I began eating to change my body. I was wilful in this. Some boys had destroyed me, and I barely survived it. I ate because I thought that if my body became repulsive, I could keep men away. Of all the things I wish I knew then that I know now, I wish I had known I could talk to my parents and get help, and turn to something other than food.
The Guardian: Roxane Gay: ‘My body is a cage of my own making’
The boys had raped her in a particularly offensive way and it's easy to say her reaction was inappropriate but it's rather more difficult to say what she should have done. When you have been raped by multiple boys, how do you tell your parents; how do you tell anyone.
‘I don’t hate myself in the way society would have me hate myself,’ says Roxane Gay
Photograph: Jennifer Silverberg for the Guardian
I don't know how much she is supposed to hate herself but I do know we failed if anyone in society hates himself or herself and the Rockhouse believes there is one hell of a lot of that going around.
Although I'm not sure, she sounds like she's a gay since she identified a partner rather than a husband. There's a reason to hate herself. She has dark skin for a second reason to hate herself. She'e extremely overweight so she's a three-time loser for hating herself and you don't need the full diatribe on how little is being done to ameliorate the hatred on any of those scores.
While she inflicted some of that self-hatred on herself, society piled a whole lot more on top of that. The relative distribution of how much hatred is attributable to what source doesn't gain much since we know without analysis a great deal of it came simply because she was breathing.
By the time I got back to my hotel room, my thigh muscles were shredded, but I was also impressed with how strong those muscles are. My body is a cage, but this is my cage and there are moments when I take pride in it. Still, alone in that hotel room, I sobbed. I sobbed because I was angry at myself, at the event organisers and their lack of forethought. I sobbed because the world cannot accommodate a body like mine and because I hate being confronted by my limitations and because I felt so utterly alone and because I no longer need the layers of protection I built around myself, but pulling those layers back is harder than I could have ever imagined.
- The Guardian: Roxane Gay: ‘My body is a cage of my own making’
Read about her in the full article since I have no doubt you will like her as she's obviously intelligent but she has made these mistakes and now she's trapped. If you would like to know her even better than that, consider her book. Details are at the end of the article.
Perhaps you dismiss this as just another victim's story but the fact remains she really was a victim of something through no fault of her own. That she made mistakes in response to that doesn't require a judgment but rather compassion since maybe it's possible to help her fix those mistakes. However, that does nothing regarding the original source of the mistakes.
There was only passing mention of her partner in the source article and that absence seems telling relative to a highly-personal exposition of other aspects of the hardships of obesity. The armchair diagnosis from the Rockhouse is that sexual damage is still there although we have no advisory on how to fix it. Humans seems less able to remedy an afflicted sex life than just about every other malady which may befall us.
Ed: no lambasting of this woman?
I've never managed to quit smoking and the cost of that proclivity is just about due so I'm really not in a position to criticize anyone for such mistakes, am I.
I'm not shamed from every source for smoking but a fat woman sees svelte but entirely insubstantial puffballs all day long on television and endless parades of more of the beautiful people and their rapacious hungers (i.e. typically for shopping) on Daily Mail, etc. No-one does anything of that nature to me as a smoker but fat people get blasted with shaming 'round the clock with much of it coming from other women.
- Infer long and excruciatingly boring diatribe regarding the obscenity of the modern era of conspicuous consumption. The pretty people are admired and lauded for it whereas fat people are shamed continuously for a different form of it. -
Years ago, I told myself that one day I would stop feeling this quiet but abiding rage about the things I have been through at the hands of others. I would wake up and there would be no more flashbacks. That day never came, or it hasn’t come, and I am no longer waiting for it.
A different day has come, though. I flinch less and less when I am touched. I harbour less hatred toward myself. I try to forgive myself for my trespasses.
I came to many realisations in the aftermath of breaking my ankle. I was broken and then I broke some more. And I am not yet healed, but I have started believing I will be.
