Baby Suggs laughed, clear as anything. “You mean I never told you nothing about Carolina? About your daddy? You don’t remember nothing about how come I walk the way I do and about your mother’s feet, not to speak of her back? I never told you all that? Is that why you can’t walk down the steps? My Jesus my.”
But you said there was no defense.
“There ain’t.”
Then what do I do?
“Know it, and go on out the yard. Go on.”
~Toni Morrison, Beloved
So… how do you torture a woman? … You can pry her body away from her mind, or you can pry her mind away from her body.
To pry her body away from her mind, you need to physically humiliate her. Of course, rape is the most traditional method, but it’s not the only one, by any means. You can ridicule her body, or make fun of the things she does. You can make her self‑conscious about her looks. You can make her strap her breasts in. You can make her embarrassed about her periods. You can make her frightened of puberty, frightened of sex, frightened of aging, frightened of eating. You can terrorize her with her own body, and then she will torture herself.
~Carolyn Gage
