question about sexual encounter

[havetoask]

Sorry, the title is a bit wanky, I feel a bit stupid asking this question though.
I've namechanged for this one.

If you meet a man and you end up back at your house, and then go to bed, and this is the maybe tmi bit.....

If you have never had sex before and your body clams up and he can't get inside you, but he forces it in, and he knows he is hurting you quite badly but carries on, making you bleed, is that ok? Would that be considered a disastrous sexual encounter or would it be more serious?

This happened a long time ago, but I can't stop thinking about it and it's not a nice feeling. Plus, I didn't have sex or get intimate with anyone for a long long time after that. I can't believe I'm posting this now. Am I overreacting?

If you said no, he raped you. At the point at which you say no, it's rape. I'm not saying that until then it's not rape, but it's very grey area because sexual behavior can be so personal, so variable, and very bizarre.

Something that would indicate unhappiness in one person would indicate nothing of the sort in another. 'Freezing' may indicate terror, or it may indicate boredom. Having sex with someone who is frozen with terror is rape - but is having sex with someone who has become bored and can't be arsed rape? And until they speak up, until they say stop, how can you tell?

I have a big issue with the whole "He/she should just know" argument. My ex used to use that to justify having a go at me for all manner of things, that I should just know he wasn't happy at X's house and wanted to leave. Body language is a deeply variable and ambiguous thing - words are definite.

"And for all you say about non verbal signals, well, he was busy at the time, wasn't he? And men have never been especially adept at non-verbal signals."

This is one of the most disturbing things I have read on this thread so far. As someone who has suffered a sexual assault, it really worries me that this view holds fast in some peoples minds.

Just because a guys gets into his "groove" during the process of a sexual act, does not negate his perception of forcing an unwilling partner. That is all I will say really.

It's a bit harsh to label it rape if the woman had initially consented to sex and did NOT communicate in any way that she had changed her mind (lying still, shutting eyes and saying nothing are things that people do when they are consenting to sex; people respond differently and feel differently).

I do agree with solid gold, it is such a complicated area. "your body clams up and he can't get inside you, but he forces it in, and he knows he is hurting you quite badly but carries on, making you bleed" is pretty much a summary of my wedding night though, which by all accounts was uneventful. I just wanted my virginity done and dusted so gritted my teeth and got on with it. So it is so complicated.

I am very very sorry that you have had these experiences havetoask How awful for you. I'm pleased the thread has helped you thinking about things.

I'm glad my wedding night wasn't like most people's first times! My XH was a total idiot, he really didn't know what he was doing (even when we'd been married a year) but it was never painful or a bad experience for me. I'm not taking anything from anyone else's experience, just pointing out that it isn't like that for everyone.

Submission requires both parties to know there is something being submitted to.

All of this is academic, besides the point, and unjudgable anyway. The Op felt assaulted, and given the event, I can certainly see why, but it doesn't mean he meant to. On the other hand he may have meant to. We don't know, we weren't there, but screaming "He was raping you" is about as accurate as saying "Nothing bad was happening".

How is willingly getting into bed naked with the intent to have sex and lose one's virginity 'submitting to domination'?

dittany, this thread wasn't about making a wider point though! It was one person's question about one experience. Making a wider point, being bullied into having sex when you don't want to does require an act of submission on the part of the person being bullied, that's where we get into the area of assault, but this wasn't what the thread was about and therefore not what I have been referring to.

"Submission requires both parties to know there is something being submitted to."

I agree and if it's not decided that it will be that kind of sex then it shouldn't be assumed. Submission is something very trusting and shouldn't ever be assumed or expected. Even within couples who practice it on a regular basis there are rules and never assumption. A submissive partner has all the power, not none.

Thank you MP.

Now Mabanan, you are horrified to see a woman apparenylly promote the "she didn't say no, so it isn't rape' myth.".

The only person promoting this myth so far is you and Dittany. Dittany put her 'case'with a selective quote which left off the end of the sentence - you took that at face value cos you find my posts patronising and so don't need much excuse to dislike me.

Like many many people have said, it's a very complicated area and I have been very measured to Dittany in the face of all her personal attacks. I will not engage with her because I respet that she is a person still suffering a lot. She somehow seems to think I'm partly responsible for that suffering, which of cousrse I'm not. I don't care about your opinion of me at all, or anyones who thinks they can discern anyones character by so little information.

But this thread has been hijacked ebough. If you or Dittany want to take this up on another thread or off board, be my guest.

"I think it's actually one of the ways victims have been kept silent about our experiences, because we've been taught to believe that unless we could get a conviction for what was done to us, it isn't important and it isn't rape".

Dittany, this is what I was trying to say but you managed to put it succinctly and my brain is so scrambled that I had to write a 'novel' to try to explain what I meant!