Adapted and abridged from Hunger: A Memoir Of (My) Body, published on 6 July by Corsair at £13.99. To order a copy for £11.89, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.
The Guardian: Roxane Gay: ‘My body is a cage of my own making’
The boys had raped her in a particularly offensive way and it's easy to say her reaction was inappropriate but it's rather more difficult to say what she should have done. When you have been raped by multiple boys, how do you tell your parents; how do you tell anyone.
‘I don’t hate myself in the way society would have me hate myself,’ says Roxane Gay
Photograph: Jennifer Silverberg for the Guardian
I don't know how much she is supposed to hate herself but I do know we failed if anyone in society hates himself or herself and the Rockhouse believes there is one hell of a lot of that going around.
Although I'm not sure, she sounds like she's a gay since she identified a partner rather than a husband. There's a reason to hate herself. She has dark skin for a second reason to hate herself. She'e extremely overweight so she's a three-time loser for hating herself and you don't need the full diatribe on how little is being done to ameliorate the hatred on any of those scores.
While she inflicted some of that self-hatred on herself, society piled a whole lot more on top of that. The relative distribution of how much hatred is attributable to what source doesn't gain much since we know without analysis a great deal of it came simply because she was breathing.
By the time I got back to my hotel room, my thigh muscles were shredded, but I was also impressed with how strong those muscles are. My body is a cage, but this is my cage and there are moments when I take pride in it. Still, alone in that hotel room, I sobbed. I sobbed because I was angry at myself, at the event organisers and their lack of forethought. I sobbed because the world cannot accommodate a body like mine and because I hate being confronted by my limitations and because I felt so utterly alone and because I no longer need the layers of protection I built around myself, but pulling those layers back is harder than I could have ever imagined.
- The Guardian: Roxane Gay: ‘My body is a cage of my own making’
Read about her in the full article since I have no doubt you will like her as she's obviously intelligent but she has made these mistakes and now she's trapped. If you would like to know her even better than that, consider her book. Details are at the end of the article.
Perhaps you dismiss this as just another victim's story but the fact remains she really was a victim of something through no fault of her own. That she made mistakes in response to that doesn't require a judgment but rather compassion since maybe it's possible to help her fix those mistakes. However, that does nothing regarding the original source of the mistakes.
There was only passing mention of her partner in the source article and that absence seems telling relative to a highly-personal exposition of other aspects of the hardships of obesity. The armchair diagnosis from the Rockhouse is that sexual damage is still there although we have no advisory on how to fix it. Humans seems less able to remedy an afflicted sex life than just about every other malady which may befall us.
Ed: no lambasting of this woman?
I've never managed to quit smoking and the cost of that proclivity is just about due so I'm really not in a position to criticize anyone for such mistakes, am I.
I'm not shamed from every source for smoking but a fat woman sees svelte but entirely insubstantial puffballs all day long on television and endless parades of more of the beautiful people and their rapacious hungers (i.e. typically for shopping) on Daily Mail, etc. No-one does anything of that nature to me as a smoker but fat people get blasted with shaming 'round the clock with much of it coming from other women.
- Infer long and excruciatingly boring diatribe regarding the obscenity of the modern era of conspicuous consumption. The pretty people are admired and lauded for it whereas fat people are shamed continuously for a different form of it. -
Years ago, I told myself that one day I would stop feeling this quiet but abiding rage about the things I have been through at the hands of others. I would wake up and there would be no more flashbacks. That day never came, or it hasn’t come, and I am no longer waiting for it.
A different day has come, though. I flinch less and less when I am touched. I harbour less hatred toward myself. I try to forgive myself for my trespasses.
I came to many realisations in the aftermath of breaking my ankle. I was broken and then I broke some more. And I am not yet healed, but I have started believing I will be.
Adapted and abridged from Hunger: A Memoir Of (My) Body, published on 6 July by Corsair at £13.99. To order a copy for £11.89, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.
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