to focus on knowing, on a day to day and moment to moment basis,that the threat or reality of men's sexual violencetowards women and childrenis occurring as a lived, breathed, skin to skin realityfor all who live in this patriarchal society.This is science and soulwork;it is our cells and our stomachs and our skin that know.We re/member intimate assault by sensing itin our own body, emotional resonances, verbal tones,looks, chests extended and shoulders bowed.We can become clear enough, strong enough, and resolved enoughto know the resonance and reality of intimate assault and other forms of abusewithin our own lives, our educational work, our culture and our society.My tracing the blood tracks back to intimate childhood sexual assault,and being unable to legally verify those assaultsand being under legal threat if I published my "allegations"is one tiny tale that illustratesthe multilayered personal, emotional, social and legal pressureswhich keep victimsurvivors silent.1301 3 16; Ienr Screviirri-; mate child NoWonleA's -? its t es sona%setAALt ay,arc41._.SILENCED KNOW L €1)Q-I-1a.41^Skirt“. 1144'44:R0N 11) ass^41.-4 si I odtce.C^ter ?rool. se A. Acoottei piANAND: tte4;3 scsiAxa.oleoe4 4oti oaks %donne^ in porno 5tvi,wkio" seictuh.t ass AAAtt, Viorem.ssvn^allaAA* en in-tirrsAte^(*IAA,- SS 4.40atAgo" 44 -tone 44.11% tost.^nowt 44.54itwlWhat So^kdone. 40 nn41.4si rtil^h &-zant,014,-"4o..ei to^tornhAk tow. kowt.e.preas■nt , se I^gi.ce-p&44744. £t440.asi^ievbfhliNct /"..VartThe Howling Feminist SpringTo live, to witness, to re/memberThis spiraljourney has been a peregrination, a pilgrimwanderingthrough places of silence, places of voice,places of silencetovoice and voicetosilence,and some collective hollering.I live silencesecretsliesbetrayalabandonmentabusein my bodyas emptiness, hollowness, disembodiment.I witness truth, testimony, nourishment and substancein my bodyas wholeness, fullness, connectedness, cellintegrity.To re/member intimate childhood sexual assault is to soulsensethe instinct sprained, bruised, tainted, injured, limping,soul silenced, glazed, deadened,too quick, hollow bright...the impinging, insinuating, invading,taking space, privilege, advantage, for granted,too close, too intruding, too assuming,too unhearing, too confident, too diffident...and, sometimes, the "perfectly normal".To re/member intimate assaultwe need to become knowing witnesses to it,in our minds, bodies and souls.With no drooling penises as proof,we can create personal lives and educational practicesthat re/member intimate assaultby sensing, recalling, and recreatingtheory, knowledge, and relationshipsthat claim our silence, our language, our witness, our knowledge.132i-fowlinsfemigAsz ^feirnernbe(in8 is meklan8 silence 4i^ri 0 L..) I+0.Z€144 S't &A;r1 eASlut dy- haxegeod^at ;ear1-rP.gV2.t.ø ;^'rn stuf^I:rn Si■Af tAct to\jureA sou.I so;e 4.pre .so- 'C4a6ki S tbnlaelk OketIP# OW 1..M.,4;6te4ue, ,CIty2,f-el^(SILENCED kNOwINQ-)siltAct- 4.3 sile,v,e.irbredeitoSot ells,444.sl% m e awe e ses mo venboa, s g press■o.v., ba^6,....1ramtAl oz -heckle tw.4,14.ntpas 'Vcootl^4o -Coot.*^t ittj^s ev■s;ons,c ol ou.vs,&pan stre."5-% ,passf.r, ecoNcs,slosh, +2 son *II 615 as-r-eareon ne c:Rons, touches,I offer this springas a model of understanding howour intimate experiencesof silence and coming to know our silencesfeed and are fed byour creation of language that names our experiences andwitnesses who can respond to them,and how knowing, language, and witness,in turn, nourish and are nourishedby the collective project ofconsolidating, framing, chronicling, andcelebrating women's knowledge.The Howling Feminist Spring is the healing, creating, resisting reverse of the Silent Patriarchal Screw. Thehowling feminist spring embodies the essentials of my own healing process, and the feminist project ofre/membering intimate assault by making silence knowledge. This model shows the relationships amongmy experiences of healing that range from the mucky, muffled haze of silent knowing (at the bottom), tothe embodied knowing of dreams, tremours and postures (body knowing), to the spoken and heardnaming of experience (knowing language and knowing witness), to the shared creation of community,theory, and action (re/membered knowledge). This is not a linear progression that simply happens to becurved into a spiral. As indicated by the slippage/sabotage arrow, at any and many moments, a touch,word, or action has tumbled me back to the depths of silent confusion. Other times, I have been nourishedby a cassette tape, book, or collection of homedried herbal teas that has healed my bones.134Writing for my lifeI had no choice but to complete this work. Early on, it became something far more essential than anintellectual project or an academic contribution/ requirement. Earlier in this text, I have written that doingthis work has had profound consequences in every aspect of my life: my fears depression, writing,creativity, sexuality, clarity, strength, courage, determination, integrity, joy and power... that it has been mysometimes souljewellry, babychild, and activated bomb. It has been, and is, even more. I realize now thatas I began to write poetry about my own experience, I had begun to write for my life. Throughout this threeand a half year writing process I have had a non-negotiable knowing that I either complete this worksuccessfully or stay in the fog forever. At my current age of forty-three, this work has given birth to mysecond life.As illustrated in the feminist spring, my experiences of knowing have been highly interrelated in thisresearch/ healing process. Experiences of silent knowing have recurred up to the completion of thisdocument (see July 26,1993 journal entry at the beginning of Part Five); my experiences of body knowingare becoming more consistent and grounded through my yoga/ meditation practice; my creation of thistext and its academic acceptance are my current experiences of knowing language and knowingwitnesses; feminist theory and reflections on practice, other victimsurvivorhealers' stories, and UBC's legalsupport of this work are some of the forms of re/membered knowledge that have helped initiate, sustainand disseminate this work.135136PERSONAL SUPPORT FOR RE/MEMBERING SILENCEPaid helpOver the past seventeen years I have received an enormous amount of professional and paraprofessionalsupport in individual counselling, retreats and support groups, and intensive personal growth courses andprograms. Fees have ranged from $10.00 (student sliding scale) to $70.00 an hour for personalcounselling, and from $70.00 to $1000.00 for retreats and courses. Few counselling services, and none ofthe retreats, groups, or courses are covered by government medical plans or employee benefits.I began personal counselling in 1976, five years into my horrible marriage. By that time, I had ground myteeth flat, had trouble breathing full breaths without gasping for air, had five years of nonorgasmic sex, andhad no personal friends. I don't remember even knowing I had any problems until I began to vaguelyconnect what felt like small events. A male colleague in my teacher certification program commented that Iacted like I never got hugged, and the comment just stuck in my head. He had said it a little unkindly, but Islowly realized it was true: I never did get hugged, or any other form of affection. Then, my husbandstarted to shift from emotional and intellectual abuse (alluding to my IQ of 77, and my being a cuntfacedwhore) to physical assault, poising to strike me once when we were arguing in the bedroom, and pickingme up during arguments in the bathroom and dropping me, on my back, into the empty bathtub.In the spring of 1976, I went to see a psychiatrist. Since then, I have worked with at least seventeencounsellor/ therapist/ psychiatrist/ minister/ body worker/ spiritual counsellors, and participated in atleast six intensive group program/ retreats for personal growth. I had negative experiences with four ofthese seventeen: the first psychiatrist said and did nothing when I reported, in the presence of my husband,the physical threats and assaults; a counsellor invited me to give him a massage; a "bodyworker keptcuddling up to me during a session, despite my whimpered protestations; another counsellor interviewedme with such curious excitement that I felt like an exotic insect: a survivor of intimate assault who spoke137coherently. The rest of the professional support helped me to at least "carry on", through my marriage,leaving my marriage, my herpes and other disasters with men, and through the process of confronting anddealing with my family. Mostly, they listened and listened and listened.I have had experiences