So…how do you torture a woman? Well, you can tie her up on the rack and rip her bones apart from the sockets. That’s one way. Or you can tear apart her mind and her body. Now, there’s two ways to do this: You can pry her body away from her mind, or you can pry her mind away from her body. Either way, it works out to the same thing – you stop the woman. She can think but not act, or she can act but not think. To pry her body away from her mind, you need to physically humiliate her. Of course, rape is the most traditional method, but it’s not the only one, by any means. You can ridicule her body, or make fun of the things she does. You can make her self-conscious about her looks. You can make her strap her breasts in. You can make her embarrassed about her periods. You can make her frightened of puberty, frightened of sex, frightened of aging, frightened of eating. You can terrorize her with her own body, and then she will torture herself.
Carolyn Gage
'The Second Coming of Joan of Arc'
