E
elsker
Guest
Hello Everyone
I know most of us have heard about Ms. Pitt’s double mastectomy a while back and today we are again hearing about her surgery to remove both ovaries (one healthy and one suspicious for cancer). Not sure if she still has her uterus and cervix but I suspect that at some point she will remove them as well.
She lost her grand-mother, mother and aunts to breast and ovarian cancer and as a mother with children is terrified of dying of the disease as well. However, I have to ask one question based on her admitted history of sexualization and self harm: Is she using cancer fears as an (unconscious) permission/rationalization to mutilate her body?
Looking at her admitted past which includes tragic sexualization and self harm could it be another form of the old self abuse now manifesting via surgery where surgeons are the ones doing harm and harm that she is directing out of paranoia, anguish, grief and a desire to strip herself of her outward signs of female sexuality as a response to having been abused as a child?
I ask these questions not to demean her or any women who may fear cancer, have been abused or struggle with the cross of self harm but because I (like Ms. Pitt) have an extensive history of reproductive cancer in my family and have had my own cancer scares and biopsies to detect malignancies in my breast and to investigate possible abnormalities in the cells of my cervix. Praise God no cancers were discovered and any abnormalities are being monitored but no surgeries have been considered. I am also an incest victim and have self harmed as a young person and have had emotional struggles, suicidal intentions and sexual victimization as an adult.
My childhood sexualization and addiction to self harm along with the sex abuse scandals in the church caused me to abandon my faith for a quarter century out of confusion and misplaced anger. I have been at the very bottom of low self esteem, self loathing, anger, fear, pain and insecurity in myself as a woman, wife and mother. At the height of my pain and fear any doctor could have convinced me that the only way to get control of the threat of cancer would be to take out my organs (healthy or sick) and in my fragile state I might have found this cathartic: a way of exercising control over my body when I felt I had no control over the things done to my body by others who controlled and in a sense were still controlled my life by way of the terror I still felt when recalling-in PTSD induced flashbacks, triggers, etc,- the things done to me. This is the point I’m making, as a Catholic but also as a woman. When is it sensible to turn to preemptive measures and when does that desire become less about stopping a disease process and more about considering YOURSELF (along with breasts and other reproductive organs that are part of our sexual identity as well as gender) the disease that must be destroyed and cut out?
I myself have had moments of absolute self hatred and fear where the thought of “getting rid” of female organs would have been a relief to me. Now that I’m back in the church I understand how beautiful our bodies and sexuality are and that God gifted men and women with these so that in marriage we can use these gifts as a sacred extension of what we feel for one another. From this expression we are also gifted with children who are made of love and are deserving of love as well as knowledge of the loving, saving power of Jesus and his church. Having been an incest survivor I learned the hard way the value of children, the sacredness of human life and how necessary it is to defend and protect life as well as our own dignity as men and women.
I know Ms. Pitt is not a Catholic-she is a liberal who supports some of the things the church is strongly against. I also know ,however, that she has the admiration and sympathy of many women Catholics and non-Catholics alike and this concerns me greatly. Coming out with the Op-Ed pieces that she has after every surgery, Ms. Pitt is essentially saying to the world: ‘If you are a wife, mother and have responsibilities to others, you are a bad and selfish person if you don’t cut out not only sick but healthy organs if there is even a chance they might be or could become cancerous someday!’
What scares the heck out of me is that Catholic women who are unsure or in denial of church teaching may be swayed by this ‘siren-song’ of “prophylactic surgery is good” propaganda and think that they have a duty to their families to disregard church teaching in favor of some false sense of security which can never be proven to have prevented something that may have never happened or could have been treated in ways that do not destroy the natural functioning of healthy reproductive organs. And obviously not every organ that can become cancerous can be removed. My husband joked: ‘So if she fears brain cancer or lung cancer is she going to get her brain and lungs removed?’
Going back to mine and Ms. Pitt’s experiences of abuse and exploitation, I can’t help but feel that faith and belief that we can be and are worth being healed and redeemed is instead being replaced by the notion that things of faith and hope don’t matter ,instead, what matters is what amount of control we can exert over our physicality; leaving the soul isolated to fend for itself, hidden under the facade of “control”- cutting out not only body parts but cutting off our relationship with God in the process (when ironically) we are the most in need of Him.
What is your take on this?
