Clearing the Murky Waters of Grey Area Sex By Alana McConnell | Illustration by Yi Jong
CW: This piece discusses sexual misconduct. If you do not have the capacity to read this right now, please don't or please be mindful while you're reading and stop when necessary. AUT Counselling and Mental Health Services (free for all students) Call (09) 9219292. You go over to a boy’s house for dinner. You’ve been on one date, and have been talking on Tinder for a few weeks. After dinner and wine, you go to his room. You didn’t go to his house planning to have sex. You want to get to know him better, foster more safety and communication. Though you know that going over to someone’s house invites the idea of sex, you believe that you will be able to assert yourself. He starts to kiss you, and before you know it, he is reaching for a condom. You want to speak up, to slow things down. But you don’t want to create a disruption, cause a scene, or get rejected. It's easier to go along with things, even though you don’t actually want to. It feels like you are in too deep. You go through the motions, but it's more of a performance than a pleasurable experience. As you walk home later in the evening, you feel awful. You feel guilty, like you let yourself down. You feel dirty and angry with yourself. What stopped you from saying no? Or maybe you are in a long term relationship. Your partner comes home from a night out with his friends. He is clearly very drunk and very horny. He wants to have sex with you, and though you are feeling tired and not in the mood, you let him have sex with you because its easier than saying no. After he finishes you turn over and go to sleep. You clearly were not enjoying yourself, but he was too drunk and too horny to notice. He may not realise it, but he makes you feel sometimes like you owe him sex. Maybe something along these lines has happened to you, or happened to a friend you know. Maybe you’ve heard variations of these experiences when you are decompressing with your close friends after a big weekend, or late night chats around a table with a glass of wine in hand. Everyone knows that these experiences aren’t quite right, but we are scared to fully engage with them. That’s when the term grey area comes in, because as Rachel Thompson said, “we do not currently have the terminology to describe these experiences."1
25
