Go Get Yours, E. Jean

In her mid-60s, author Patricia McCormick discovered it IS possible for an abuse survivor to find sexual pleasure again. Now she wants to change the cultural narrative that insists otherwise.

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“I never had sex again.”

This is how E. Jean Carroll described the damage done to her after being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump in a Bergdorf’s dressing room in 1996.

The famous and famously feisty Carroll went further in an interview last month on The New York Times Modern Love podcast, describing herself as a “desiccated, skinny, old lady … who had wiped out 30 years of pleasure from her life.”

As a survivor of sexual harm, I can relate. I’d accepted a wan sex life for years, blaming my “issues” on the harm I’d experienced as a child. I’d still be captive to that belief if, too, had I not been forced to confront finding myself newly single at 64.

To women like me, E. Jean Carroll is a national hero for the courage she showed by taking on a certain predator-in-chief. Like all survivors, Carroll has a before and an after. Before that day in the dressing room, she was a woman in full, a woman with a rockin’ sex life.

As a survivor of sexual harm, I’d accepted a wan sex life for years, blaming my “issues” on the harm I’d experienced as a child. I’d still be captive to that belief if, too, had I not been forced to confront finding myself newly single at 64.

After, she closed up shop. Like a lot of women in the pre-MeToo era, she decided against going to the police (a friend said Trump would bury her) and she didn’t take advantage of what therapy was available (she felt hypocritical, as a popular writer for Elle magazine giving advice about how to have the rockin’ sex life she’d lost). More important, as she shared on the Modern Love podcast, she followed the family code she’d been taught: smile and move on.

Listen to E. Jean Carroll on the Modern Love podcast:

Thiry years ago, when Carroll was assaulted, survivors were often encouraged to remain silent; we shouldered the shame that rightly belonged to our abusers—and dealt with the lasting psychological and sexual harm in secret. Many of us were even blamed for our own victimization. Gradually, though, behind the closed doors of therapists’ offices and women’s groups, survivors started to find their voices, some of them speaking out publicly for a new narrative of sexual harm, one that insisted on compassion and support for victims. Then, in 2006, the #MeToo movement threw those doors wide open, fortifying and honoring the claims of victims, and outing predators, and insisting on accountability.

But somehow, along the way, a quietly destructive narrative grew up alongside those newer, more enlightened attitudes. Whispered or implied, it goes something like this: They’re damaged. Permanently.

I first picked up on this message in a survivors’ group I joined when I was in my 40s, many years after the harm I experienced in childhood. It was the late ’90s. The therapists and survivors in that group were wonderful at offering solace; I am forever grateful to them. But whenever I raised the issue of regaining sexual agency and vitality, the room fell silent. The first time I was met with that silence—early in my own journey as a therapy patient—I was doused in shame, feeling blamed for my own sexual desires.

Somehow, along the way, a quietly destructive narrative grew up alongside those newer, more enlightened attitudes. Whispered or implied, it goes something like this: They’re damaged. Permanently.

But as years went on and I kept trying, I came to accept that conversations with survivors about regaining a full sex life was a kind of third rail. Later, as a trained facilitator, I was warned that frank conversations about sex, even healthy sex, could be triggering to survivors. I was told that by putting desire on the agenda, I ran the risk of re-traumatizing my fellow survivors.

The many books I read about sexual trauma devoted only a scant chapter to sexual recovery, and the tone was dreary and defeatist. Movies that honor the experiences of survivors usually conclude with only a modest uplift, a door cracking open toward recovery, or sometimes the possibility of a gentle, understanding partner who “gets it.” The message survivors receive is this: You are damaged. And it’s okay, you don’t have to have a rockin’ sex life anymore.

I think this story line developed, in part, because survivors were required to prove that they’d suffered. In the he-said/she-said world of dueling accounts of a sexual encounter, especially when forensic evidence was lacking, or when the victim was a child, the guilt of the perpetrator was often established by documenting the suffering of the survivor. Which is real. Don’t get me wrong. The pain, the shame, the flashbacks, the depression, the self-harm: this is all real. I know this firsthand.

But by focusing so much on this suffering, the natural result is the you’re-damaged narrative, which has the reverberating effect of giving perpetrators too much power in our lives going forward, and making sexual healing seem like a remote possibility.

Patricia McCormick, recently.

When I was in my 50s I filed a complaint about the parish priest who’d abused me when I was a teenager. It took several years for the diocese to get back to me, When I was finally interviewed by a lawyer for the Diocese of Harrisburg, he asked coyly about any sexual difficulties I’d had in the years since. He proceeded to turn to my then-husband, who was attending the meeting with me in solidarity, and said, “I bet it’s been tough, right?” This wink-wink, nudge-nudge comment from a man who’d spent his whole career handling abuse cases!

