The other day a link to Total Sorority Move was posted on my Facebook timeline. While I indulge in their articles every once in a while, this one really struck a chord with me. This piece chronicled the sexual experiences between rape and consensual sex, and suggested that this happens to almost every girl.
Personally, I have experienced sex that lies within this inbetween space multiple times. My second year, I went through a really bad breakup. I would go to the corner, drink and flirt and have a good time. At the end of the night, someone would offer to walk me home. Wanting to be wanted, I would allow him to. He’d come upstairs, and before I knew it, I was lying on my bed, him straddling me. I didn’t necessarily want to have sex, but at the same time, I wasn’t exactly opposed to it. Instead of pushing him off, telling him to get dressed and leave, I would let it happen. It was easier to give in to the situation than to have to go through the struggle of saying “no”, convincing him that the kissing and groping of before hadn’t meant I wanted to go all the way.
Afterwards, I felt gross. I felt violated, but not by the guy, by myself. I had let myself give in to a guy because I had wanted to feel wanted, I had wanted to feel sexy. I had given permission to someone else to violate me, and by doing so, had violated myself. Had I experienced unwanted sexual contact? Yes. But had I engaged because I felt intimidated, coerced, or like I had no other choice? Not really. These are the sorts of questions asked by the Women’s Center about sexual assault. I had not been raped, but I also had not had consensual sex.
Is this in between space the result of the college hook-up culture? Is it something that has arisen from women being able to be as sexually free as men have? I admit that I often told myself during this period of my life that I was just doing what guys do. I was having sex just for sex, and that because I was a grown woman who had control of my body, and I was being safe, it was fine. It was even fun. In reality though, I wanted the flirting and the kissing and the dating that can come with intimate relations. I wanted someone to really want me because they wanted me. When I couldn’t find that, I convinced myself that having someone want me for my body was the same.
No one talks about this kind of interaction. If it wasn’t rape, if I let him into my apartment, let him kiss me, and didn’t say no when he wanted to go further, then I really can’t blame him. He can’t read my mind, right?
But perhaps we should live in a world where it is just as easy for someone to say no as it is to say yes. Instead of going through the struggle of having to convince him that you really don’t want it, saying a simple “no” should be enough. There are all types of sexual encounters, and what falls in the middle of the spectrum should be talked about just as much as what is on the ends.