with three massage therapists and a chiropractor who all helped me releasetension and pain. Only one, a woman in her fifties who was massage therapist student, demonstrated asense of the physical/ emotional dynamics of intimate assault within my body.The personal growth groups included a series of Kt-groups" focussing on expression of anger regardingcurrent and past experiences; the Context Training program, a series of courses entitled "The Pursuit ofExcellence", 'The Wall" and 'The Advancement of Excellence"; a support group for survivors of intimatechildhood sexual assault run by a woman who was a survivor herself who was apparently self-taughtregarding her group leading; and a series of retreats run by this woman which encouraged, throughbreathing and music, regression to early experiences of trauma.In one of these programs I was verbally attacked, at length, by a male group leader for exaggerating theimportance of my experiences of intimate assault. I don't know exactly why I was expelled from sexualassault survivors' support group, but it was connected with my breaking unstated group rules, my beingmore analytical than others, and my doing a thesis on the topic of intimate assault.The "Mastery of Self Expression", an intensive weekend course based on acting principles whichencourages release of inner feelings and truths, was my most recent and productive personal growthgroup experience. I was deeply heard, sensed, and felt. I witnessed and benefitted from the programleaders' feltsense of the realities and consequences of intimate betrayal in both women's and men's lives.FriendsA special aunt, a lover, friends, some teaching colleagues, my neighbour and my hairdresser are some ofthe people who have supported me in my earlier days and through this work. Within my extended family, Ialways felt enormous tenderness, love and generosity of my Auntie^, who called me "Deane", savedmoney for my first (Salvation Army) furniture purchases, and confided in me, not long before her death,that although aunts weren't supposed to have favourites... I miss her deeply; her presence and strengthremain with me.Similarly, I continue to be nourished by both the memories and spirit of Don^, with whom I shared apassionate relationship during the first two years of this research. I was beginning to write my poetry inJanuary of 1990, when Don and I first met. For about the first months, my days were dark dives intomemory and wordlessness and my evenings were cheerful witty telephone visits with this charteredaccountant in his fifties, who didn't know, didn't ask, and when he did know, didn't understand or respectwhat I was writing about. It was an incomplete, imperfect union: shortly before our final break-up and hisfatal heart attack, after I'd shared my writing with him for over two years, he told me that he thought myideas were stupid, but that he would defend to death my right to be stupid (!!!). I recognize now theintellectual abuse and emotional neglect I experienced from him, as well as the mystery of our earlypassion and his spiritual presence in me after his death.I have leaned on and lost many friends, and retained a precious, slowly growing, core of them. They havewritten me letters, helped me move, helped me vacuum when I was too depressed to do so, accompaniedme cross country skiing, hiking and kayaking, drawn with me, cried with me, played catch with me,camped with me, given me legal and spiritual literature, introduced me to yoga and to the songs ofmusicians who explore the resonances of intimate violence (Tracy Chapman, Tony Childs, Daniel Lallois,Ani DiFranco), and spent hours of long distance telephone time, finescale editing and heartresponding tothe penultimate draft of this work. The curmudgeonly good will of my neighbour/ building manager, and13 8139the magic scissors of my hairdresser have provided other small moments of humour, grace and solace.ProtectionIt is extremely painful for me to write about the protection that has been necessary for the writing,completion and publication of this work. I have often felt like a woman who has given birth to a beautifulchild, then had to disguise, hide, and even disown my babychild until it was safe to acknowledge it. I haveoften felt angry, helpless and bewildered at the enormous gap between what I knew and what I couldpublish. To complete and publish this work I have changing my name, removed sections of completedtext, and withheld names of individuals who have both supported and hindered this work.I have gone through many stages of renaming myself as author of this work. I developed the pseudonymof Morgan McClung to protect myself from legal threats from family members and to protect my privacy inrelationships with students and staff in my teaching work. I found it to be a powerful and liberating personain my artwork and asked some close friends to call me by that name. This sense of liberation collapsedwhen I approached completion of this work and became depressed in anticipation of living two separateidentities. With the help of my yoga teacher, Dharm Kaur Khalsa, I realized that I needed to claim my ownwork within my public life, and that this would involve abandoning my family name and taking one name formy writing, private, and public life. The terms pseudonym, or false name, or nom de plume, are hardlyappropriate for such an undertaking. I have, overtime, thought of this protective renaming as nom deguerre, veilname and spiritname. It has now become an important part of my new life (I can hardly wait tohear my students having to call me Ms. Wisewooff in the fall) and, in the spiritual, legal, and personal sense,a protection name.Domestic nourishmentPlaceSense of place, my place, my places.Handmade woman, wildworld, crafted world,artistic world, spirit world, world of words:Antiques, paintings, masks, carvings, old silver, baskets, brass, and balance scale,light, prisms, stained glass, quiet, safe,Joshua Canary, fish tank, balcony birdfeeder, plants,huge trees lining the street;DeskLarge ammonite spiralfossil,bees' wax candle that I have to keep relighting,currently chosen Angel card(joy, abundance, discipline, responsibility...),Crayola tin holding sweetgrass and sage,bottles of blue and black ink, favourite stapler and three hole punch,sharp scissors, frosty Scotch tape, glue stick, silver mechanical pencil,choice of fountain pens and small leather "quill" to house them,Joshua feathers sitting on the base of the brass lamp,basket of felt pens and watercolour pastel crayons,brown leather blotter with candlewax, frameworks,and my goddechild's colouring,old oak deskfilebin with dovetailed corners piled with my favourite booksand bills stuck in them that I know I can pay,pottery byre for burning smudge and memories,black, silver and deep pink bag for travelling stonessummer softball pitching trophy;ComputerPrinter (with access to Adult Education laser),and, on keyboard, my talisbeings:white wax woman Sharon made from dripped candle,bronze Buddha, from Auntie Jen, ruby in matrix,smooth dark blue healing stone, from Diane,cut crystal ball, polished abalone shell, clear crystal point,elephant with trunk raised, from Janebulbous green fertility stone;140Bulletin boardRecent pay slip, RRSP contribution slip, advice of taxes paid,painted fabric of Geishawoman with paintbrush contemplating an empty scroll,letters, cards and postcards received, clipped quotes,quote from the city gardener written in my left hand,about gardening as composting, watering, mulching, weeding, and clipping deadheads,booklet on Instructions for Preparation of Graduate Theses (revised, 1992),my notes on Ian's praise and reflections on my work(Jo, it's been 28 years that I've known you...),a spiral.Close byTape deck with chanting, soothing, rousing sounds,my guitar and music, my huge spiral shell,bookshelf with my own reference books,row of my fifteen bound journals since 1988,and three sketch books from 1992,my leather or woven bags to carry my work out to UBC,my other three degrees and B.C. Teachers' Federation membershipall framed and hung in a column over my computer printer,and a poster with the daily phases of the moon;On my bodyCotton or wooland the art of personal spiritpower adornmentthe justright combinations of silverbronzewoodleatherstonebeadearrings, bracelets, rings;On my breaksGoing for coffee, maybe a cappucino, maybe a cinnamon bun...Benny's Bagels? Max's Delicatessen, Starbuck's...the seating, the music, the staff, the light,the people reading books, writing journals and letters,talking earnestly about he said... then I said...;141142In my lifeSolo/ solitary/ isolated/ solitude.Alone, all one.Is anyone still wondering why women haven't