The Sexually Traumatized Psyche of the Black Woman

Physical: of or relating to the body, as distinguished from the mind or spirit, involving or marked by vigorous activity. Torture: (1) infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or correction, an instrument or method of inflicting such pain; (2) excruciating physical or mental pain, agony; (3) something causing severe pain or anguish. Welcome, sisters. Although I titled this chapter physical torture, I understand that physical torture is what leads to mental torture. In chapter one, the focus was on mental damage to the psyche, yet I understand now that you can have mental damage without physical damage, yet you cannot have physical damage without mental damage. Let us look at this, sisters. If one is shot in the leg, first there is the physical damage. I am sure the mental damage begins simultaneously, depending on the amount of damage to the leg. The leg experiences trauma, which is serious injury or shock; as you know, the body does go into shock. Now because of the bullet piercing through the body, there is a series of effects that follow, which in a lot of cases may paralyze or kill the victim. If a good doctor gets to the victim in time and does what he is licensed for, you could leave the hospital with the wound already healing. Well, what about the mental damage? Physical pain gets more intense by the minute and sends messages through the nerve system and to the brain, where it is changed into thought patterns traumatizing the psyche of the victim. If a person is bit by a dog, there is physical pain. There is the tearing of the flesh, the teeth sinking in to the flesh; because of the pressure of the jaws going into the flesh, there is a massive amount of pain. Then ligaments, bones, and tissues inside the body are traumatized. The victim, after receiving medical attention, could be deathly afraid of dogs for the rest of their life. Just before the physical traumatization, the person was able to be around dogs. Now, after the dog bite, the victim is deathly afraid of dogs. Why? Because the physical pain was transferred into mental pain, and the mental pain hurts worse and lasts a lifetime. In The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave, in the chapter titled “The Breaking Process of the African Woman,” on page 16, middle of the first paragraph, it reads, “If she shows any sign of resistance in submitting completely [FYI, after being raped] to your will, do not hesitate to use the bullwhip on her to extract the last bit of b—— out of her.” First of all, I fail to understand how a woman who resisted this process was labeled a b——. Ironically, in the year 2009, that is how the black woman refers to herself and her closest friends. We are now going to examine the bullwhip, its purpose, and how it affected her psyche. In a book called They Stole It but You Must Return It, written by Dr. Richard Williams (who is a health educator), on page 27 is a situation of torture told by Frederick Douglass, who was born in February 1818 and was an abolitionist, an editor, and a diplomat. Mr. Douglass reports, “I have often been awaken at the dawn of the day by the most heart-rendering shrieks of an own aunt of mine, who he [slave master] use to tie to a joist, [which is a wooden beam from one wall to another] and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered in blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped, and where the blood ran the fastest, there he whipped longest. He would her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush, and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin.”