Body Politics, Sexual Violence and Trauma: Tattoos to ‘Re-Member’

Scrutinized, sanctioned, and regulated in both theory and practice, women’s bodies are undeniably political. Gender based violence occurs as a result of normative role expectations and an unequal distribution of power (Bloom 2008). Sexual violence against women, as one type of gender based violence, most proximately perpetrated by individuals is, arguably, a form of violence countenanced by the state through its institutions. In the case of sexual assault, the violence and trauma experienced by its victims are reinforced and intensified by the legal system. Our work has shown that tattoos work to reclaim and rename traumatic experience. Tattooing, as trauma by choice, allows one to remake meaning and reclaim experience, and to integrate trauma into one’s life in a way that demonstrates “the choice of what happens to [one’s] body (Inckle, 2016, citing Jeffreys 2000, p. 423).” In this presentation, we discuss proximate and distal causes of trauma as a consequence of sexual assault, and consider tattoos as commemorative, restorative, and empowering artifacts that make visible the invisibility of trauma, remake its meaning, and function to help survivors ‘re-member’ integrity and reconstruct identity.