Rachel Thompson interviewed by Nataliya Deleva.
“Do you mind if we don’t have sex?”
How often this question, if asked by a woman on a first date, is met by the other side with understanding? One-night stands could be quite fun, but there could be personal reasons why you might not want to engage in sex on the first night with someone you don’t know or trust, even if you’re attracted to them. Some men feel offended by the rejection, going as far as asking to be reimbursed for the money they’d spent on the woman, reducing sex to a transactional act and objectifying women.
In her forthcoming book Rough, an insightful and thought-provoking non-fiction collection, writer and journalist Rachel Thompson examines the damaging sexual narratives often hidden or less talked about, and through the testimony of fifty women and non-binary people, she looks at the way our culture and perceptions of gender roles influence our behaviour in bed. From stealthing to non-consensual choking, she provides examples of harmful sexual practices which could be assaulting, humiliating or violent, looks at the systems and personal attitudes and starts a helpful dialogue to kindle positive change.
3:AM: Rachel, sexual consent is a pivotal topic in your book, rightly. Some might argue that, once initial consent to engage in a sexual experience is given, there is no need to affirm it later if conditions change, nor to withdraw it. Others feel it’s not sexy to seek consent from the partner and consider it a ‘mood-killer’. But the truth is, it’s ok to change your mind. It’s also fine to withdraw your initial consent and ask your partner to stop. I was surprised to read how often women would literally and figuratively close their eyes to the pain or humiliation they might endure during a sexual act, patiently waiting for it to be over. They might be unsure for years after if what had happened was “just rough sex”, or “sex gone wrong”, or a “grey area”, or simply a mistake the partner didn’t know about. Examples you provide range from spitting to non-consensual choking. You also mention stealthing: deliberately removing a condom during sex without the partner’s consent, which has been described by some media as a sex trend when, in reality, it’s sexual assault. I find this fact disturbing. How should we talk about consent so that we remove the so-called “grey areas”, without sounding as if signing a boring legal document?
Rachel Thompson: We urgently need to move away from the dangerous misconception that consent is a one-off agreement that occurs at the outset of any sexual activity. By framing consent as a contractual, sign-on-the-dotted-line-before-we-get-down-to-business, we suggest that anything that ensues thereafter is fair game and that a person doesn’t have the right to feel harmed if something happens after that initial consent negotiation. Consent is ongoing and can be withdrawn at any point. It’s as simple as that. Each new sex act that’s introduced also requires consent. But on top of consent, I think we also need to be talking about sexual boundaries — how to assert them and how to ensure they are honoured. We should also be talking about how to model ethical sexual behaviour. Consent is mandatory, but it’s also the bare minimum.
3:AM: Reading Rough, it struck me how often women, girls and non-binary people you interviewed were unsure if the violent sex they had experienced was indeed violating their consent and if it was, in fact, a sexual assault. Many of them felt confused and it was only when they talked to friends when they received a confirmation of what they already suspected. Why is that, you think?
RT: This is a very prevalent phenomenon called ‘unacknowledged rape’ or unacknowledged assault. It’s when someone experiences a violation that has the hallmarks of rape or assault, but the survivor labels it instead as a ‘grey area’ or ‘just bad sex’ or ‘a weird night’. It sometimes takes people years, even decades, to realise that something they went through was actually rape or assault. This is because a lot of the time, the reality of sexual violence differs from the stereotypes and cultural ideas we hold about it. When a violation takes place that differs from the ‘violent stranger rape’ trope or when it’s perpetrated by someone we know or like or love, it can be difficult to identify sexual violence when it’s actually happening to you. But it’s also because of deeply ingrained victim blaming in our society that causes survivors to doubt themselves and wonder if what happened to them was ‘bad enough.’