done more of this work?Bodyspirit strengthMy physical and spiritual strength for this work has been nourished in a number of ways throughoutthis research process. My affiliation with the United Church of Canada has been a source of spiritual/social/ political strength. The constant political stands and social actions taken by this institution, anda number of feminist ministers and theologians within it, have nourished this work and mydetermination to complete it.Since I was a small child, I have always been an athlete. My early physical strength was developedwith general tomboying and cowgirling, family arm and leg wrestling, baseball, bicycle lacrosse withcroquet equipment, and all team sports played throughout elementary and high school. The lastschool-based team sport I played was varsity women's fieldhockey in my first year at UBC. After that, Ihiked, ran, swam, canoed, cross country skied, cycled, did aerobics and played recreational volleyball,but never maintained a rigourous program of physical activity. I also tried, and abandoned, hathayoga, meditation, karate and tai chi. I found it extremely difficult to struggle through the initial feelingsof heavy depression I would feel when starting any kind of exercise session, game, or physical outing.Looking back now, I realize that this heavy depression/ sludge was the silent knowing and painembedded within my lungs, muscles and cells. Physical or meditative activity would begin to work thepain and knowing loose, and I couldn't handle it. Only the roughness and aggression of ball hockeywith two male teachers and a gang of high school boys felt thoroughly and fabulously cathartic; a fewseasons of squash came close.14 3The more I have healed and written of my experiences, the less emotional sludge I need to pushthrough when I become physically active. By this spring, I had become somewhat more disciplined inexercising, but still found it to be an incredibly lonely undertaking, until I began Kundalini yoga in April.This form of yoga integrates prayer, chanting, meditations, breathing, inner and outer bodymovements, and relaxation. People are attracted to this practice for stress reduction, increasing clarityand creativity, and building a spritual/ physical discipline in their lives. During my first month of yoga, Inever knew how I would react during and after each class session. At anytime, I would sob or cry, feelsudden fear or remarkable peace. As the exercises stretched the narrow boundaries of my physicalexperiences, I felt afraid of any unusual sensation, such as increased body heat during the rapidbreathing (breath of fire) tingling in my arms, and slight dizziness. After watching the teacher, DharmKaur, extremely carefully for a number of sessions, I began to ask for her help and direction.Me: I'M GOING THROUGH EXTREME EMOTIONAL STRESS FINISHING AVERY DIFFICULT THESIS AND I DON'T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE MY FAMILY AND WORKIDENTITY AND...Her: YOU NEED TO GET STRONGER. DO MORE YOGA. ALOT MORE YOGA.So I did. Through this yoga practice I have gained more emotional, spiritual and body strength than Ihave had in my life. I now do brief exercises in the morning and at least half an hour per night of yogawith Buddhist chanting, attend a few formal yoga classes per week and usually attend one earlymorning (4 am.) Sandna session per week. I am now swimming a number of times per week, in a morerelaxed way than I have in my life, and playing recreational softball, but it is the yoga and chanting thatstrengthen and cleanse me daily. There is little sludge now, but I know I will need to maintain this levelof yoga and exercise for the rest of my life to maintain my clarity and energy.Finally, a radical source of spiritual nourishment has been Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who RunWith the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (1992). I began reading this book,slowly, in January, 1993 and chewed my way through it until the late spring of this year. Having aborrowed copy didn't stop me from marking key passages throughout the text as I read, althoughmany of them, such as What poor bargain does every woman make? (p. 394) adhered to my bones on144to my bones on our first encounter. This book has affirmed, enriched, and emboldened me, in spirit,body, language, and vision. Although I read this work more than a year after developing the patriarchalscrew and feminist spring models, I find I can relate many of her key notions to the Howling FeministSpring:silenced knowing:Shame-filled secrets, interred knowledge,instinct injured, disjointed, losing soulskins,poor bargains.body knowing:Who is the wild woman?Medial woman, wild mother, creative firesReclaiming/ retrieving wild woman:do not fear the 'not know',the voice, memory, dreams.Making descent deep within the body... the mind.., the soul:homing, disintered knowing,calling up/ commingling with the soul.Knowing language, knowing witnessesTo truly heal, we must say our truth:not only our regret and painbut also what harm was caused.Stories create and embed knowledgehauling up, paleontologic endeavour,medicine, lifelong healing art.Call back the hawk: endurance meanswe are making something.re/membered knowledge:The howLGo gather bones, wounded healer.Finding our pack, dancing in handmade shoes, marking territory, taking right action,asking questions, impelling dialogue/ accountability.Refusing to be captured.Rage, collective rage: you are free to go.Itn•Resignationresign:to relinquish, surrender, give up, or hand oversomething aimed at or desired,to give over, desist, or refrain from,to give up an office or positionto retire, to abdicateThe flow of longingyearningneedingachingfor familyrecognition respect understandingsolidarity support intimacyknowing hearing feeling understandingdeeppain, deeplaughter,my soulhemorrhage,subsides.I slowly carefully gentlyresignmy position of need.No member of my immediate family has told me they believe my experiences of intimate childhood sexualassault. My relations with family members reside at the conflux of my truth, their denial and the day to daylife realities of aging parents and growing nieces and nephews. Their denial is not simply about the realityof events that happened many years ago, but of the family system dynamics that created, hid, and nowprotects the abuse, and of my healed identity, power and vitality. I have told them of my writing with aprotective name, and that identities will be hidden. No one mentions anything about the disclosure, andmy writing is rarely alluded to, even in the most general sense.I have almost stopped hoping for anyone in the family to believe me. I feel concerned about the effect ofthis entire issue on my parents', particularly my father's, health. I don't know if any members of the familywill seek this work out from the university library to read, and what impact it would have if they did, and Ihaven't begun to seriously consider the emotional implications of publishing this work as a book. Myaching need to be close to my nieces and nephews has subsided somewhat, and I have some contact with146147them. I don't know how they have interpreted my extended absences, or what they have sensed fromothers about me. I feel an emotional closeness with one brother, and some kind of emotional resignationtowards the rest. This resignation/ acceptance does afford me some sense of peace, and cessation of theemotional drain of wanting to be understood and believed, but I am still angry towards them.RageThe larger phenomenon related to my own family's denial and amnesia is the development, organizationand publicity of "False" Memory "Syndrome", which, I suggest, might be better understood as False DenialSyndrome. While I have come to some emotional acceptance/ resignation towards members of my familywith regard to their denial of my^ and^ 's sexual assaults, I am enraged by the developmentand promotion of this concept. One of my abusers has sent me literature on this "syndrome" and hasoffered to help my "cure".Could or would counsellor/ therapists induce memories of assaults that never occurred? Would a womanvoluntarily choose to rend the fabric of her most intimate being and the social fabric of any semblance offamily life by making something like this up? After the personal, emotional, and financial cost of mydisclosure process, I cannot imagine anyone choosing to make this up. Given the dynamics of intimateassault as portrayed in the Silent Patriarchal Screw, I anticipate that the membership and power of the"False" Memory "Syndrome" organization, and the notion itself, will become yet another means of silencingvictims and protecting abusers.148We are just beginning