Experiencing sexual violence as someone who identifies as non-binary
Written by: Amna Mukhtar.
Trigger Warning: This blog contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors.
I’ve always hated the phrase I’ll spare you the gory details. As humans we never do, not when gore is involved. We like to lean in and say scary things with a malicious grin, eyes narrowing. Three months after I was raped by my ex-boyfriend, I overheard someone whisper in the school canteen, “I’ll spare you the gory details, but it turns out he’s a predator”. I remember pouring my coffee into a paper cup and leaving angry because I was always going to be the one, you know? I was going to be the best part of both my parents and I was going to be the best at being a friend and one day I was going to be the best wife and then the best mother. Tick, tick, tick… I was going to check all of the right boxes and do all the right things and never break down (at least not in public). I was going to make it. Or so I thought. I could attempt to describe how traumatising, how absolutely terrifying it is to have your soul, space and safety violated but I’ll spare you the gory details.
I began to ask a myriad of questions in order to understand why it happened in the first place and many of these questions turned inwards. How often was I myself, and how often was I just outside my body, a complacent witness in my own destruction? When was the first time I dropped my head to avoid the wrath of a bad man, in the ghosting way that girls are taught to do? Did I fix my hair on impulse in the middle of zoom meetings, attempting to look pretty even off-guard? Did I cry beautifully? Am I Medusa or Aphrodite? How often did I skip meals? When collapsing my ribs in the mirror and pinching at my waist, was it my mother’s voice in my head, or my own? How often did I say - oh, I hate mine and mean my body/spirit/mind? Was there ever a time where I really felt safe in my body?
See, here’s the thing: the jargon of womanhood doesn’t sit comfortably in my mouth. I used to dream of being abducted by aliens and made perfect by their advanced technology because I was barely able to wear my skin without shivering. This body felt so foreign to me, a country invaded. I googled latibule on the back of the bus and wrote a poem where the first letters all spelled out who even am I anymore. I googled I don’t like being a girl and then I don’t like being boxed in and then girl who doesn’t like being a girl and then please just let me out.
They say that in the effort to navigate healing after an assault you completely change as a person but I disagree; After violation comes the reclamation of what was always there. I used to wear my girlhood like a pageant sash, like look at me! I am all curves and hips and long hair! I felt unattractive if I wore hoodies and joggers so I’d squeeze myself into tight jeans and suck in my stomach and swallow my tongue whenever his hands slipped somewhere they didn’t belong. I realised in my process of healing that that girl wasn’t gone, she just never existed in the first place. I realised that I was no longer good at being a good daughter and thought, isn’t it so horrifying to be knee-deep in a forest fire, gutted in a stairwell, lying naked in the mud? When I finally came out to my mother she nodded and said you are becoming a fiercer version of yourself. When the moon looked down, she smiled, just as you should.
Of course, gender means different things to different people. Like I said before, being a woman was inherently performative to me and I found myself wanting to shrug off the entire concept. Letting it go was healing. When she was set on fire, they rose from the ashes and it was so freeing! I was honest with who I was, who I am. But I am also completely aware that non-binary is a bad word. It reeks of questioning, emphasising our duality, on our hearts that just want happiness. Non-binary is a joke. it is “I’m not into labels” on t.v. (cue the laughter!) and it is “alone” in my life (cue the awkward silence). It is the risk of being kicked out of any community. Of belonging to none, of sickness, of you just want attention. But to me, it is a personal revolution. It is the act of saying my name before you perceive what you think I am. It is the separation of the soul from the body. It is Amna.
I am done pretending that this body is the equivalent of checking a box. I will not spare the intricate, gory details of who I am.
“They’d like their ice cream with a cone”, my best friend says softly. It is the first time somebody uses my pronouns in a public setting. She says it without hesitation. How wonderful, how wonderful. Most of all- how safe.
Author Bio: Amna is a 17 year old poet, writer and activist who hopes to study law and reform the way our judicial system approaches sexual violence.
