A time when sexual regret did not amount to sexual assault

[Twoofginger]

The words in my thread title appear in an Irish Independent article about the journalist's experiences of uni life Trinity College Dublin in the 80's/90's versus how it is portrayed in the BBC3 TV hit Normal People.
I was quite enjoying the article until I got to that part and it shocked me - is the journalist saying anything other than that sexual assault reports nowadays are just experiences that women regret and who decide in the cold light of day to "cry rape" ?

www.pressreader.com/ireland/irish-independent/20200519/281968904879388

I will see if I can figure out how to do a clicky link - not even sure that the URL above works

It's always just bubbling there under the surface isn't it.

I've had my fair share of fun. I have had regrettable encounters - ones that were just bad, ones that were embarrassing, people I've slept with who I wouldn't if it hadn't been a lovely sunny day and I'd been on the beers etc. They're obviously different from sexual assault.

The idea that our women's brains can't tell if we've been assaulted or just got a little bit too friendly with the new guy in tech support and are ashamed the next day is offensively insulting.

"Im not saying there werent any rapes but I never heard of any"

fucking hell

"it was still a time when 'no' was a perfectly acceptable response"

Hasn't read Tess of the D'Urbervilles then. Or a thousand other texts stretching back through the centuries.

Very, very foolish. Written by a woman though, isn't it?

Yes, it all goes downhill from that point. Reminds me of my mother's claims that there was "none of that in my day".(drinking/ sex before marriage/ teenage pregnancy)

The idea that our women's brains can't tell if we've been assaulted or just got a little bit too friendly with the new guy in tech support and are ashamed the next day is offensively insulting.

I'm very wary about this kind of statement. People seem to be able to embrace all kinds of concepts if they are told they are the truth.

There have been some interesting journalistic investigations around what young people are taught about sexual assault that suggest that if they are given information that is confusing, they will be confused. You can also see some disturbing numbers around accusations of sexual assault in some universities in the US where there are far more against black men, all out of proportion to their numbers on campus.

We saw some of this come out with Me-Too, where there were several incidents or even literature presented as part of the Me-Too movement that created controversy, and that was really the dividing line - was this bad sex or sexual assault? The article about Aziz Ansari is probably the best example. But even here on MN I've seen people claim that having sex because you are nagged is a sexual assault.

Now, some may respond, yes obviously those things all are sexual assault, but I think the disagreement about that is the point.

As far as the article however I think the author is being naive to think there were no rapes. But it might be the case that there was a different sort of culture generally about expectations around women saying no, I've noticed some change in that direction within my lifetime.

‘But even here on MN I've seen people claim that having sex because you are nagged is a sexual assault.’

Depending on the power balance in a relationship, someone persistently requesting sex with negative consequences for refusal within a relationship can be sexual assault.

Well, considering that we live in a society where it’s considered far far worse for a man to be accused of unwanted sexual behaviour than it is for a woman to be sexually assaulted or raped, I’m not surprised people try to push this narrative of sexual regret. It’s always easier to blame the silly woman for getting herself into trouble.

It all goes back to that age old belief that men are sexual creatures, they can’t help it, and if a woman plays with fire then she shouldn’t complain if she gets burnt.

I think there needs to be a clear divider between
sex you wanted at the time but then regret which could also cover if both parties are very drunk and it was mutual decision = sexual regret,
or
sex that you didnt want or consent to = rape.

Depending on the power balance in a relationship, someone persistently requesting sex with negative consequences for refusal within a relationship can be sexual assault.

Yes, it could be, but mostly, it's not. It's just a jerk or a nag or a even a manipulator. There is a huge difference between being raped, and having to go out of your comfort zone and be more forthright and firm than you normally are.

Do you remember when the article about Ansari came out - it was hugely controversial and it was very much about how we draw this line. But plenty of people felt it fit into the Me-Too narrative.

I think it relates to the way younger people now seem to struggle so much with emotional discomfort of any kind and think it is "literal violence". Those kinds of situations are very uncomfortable but a good part of that is about being unsure of our own boundaries, wanting contradictory things, being too shy to communicate effectively or even being afraid of being firm. I suspect a majority of women have had some similar experience, but if you come from a generation that has been really shielded and sees emotional discomfort as completely overwhelming, it is hard to deal with it.

My pov was that if I were a university student who HAD been sexually assaulted, how reading this in a national newspaper would make me feel.
The journalist says that nowadays sexual assault is actually sexual regret? Oh right.

Goosefoot I see what you mean about confusion but I still think this part of the article is a disaster zone. Sexual assault is not just the 2020 term for sexual regret. It is a real problem and I think saying it just sexual regret is what I have heard about rape victims "she woke up the next morning and realised she looked like a slag so she cried rape".

Yes, the article itself is a mess.

When concepts like this become very meshed together, in people's minds I mean rather than in law, it often has bad results in two directions. On the one hand you have people like the woman who wrote the Ansari article. On the other, you have people who now think rape or sexual assault is really just people having regrets. It's like the more people seriously think one is a true perspective, the more who begin to find the other credible.

