Here at Queen’s, I recently had an interaction that truly confused me. I was having sober, consensual, unprotected sex with a guy my age, when he had the bright idea to finish inside of me without giving me a heads up. In all honesty, I had no idea how to react. In the moment I was frustrated and expressed that I did not at all appreciate it, and he replied, “well, aren’t you on birth control?”. Would it matter if I was or not? I still had no desire for him to do that, and he had no right to make the assumption that I was. In the moment, I didn’t really acknowledge the situation any further, other than making a joke about going to buy some plan B (and I did). He brushed it off as if everything was fine because I must have been on birth control and I was getting plan B. He never apologized, or offered to pay for my plan B, which are minimum expectations (what a gentleman he was). I have been ruminating about the situation, and it is beyond me how society has truly shaped men to think that his sexual partners are responsible for dealing with the consequences of his actions, and that it was somehow the women’s responsibility to take all precautions when it comes to sex.
In the midst of my confusion, I also could not help but feel this was somehow my fault? Had I not made it clear that I had not wanted him to do that? Should I have said something? I was under the impression that it was general knowledge that a man should never finish his business inside a woman without her clearly saying it was okay to do so, and even then, maybe he should consider not doing it anyways. I did not think that the mere absence of “no” was the same as “yes” (because it’s not). It took some time to stop making excuses for a man that was clearly in the wrong, and trust my judgement. What he did was in fact sexual violence. I know as people read this and they think that labelling this interaction as “sexually violent” is a bit radical. We have this idea that sexual violence is physically violent, messy, and overtly forceful. We deem an interaction as sexually violent depending on the magnitude of the problem and the nature of the people involved. However, this is not what sexual violence is, that is only what rape culture has shaped us to believe. Sexual violence is when sexual consent is not obtained or given freely in any situation. I had consented to having sex, but I had not consented to all sexual acts within that interaction, such as him deciding that it was appropriate to “finish” inside of me. Therefore, if I had not given consent, this was evidently sexual violence.
Simply put by Milena Popova author of Sexual Consent, “make sure the person you are propositioning or having sex with wants to do this”, and this goes for anything within a sexual interaction.
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