Society's Reaction to Female Trauma: You're Doing it Wrong

There’s so much to discuss when it comes to living as a female in this day and age. After further introspection I’ve decided to turn this into a series where we dive into different fragments of the experience. If you read the caption under the topic preview you would’ve seen me speak about the recent protect our girls hashtag here in Barbados. If you are not familiar with the case head over to any of our local news sites to become up to date.

In part one of the series, we’re going to be exploring society’s reaction to female trauma. Personally, I feel like we have two extremes. Either the pain and suffering is taken lightly or there is immense sympathy triggered by an unfortunate situation. In other words, we don’t really care until it’s too late. In my opinion this occurs because of:

1. False Narratives – there’s a misconception that because you are female you should be able to endure pain without a single utterance. Sadly, the seeds for this misconstrued thought is planted before we can even process our own feelings. We start by telling little girls on the playground “he pushed you because he likes you”. Statements like that are more damaging than we realize. That quickly turns into “he loves you, and it only happened one time”. There’s no plausible reason to equate physical abuse to love.

2. Past Trauma – hear me out. Believe it or not some people would rather see you suffering than thriving, but their hearts may not be in a bad place. We don’t always realize the pain others go through behind closed doors. Even the people you think are close to you may be dealing with internal turmoil without your awareness. If not handled correctly hurt tends to manifest in not the best of ways. It may cause some to adopt a “well it happened to me and I survived all by myself so you’re fine” mentality. This is a prime example of a trauma response. They’re not fine but broken. They’ve either become numb to the pain or think that the pain of others would somehow make them feel better. Either way some work needs to be done.

3. Lack of Tangible Evidence – while we’re making progress, there’s still a portion of our society that believes that if a scar isn’t physical it doesn’t exist. Mental abuse is considered “normal” by some, which feeds into past trauma, and therefore not taken as seriously as it should be. This causes a need for validation that quite frankly shouldn’t exist. Females are then forced to prove that they are hurting in hopes that you believe them and offer your assistance.

As a female myself I have been on the receiving end of these reactions; I know many of my sisters have been as well. In reference to the aforementioned article, when I was scrolling through the comments my heart caved. The narratives being pushed were simply heartbreaking. It ranged from the vilification of the victim to downright denial of wrongdoing. As a society we need to do better. We need to come together and raise our voices to make a change. You may feel like you’re standing alone but your contributions are important. Ladies, if no one else is willing we should be. History is filled with brilliant examples of us coming together and getting things done. There’s power in female and right now we need it to ensure the wellbeing of not only ourselves but the generations under us. The tools we have been given are not ideal. But who knows better how to take the most unexpected ingredients and make something magical?