to chart the territory of intimate childhood sexual assault and other forms of intimateand sexual assault. Some of the rough sketched boundaries are scratched out in a confusion of entangledfear and good intention, such as teachers' and other working peoples' current reluctance to initiate anyprivate, physical or affectionate contact with children and women for fear of misinterpretation andaccusation. I know that I am conscious of every moment of physical contact I have with a niece, nephew,neighbour, friend's child, or student. I am conscious, too, of feelings of vulnerability -- mine and theirs --when meeting a student, for example, in my portable classroom, alone, after school. Other actions aremuch less benign. Direct incursions on the fragile ground of women's rennemberings include thedevelopment and promotion of "False" Memory "Syndrome" and recent legal decisions allowing accusedassailants access to their victims' private journals.To end the oppression of intimate childhood sexual assault and reclaim and reformulate the depths ofwomen's knowing now embedded within our individual and collective silence, we must develop a profound,cellular, and critically sophisticated understanding of the personal, family, social, economic, social, andcultural dynamics of intimate assault.Solitary womanI live alone. I am heterosexual. I have no male partner, no constant female companion, and no children.My being a solitary woman has made this work possible in a number of ways. The social and physicalvulnerability I feel as a manless woman has increased my awareness of the underlying realities of women'slives in this patriarchal society. My feminism has become more radical as a result. It is commonlyobserved that women with children are one man away from welfare. When I was in an intimate relationshipwith Don, I felt a sense of emotional belonging which made me less aware of the possibility and reality ofmen's social, sexual and physical aggression. Without this one-man buffer, I have developed a heightenedawareness of men's power (or the possibility of their power) over women.149Socially, when a man gives me his full name or phone number, he offers an invitation. If I do the same, Ifeel at risk: He can find out where I live. If! make him mad, or something goes wrong... During a recentsummer holiday trip, I drove logging roads alone and camped alone in a somewhat isolated campsite.Memories of being accosted by a man while I was cycling on a Quebec country road, by another manwhile I was sunbathing on a Yukon lake shore, and of being warned about a rapist while I camped alone ina busy New Hampshire campsite all came flooding back to me. Instead of absorbing the nourishment ofthe wild natural beauty, I battled my fear that another man would attempt to molest me. Finally I found anelderly couple in a trailer, and pitched my tent nearby. All I wanted was time alone in nature!I have had no constant woman friend whose life was similarly "unencumbered" on whom I could rely forunconditional roundtheclock support or for wisdom born of similar experiences, and whose comfort andsolace I felt I could take completely for granted. Friends and my research advisor have provided enormoussupport, particularly during crises, but there has been no one to show me the way, with regard to mywriting or healing. My not having children has also contributed to my being able to undertake andcomplete this work. I cannot imagine how I could have sustained the lengthy and profound stillness thatthis work has demanded, had I been caring for a child or children. I have had a great deal of open time,flexible time, followmymuses time which has invited and sustained the creativity of this work. Myvulnerability, solitude and independence have freed me from false allegiances, sharpened my senses offear, pain, and healing, and created the space and necessity for my creativity to takeroot/ bearfruit.150I am not clear about what the above implies for others who may undertake similar work. I would notwish for anyone the loneliness and isolation I have often felt doing this research. Are there other wayswe can create the physical, financial, spiritual, intellectual and emotional space, time, clarity, strength,resources and independence that this work demands?As I observed in the introduction to this section, I see the many forms of personal and educationalsupport I received for this work as one of its principal educational implications. As an individualproject, re/membering silence is lengthy, expensive, solitary work that few women would be able toundertake. Individually, within informal groups and within educational institutions, educators can be --no, must be -- central to the collective work of re/membering intimate childhood sexual assault andwomen's oppression.EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT OF RE/MEMBERING SILENCETeachers and teachingThe three educators who first supported this work were my kindergarten, Grade One, and Grade Twoteachers, Mrs.^, Mrs.^, and Mrs.^. With each of these women I rememberfeeling visible, heard, and recognized. I wanted to please them and I wanted them to love me, and theydid. They were extremely important to me then, and somehow, still are. My high school students havebeen a vital source of energy, honesty, and creativity. My teaching career has provided me witheconomic security and personal time during vacations and unpaid leaves to do this work. Some of myteaching colleagues, my school principal and the school board assistant superintendent haveencouraged this work.The AdEd "Girls"I have discussed how the writings of feminist researchers and educators have influenced this work. Ata more immediate level, feminist administrators, educational consultants, academics and activistswhom I met as students in Adult Education graduate studies at UBC have taught me about embodiedfeminist consciousness, theory and action through their political, social, organizational activism,spiritual depth, intellectual analysis, shared readings, personal support, our collective writing work,and, of course, our clothing exchange parties. Their passions, strength, energy, caring, anger andhumour have figured largely in the making of this feminist and the initiation and completion of thiswork.University supportEarlier in this text, I have noted or alluded to ways academic structures and thinking have confused orsilenced me. I have felt intimidated, discouraged and devastated by professors who have been unableor unwilling to understand the nature of this work, and ascribed this lack of understanding to the work,not themselves. Both the shape and substance of this work have undergone a number of lengthy andfundamental revisions because of legal, emotional, and academic pressures.On the other hand, the struggle to create a form of text that would be true to my experience and meetthe rigours of academic discourse have taken me deeper into the darkness of my experiences andfurther into the development of an analytic framework than I would have ever done on my own. Bychoosing to work within the boundaries of conventional academic research and theorizing, I haveintegrated the finescale narrative accounts with analysis and theory. If I had written this on my own, itwould have probably been the poetry alone; I now see that this integration of the intimate and thereflective! analytic is a principal contribution of this work.151152I don't know where else, aside from within the Adult Education program, I could have undertaken thiswork. Adult education approaches to education for social justice, reflection on adult experiences andvalues, theories of learning and teaching, and the development of critical social analysis was the soil inwhich this exploration found root.The academic support has been sometimes hesitant, sometimes heartfelt, and sometimes suddenlywithdrawn. I have worked for long stretches on my own, with carty on directions from my committee.There have been a number of changes in the membership of the committee. Dr. Linda Peterat,professor of Home Economics Education, has provided consistent intellectual and moral support sincethe beginning of this undertaking. Dr. Jean Hills, now retired from the Department of Administrative,Adult and Higher Education, joined and chaired the committee eight months before my completion.The non-woman, non-feminist respondent to this work, he has given me early ignorant responses (hiswords, not mine) that left me dumbstruck in the worst sense: intellectually paralyzed. Our interchangessince that time have helped me see the necessity of sharpening my discussions of some key themes,including the relationship between knowing and knowledge, proof as a drooling