Our Shared Shelf discussion

I don't know if this breaks any of the rules (if it does, moderators I apologize, I am not trying to stir up trouble here...I just kept feeling this recurring theme as I was reading the book) but I'd like to talk about low self-esteem here....as our personal truths...not as a judgment, not as a support group.

Roxane wasn't trying to play the victim, but she wasn't able to freely talk about it. As she mentioned in her book, whenever she brought up fat, people would try to make her feel better by saying she wasn't. But all Roxane was doing was staying her facts as she saw them.

When I try to talk about it with my friends, they get uncomfortable or they give me a pep talk as if my version of my identity is invalid. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have friends who build me up rather than knocking me down....but it's hard to process our thoughts when we don't have an outlet. Then I start feeling guilty for having low self-esteem because I am not even given the floor to talk about it.

I personally don't think having low self-esteem is bad. It's just a state of mind. It changes based on environment. Where you are, who you're hanging out with, what you're watching, what you're reading, what you're eating etc.

For the most part, when I start feeling low self-esteem, it's usually a secondary behavior pattern to an uncomfortable feeling I'm not willing to face. It's information. But if I'm unable to talk about it and process it, it takes a lot longer to figure out the issue...and it costs a lot more pain. Think of how many years Roxane could have saved if she were just able to be open with her shame and her low opinion of herself? And, like her, if we don't address those issues....they come out as regrettable actions.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you feel like you're doing 21st-century feminists a disservice by having those thoughts?

I haven't finished the book yet. I am finding it extremely difficult to digest the fact that she was *SPOILER* raped by small children and in between of puking in my mouth and being utterly disgusted, I am finding the strength to finish the book.

Roxane Gay does display a great level of low self esteem. The way that she allowed herself to be mistreated and punishing herself by eating. Our human mind is either our greatest strength or weakness. It is what we feed our mind that defines us but having negative thoughts are perfectly normal, especially when we are young. We aren't robots who only have 1 and 0 outputs but in the case of Roxane Gay, she allowed her problems to become her centerfold. She carry forward her problems as a child into her adulthood. I don't know if she would discuss in the later chapters but she definitely had family issues. If she had a great family, she wouldn't be swimming in self esteem issues.

Our surroundings are vital for our early development and the family, especially siblings plays an important role in our lives. So I find it difficult to learn that her parents and two brothers saw nothing of a 12 years old girl, who would have being going through trauma. It just breaks my heart to learn that she had to undergo the traumatic experience on her own.

Low self esteem is not healthy. Don't torture ourselves mentally because we are worth it. Against all odds, our first accomplishment in life is that we were the first to swim to ovum; to be conceived. We need five aspects in our adulthood; good job, good income, good family, good friends and good lover. If you find yourself lacking one of those aspects, do something about it. Our problems will never go away until we take actions; massive actions. Most importantly, feed our brain with the right thoughts and supercharge our life.

Benarji you make missing the point an art form, on offense, but levels of esteem are a result not a cause and people are not weak because they are so affected. Many people would view your comments as a sigh of low self esteem for example.

Its not a crime nor necessarily a bad thing too high self esteem can be a problem too.

It something of a modern malady that we think we can control everything. things can happen to us through no fault or action of our own.

Finally if you found the rape so distressing imagine how the victim felt and take care with your responses she may read your comments you never know.

personally I find such courage and honesty humbling.

Benarji wrote: "It just breaks my heart to learn that she had to undergo the traumatic experience on her own.."

So that is something of the crux of the issue.

Victims tend not to report their abuse to family, friends, or authority members.
1) Commonly, the abuser or rapist is someone the victim knows. This is a violation of trust and safety so severe that victims often do not know who else or what else will hurt them. It becomes logical to the victim that if 1 person who was trusted could do this, than anyone who was trusted could as well. This does not mean they think everyone will rape them, but rather, that anyone could hurt them.

2) Commonly the abuse or rapist is someone the victim knows. (Emphasis) And therefore the victim had history with them. History which means that either someone told them that they don't like them or something was off, which the victim would have defended. History which means that someone could have said how amazing the pre-abuser is. To which the victim would be proud to be with them. Somehow, someway, the pre-victim is emotionally connected to them in a complex myraid way. After the abuse or rape then comes the mind trying to understand how it could happen. This is normally guilt. The victim undergoes mental gymnastics trying to understand what happened and to assign fault. And more times than not the fault resides with themselves. Guilt for not seeing it earlier. Guilt for defending the perp earlier. How could they be so stupid? Guilt for being with them after being warned. Guilt for not being good enough that forced the abuser to do this. Guilt for not doing it correctly. Guilt for feeling guilty. Etc.

