When I was 22 years old and in my final year of uni, I went home with a guy I met in a nightclub. It had been a while since I’d had sex and I was feeling self-conscious that I wasn’t making the most of my young years, and that I was some kind of freak for having dry spells (spoiler alert: not having sex doesn't make you a freak!). The sex was unwanted, I didn’t desire the man in my bed that night, but I was sexually inexperienced and vulnerable to other people’s ideas of what sex and love ‘should’ be like.
His kiss felt unwanted, his tongue an invasion of my mouth. I didn’t want him to touch me anywhere on my body. I wanted him to get off me. “Is it good for you?,” he asked with a smile. “Actually . . . no,” I said hesitantly. “I want to stop.”
That night I withdrew consent midway through sex and, in doing so, unleashed the man I’d brought home's rage. Through gritted teeth, he asked me to repeat myself. I apologised and said I wanted to stop, but he was angry and acted as though I’d taken something from him.
“You f*cking b*tch,” he snapped at me. As I ushered this man out of my student flat with the assistance of my flatmate, he hurled insults at me about my body and screamed in the street.
When we slammed the door behind him my hands were shaking so hard I bent the front door key permanently out of shape.
Because standing up against sexism is literally a matter of life and death.
While researching my book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into The Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, I was inundated with stories from women and people of marginalised genders whose early sexual experiences were marked by fear and mistreatment. Some recounted experiences of rape or sexual assault; some talked about violations they weren’t sure how to articulate just yet; and some shared instances where their identity had presented ways for them to be harmed through racist micro-aggressions or ableist acts.
I heard from countless people who described consenting to sex they didn't want or desire for a whole host of reasons, and others who said they weren’t sure that their violation “counted” because it was “technically consensual.” During my research for the book, I discovered that nearly a quarter of adult women in the United States have felt scared during sex, according to research by the Indiana University School of Public Health.
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I couldn’t shake the feeling that our sexual culture is in desperate need of change. Change must start with our societal satisfaction that consent is the only metric for sex. Consent is mandatory, but let’s not forget, it’s also the bare minimum. As I wrote Rough, I returned to Rebecca Traister’s 2015 essay on why consensual sex can still be bad and was struck by the following line, a quote from Feministing editor Maya Dusenbery:
“Seriously, God help us if the best we can say about the sex we have is that it was consensual.” Is the bar for sex so low that all we require is for it to be consensual?
The resources and helplines you need to know.
Recently a sex educator told me he hears questions from young people about consent that are voiced as “Is it legal if I do X?” But instead of viewing consent as a legal hurdle to jump over, we should really be thinking “Is it right to act in this way?”
We should shift our thinking away from legality and consent as some kind of contractual agreement and instead think about the ethics of our sexual interactions. During my conversation with academic Laina Bay-Cheng, she put forward the idea of ethics-grounded sexual relationships:
“What we should be doing is infusing all sexual encounters with a sense of ethics and commitments to one another. Even if it’s one night, you should still care about that human as a human.”
As well as considering how we treat one another as human beings, we should acknowledge that the bedroom and our sex lives are not separate from the systems of oppression that invade every arena of life. Sex is political and the bedroom is a realm where power imbalances exist, where a person’s privilege can take centre stage, where larger power structures can manifest themselves.
Rough explores how people’s identity can present ways for us to be harmed in sexual situations. Allyship isn’t just limited to the workplace or friendships – it applies to all areas of life. The bedroom is not exempt from that.
If you’re someone with privilege who considers yourself an ally to marginalised communities, think about whether you’re bringing that allyship with you when you enter the bedroom with someone with less systemic power than you. Consider the ways that your own actions within sex and intimate relationships can perpetuate microaggressions that might re-traumatise a marginalised person.
As Aja Barber, writer and fashion consultant, says in Gina Martin’s book Be the Change: “Remember that ‘ally’ should be a verb and not a noun. We should all be constantly learning and growing and that means that your work as an ally is never really completed.”
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When reflecting on my own past sexual experiences, I started to think about the reasons why I consented to sex that I really didn’t want to have. Some of the reasons stemmed from my attachment style as an anxiously attached person who just wanted to get closer to someone I felt was pulling away. But sometimes I consented to sex because I felt it was the ‘polite’ thing to do, what was expected of me in that moment because the guy had been vaguely nice to me.
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Consenting to unwanted sex is a gendered issue. More than four in ten women live in fear of refusing a partner’s sexual demands, and feel they have no choice but to agree, according to a UN global study of 52 countries.
In order to change our sexual culture, it’s important to reflect on the ways gender roles and cultural ideas might be influencing your decision making in sexual situations. These perceptions can lead us to believe we ‘should’ have sex even if we don’t want to or don’t really feel like it.
Hilda Burke – psychotherapist and couples counsellor – tells me she once had a client who slept with every man she went on a Tinder date with because “That’s what she thought Tinder was. So, even though she found a lot of the men unattractive and the sex not very enjoyable, it was what she felt was expected in the 'Tinder World' so she did it. In time, she learned to check in with herself, what she wanted and, crucially, what she didn’t, which led to a much more content love and sex life.”
Or whether you've done it to someone else…
Just as traditional gender roles make women feel they must be pliant people-pleasers and passive recipients of sex (as oppose to active participants), men’s experiences of sex are also shaped by ideas about masculinity. A study by New York University found that men have unwanted sex with women to conform to gender expectations and to avoid uncomfortable situations and embarrassment.
“Men consent to unwanted sex because accepting all opportunities for sexual activity is a widely accepted way to perform masculinity,” according to the study’s author, Jessie Ford, a doctoral candidate in NYU’s Department of Sociology.
Moving beyond just consent, we should begin thinking about improving communication with our sexual partners and, crucially, setting (and honouring) sexual boundaries. Boundaries set the basic guidelines for how you want to be treated and, in a sexual context, they tell your partner what you’re comfortable doing and the sex acts that are 100% off limits (as well as acts you might be open to trying at a later date).
Our sexual culture won’t change of its own accord. As individuals, it’s time to reflect on how power structures might have shaped our ideas about sex and impacted our behaviour towards other people. Ultimately, you don’t have to like or love the person you’re sleeping with, but you should treat them with the basic respect you’d treat any other human being in any other setting.
Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into The Bedroom And What We Can Do About It is by Rachel Thompson.