In 1992 there was very poor access to contraception

Are you talking about Ireland? Certainly not true of the UK.

In 1992 there was very poor access to contraception and in my experience the men were just as keen to avoid pregnancy as the women

In the U.K.? I turned 18 at the end of 1992. Went with my mate the year before to local family planning for morning after pill. Gillick lost in 1985 - so GPS could speak to under 16s about contraception. Went off to uni in 1993 with condoms bought in local chemist. Didn’t know any peers who couldn’t access contraception and a few who had abortions.

Sorry. Don’t buy this at all. Less violent porn about. But as #metoo has shown - loads of sexual assault about just expected to not mention it or question that it may have been you.

Agree with poster - we can tell. Regret first full sex I had but he didn’t assault me.

But access to contraception was relatively easy in 1990s uk

She's in Ireland isn't she? Maybe there was poor access to contraceptives there. There wasn't where I was in the UK, it was easy to go to the family planning clinic and go on the pill or get condoms. I think if she hasn't heard of anyone being raped then she hasn't. That's her experience. Obviously there were incidents of sexual assault /rape, women don't tend to go round publishing it. I think there are at times incidents of sexual regret too.

I think in the 80s and 90s there were girls who did, and girls who didn't, and men wanted to know what kind you were. When you made it clear, most of them moved on. Now I'm not sure how much opportunity there is to be a 'woman who doesn't do casual sex', and still date.

But back to that phrase in the article, disgusting. And one used against me.

I've experienced rape and sexual regret. Coercive sex is rape, and men need educating to that point. If you nag someone into having sex with you, that isn't consent.

I was in Trinity in the late 80s, like Connell I was working class and studying English.
I certainly didn't hang out at pool parties and Italian villas. But I do get the context here.

There were no contraception in Ireland at the time. There was one condom booth, which to escape laws was put in a different place each morning.
There was, to be blunt no expectation of penetrative sex. We had been reared in a society where sex didn't exist. Oral sex was seen as the penultimate of that trajectory. Because the fear and shame of an unwanted pregnancy ran very deep.
Of course women were raised but it was silenced. The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre was very busy, I went there myself thinking I was pregnant from oral sex and had nowhere else to turn to. I wasnt but if I was, there was no abortion. Many friends had to beg and borrow the money for the boat to Liverpool or London, usually would stay with an older Male who had emigrated there and from my friends experience would try for sex.

When I say try, I mean coercion, the guilt and Shame meant many women did. It was shame upon shame.

We are applying our current thinking onto the situation.
It dies raise interesting questions though around te idea of societal entitlement around consent. I was in a lot of very dodgy situations with men at that time but never felt I had too. Nit that men at the time were different but we all knew, unspoken that the consequences of penetrative sex were huge, a lifetime licked away, a baby taken away, reputations ruined.

i left school in 1985 in Dublin....there was access to contraception

In Dublin maybe but if you came from the country the local GP would not give it.

Im curious what people view as coercion. I often have to discuss these issues for pshe lessons.

As far as i am aware the legal definion of coercion is
"Coercive behaviour is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim"

there is some orger guidance from the cps which is that coercion

"If it causes B to fear, on at least two occasions, that violence will be used against them - s.76 (4)(a); or
If it causes B serious alarm or distress which has a substantial adverse effect on their day-to-day activities"

Are we really saying that nagging someone meets this threshold. There must be hundreds of threads here where partners have mismatched sex drives and the person who wants sex less comnents they have sex now and then to stop the nagging.

I went to Uni in Dublin in the late 80's - we had very easy access to the pill - so much so that my friends in NY envied how easy it was for me to obtain contraception (even the MAP) at Uni versus the access they had at Uni in NYC.
So to those saying maybe it was because it was the 1990's - well as one who was there, no it's not that. Oh and we all knew the difference between regret and assault.

But now that I've read the piece - the author is someone who saw a niche in the right wing media for a female writer - she gets money to be a right wing controversialist. So she will throw women under a bus just to get a pay check. I can list about 5 similar women in Irish media on the right-wing side and another 5 on the left-wing side. There is not much of what you would call "Andrea Dworkin critical thinking feminism" getting published in Ireland these days, which is why I rarely read the newspapers here, even though I subscribe to one online and buy another on a Sunday.

yeah you had to go to the gp rurally but most young women travelled to a city to a FPC or had ‘problem periods’

Ansari etc.

I read the Ansari account, I recognised it. I've been the person who's had to say no extremely forcefully - luckily within safe walking distance of home - it was unacceptable behaviour from the man, it was assault, but nothing I could talk to the police about - they'd laugh me away, which of course is why it carries on as an expectation.

I've also been with men who took the no just fine, who I even shared a bed with after saying no, because they accepted it, and knew that me getting home would have been difficult/dangerous.

And I've been with men who forced their un-be-condomed penis in as I was pushing on their chest telling them no. I couldn't report that either of course, because we were boyfriend/girlfriend, and no-one would have cared.

I know which men I want my sons to grow into. I know which men I should be able to report, if the reporting wasn't more traumatising than the originating act