3) Commonly the abuse or rapist is someone the victim knows. (More emphasis) Which means, that after the act, they still are around them. In the case of Gray, she had to go to school with her attackers. And that leaves more power with the abuser. They can lord it over the person. Making the victim feel that much more powerless. Or they can ignore it completely, disregarding all of the emotional trauma that the victim is undergoing making it 10x more painful as there is no outlet - no one to blame, to hate, as the abuser is not emotionally invested themselves. The power resides wholly with the attacker - they control the narrative.

So you have someone who is isolated, hurt, untrusting. And all they want to do is get back to normal. So are they going to reveal themselves to expose a weakness? Are they going to allow people to stare at them in sympathy or worse - accusation? No. Instead, most tend to keep their heads down and try so desperately to pretend it never happened while consciously/unconsciously avoiding anything that puts them back into that unsafe place again.

If you don't talk to that person again, you're safe
If you don't walk through that area, you're safe
If you shun skimpy clothes, you're safe
If you eat and become less desirable, you're safe.

Because the victim still refuses to believe they didn't do anything wrong. Something went wrong. But they can make sure that a repeat doesn't occur again by changing everything they can control - which is themselves and their actions. Control was taken, therefore victims do everything they can to gain control back.

I think the low-self esteem topic is particularly interesting in relationship to the idea of being fat. I think most people struggle to accept their bodies at some point in their lives and feel the need to fit a societal ideal of beauty. Self-esteem levels often don't translate to reality, for an example when I was far skinnier than I am now (and therefore closer to this society ideal), I had terrible self-esteem and thought of myself as fat. This fat that we carry on our bodies can change our views of ourselves, but it's also relative based on our current shape and size. For many people, their happiest, healthiest version of their bodies aren't going to be smallest version.

I'm all for body postivity and supporting yourself and your friends, but agree with Griselda that people should be allowed to express and discuss negative emotions as well.

When reading through a lot of the self-esteem issues of this book regarding Roxane's size, I felt heartbroken, for many reasons. I struggle with self-esteem regarding my own size (and I'm not terribly overweight, but I am overweight), and I've watched my mom struggle with her weight my entire life. But, especially when she talked about how people don't want her "fat" to be touching them, it really distressed me. My mom has been large my entire life, so when i read this, I had flashbacks to being a small child and I loved laying on my mom's side as she laid on the couch and watched tv. I loved being close to my mom and being in physical contact with her. When I'm around larger people like that, I never think I don't want their "fat" touching me. If I don't know the person, I want to keep my space because I don't know them and I'm not all that social. But, like the instance on the plane, those seats are tiny and you're going to be touching some else's body. That's just a fact. It doesn't really matter the size of the person (unless it's a small child or just unusually small adult). When she talked about this subtle (or not so subtle) fat shaming, I really felt pained. My mom has bone-on-bone arthritis in both knees, but she hates using the motorized carts at stores because she's afraid of people's judgment or afraid of embarrassing my sister or I. But I don't think it's something I or my mom should be embarrassed about. Like Roxane says a lot in her book, everybody has their own truths to their bodies. You shouldn't judge someone because you don't know their truth. If we all understood this and abided by this, I think we would have a lot less self-esteem issues, at least concerning bodies.

Ashley wrote: "When reading through a lot of the self-esteem issues of this book regarding Roxane's size, I felt heartbroken, for many reasons.

Beautifully written. Thank you for sharing these details. Roxane, never being a mother or having a mother who struggles with weight, would have never known how weight isn't important to those who love you unconditionally.

Give your mom a big hug for me when you see her next!

Personally, I have the impression that Roxanne Gay’s low self esteem wasn’t totally relate to her body, or her personal experiences. Sure, in her adulthood those factors were part of the problem, but if you read the way she talks about her prior relationship with her future rapist you can see that her low self esteem was already there.

As a person with an extremely low self esteem myself, I can relate with a lot of her experiences: I kept secrets from my family because I was afraid of their reaction, and I could pretend very well. Blaming her family is wrong, I have a loving and attentive family, I love my brother to bits, and even if they had their faults, I am a good pretender. So good that I can’t lie with my mother about anything, and yet she never suspected I had some secrets.

