Not the perfect victim

Confessions of a Sex Addict: A Girl from Delhi Who Has It All Figured Out – Part 51: Not the Perfect Victim

How often do we turn women’s narratives about experiences where their consent wasn’t respected, or their autonomy over their own body was taken away, into stories about “bad sex” or “dissociated sex”?

Far too often.

It is prevalent, and it should be acknowledged that a woman’s autonomy over her own body is still treated like a privilege in this society rather than a right.

From wearing a short skirt to doing substances.

From going to someone’s house to kissing them first.

Everything somehow becomes the reason a woman was assaulted.

Except the one thing that actually causes assault:

The person who chose to assault her.

From being told as a child that it was my fault because I stopped and talked back to a man…

To being told, even if only by the voice inside my own head, that it was my fault because I got intoxicated…

Life has come full circle.

Sometimes I feel like I was given a woman’s body as a curse.

Today, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never written publicly before.

I spoke about it in therapy last year.

Later, I told a few close friends, my ex, and two other people.

Exactly six people have known this until today.

I am overweight.

And for years, I deliberately sabotaged my own weight loss.

My mother tried to help me.

Doctors tried to help me.

Sometimes I would follow through.

Sometimes I would quietly undo all the progress.

Because I genuinely believed that if I became thinner, I would be assaulted even more.

People assume that overweight women are invisible.

That wasn’t my experience.

I was already being touched without my permission.

Already having my boundaries crossed.

Already learning that my body didn’t fully belong to me.

When I was a teenager, someone who repeatedly got handsy with me told me that I’d “look so much better if I lost weight.”

That sentence lived inside me for years.

Because all I heard was:

“If this is already happening to me now… what happens if I become thinner?”

I know what many of you are thinking.

Maybe he just meant I’d be more attractive.

More dateable.

More fuckable.

More desirable.

As if that’s somehow comforting.

As if hearing that your value – and your vulnerability – is tied to how desirable people find your body makes anything better.

And now, standing at the doorstep of twenty-five…

I have once again had my autonomy taken away.

This time, it was far worse than anything that came before.

I’m still not okay.

My friends have been incredibly supportive.

Some of them encouraged me to report it.

I understand why.

But there is still another voice inside my head.

A quieter one.

A crueler one.

The one that keeps whispering,

“This was your fault.”

Because I’m not the perfect victim.

I wasn’t sober.

I wasn’t dressed modestly.

I went to his house.

I trusted him.

And I know exactly how those facts are used against women.

I also know that it’s been a month.

I know what the legal system often looks like.

I know what a “he said, she said” case can become.

I know why so many people never report.

None of that changes what happened.

It only changes how difficult it can be to seek justice.

I don’t know how long it’ll take me to stop blaming myself.

Maybe a long time.

Maybe years.

But I hope one day I’ll stop measuring my pain against society’s impossible checklist of what a “real victim” is supposed to look like.

Because victims aren’t perfect.

They’re human.

And no one has to earn the right to have their lack of consent recognized.

Not by being sober.

Not by dressing a certain way.

Not by making all the “right” decisions beforehand.

I don’t know if I’ll ever publicly say more than this.

But today, I can finally say something I couldn’t say a month ago.

What happened to me wasn’t my fault.

And maybe that’s where healing begins.