Breaking Skin and Silence: Self-Injury and Female Voice

In this presentation I will read an excerpt of my senior thesis, a collection of critical non-fiction essays in Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies. The reading will focus on how culture is enacted through and reproduced on... [ view full abstract ]

In this presentation I will read an excerpt of my senior thesis, a collection of critical non-fiction essays in Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies. The reading will focus on how culture is enacted through and reproduced on women’s bodies, situating them as graphic cultural texts. I will explore how women’s self-injury can act as both an isolating cycle of self-abuse as well as an attempt to protest against a society that has created little room for women to forge their identities in a meaningful and authentic way. As the bodies of women who self-injure become a space for them to physically map their true emotions and appropriate the culture of violence and objectification that has been inflicted upon them, their bodies reflect back to society in a significant way what has been done to its women and girls. ​