Plus, there are different way to hide. She says that her body is her fortress, mine is my appearance. I built a hard shell, so hard that I get to the point that I was unable to break it up.

I just recently discovered that my unconscious choices dictated by my low self esteem were damaging me, and I was about to screw up my whole existence because of that. I had to crash my face on it before being able to realise what was happening. I came to the realisation that I wasn’t the person I wanted to be. And not because of my life or my environment, but because of myself. From there, I started to rethink my concept of myself and tried to be the person I wanted to be, and surprisingly, so far it’s been rather simple!

Here’s my experience. Sorry for the double post

Luna wrote: " just recently discovered that my unconscious choices dictated by my low self esteem were damaging me, and I was about to screw up my whole existence because of that.."

That's a great point Luna. I think many of us do things or believe in things that are contrary to some of our values. And we may not even know we're doing it until an external stimuli shows us otherwise.

Luna wrote: " I came to the realisation that I wasn’t the person I wanted to be.."

I feel like that has a lot to do with low self-esteem. When you feel you're unable, for whatever reason, to be your true self. Whether that's because you don't trust the people around you, or your society to be accepting, or you don't trust your own competence in the matter. We just use external looks as a way to counteract it because it's easier to change something from the outside. Something tangible.

I know, personally, my low self-esteem comes more from my thoughts. Since I have anxiety and depression, I tend to think that my way of thinking is "bad" and in order to hide it, I just don't speak. And when I'm in social situations, if there's food, I use that as an excuse to keep my mouth occupied. Or I drink a lot of water and excuse myself to the restroom (since I drink a lot of water).

I too struggled in reading this, because while I have had SEASONS of low self esteem, or certain areas of my life that I'm not as happy about, I have never had the habitual self esteem issues that Roxane seems to have faced, both symptomatic of being a victim, but also, as was mentioned, even before that. I think she probably had the normal self esteem issues of any pre-teen and teen going through the physical changes of that age, and that probably made her more vulnerable to this "boy" (not sure what to call him, really), regardless of how wonderful or supportive her parents might have been. But of course, after that horrifying experience, she was left raw and completely vulnerable to any bad feeling she might have ever had about herself, and that only compounded over the years.

I found it difficult to read about her later choices, because there is this balance of depression and psychological damage for which I felt sympathy, but at the same time, so many choices she could make differently and not allow that experience to completely control the rest of her life, and she COULD live a different life, and yet chooses not to. It's not something I or anyone else can judge (and I would never hope anyone else could truly understand her position by experience!) but at the same time, in my head, if not my heart, it's hard NOT to judge. Everyone truly is fighting their own internal battles that we can't know or imagine.

I know I am responding to this months after the question was posted, but I bumped into a book that reminded me of this thread.

Please, moderators, if I am being OT feel free to remove my reply :)

The book is "Fight Like a Girl" by the Australian Clementine Ford. She used to be pointed the finger at because she was fat, althought she never got to Roxane Gay's body weight, so became an anorexic first and then a bulimic.

Her book wants to be "a love letter to all girls," and I am quoting her, but it is in fact the worst feminist manifesto I have ever read. She makes use of bad words, instead or solid argumentations, she seems to hate men and the book as a whole seems more the product of low self-esteem than truly empowering feminist ideas.

The thing is I noticed that many feminists, including me, turn to feminism in order to gain that sense of belonging that we are lacking. We should always be well aware, I think, of the difference between turning to a movement that empowers women as a group and sticking to a label that makes you feel allowed to say "F**k off" to whomever has something critical to say about you.

I think most women have low self-esteem, because it is way too common to be called "fat," "ugly" and many other names in primary school and during teenagehood. I'd say having a supportive family is crucial, but my personal opinion is we should all get professional support at some point in our lives, because we all get just way too much negative attention during our lives.

It is true also for power rapists, I believe: if only they felt good about themselves, they wouldn't need to overpower others. Anger rapists may as well benefit from a better understanding of their emotions.

In short, I honestly feel sorry for most of the people I know: we should all just be more supportive and work towards a better humanhood, because we all deserve to get the chance to live our lives as happily as we can. I am sure groups such as OSS do a fairly good job and there are plenty of opportunities to shape the society for the better. It's a matter of time, I hope, before we achieve a better and more positive environment :)

Clarissa, Congratulations for having the courage to face so much pain. You're on an incredibly important path and I'm sure it will finally be worth all the struggle.