I Can’t be Both

An arts-based therapeutic exploration of the duality of being both survivor and perpetrator of sexual violence

Mixed Media & Response Art · Neha Bhat

This artwork was exhibited at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Trauma Resilience Centre, Bangalore and the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan, among others.

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I Can’t Be Both

I Can’t Be Both is a mixed-media art and poetry series by psychotherapist and artist Neha Bhat exploring survivor-perpetratorship: the psychologically complex experience of having survived sexual violence while also having caused sexual harm. Emerging from Bhat’s work in sexual trauma therapy, the series uses response art, poetry, pattern and the body to examine consent, shame, accountability, trauma and the limits of binary narratives around victimhood and perpetration.

With the rise of the #MeToo movement in 2017, multiple stories of sexual violence perpetrated by powerful celebrities as well as by people at the top of the corporate ladder and everyday householders have been surfacing globally.

While many female, male and transgender survivors and those identified as perpetrators of sexual violence seek pathways toward healing, there exists a silenced group who embody both identities within one body.

People who have both survived sexual abuse and also perpetrated it.

“By distancing ourselves from people who have committed harm and disregarding the circumstances and conditions of perpetration and survivorship as a duality, we lose our best opportunity to learn how to prevent sexual violence in the first place.”

Sonya Shah, Director, The Ahimsa Collective

Content Note
This series contains explicit references to childhood sexual abuse, incest, sexual violence, consent violations and perpetration. Some artworks and accompanying texts may be difficult to encounter. Please engage with the work at your own discretion.

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Survivor-Perpetratorship,
Sexual Trauma & Response Art

These folks who are survivor–perpetrators often lack access to competent trauma therapy services worldwide. Most healing professionals are quick to put such a person into one box or the other.

However, many people do identify and hence struggle with healing from, and taking accountability towards both aspects of their trauma history.

As an arts-based sex-focused trauma therapist, my clients with this dual identity found themselves as the focal point of the social discourse. This series emerges from my practice as an art therapist, a queer woman, and a survivor of sexual violence.

It is grounded in my therapeutic encounters with unnamed clients in India and the U.S. who live with this dual identity. Some struggled with understanding consent in their adult lives due to histories of incest, while others felt powerless around boundaries shaped by childhood sexual abuse.

Each artwork explores the confusing, shame-laden, and often violent nature of this duality through pattern, texture, poetry, and text, within the framework of trauma-informed art therapy.

Six visual pieces, paired with six poems that depict this internal conflict, were created from the oral narratives of six racially and socio-culturally distinct individuals.

The artwork then traveled to numerous art galleries and therapy programs, serving as a conversation starter to some of the very taboo life histories and their healing interventions.

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The Artworks

PAINTING 1:
Of Suckling Fruit and Open Wounds

Narrative 1:

“Everything I know about sex is from my babysitter. She was 31, I was 12 years old. She was sweet, caring, gorgeous and in an open marriage with her husband. I was devoted to her pleasure. I am now 26, she has long left me, for someone less needy than me, but I still love her. Why am I so broken? Last year, I slept with a girl I was casually seeing when she was drunk. Deep down, I knew she was too drunk to consent, but I went ahead anyway. I don’t know what to do. Nothing works for me anymore.“

The work turns to fruit and flowers, visceral and sensual forms of nature as metaphors for trauma, desire, and rupture. Layered patterns echo the multiplicity and depth of each story, resisting the notion of a binary solution to sexual violence. Instead, they invite the viewer into a visceral, embodied encounter with complexity: a confrontation with what cannot be easily resolved, but must be witnessed.

POEM:

She held me like a baby,
my sweet girl,
My darling Ni,
when I was 12, and she 31.
When she suckled fruit,
Its nectar seeped,
Deep down,
Into the cracks of my back,
By the wrinkles on my face,
Into the salty wound
That she left
Each time I thought of her.
I, duplicitous,
I, chaotic,
Came upon another,
One of her
Succulent, sweet and gorgeous,
I couldn’t stop,
I didn’t stop,
Why didn’t I stop?
I should have stopped.

PAINTING 2:
Of Juicy Papayas and Bitter Tongues

Narrative 2:

“Me and my cousin played sex games with each other in bed when we were 7 and 8 years old. It went on for 6 years after that. I hated it and then I started liking it. Is this sick? Pleasure and pain are one for me. I’m now 42 years old, I’m broken. I was called out on facebook last year as being a molester of one of my friends as part of the #metoo movement. I don’t remember doing it but I remember feeling bad when I touched her. I tried apologizing but I know it is not enough. I don’t know what to do”.

POEM:

Ladka kya hain,
Kya hain ladki,
Tumhari chonch,
Meri chhadi

(hindi)
What is a boy,
What is a girl
A bird’s beak
Lies within
The creeks of
My underwear
Mummy didn’t see us,
Playing with our toys,
Hold my tongue
Close to yours,
Before you suckle
Before you chuckle,
I won’t tell her,
And you won’t too.

PAINTING 3:
Of Peeling the Layers of my Burning Skin

Narrative 3:

When I was 5 years old, our family driver, G played a “sex game” with me. All I remember is coconut trees, open skies and a weird sensation in my body. I told my father and G was fired the next day. I don’t know if it was rape or not because it was not traumatic for me. I thought that event had no impact on me until I realized, at 21, that I had violated my girlfriends’ boundaries during sex. This old sex game flashed in my mind, and I pushed her to play it with me, as we were being intimate but she did not like it. I now realize that so many of my relationships have been unequal, where I’ve been the caretaker of younger partners. I have had the upper-hand in them sometimes, but I feel powerless all the time. I don’t know what to do.

POEM:

Oh, skin
Burn inside me,
Let me vanish
Beneath the covers
Of your memory,
For I wish to undo
What I did and didn’t do,
What I did and didn’t know
Peel my layers
One by one,
Until I no longer
Have to be
Who I am.

Reception & Impact

Therapists, counselors, and art therapy practitioners who encountered the work spoke of its courage in naming a reality that is rarely acknowledged – the dual identity of being both survivor and perpetrator of sexual violence. Many shared that the visuals and poems created an opening to conversations they had struggled to bring into their own practice.

For some, it gave language and imagery to experiences they had witnessed in clients but had never felt safe to discuss publicly.

Amongst fellow survivors and healers, the work resonated as both a validation of lived experience and a challenge to expand the scope of trauma-informed care to include more nuanced, non-binary perspectives.

Selected exhibitions and presentations

• School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• University of Michigan
• Trauma Resilience Centre, Bangalore
• Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers Conference, Atlanta
• Hakara Journal
  
  In artistic spaces, the series disrupted the silence around incest, consent, and the complexity of sexual trauma by layering visceral beauty with uncomfortable truths.
  
  The metaphors of fruit and flowers became talking points for curators, critics, and audiences who were struck by the tension between lush, sensorial imagery and the stark realities of violence. Several artists commented that the work gave permission to approach taboo subjects with honesty and tenderness, without collapsing them into shame.
  
  By bridging art and therapy, the series illuminated a difficult terrain with depth and vulnerability, opening dialogue not just in professional circles but in broader cultural conversations about accountability, healing, and the messy truth of human desire.
  
  Also available to view in the Hakara Journal, a bilingual journal of creative expression

Further details can be provided upon inquiry.