penis, and theimportance of focussing on re/membering, rather than proving intimate assault. Dr. Bertie McClean'scommitment of UBC's legal support for this work is one example of the critical role educationalinstitutions must play in making silence knowledge.I could not have completed this work in its present form -- perhaps, not at all -- without the creativity,"chutzpah", commitment, emotional generosity, spiritual humours and feminist vision of my researchadvisor for the past two years, Dr. Kathryn McCannell of the UBC School of Social Work. I don't knowof anyone else who could have supported this work as she has; nudging me to become even nervier,nourishing me with literature, and witnessing my fear and exhaustion. In her company I have come tolearn that rigour in this work is personal integrity, tightness of weave, seaworthiness, a felt sense of153deep personal completion, and responding to impossible problems with creative solutions that beginwith, What I really feel like doing is...These are not simply words of praise from a grateful acolyte/ admirer/ friend: Kathryn's academicbackground, professional training, personal qualities and abilities, and current tenured status embodythe qualities necessary for advisement of this type of work as academic research. She is a skilledsocial work practitioner who, as evidenced in her own published writing as well as her day to day life,has clearly felt, observed and analyzed her own pains, struggles, and frustrations as a woman, motherand academic. She is passionate, creative, resourceful, inventive, angry, resilient, anduncompromising in her feminist analysis and vision. She is tenured, and has also been willing and ableto take on the considerable demands of this advisement, which are in addition to her full workloadwithin the Social Work department. She has stood witness to me: deeply caring, deeply respectful,and consistently describing the limits of her own involvement. The work was always mine; she wouldallude, suggest, tease, but the problems and their solutions were always my own. This was not atherapeutic relationship: during emotional intellectual/ legal crises, she would name her concerns andsuggestions, but leave it to me to garner the personal support I needed to deal with them.The most obvious implications of her advisement are that universities must hire and support moreKathryns, that the advisement of interdisciplinary/ crossdisciplinary/ metadisciplinary must be activelysupported within university departments and research centers, and that advisement of women'sintimate reflective research demands profound integrity born of personal growth and awareness,passionate feminist commitment, and clearly developed social and political analysis.The next implication is that we cannot wait for, or rely on, such institutional support. I suggest that wecan make our individual and collective silences knowledge in an infinity of ways, all of which demand/engender courage, creativity and passion. The four loops I have described on the howling feminist154spring, silenced knowing, body knowing, knowing language/ knowing witness, and re/memberingknowledge may be helpful tidemarkers in this endeavour.I would love to be a part of a small ongoing group of women who develop, maintain, revise, perseverewith goals to make silence knowledge by reflecting on experience, building theory, ritual, and socialaction, finding and sharing resources, developing clear boundaries in the sharing of pain, andencouraging each other to develop strength and clarity through yoga, tai chi, or meditation. We couldencourage each other to chronicle our journeys on an on-going basis, through drawings, clay, fabric,writing, videotape, audiotape, scribbled point-form notes. We would read, howl, enrage, laugh,scheme, organize, protest, comfort, and sing. We would weave these creations into larger, morepublic demonstrations of women's intimate knowings. I have enjoyed glimpses of these possibilitiesthrough my associations with my feminist academic friends, my advisor, a loose-knit Christian Feministgroup, and my friendship with Jane. I want more.I wonderI'm 43 now, almost 44.I wonder what it would have been likeif every place of learning,every hallway, meeting room, library,resource center, office door,program of studies, course outline, administrative office, policy, budget, facility, conference,awards ceremony, handout,workshop, panel, symposium,theory, model, framework,research project, test, assignment,arrangement of seating, discourse, and thinkingthroughout my kindergarten, primary, elementary, high school,undergraduate, professional training, thesemany years of graduate school,and my school board employershad taken into account my/ our silences?I mean, what would thatlook like?be peopled like?act like?feel like?sound like?smell like?move like?talk like?think like?accomplish?When could I have started doing this work?What could I have been doing since?155TOWARDS A WORKING AGENDA FOR RE/MEMBERING SILENCEWart dreamApril 3,1993I am on a large rock outcrop on the edge of the primal sea.Smoothly, suddenly, the cleardeeps rise and lift away my travel bag.I easily swim/ retrieve it,but am in awe of the spiritdepths below and beyond.Next, I am on land and lookingat a horrid warty outcroppingon the right sideof my middle fingeron my left hand.I see how easily I could slice it offthen hear the voicethatknows explain that no,it is a virus from the deepsandpast,and it is throughout my beingand I must heal/ cleanse throughout every pore,and then it will be gone.As educators and researchers and learnerswho are victims, witnesses, and assailants inpatriarchal structures which protect,educational practices which ignore,and discourses which inhibit knowledge of,intimate childhood sexual assault,we must know our silences and betrayals,taking unobtrusive measure:be/coming still, senseopento receive a thousand tiny points of life:shiver, ache, firefly, shadowMorse code, semaphore, braille,tellingthis is where we woundthis is where we silencethis is where we heal.156157My conclusion in this work is that intimate childhood sexual assault is the first silencing of women in apatriarchal society that is structured upon the oppression of women, and that educators have a vital role inre/membering this silence, and resisting this oppression. An important step towards this goal is foreducators to develop a personal feltsense of silence by reflecting on their own experiences of silentknowing. This feltsense can become the nourishing matrix of creative personal action and educationaltheory and practice.Personal actionI have developed this feltsense by reflecting on my own silences and betrayals in personal therapy and inthis academic work. Measured in financial terms alone, let alone the other losses, demands andchallenges, the cost of this work has been more than most women could afford. Over the past seventeenyears ago I have spent many thousands of dollars on personal support and group work. I also count asignificant portion of the salary lost during my four years of fulltime graduate studies (totalling around$160,000) into the cost of this healing process.What smaller incremental steps of personal action can women and men take towards making silenceknowledge? I offer this list as the beginning of a suggested working agenda, based on my own experienceand the actions of many others:Develop a personal practice, such as yoga, meditation, chanting, or tai chi whichintegrates your body, mind, and soul. This is solitary and collective work that demands,nourishes, honours, protects, constrains, holds in awe, shares, questions, consults, andrecognizes pain and limits; it is learning that requires time, strength, and courage to float,shift, wonder, and cleanse, cell by cell, in deep sea changes.Reflect on your own betrayals, silences, and abusings. They may seem to be trivial or toodangerous to even name; do so. Draw them, shape them, dream them, write them. Growto speak them in private. Grow to speak them in public.Develop listening/ being skills that maintain boundaries, depth, honesty and grace in theface of the unspeakable.Become aware of the power dynamics of conversation, particularly between men andwomen. Who speaks? Who is heard and responded to? What qualities of voice, volume,tone, sentence structure and word choice reflect/ create a sense of authority, or apology?Befriend a child or woman whom you sense has been, or is being abused. See what youlearn about strength and survival from her, and about ignorance, denial, judgment,disgust, and fear from yourself.Read anything feminist; particularly, radical feminist. Develop an appreciation of thediversity of feminist perspectives. Study