The thing is though, doesn't the law have to be like this? Otherwise innocent men could be convicted for rape all over the place just based on the woman's feeling about it rather than any harder evidence. Some women, sadly, do falsely accuse men.

Give Dittany a bit of a break people, it sounds like she had some bad experiences which she is not yet over, and has a lot of anger about. When she hears any hint of anyone suggesting it was the victim's fault, even if people don't really mean that, this is a massive trigger for her feelings about what happened to her, I don't think she means to make people feel attacked personally.

TinkerbellesMum, thank you so much for saying to someone "you were 11 you COULD NOT give consent". This really makes me feel better about my own experiences because part of me still feels it was my fault for not fighting back. But the fact is, for victims who were underaged, it is definitely wrong even if they actually consented! It is still an offence to involve someone underaged in sexual activity. Reading what you wrote made me feel slightly less self loathing (I thought it was all gone but there are still traces of it).

The more I think about it the more i think maybe he didn't hear me. I only said it twice and he showed absolutely no sign of hearing me - ie he didn't look at me or anything or respond or anything he just carried on with what he was doing with a sort of blank expression. It sounds like he was maybe "in the moment" as some people have said and I have been judging him wrongly.

The thing is that if he wasn't to blame then I'm not sure where that leaves me with my feelings of hurt and anger if I can't blame him. I really thought I had got to grips with what happened but now I'm not so sure.

Dittany what you say has always made a lot of sense to me but I have to see that there are many different opinions on this topic and although I always tend to see it in a black and white way - i.e. I would agree with you and disagree with others, this thread has made me think more about what happened. It had never occured to me that he might not have heard me.

I think you might mean my second. And passive agressive my arse. It was an engagement with what your posts and others were saying, hence it wasn;t directed to you personally. Yet you think that it was an "attack".F GS get a grip.

Like I stated before, critical engagement is not the same as arguing for the sake of it, which is all your posts seem to be doing and its beyond dull.

How is it MN seems populated with people with narcissitic delusions these days? As if people are just waiting to attacking them. As if MN wasn;t a parenting site. I am really tired of this. Let it drop you silly woman. We disagree, its no more than that and it's not the end of the world.

MT signing off.

Dittany (at the risk of major TMI here) I have had sex with men who have lain still with their eyes shut, and this has been because they were 'in the moment' and enjoying it. I have also had sex where I lay still with my eyes shut, and was enjoying it - as well as sex where I lay still and gritted my teeth and put up with it. I would not label the experiences in the third category rape (I am speaking only of my experiences). I think there is a major difference between stupid, selfish, oafish behaviour and setting out to trap or coerce or beat or frighten another person into allowing sexual access.

I know, I was trying to say that submission should be something consenting and not something that someone feels forced into. I've probably not expressed it well.

ActingNormal it's a good trick from child abusers, make the child feel at fault and fill them with self loathing so they (the abuser) get away with it. A man I used to be close to as a child went on to rape two other children (as far as we know, there could easily be others) and I feel so guilty because I'm a strong character and he knew he wouldn't get away with it with me. I wish I hadn't been as feisty because I could have protected the two (or more?) younger children if he thought he could get away with it. How crazy and backward is that?

I don't think we can say if the woman didn't say no then it wasn't rape but we can say that if the woman didn't say no it is harder to convict the man in a court of law because he can argue that it wasn't clear to him that she didn't want it. Like I said before, we can't really change the law if it means a load of innocent men will be convicted after being falsely accused maliciously as well as the guilty ones.

Just because someone can't be convicted though does not mean that the victim's feelings should be dismissed.

It seems the only thing we can do is educate everyone about making it clear what they do and don't want and making sure that the other person is happy with what is happening. This won't stop everyone from having the experience of freezing with shock though.

ChukkyPig, it sounds like you did everything you could to try to stop him. If he didn't hear you, which I find very hard to believe, what could you have done about that? It absolutely was not your fault. Even if he really didn't realise that you didn't want it, which seems really unlikely, this does not mean that your feelings about what happened don't count or aren't real. Just because he didn't know you didn't want it (if that is the case) doesn't mean it didn't feel like rape. You had a very bad experience so you deserve support.

Tink, you couldn't. You are looking back with the eyes of an adult, but would you put that onto any other child of that age? You were no more adult, no more capable of stopping an adult abuser. he did that, and you have no responsibility for his actions

I know it's a crazy line of thinking, but I also know it's what he thought. He knew he'd be caught out with me, looking back on things I can see that the way I was was what put more distance in our relationship compared to the others who he spent more time with after that. As a child it seemed like favouritism, now I know it was grooming and I was ungroomable.