Navigating the Hostile Terrain of Intimate and Cultural Violence

Abstract

The women’s narratives indicate that intimate and cultural violence go hand in hand, and that healing requires attention to both areas. For whose initial experience of violence occurred when they were young, the difficulty in this healing is that the violation often had serious implications for their childhood ability to create boundaries and evaluate danger that often persists into their adult relationships. A second difficulty in healing is that given the ubiquitous nature of stereotypes about Black girls and women, the relational and cultural context within which they approach healing is embedded in hostile attitudes toward their race, gender, sexuality, and class. The women I interviewed responded to this challenge with coping strategies and connections that allowed them to survive and maintain their lives. I examine these processes in this chapter, including their perspectives on how sexual violence impacted their intimate decision making, and relationships/encounters that helped them navigate the hostile terrain of negative stereotypes that showed up in places and relationships that were important to them.