I didn’t really have much of a sexual identity till I was an adult. Before I was abused by my partner, all I’d really done was making out. My ideas of sexuality were heavily influenced by the Mill & Boons books and erotica I’d come across. These books gave me the idea that sexualised body parts like the breasts and groin must be super sensitive. Because mine weren’t, I assumed there was something wrong with me. Much later, when I started having sex by choice and didn’t have orgasms or found myself getting bored with sex, my friends and even some therapists suggested that it was because I had been abused – it wasn’t natural otherwise. It took me years to accept that I just don’t get pleasure from clitoral stimulation or penetration, and that neither of those things were solely due to the abuse I faced.
This idea of certain body parts being more sensitive than others was also Tushar (my ex) believed in, because when I didn’t react as he thought I would to forceful penetration (because I just didn’t really feel it all that much), he would add more and more force to increase the pain. He often told me that there was something wrong with me, that I must enjoy the pain or else I would react more or scream like any “normal” girl would. He would constantly up the pain and tell me that I had asked for it, that I wanted it because what else could my “muted” responses mean?
Shame and sexuality are far too closely connected in our culture, especially for women. Add in a kink or non-vanilla-man-pleasing-missionary kind of desires, and that shame quotient has a tendency to rise drastically.
Even before I met Tushar, I was already devouring BDSM erotica. Every time he told me that I was asking for it, a part of me believed him – because I had masturbated to similar scenes before. No one had ever taught me what consent means. It took me years to teach myself that masturbating to or engaging in BDSM sex consensually is dramatically different from those exact actions being done to me without my consent.
One of the hardest things to swallow about my abuse has been the number of people who were complicit in it; the guards in the building, the teacher who once saw the marks on my body and told me to ‘cover up’, the police who called Tushar rather than filing my complaint, and the doctor who came by the few times I tried to kill myself to make sure I wasn’t actually going to die. No matter how much different parts of my body hurt, I never saw another doctor unless I had a foolproof excuse for having those pains. Which means that I certainly did not visit any gynaecologist.
The first gynaecologist I saw seemed to be a lot more concerned with whether or not my scarred vagina would allow me to successfully give birth or get pregnant, than my actual health. I never went back to her, never even looked at the results of the tests she did. The next gynaecologist I went to after a tear in my vagina (during consensual sex) made me feel so disgusting that the instant I returned home, I showered and howled. I have at least half a dozen similar stories. Even today, I don’t really get conclusive help on these vaginal tears and they still often open up from penetrative sex. Feeling my vagina tear open and remembering how it happened tends to have a negative impact on one’s sex life, and desire to have sex.
Over the last few years, my female friends and I have often shared gynaecologists’ horror stories, asked each other questions we couldn’t ask doctors and used the internet as our guide. In Delhi, there is a floating list of non-judgemental gynaecologists, but the list is short. We also talk about what needs to change to make things better for us and others like us.
The one undeniable conclusion is that India needs Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) and gender sensitisation as part of school curriculum. Please note that I say sexual education and not just ‘sex’ education. Young people need to be learning about sex and sexuality from sources which aren’t randomly searched on the internet. Considering the taboo around sex and gender inequality in India being so high, I don’t imagine that things can change without CSE and gender sensitisation. I know married women who didn’t even realise they’d had sex until they were told they were pregnant.
With the repeal of Section 377, with our generation questioning the ideas which worldwide media has been promoting, the only way to push this movement forward is to include everyone and promote a level of gender equality which is all-encompassing. A combination of CSE and gender sensitisation which covers not just contraceptives and responsible sex, but also consent, sex with different gender configurations. An open dialogue about pleasure is the strongest method to transform the current atmosphere around sexual health and reproductive rights. With these topics, I find myself giving up on the previous generation and focusing more on not repeating the same bad habits of our generation.