Let's Talk About Rape — Empowering survivors, changing the narrative

The childhood sexual abuse left its mark in more then one way.

shumu

Child sexual abuse and rape survivor from Bangladesh

My name is Shumu. I was born into a Bangladeshi family and into a culture, where the agency over a woman or a child’s body is not one that is acknowledged in the first place, and for me, that struggle to win back the authority over my own body was further complicated by the fact that at merely 5 years of age an adult that I was supposed to trust savagely and brutally abused me sexually and continued to do so for the next 6 years.

Now, let me clarify something before I go on any further. I was born into a very privileged, educated and progressive Bangladeshi family back in 1980 when the society was yet to be savaged by radical Islamization and regressive ideas about women’s rights that have plagued it over the past two decades. And yet, it happened to me. Unfortunately, it is extremely common for a child or a woman to experience sexual violence from all echelons of Bangladeshi society, whether they belong to an extremely poor family or you are part of the 1% extremely rich and privileged families.

When she witnessed the abuse herself, my mother actually blamed me for the abuse taking place on the first place as apparently I had seduced my abuser. She would continuously be suspicious of me for interacting with any male at all regardless of my relationship to them or how old they were. Often, this suspicions would result in severe beatings for me.

Let’s Talk About Rape® is a collaborative project with a therapeutic approach, where survivors set their own agenda and use a shutter release cable to take self-portraits as a powerful tool for healing and reclaiming their narrative.

Shumu, Texas, USA 2024

There are very few things in this world that can be more empowering as having the agency over one’s own body.

shumu

I must say in my mother’s defense that she was most likely continuing to behave the way her mother and later her husband had behaved towards her and was simply projecting the learned behaviour as an abuse victim herself on to me, although I came to that realization only when I became an adult myself and as a little girl, I could see no justification for the beatings and abuse that my mother would subject me to, making them even more painful.

There was constant criticism of how I dressed, how I sat or behaved in front of others and how I interacted with anyone of the opposite sex regardless of their age. My physical structure as a chubby child became my enemy. My mother would continuously be pulling an orna (a piece of clothing that is mainly worn to cover your breasts and in some cases to cover the head as well) over my growing breasts or be telling me to walk with my upper body contorted inward towards the front so that I would continuously be walking with my back humped over. Walking with your head held high was a sin as it would show off your growing breasts.

This continuous criticism together with the trauma of abuse, not only distorted how I would view myself as an adult, but also took a huge toll on my self confidence and coloured every single relationship I would ever find myself in. My lack of self confidence as a child and as a young woman was apparent enough to other predators that resulted me in getting violated again and again. Both in and out of relationships all the way into my adult life.

Shumu, Texas, USA 2024

I was 33 years old when I finally learned to accept my body and my sexuality as something normal rather then a curse and started to interact with others on my own terms rather then what my family and the society had taught me until then. It took years of therapy which I sought out myself as an international student in Canada, and a number of very abusive relationships until I finally learned to respect myself a little. I must say it is still an ongoing struggle and I have to continuously monitor myself so that I don’t fall back to the traps of the way I was thought to view myself as a child.

I was 34 when I finally publicly wrote about my abuse as a child in a feminist portal where I was writing in back then. Needless to say I faced harsh criticisms both from my mother and from the Bangladeshi society in general for writing about such a shameful incident publicly. My mother refused to speak to me for three months in spite of living under the same roof with me. My relationship with my mother only became somewhat normal after I had finally moved out from living with my parents at 37.

The childhood sexual abuse left its mark in more then one way. When I was 23, I was diagnosed with Endometriosis, which caused me excruciating pain, bleeding and other physical symptoms that severely limited my education and career choice and resulted me in having a complete hysterectomy when I was 38 years old. When I was 31, a very wise and kind naturopathic physician finally made the connection between that and my childhood sexual abuse. I understand that a lot of research still needs to be done in this area, however, today I have no doubt in my mind that there is a strong connection between the two.

As I kept volunteering as an activist for feminist causes, I eventually met a wonderful circle of passionate, brilliant women who were kind enough to select me for this project, to represent the Bangladeshi women who has been living with sexual violence. I must point it out here, that I am only one of the millions of women of Bangladeshi ethnicity and diaspora who have been living a brutal reality that is in most cases much worse then mine. Over the years, as a feminist and as a columnist in a feminist portal, I had the privilege to find out about the horrific abuse that a lot of Bangladeshi women go through everyday without receiving any of the help or support that I have been fortunate enough to have received as I have been living in Canada for most of my adult life.

When I first came to hear about this project, I was quite nervous. But as I became familiar with all that it entails, I finally realized, this would be an excellent opportunity to represent and give voice to millions of women from my background who have often been deprived of theirs.

The birth of Bangladesh as a country has been a result of a violent blood-shedding war that saw millions of people die and hundred thousands of Bangladeshi women being mass raped by Pakistani army and their local collaborators in 1971. Based on the official records, any where between 200000 and 400000 Bangladeshi women were trafficked, raped and tortured in what was very much an official military strategy of the Pakistani authorities. Reportedly, the idea was that once these women are impregnated by Pakistani soldiers, they will the give birth to half Pakistani children who will never go against their fatherland. It must also be said that the official numbers only represent a fraction of the actual rapes that were reported at all.

When I was taking these self-portraits, I felt that for the first time, I was gaining back the agency over my body that my family and the society has deprived me of for most of my life.

shumu

As a newly independent nation, we named these rape survivors “Birangona” or “The War Heroins” and promptly forgotten about them. In many cases, although the families of these women collected the pension that they were granted, they themselves were promptly abandoned because it was shameful to have anything to do with women who have survived sexual violence. They were impure and as such, had no place in society of the independent Bangladesh.

Is it any surprise then that Bangladesh as a country and the Bangladeshis as a nation and as a diaspora has so little regard for women who have survived sexual trauma? Just as the collaborators of the Pakistani army were eventually forgiven and integrated in the society, even today the Bangladeshi society has a tendency to forgive and even hide the sexual violence committed by the (mostly male) predators and brush it under the carpet while the survivors pay an exorbitant price. As a result, they barely speak of the sexual violence that they are subjected to.

When I was taking these self-portraits, I felt that for the first time, I was gaining back the agency over my body that my family and the society has deprived me of for most of my life. I hope that as you view these, as you peer into my gazes, you can also view the pain of the millions of Bangladeshi women who have undergone much worse abuse then I have. I hope that by speaking out, I am able to give voice to their voiceless pain.