I was a survivor. I was damaged. I bought fully into the narrative that had been fed to me my entire life. And now it was worse because I was 64, and another message hammered at my self-confidence: that I was old, unwanted, unattractive. It was too late for me to have that rockin’ sex life. I filed for divorce, ready to close up shop.

I had, in fact, labored under the idea that I was damaged because I couldn’t easily access my desire. I went to therapists, gynecologists, and healers. My slow-to-ignite desire was a permanent condition, I was told. Like diabetes. It couldn’t be cured, but I’d manage it. But then, I found out my husband of four decades had been unfaithful for virtually all of our marriage. His inclination to go elsewhere seemed proof positive to me that I was, indeed, sexually inadequate.

I blamed it on my circumstances. I was a survivor. I was damaged. I bought fully into the narrative that had been fed to me my entire life. And now it was worse because I was 64, and another message hammered at my self-confidence: that I was old, unwanted, unattractive. It was too late for me to have that rockin’ sex life. I filed for divorce, ready to close up shop.

But some nagging instinct led me to seek out a sex therapist. I would at least get to the bottom of my “damage” in my quest to understand what led to the demise of my marriage. I also saw several sexual health practitioners, including a pelvic floor specialist and a gynecologist who specialized in sexual health. I asked each of them to examine me for actual, physical damage, to check for scar tissue, muscle tightness. Turns out, I had no physical signs of this problem I seemed so intent on finding. What I learned from my sex therapist: my husband was the one with sexual problems. Duh.

And yet, this was a revelation to me. It was also absolution. And it was an opportunity—a terrifying one—to discover who I was, sexually, without the only long-term partner I’d ever had. I’m fortunate because I had the means, emotional support, and years of therapy under my belt to give myself a new sex education in the aftermath of my husband’s betrayal. It took books, classes, videos, as well as a little THC, a lot of courage—and eventually a wonderful new partner. Turns out I am capable of exquisite, profound pleasure. I am capable of true intimacy. I am capable of abandon. I recovered—or, I prefer to think, uncovered—the sexual vitality that was mine all along. The very thing that Carroll laments having lost in that dressing room in Bergdorf’s.

I came to understand, too, that I had absorbed the damage narrative and used it to circumscribe my sex life, to deprive myself of full agency. My focus on that damage weakened rather than empowered me. To address sexual harm in a holistic way, we need to make room for pleasure in the conversations we have about recovery. We need to prioritize restoring sexual function—and joy!—for survivors of sexual harm in the same way that it has been afforded men with erectile dysfunction. But, in order to do that, we must first rewrite the narrative. We need to expand our view of survivors so that it that respects and honors our suffering and need for safety, but also encourages and empowers rather than weakens us.

This is worth keeping in mind as we support survivors—including the Epstein survivors who spoke so clearly on Capitol Hill at the same time E. Jean Carroll was speaking on the Modern Love podcast. It took incredible courage for Carroll to fight Trump in court. But I’d wager that it took nearly as much courage to acknowledge that she’d never been intimate with another person after his assault.

I’m fortunate because I had the means, emotional support, and years of therapy under my belt to give myself a new sex education in the aftermath of my husband’s betrayal. It took books, classes, videos, as well as a little THC, a lot of courage—and eventually a wonderful new partner. Turns out I am capable of exquisite, profound pleasure. I am capable of true intimacy. I am capable of abandon.

“It feels horrible,” she said, to realize that he’d had such a profound and lasting impact on her sexuality. “But,” she said, “if it leads to me obtaining the thing that I have been without and lack and feel horrible that I haven’t had it, if it leads me to having it—it might be nice.”

E. Jean Carroll has already reclaimed so much—for herself, for all women—by fighting Trump in court (a victory that was upheld on September 8th). And now, by speaking so candidly and optimistically, she may well have inspired another cultural moment. Let this moment be one that invites all of us, especially her fellow survivors, to rewrite the cultural narrative about sexual harm. It can still be a narrative that respects suffering, that honors a need for safety, but let it also affirm sexual vitality and joy. The headline on that Modern Love podcast starts with an acknowledgement of that suffering: E Jean’s Vibrant Sex Life Ended 30 Years Ago. But it’s the second line that may well be the springboard for this new narrative: She wants it back.

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Patricia McCormick is an author, journalist and activist in the fight against book bans. She is writing a memoir.

Check out all of the Oldster personal essays… P.S. Typos happen. Please forgive me if you find any! - Sari Botton