Bonds, binds and binaries: Women, girls, silence, sexual desire and intergenerational transmission

This paper addresses the intergenerational transmission between women and girls surrounding the experience of sexual desire. I propose that at the heart of such transmission we find trauma, fear, silence, and a psychological dissociation that takes place in both adult women and girls - conceptualized here as a form of mutual dissociation called the dissociative bond, rooted in the larger social patriarchal structure. I point to the healing power of understanding this in a psychoanalytic framework and of particular forms of social activism (exemplified by SPARK, a grassroots feminist organization) as pathways toward resistance and transformation.