Blessings to all.
I know most of us have heard about Ms. Pitt’s double mastectomy a while back and today we are again hearing about her surgery to remove both ovaries (one healthy and one suspicious for cancer). Not sure if she still has her uterus and cervix but I suspect that at some point she will remove them as well.
She lost her grand-mother, mother and aunts to breast and ovarian cancer and as a mother with children is terrified of dying of the disease as well. However, I have to ask one question based on her admitted history of sexualization and self harm: Is she using cancer fears as an (unconscious) permission/rationalization to mutilate her body?
Looking at her admitted past which includes tragic sexualization and self harm could it be another form of the old self abuse now manifesting via surgery where surgeons are the ones doing harm and harm that she is directing out of paranoia, anguish, grief and a desire to strip herself of her outward signs of female sexuality as a response to having been abused as a child?
I ask these questions not to demean her or any women who may fear cancer, have been abused or struggle with the cross of self harm but because I (like Ms. Pitt) have an extensive history of reproductive cancer in my family and have had my own cancer scares and biopsies to detect malignancies in my breast and to investigate possible abnormalities in the cells of my cervix. Praise God no cancers were discovered and any abnormalities are being monitored but no surgeries have been considered. I am also an incest victim and have self harmed as a young person and have had emotional struggles, suicidal intentions and sexual victimization as an adult.
My childhood sexualization and addiction to self harm along with the sex abuse scandals in the church caused me to abandon my faith for a quarter century out of confusion and misplaced anger. I have been at the very bottom of low self esteem, self loathing, anger, fear, pain and insecurity in myself as a woman, wife and mother. At the height of my pain and fear any doctor could have convinced me that the only way to get control of the threat of cancer would be to take out my organs (healthy or sick) and in my fragile state I might have found this cathartic: a way of exercising control over my body when I felt I had no control over the things done to my body by others who controlled and in a sense were still controlled my life by way of the terror I still felt when recalling-in PTSD induced flashbacks, triggers, etc,- the things done to me. This is the point I’m making, as a Catholic but also as a woman. When is it sensible to turn to preemptive measures and when does that desire become less about stopping a disease process and more about considering YOURSELF (along with breasts and other reproductive organs that are part of our sexual identity as well as gender) the disease that must be destroyed and cut out?
I myself have had moments of absolute self hatred and fear where the thought of “getting rid” of female organs would have been a relief to me. Now that I’m back in the church I understand how beautiful our bodies and sexuality are and that God gifted men and women with these so that in marriage we can use these gifts as a sacred extension of what we feel for one another. From this expression we are also gifted with children who are made of love and are deserving of love as well as knowledge of the loving, saving power of Jesus and his church. Having been an incest survivor I learned the hard way the value of children, the sacredness of human life and how necessary it is to defend and protect life as well as our own dignity as men and women.
I know Ms. Pitt is not a Catholic-she is a liberal who supports some of the things the church is strongly against. I also know ,however, that she has the admiration and sympathy of many women Catholics and non-Catholics alike and this concerns me greatly. Coming out with the Op-Ed pieces that she has after every surgery, Ms. Pitt is essentially saying to the world: ‘If you are a wife, mother and have responsibilities to others, you are a bad and selfish person if you don’t cut out not only sick but healthy organs if there is even a chance they might be or could become cancerous someday!’
What scares the heck out of me is that Catholic women who are unsure or in denial of church teaching may be swayed by this ‘siren-song’ of “prophylactic surgery is good” propaganda and think that they have a duty to their families to disregard church teaching in favor of some false sense of security which can never be proven to have prevented something that may have never happened or could have been treated in ways that do not destroy the natural functioning of healthy reproductive organs. And obviously not every organ that can become cancerous can be removed. My husband joked: ‘So if she fears brain cancer or lung cancer is she going to get her brain and lungs removed?’
Going back to mine and Ms. Pitt’s experiences of abuse and exploitation, I can’t help but feel that faith and belief that we can be and are worth being healed and redeemed is instead being replaced by the notion that things of faith and hope don’t matter ,instead, what matters is what amount of control we can exert over our physicality; leaving the soul isolated to fend for itself, hidden under the facade of “control”- cutting out not only body parts but cutting off our relationship with God in the process (when ironically) we are the most in need of Him.
What is your take on this?
Blessings to all.
