PHOTO: Instagram/Priyanka Paul
KARACHI: While the psychological trauma of sexual abuse is often discussed and acknowledged, its physical implications are largely ignored.
Priyanka Paul, a 20-year-old illustrator and poet from India, took to Twitter earlier this week to speak on the issue. The artist-activist narrated her experience as a sexual assault survivor, and explained how the trauma robbed her of her ability to experience sexual pleasure.
“For as long as I can remember, or at least for most of my adult life or a couple of years before I turned 18 as well, I remember never having sensation in my breasts,” the artist said.
Paul used to believe that what she experiences, or the lack thereof, is a common occurrence.
“…For a long amount of time I thought that was normal. Maybe some women have sensation there and maybe some don’t, and maybe that’s true,” she said, adding that she always felt numb in her breasts and always wondered why that was so.
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In her attempt to rationalise her experience, she convinced herself that it was a biological problem. But it did not help her feel any differently.
“[I] always felt lacking. We as a culture put so much of a woman’s worth into her breasts,” she said.
“Touch my hand, touch my boob, same feeling,” Paul said. But the realisation that it was indeed not biology, rather physiology, came when she had a conversation with her aunt about her body piercings.
“My aunt was telling her therapist about me, about how I got a piercing in one of my nipples,” she said. “Her therapist said that this was a common trend among sexual assault trauma patients.”
As per Paul’s aunt’s therapist, people who have experienced sexual assault trauma are “desperate to see if they could feel anything at all”, so they get piercings in erogenous body parts, the artist added.
It is the body’s physiological response to sexual assault trauma, especially if it happens in childhood. “There are rape victims who have no sensation in their vagina because of what they went through. Your body shuts down,” the 20-year-old artist-activist said.
Paul shared her experience where she was repeatedly sexually assault by a teenage boy in her class, between the ages of 13 and 15.
“He would grope me in public, in the classroom, and ask his friends to do it as well,” Paul recounted, adding that she was heavily slut-shamed from her classmates. The lack of response from her teachers and the school administration added to the trauma, the repercussions of which were only felt by her.
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“[All of that made me] feel like I lack as a woman… Because we’ve been taught to put our worth into things like our breasts. To pride ourselves over this.”
“Every time I look at my breasts, it takes me back to what that boy did to me, what he took away from me,” the survivor adds.
The young artist implored people to take sexual assault trauma seriously.
“I think people have convinced themselves that it has mental health implications… [On the contrary], sexual assault and the trauma after it can have physical implications [as well],” she said.
What also hurt, Paul added, was the lack of awareness about the issue because of which she spent her teenage thinking something is wrong with her.
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“Don’t dismiss the conversation happening right now, no matter how sporadic, [because] 14-year-old Priyanka would have wanted someone to help her,” the artist said.
Read the full Twitter thread here.
