Stretch factor: How incest works

Tonight marks the true beginning of my long-thought-of project - a book about incest - not the personal story, not the self-help kind, but a book similar to Malcolm Gladwell's Blink - a popular science book about incest. Book name - Stretch: How incest works. The name might change in the future, but the purpose will remain the same - to educate the world on how actually incest works, the mechanics of it - from physical sense, to relational, to psychological: the facts without indication of what is good or bad - simply about what is. For example, every 3rd girl and every 8th boy in US is a victim of incest. How? This is how - of all child sexual abuse cases, 95% are committed by relatives - read - INCEST. People are having a hard time believing that this is happening all around us, through us, in many families, among neighbors - people don't know how to read signs, what to do, how to understand it. This book will be an attempt at giving people a tool - it will be illustrated by photographs - translating emotions felt at various stages / types of situations - into images. I am intending to interview as many incest survivors as possible in the course of creating this book - so please contact me if you are a survivor, and let's chat.

Today is a special day because by accident I have discovered that a person with whom I was in contact before is actually an incest survivor herself. I have asked her what it felt like to her, and she said it felt twisted, like another layer underneath a smiley face - everyone pretends that everything is all right, but underneath it is all rotten and wrong and painful. I will ask her permission to write the entire interview here, but I wanted to thank her for inspiring me to finally start on the book instead of simply thinking about it. 

If you are a photographer who wants to get involved, please contact me as well - I find it that with images we will be able to break through the noise and really get attention of the non-believers, of the ones who ignore and walk by, who choose not to know and not to meddle, lest it stinks if they touch it. And it does, but it stinks only because it has not been touched in a long time, and it clears up after many people help the victims to get rid of their stagnation, of them suppressing their emotions, of their untold stories. Help clean their wounds.

The book name was inspired by my own most burning question - the question that I had ever since I remembered that I was raped by my father at the age of 5 - how on earth is it possible to put in a grown penis into a vagina that is the size of a little finger? (And after remembering that this was not the first time, but the first time was when I was 2 and my step-grandfather did it - this question bewildered me even more). I mean, how is it physically possible, without tearing everything up? And the answer is - it is. It is not about the size, or the age, or the "being dry or not" - it is about stretch factor. Some people are more stretchy than the others - if forced in, and enough give is felt, more will be forced in. I happened to be very stretchy - both my curse and my salvation. My curse because it allowed the rape to go on for so many years, my salvation - because I didn't completely rip, and didn't suffer as much from the wounds when I could have. This simple fact usually startles people and is TMI for them. Well, this is what it is all about - to penetrate, meaning to dominate, meaning whoever holds the knife and cuts, that person has the power. Whoever is being cut, is the victim. Rape is all about power - the penis only happens to be the weapon of choice for this particular crime. And it is very hard to detect the aftermath - because, well, we stretch. And after that - we heal. The tissue in the genital area is one of the most regenerating ones, only not many people know about it.

The other burning question I always had was - how come the closest person to me - the one who is supposed to care for me - is doing such a violent and disgusting thing? Well, stretch factor again - it is all about stretch in the family fabric - if it is stretched thin already, it is very easy to rip - in fact, it is not even ripping it, it is simply finding a hole and making it larger. Some families are more stretchy than the others - in terms of boundaries, commitments, responsibilities, love, etc. In mine it was practically a hole upon a hole, from lack of boundaries to complete neglect of me starting from when I was a baby. Stretch factor again.

I will think more about how to flesh out the idea, and if you have any comments, suggestions, please let me know. But so far this name means exactly what it is and how it works. I'm inspired.

P.S.: I have since renamed the book to First Aid For Incest - here is more info on it.

Photo by Erich Ferdinand.