Articles: The Cutting Edge
By Sue Rochman
Anxious about their sexuality, young lesbians sometimes turn to self-mutilation
AIMEE ELIZABETH BELL CLEARLY RECALLS the first time she began to cut into her skin. It was a hot July night in her small Michigan town. She was in her bedroom, listening to Tori Amos, and the knife that she used to trim the wicks on her candles suddenly caught her eye. Soon eight thin dotted trails of bright red blood ran along her left forearm, from the crook of her elbow to the heel of her hand. Only when she saw the blood, Aimee Elizabeth says, did she realize what she had done.
"While I was doing it, I felt kind of numb," she recalls. "But then I snapped into reality. And I was scared. It surprised me that I had been able to do that to myself. But it also felt kind of good to have control over something like that. I had the control to make myself feel pain or not feel pain--it was my decision."
In a strange way it also made her feel safe. And for the two weeks prior to her first cutting, Aimee Elizabeth hadn't felt safe at all. On the Fourth of July she had fallen asleep on her friend's living room floor. She woke up shocked and scared--an older male friend was on top of her, raping her. She tried to fight him off, but she couldn't. She turned her head to look at the clock. It was 3:54 A.M. She was 11 years old.
Now, seven years later, as an 18-year-old high school senior, Aimee Elizabeth is talking publicly about her cutting for the first time.
According to Lynn Ponton, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of the The Romance of Risk, about one in ten women and men intentionally injure themselves. Most start as teenagers. Many have been sexually, physically, or emotionally abused as children. Some are struggling with depression. Others are experiencing conflict and anxiety about their gender or sexual orientation. "I view self-injury as a form--albeit an extreme form--of adolescent risk-taking behavior," says Ponton. "And in a culture that disparages gay youth and gay bodies, it's not surprising to me that these youth would be involved in more risky behavior."
Whether self-mutilation is more common among gay and lesbian youth than it is among heterosexual youth isn't known. "What we do know," says Ponton, "is that the group that's cutting is the group that's been abused, and more often gay youth have been abused. Also, those who cut often have unconscious conflicts, and if youth are questioning their sexual orientation, there can be a lot of conflict and anxiety. So it's not that they are self-mutilating because they are gay and lesbian, it's because they fit in these other categories."
Jane Hyman, author of the book Women Living With Self-Injury, agrees. "There was one woman I spoke with who explicitly mentioned the self-hatred she felt as a lesbian as one of the reasons she began to injure herself," recalls Hyman. "She felt this intense pressure to be straight, especially in high school, because the students who were accused of being gay were ridiculed and ostracized. She was determined that that not happen to her. So she wanted to be anything other than who she was."
AIMEE ELIZABETH BELL CLEARLY RECALLS the first time she began to cut into her skin. It was a hot July night in her small Michigan town. She was in her bedroom, listening to Tori Amos, and the knife that she used to trim the wicks on her candles suddenly caught her eye. Soon eight thin dotted trails of bright red blood ran along her left forearm, from the crook of her elbow to the heel of her hand. Only when she saw the blood, Aimee Elizabeth says, did she realize what she had done.
"While I was doing it, I felt kind of numb," she recalls. "But then I snapped into reality. And I was scared. It surprised me that I had been able to do that to myself. But it also felt kind of good to have control over something like that. I had the control to make myself feel pain or not feel pain--it was my decision."
In a strange way it also made her feel safe. And for the two weeks prior to her first cutting, Aimee Elizabeth hadn't felt safe at all. On the Fourth of July she had fallen asleep on her friend's living room floor. She woke up shocked and scared--an older male friend was on top of her, raping her. She tried to fight him off, but she couldn't. She turned her head to look at the clock. It was 3:54 A.M. She was 11 years old.
Now, seven years later, as an 18-year-old high school senior, Aimee Elizabeth is talking publicly about her cutting for the first time.
According to Lynn Ponton, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of the The Romance of Risk, about one in ten women and men intentionally injure themselves. Most start as teenagers. Many have been sexually, physically, or emotionally abused as children. Some are struggling with depression. Others are experiencing conflict and anxiety about their gender or sexual orientation. "I view self-injury as a form--albeit an extreme form--of adolescent risk-taking behavior," says Ponton. "And in a culture that disparages gay youth and gay bodies, it's not surprising to me that these youth would be involved in more risky behavior."
Whether self-mutilation is more common among gay and lesbian youth than it is among heterosexual youth isn't known. "What we do know," says Ponton, "is that the group that's cutting is the group that's been abused, and more often gay youth have been abused. Also, those who cut often have unconscious conflicts, and if youth are questioning their sexual orientation, there can be a lot of conflict and anxiety. So it's not that they are self-mutilating because they are gay and lesbian, it's because they fit in these other categories."
Jane Hyman, author of the book Women Living With Self-Injury, agrees. "There was one woman I spoke with who explicitly mentioned the self-hatred she felt as a lesbian as one of the reasons she began to injure herself," recalls Hyman. "She felt this intense pressure to be straight, especially in high school, because the students who were accused of being gay were ridiculed and ostracized. She was determined that that not happen to her. So she wanted to be anything other than who she was."