Trauma & Taboo: The Unspeakability of Sexual Violation

Drunk Church

Continuing with our Season 2 Villain Arc, we examine the vilification of victims and the gridlock of taboos that surround sexual violation through a discussion of our very own Aurora Laybourn’s original work “Cavarero’s Repugnance: Naming Sexual Violence”. Building from a critique of Adriana Cavarero’s "Horrorism", Aurora argues that the repugnance of sexual violence has a silencing effect that renders it unintelligible and unspeakable by recontextualizing Medusa, the figure Cavarero uses to represent the horror she evoked on others, as a rape victim herself.. The figure of Medusa exposes how when faced with victims and their narratives we overt our eyes and choose not to see, preferring to villainize them instead. Looking straight on has a freezing effect, as to do so would force us to confront the horrifying extent to which we are implicated in perpetuating the negative effects of sexual violence.

We apply this critique to a wide range of issues ranging from interpersonal harm, plagiarism, sex work and transness—asking ourselves what it means to engage with the messy intelligibility of violation regardless of the horror, and to see the human face behind the gorgon's mask.

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