A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

Elliott’s 10th essay discusses her experience as a sexual assault survivor and the voyeurism surrounding women who have survived nonconsensual sexual encounters or experienced trauma more generally. She describes the ways people expect women to react to and disclose their trauma, comparing it to the biblical depiction of the disciples needing to poke Jesus’s wounds after he came back from the dead in order to truly believe that he was real. She cites two examples of women who have been wronged by the criminal justice system: Cindy Gladue, who was horrifically assaulted and murdered and whose white, male murderer was declared not guilty; and Amanda Knox, who was wrongfully imprisoned for four years before an eventual acquittal because she did not portray socially acceptable expressions of trauma when she discovered her roommate dead in their Italian flat. These examples illustrate clearly and viscerally the results of Western misogyny, and how social systems and institutions perpetuate violence against women through the perpetuation of social norms and expectations of womanhood and manhood. These norms justify the wrongdoings of men at the expense of women. While all of Elliott’s prior essays have touched on her experiences as a woman, this essay focuses specifically on the identity of womanhood, the discrepancy between how men and women are treated in society, and the ways this colors trauma. Elliott asserts her right to try to forget about her assault, to tell very few people what happened to her, and to choose to have control over the proverbial door to her trauma.