the literatures of feminist educational theory,research, and teaching, feminist literary theory, feminist writers such as Audre Lordre andAdrienne Rich, and feminist theologians in a range of faith traditions. Learn to ask feministquestions.Develop an understanding of the relationships among oppressions on the basis of gender,sexual orientation, race, class, age, culture, physical and intellectual ability, and moresubtle differentiations, such as marital status. Become attuned to the dynamics of multipleoppressions, for example, the extremely high incidence of sexual assault of poor, mentallydisabled women.Immerse yourself in the literatures of sexual abuse. View National Film Board videos, readpersonal accounts of survivors and healers of sexual abuse. Work towards feeling andunderstanding possible interrelationships among sexual, physical, emotional, mental, andspiritual abuse as well as alcohol, drug, food, and sex dependencies, depression, and lowself esteem.Become attuned to the eroticization of men's sexual violence and women's sexualvictimization, in advertising, films, music, literature, language, fantasy and experience.Sense your own emotional and sexual responses: numb? disgusted? interested?entertained? aroused?Develop and sustain a community of educators committed to re/membering silences.Talk and work together.Learn about and actively support the work of front line women's advocacy organizationssuch as battered and homeless women's shelters, rape relief crisis centers, sexualharassment offices, and international women's human rights advocacy campaigns.Women, don't I'm a feminist but... Wrestle with your identity as a feminist, pro-feminist,woman- or man-identified women and find language to name your struggles withoutdetracting from the truths of women's oppression, resistance, and strength.158Men, become aware of your privilege of relative physical safety in your public and privateworlds; your immunity to fear of walking alone, entering a deserted underground parkinglot, being raped on a first date. Extend that awareness to the understanding the impunityabusers enjoy; their knowledge that they may harass, intimidate, cajole, seduce, fondle,and penetrate babies, children, adolescents, and women in their intimate and unprotectedspheres, virtually without fear of consequence of any sort; that they may, in fact, gain theirvictims collusion, cooperation, protective silence and amnesia regarding the assaults.Men, do something about men's violence, working with friends, men's groups, sports,community and religious groups. Consult with women's groups about your work.Support men who are helping establish and maintain sexual harassment policies; learnabout and actively support groups for battering men; support enquiries into sexual assaultof boys; gather together a group of male colleagues for a discussion, study group, orworkshop on men's violence.Men, work to re/member masculinity in ways that acknowledge and radically re/form yourlong history of violence towards women. Struggle with your identity as a feminist or pro-feminist.Men please release yourselves from tyranny of defensiveness (NOT ALL MEN ASSAULT!SOME OF US DON'T!!! DON'T TAR US ALL WITH THE SAME BRUSH !!!) and realize that ifyou are not an active part of the solution, you continue to be a part of the problem ofmen's violence. I have seen one car with a bumper sticker that reads ANOTHER MANAGAINST VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN. Why doesn't every man in Canada who is notviolent towards women have that affixed to his car, briefcase, computer, lunchbox andorapartment door?I can imagine that many men may anticipate that the cost of feeling the collective shame ofmen's violence is too great for you to bear. That may be true; if it is, become spiritually,emotionally, intellectually and socially strong enough to bear it. Until you do, the violencewill not end. Women cannot do this work alone.159Educational theory and practiceHow can educational theory and practice contribute to making silence knowledge? As educators, ourwork is enormous. The framework has been clearly established by feminist researchers, writers andpractitioners for the development of educational theory and practice committed to re/membering women'ssilence and oppression, and creating knowledge that liberates, nourishes, and makes us whole. When weapproach all aspects of our educational praxis -- our institutional structures, policies and procedures,values, beliefs, and theoretical frameworks, courses of study, selection of resources, structuring ofassignments and evaluation protocols, advisement of research, formal and informal relationships -- with apassionate commitment to making silence knowledge, we engage in healing, revolutionary work.In this work, I have broken silence regarding my experiences of intimate childhood sexual assault. In thesilent patriarchal screw, I have named this experience as the first and fundamental experience of my, andwomen's, oppression/ silencing in patriarchy. I offer this radical claim as a starting place for furtherexplorations of both women's and men's silences. I offer this work as a quilter would offer a woodenframework, fabric, warm filler, and the tentative long loosely basted stitch of a gabalashed design to aquilting circle. I offer it in anticipation that others' autobiographical reflections will enrich it with multipleperspectives.From my readings of feminist educators and theorists, and from my experience of this research, I wouldsuggest that the following be included among the working agenda of educators committed to makingsilence knowledge at every level of educational theory, research and practice:160We commit ourselves as learners, teachers, researchers, advisors, counsellors,administrators, trustees, and governors to developing in our minds and souls a profoundfelt sense of silence: what it is, what it does, and what we are prepared to do about it.We legitimize private experience, particularly intimate experience, as essential publicknowledge.We create dialogue between personal experience and educational, social, and politicaltheory.We invite, in our research and teaching and learning and advisement, the further creationof our knowledge of women's intimate truths. Recognize, at a visceral level, that girl talk,personal anecdote and confidences, can become real and essential knowledge.We develop relationships and structures that create and maintain safety, confidentiality,protection, nourishment, respect regarding the exploration of intimate experience.We develop understandings ofevaluation/ rigour regarding intimate reflections,the process of creating and challenging conceptual frameworks based on intimateexperience,the process of exploring practical implications of intimate experience.We work to make malleable the rigid structures of knowledge (breaking and joining ranksof individual academic disciplines, re/conceiving notions of logic, research, and "proof")which have served to maintain silence.We develop critical imaginations to create new modes of expression of private knowledge,including "nonacademic" forms of text, texture, colour, shape, sound, and movement moresuited to communicating and reflecting on silenced knowing.We make the process of creating knowledge more transparent by including self-reflectivepassages within academic text.We name ourselves, our histories, our biases, our assumptions, our vested interests andour limitations known, particularly when we wish to become researchers of others'experiences, or respond to their research.We bring to every discussion of educational theory and practice -- not only explorations ofwomen and knowing -- a silence audit, with queries such as: How does this discussionaccount for all the oppressions of women in patriarchy? How does this discussion takeinto account the reality of women's silence as well as our resistance to theseoppressions?161.Our physical educationAthletics and outdoor activities have been an essential source of strength and revitalization for me. Inthe fog of chronic depression, it has often been difficult for me to be physically active. In the past morecontemplative physical activities, such as yoga and tai chi, have been too emotionally painful topursue. Through my recent yoga Immersion" I have realized that daily yoga, meditation and physicalexercise is a non-negiotiable part of my emotional, mental, spiritual and physical health. My next stepwill be to take part in a Model Mugging course, in which women are trained to defend themselvesagainst attackers. I need to teach my body new instincts of maintaining boundaries and protectionfrom assault -- subtle or violent. I'm coming to see that