Victimized Daughters: Sexual Violence and the Empathic Female Self

Abstract

M U UCH OF T H E R E C E N T scholarship on development of female self has focused on relationality as a defining characteristic of feminine (Jordan et al. 1991), that quality of femaleness that distinguishes women from men in all aspects of human endeavor, including parenting, intimacy, moral judgment, and scientific inquiry (Gilligan 1982; Rubin 1983; Keller 1985). emphasis on significance of female relationality can be understood largely as a response to androcentric interpretations of human personality and social morality in which developmental models of autonomy and separateness ascribe to women role of less mature, less moral, and less individuated sex (Gilligan 1982). Thus, by contrast, feminist social psychology emphasizes significance of attachment for female development and value of relational self (see, e.g., Jordan 1991; Miller 1991). Within this paradigm, scholars have stressed importance of empathy as the process through which one's experienced sense of basic connection and similarly to other humans is established (Jordan 1991, 69). In construction of theoretical models of empathic connection, mother-daughter relationship has been developmental model through which feminist scholars have sought to explain child's ability to experience inner state of another. Writing on self-in-relation theory, Janet L. Surrey describes significance of mother-daughter relationship: The ability of mother to listen and respond, empathize or 'mirror' child's feelings has been well described by Winnicott.., Kohut..., and others; it has also been seen as beginning of development of experience of self. Here we are describing girl's