learning, practising, refining, playing andcelebrating the joy of defending our bodies is at the center of women's knowledge.Supporting the healing processIn our personal lives and educational praxis we can support our own, and others' healing by:knowing and healing from our own betrayals/ silences so we can establish andmaintain rigourous boundaries in our emotional, physical, intellectual, social (and,obviously, sexual) connections with others;coming to deeply know that healing is a physical, intellectual, emotional, social,political and spiritual act, and weaving this knowing into every moment of our healingand work;developing our instinctual sense of the sacredness of woman's body, ours andothers': my physical space, my sense of privacy, my skin, my mouth, my breasts, mybreathing, my labia, my vagina. These are the places of my betrayals and silences andhealing. How do we minutely honour this fragile holy ground?162FARE WELLI find it difficult to conclude this work. The process of thinking, feeling, struggling, celebrating,mourning, creating, talking, writing it has been central to my life for the past four years. Havingreceived responses from Ian Alexander, and Dr. Shauna Butterwick, I feel the realization that eachreader will bring different experiences to this work and create different understandings from it.Aaaaarg! I want everyone to sense/process each thread and nuance exactly as I had! I am frustratedthat there is much I haven't developed more completely, and much that I still don't know. Shauna, andothers, have asked for more specifics about the direct implications of this work with regard toclassroom practice: I have small examples from my own recent teaching experience, but not enoughto offer as guidelines or parameters. I am frustrated because I can't write of a personal miracle/ victorycure through this work: I am still lonely, I still wonder where I belong, I still long for a knowing,respectful family, and I still feel shadows of thinking I am stupid. I recently received my acceptance asa member of Mensa, an organization for people who score in the top two percent of standardized IQtests. I laughed in joy and amazement when I read the letter, thinking If I'm this smart, where is it?This writing has demanded creativity, strength, determination, courage, perseverance, and tenaciouscare that I never dreamed of myself as embodying. Meeting these demands has been central to myhealing process over the past four years. When I completed the first draft of this text, I felt an innerending so profound that I thought I might die. I drove with extra caution for a week afterwards,anticipating a fatal automobile accident. I kept thinking Who will be able to find my computer diskettesand publish my thesis?163164This feeling passed, and I realize now that it was deathbirth throe, a passing/ shedding/metamorphosis. I stand now on different ground. I think clearer. My voice is stronger. I am funnier,freer, and more radical. I've made my first protest telephone call to a politician's office. My earringsare more outrageous. Maintaining this clarity will be a part of my daily practice for the rest of my life.I hope that this work has nourished your felt sense of silence, knowing, and creating knowledge; thatyou have felt affirmed, enriched, disquieted, disturbed and challenged to further make silenceknowledge in your personal life and educational praxis.Thank you for accompanying me.Nautilus'This is the face of Godde"softspoke the voiceless voice.There, suspended, fullframed in dreamvisiongrey-beige as Yukon hills at winter duskshell as soft as a cheek's caress;soulseen interior chamberssturdy, flexible, resilient to despair;the chambered nautilus.Encircling, enwombing her/self.Creating a safe walled chamber only to pass through itto the cold saltnourishing waters beyond.This is the face of Godde.Peace.The peace which undergirds all understanding.The peace which undergirds all passion.Spiral.Spiralknowing.165BIBUOGRAPHYAcker, Sandra. (1987). Feminist theroy and the study of gender and education.International Review of Education 33, 419-435.Alcoff, Linda. (1987). Justifying feminist social science. Hypatia 2(3) 107-127.Alcoff, Unda and Gray, Laura. (1991). Survivor discourse: Transgression or recuperation?Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 18(21) 260-290.Annas, Pamela J. (1985). Style as politics: A feminist approach to the teachingof writing. College English 47(4) 360-371.Barbach, Lonnie. (1984). Pleasures: Women write erotica. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside.Bass, Ellen & Davis, Laura. (1988). The courage to heal: A guide for women survivorsof child sexual abuse. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside.Bass, Ellen & Thornton, Louise. (Eds.) (1983). I never told anyone: Writings by women survivorsof child sexual abuse. New York: Harper & Row.Belenky, Mary Field, Clinchy, Blythe McVicker, Goldberger, Nancy Rule, & Tarule,Jill Mattuck. (1986). Women's ways of knowing. New York: Basic Books.Bloom, E. Sue. (1985). Secret survivors: Uncovering incest and its aftereffectsin women. New York: Ballentine.Bowles, Gloria & DueIli-Klein, Renate (Eds.). (1983). Theories of women's studies.Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Bowman, Barbara T. (1989). Self-reflection as an element of professionalism.Teachers' College Record 90(3) 444-451.British Columbia Task Force on Family Violence. (1992).Is anyone listening? Report of the British Columbia Task Force on Family Violence.Victoria: Minister of Women's Equity.Britzman, Deborah P. (1986). Cultural myths in the making of a teacher:Biography and social structure in teacher education. Harvard Educational Review 56(4)442-455.166Brookes, Anne-Louise. 0992). Feminist pedagogy:An autobiographical approach. Halifax: Fernwood.Bromley, Hank. (1989). Identity politics and criticalpedagogy. Educational Theory 39(3), 207-223.Bunch, Charlotte & Pollack S. (1983). Learning our way:Essays on feminist education. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing.Butler, Sandra. (1981). Conspiracy of silence: The traumaof incest. San Francisco: New Glide.Butterwick, Shauna. (1987) Learning Liberation:A comparative analysis of feminist consciousness raising and Friere's conscientizationmethod. Unpublished master's thesis, Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Facultyof Education.Butterwick, Shauna, Collard, Susan, Gray, Jo Anne, &Kastner, Andrea. (1990, June). Research and soul search: Feminism and adult education.Paper presented at the meeting of the Canadian Association for the Study of AdultEducation, Victoria, B.C.Caywood, Cynthia L & Overing, Gillian R. (Eds.). (1987).Teaching writing: Pedagogy, gender and equity. Albany: State University of New YorkPress.Committee on Sexual Offences Against Children and Youths.(1984). Report of the Committee on Sexual Offences Against Children and Youths [TheBadgley Report], Vol. 1 and II and Summary. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada.Crawford, Jan. (1991). Art and healing: An artist'siournev through cancer. N. Vancouver: Gallerie Publications.Crnkovich, Mary. (Ed.). (1990). Gossip: A spoken historyof the women of the north. Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Resources Committee.Crow, Ginny. (1979). The process/ product split. Quest:A Feminist Quarterly. 4(4), 15-35.Cully, Margo & Portuges, Catherine. (Eds.) (1985) . Genderedsubjects: The dynamics of feminist teaching. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.167Daly, Mary ("in cahoots with" Caputi, Jane). (1987).Websters' first new intergalactic wickedary of the English lanauage. Boston: Beacon.Danica, Eli. (1988). Don't: A woman's word. Toronto:McClelland & Stewart.Davis, Barbara Hillyer. (Ed.) (1985). Feminist education[Special edition]. Journal of thought 20(3).Doyle, Louise, & Hammersley, Peta. (1986). Helping yoursexually abused child. Coquitlam, B.C.: Act 2, Society for assistance in the communitytoday.Duerk, Judith. (1989). Circle of stones: Woman's journeyto herself. San Diego: Luramedia.Elliott, Anne, Koczka, Wanita, Van Nispen, Pip, &Williams, Patty. (Eds.) (1992). Learning and violence: Women speak out [Special issue].Women's education des femmes 9(4).Ellsworth, Elizabeth. (1989). Why doesn't this feelempowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. HarvardEducational Review 59(3) 297-324.Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. (1992). Women who run with thewolves: Myths and stories of the wild woman archetype. New York: Ballentine.Finkelhor, David & Browne, Angela. (1985). The traumaticimpact of child sexual abuse: A conceptualization. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry55(4), 530-541.Finson, Shelly Davis. (1985). On the other side of silence:Patriarchy, consciousness and spirituality -- some women's experiences of theologicaleducation. Unpublished project report, Boston University School of Theology.Fraser, Sylvia. (1987). My Father's house: A memoir ofincest and of healing. Toronto: Doubleday.French, Marilyn. (1985). Beyond power. Toronto: Random.Friere, Paulo. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. NewYork: Continuum.168Gagnon, Madeleine. (1989). My body in writing. In AngelaMiles & Geraldine Finn (Eds.), Feminism: From pressure to politics (375-387) Montreal:Black Rose.Gaskell, Jane. (1988). A feminist agenda for Canadianeducation. Our schools/ our selves October issue, 8-21.Gaskell, Jane, McLaren, Arlene, & Novogrodsky, Myra.(1989). Claiming an education: Feminism and Canadian Schools. Our schools/our selvesmonograph series, 3(7).Gilligan, Carol. (1982). In a different voice:Psychological theory and women's development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress.Goldenberg, Naomi. (1987). Resurrecting the body: Anagenda for feminist theory. In Greta Hofmann Nemiroff (Ed.), Women and men (166-179).Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside.Grosz, Elizabeth A. (1987). Feminist theory and thechallenge to knowledges. Women's Studies International Forum 10(5), 475-480.Hall, Liz & LLoyd, Siobhan. (1989). Surviving child sexualabuse: A handbook for helping women challenge their past. New York: Falmer.Harding, Sandra. (Ed.) (1987). Feminism and methodology:Social science issues. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Harris, Maria. (1988). Women and teaching. Mahwah, N.J.:Paulist Press.Harris, Maria. (1989). Dance of the spirit. New York:Bantam.Heilbrun, Carolyn G. (1988). Writing a woman's life. NewYork: Ballentine.Heillig, Leona & Burton, Nadya. (Eds.) (1992). Violenceprevention [Special edition]. Women's education des femmes 10(1).Herman, Judith Lewis. (1981). Father-daughter incest.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Heyward, Carter. (1984). Our passion for justice: Imagesof Dower. sexuality and liberation. New York: Pilgrim.Hope, Anne & Timmel, Sally. (1984). Training for transformation:A handbook for community workers (Books 1-3). Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo.169170Hyde, Nadia. (1985). Covert incest in women's lives:Dynamics and directions for healing. Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health 3(3).Jagger, Alison M. & Bordo, Susan R. (1989). Gender/ body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of being and knowing. London: Rutgers UniversityPress.Johnson, Sonia. (1987). Going out of our minds: Themetaphysics of liberation. Freedom, Calif.: Crossing.Keller, Catherine. (1986). From a broken web: Separation,sexism and self. Boston: Beacon.Klein, Renate D. (1987). The dynamics of the women'sstudies classroom: A review essay of the teaching practice of Women's Studies in highereducation. Women's Studies International Forum 10(2) 187-206.Kissner, Robert F. (1989). Trauma in our midst. Surrey,B.C.: Sexual Assault Recovery Anonymous Society.KraII, Florence R. (1988). From the inside out: Personalhistory as educational research. Educational Theory 38(4), 467-479.Lather, Patti. (1986). Research as praxis. HarvardEducational Review 56(3) 257-277..Leck, Glorianne M. (1987). Review article -- Feministpedagogy, liberation theory, and the traditional schooling paradigm. Educational Theory37(3), 343-354.Lewis, Magda & Simons, Roger!. (1986) A discourse notintended for her: Learning and teaching within patriarchy. Harvard Educational Review56(4) pp 457-472.Lorde, Audre. (1984). Sister outsider. Trumansburg, N.Y.:Crossing Press.Macy, Joanna. (1983). Despair and personal power in thenuclear age. Philadephia: New Society.MacKinnon, Catherine A. (1982). Feminism, marxism, methodand the state: an agenda for theory. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7(3)514-545.Mariechild, Diane. (1981). Mother Wit: A feminist guide topsychic development. Freedom, Calif.: Crossing.Martel, Angeline & Peterat, Linda. (1988). FeministPed-agogies: From pedagogic romanticism to the success of authenticity. In PetaTancred-Sherif (Ed.), Feminist research: Prospect and retrospect. Kingston/Montreal:Queen's/McGill.McCannell, Kathryn. (1983). Family politics, family policy,and family practice: A feminist perspective. Canadian Journal of Community MentalHealth 2(3).McClung, Morgan. (1992). Writing about violence. Women'seducation des femmes9(4), 4-5.McLaren, Arlene Tigar. (1988). Gender and Society:Creating a Canadian women's socioloay. Mississauga: Copp Clark Pitman.Messer-Davidow, Ellen. (1985). Knowers, Knowing, Knowledge:Feminist theory and education. Journal of Thought 20(3) 8-24.Miles, Angela & Fine, Geraldine. (Eds). (1989) Feminism:From pressure to politics. Montreal: Black Rose.Mudflower Collective. (1985). God's fierce whimsy Women'sEcumenical Resource Center.Pagano, Jo Anne. (1988). Teaching women. EducationalTheory 38(3), 321-339.Powers, Jane Levine & Jaklitsch, Barbara Weiss. (1989).Understanding survivors of abuse. Toronto: Lexington Books.Ramazanoglu, Caroline. (1987). Sex and violence in academiclife, or, you can keep a good woman down. In Harner, Jalna & Maynard, Mary (Eds.),Women, violence and social control. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press Int.Rhodes, Lynn. (1987). Co-creating; a feminist vision ofministry. Philadelphia: Westminster.Rich, Adrienne. (1973). Diving into the wreck. Toronto:George J. McLeod.Rich, Adrienne. (1979). On lies, secrets, and silence.Markham, Ont.: Penguin.Rockhill, Kathleen. (1987). The chaos of subjectivity inthe ordered halls of academe. Canadian Woman Studies, 8(4), 12-17.171Rockhill, Kathleen. (1991). Paisley scars in discursiveformations... falling from the rafters. RFR/DRF 20(3/4), 27-30.Rogers, Rix. (1990) Reaching for solutions: The report ofthe special advisor to the Minister of National Health and Welfare on child sexual abuse inCanada. Ottawa: Supply and Services CanadaRuether, Rosemary Radford. (1983). Sexism and God-talk:Toward a feminist theology. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside.Rush, Florence. (1980). The best kept secret: Sexual abuseof children. New York: McGraw-Hill.Singh, Ravi. (1991). Kundalini yoga for strength, success.and spirit. New York: White Lion.Standing Committe on Health and Welfare, Social Affairs,Seniors and the Status of Women. (1991). The war against women: First report of theSubcommittee on the Status of Women. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada.Stanley L & Wise S. (1984) Breaking out: feministconsciousness and feminist research. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Stein, Diane. (1986). The women's spirituality book.St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn.Summit, Roland C. (1983). The child sexual abuseaccommodation syndrome. Child Abuse and Neglect 7, 177-193.Swansea, Charleen & Campbell, Barbara. (1978). Love storiesby new women. New York: Avon.Tancred-Sheriff, Peta. (1988). Feminist research: Prospectand retrospect. Montreal & Kingston: McGill - Queen's University Press.Thompson, Jane L. (1983). Learning liberation -- Women'sresponse to men's education. London: Crom Helm.Tomm, Winnie (Ed.) (1989). The effects of feministapproaches on research methodologies. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.Vanderbilt, Heidi. (1992). Incest: A four-part chillingreport. Lear's 4(12) 49-77.Walker, Barbara G. (1990). Women's rituals: A source book.New York: Harper Collins.172173Walsh, Anne. (1986). The maps are drawn by a living choir:Contexts for the practice of a feminist metatheory of literary history. Interchange 17(1), 1-22.Ward, Elizabeth. (1984). Father/ daughter rape. London:Women's Press.Warren, Catharine E. (1987). Feminist discourse and theresearch enterprise: Implications for adult education research. The Canadian Journal forthe Study of Adult Education 1(2), 23-42.Weiler, Kathleen. (1980. Women teaching for change:Gender, class and power. S. Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey.Welton, Michael. (1987). Knowledge for the people: Thestruagle for adult learning in English-speaking Canada, 1828- 1973. Toronto: 0.1.S.E.Winter, Miriam Therese. (1987). Woman prayer, woman sonci;Resources for ritual. Oak Park, II.: Meyer Stone.Women's Research Centre. (1989). Recollecting our lives:Women's experiences of childhood sexual abuse. Vancouver: Press Gang.Woolf, Virginia. (1929). A room of one's own. London:Grafton.Wyatt, Gail Elizabeth, and Powell, Gloria Johnson. (1988).Lasting effects of child sexual abuse. Newbury Park, California: Sage.