3:AM: There is something you briefly touch upon in your book which I feel is related to how our culture forms gender stereotypes: language and gender bias. You provide examples of how groups of people, taking part in a study, associate women to “girls” and “boys”, which was very intriguing and made me think, more broadly on a linguistic level, how language forms gender perceptions and vice versa. For example, often words such as “seminal” or “potent” which stem from male characteristics are used in a way to describe something powerful, influential, creative and formative, while words like “nourishing” and “caring” or the negative “barren” or “frigid” are associated with female characteristics. In the example you provide, some participants list words like “kitchen” in their women/ girls-associated groups. To me this flags the deeply ingrained gender role perceptions in our society, and I feel there is no way to look at sex, sexual experiences and sexual violence without acknowledging these gender-related stereotypes. Would you agree?
RT: These gender-related stereotypes are so intertwined with our sexual culture — often with devastating consequences. I think it’s a valuable exercise to think about the words and characteristics we ascribe to genders, which may shed light on how we feel we might be expected to behave. Those words can hold meaning in a sexual context too — in this binary of gender roles, there’s the idea that men are always up for sex, always thinking about sex, and that gender role can make them feel there’s an expectation that they should consent to sex that they do not want or desire. There’s the notion that women are expected to be pliant and polite and to protect other people’s feelings, which creates a script of “well they’ve been really nice to me so…” “they paid for dinner so…” which may also lead to unwanted sex.
3:AM: Let’s keep discussing the theme of gender roles in our sexual behaviour and the way we treat our partners, be they long-term partners or one-night stands. There’s something about men’s desire to assert their masculinity. The dynamic could change if the person respects the woman they have sex with, but the willingness to overpower could remain. Often, the men’s pleasure would come first, and some women would submit to whatever their partners require them to do, especially when these dynamics are led by other factors placing them in unequal positions. You describe not only the more obvious acts of violence (mainly female and non-binary) people experience, but also ways in which they are humiliated or degraded. We think we own our bodies, but in reality, who (or what) does?
RT: A large element that the book focuses on is how our identity presents ways for us to be harmed. In the book, I explore how fatphobia, racism, ableism, transphobia, biphobia and homophobia manifest in our sexual culture and the micro- and macroaggressions that stem from these systems of oppression. When we talk about owning our bodies, our bodily and sexual agency, I think we need to consider the fact that not everyone has the same amount of sexual agency. So often, we talk about agency as if everyone has the same amount in equal measure, but our sexual agency is shaped by our social conditions. Our gender, race, socioeconomic status are some of the elements that intersect with our agency and affect our ability to take true ownership of our body. It’s important to look through an intersectional lens when assessing the full scope of the spectrum of harms that women and people of marginalised genders experience. And I think it’s time we started to consider the privilege and power that some of us hold in our sexual culture and the ways that someone with less systemic power could be harmed by that unequal dynamic.
3:AM: We live in a digital era when harmful sexual behaviour can spread easily online. Airdropping offensive images of male genitals is the digital equivalent to the trench coat flashing my girlfriends and I often experienced when we were teenagers. Yet it takes years for these sexually offensive acts to be treated with the seriousness they deserve. What’s the role of legislation and law in all this, and how is the slow pace in catching up with the sexual offences taking place digitally affecting people who experience these forms of assault?
RT: I feel very hesitant about placing any faith in the law given that the existing rape and assault laws in place don’t protect us. In the year ending March 2020, 99 percent of rapes reported to police in England and Wales resulted in no further action. On top of that, it’s important to note that placing our faith in carceral solutions to gendered violence means trusting a system that disproportionately targets people of colour. The laws in this country aren’t keeping pace with the ways in which sexual violence is being perpetrated, which means we have big gaps and legal grey areas, so I would encourage people to start looking outside of a legal prism when considering how we define sexual violence. At the very same time, it’s also clear that when it comes to digital sexual violence, such as image-based sexual abuse, the large gaps in the law and the fact it’s a borderless crime means there are very few avenues of recourse for victims and many report being essentially ghosted by websites that host abusive content unless legal threats are made. So, there’s also the argument the legal grey areas and lack of comprehensive laws on digital sexual violence plays into the hands of tech companies.
3:AM: In the chapter “Sex wasn’t for people like me” you delve into the sexual experiences or of disabled people, or rather, of their desexualisation. “The desexualisation of Disabled people means divesting them of their sexuality”, you write. “Being desexualised refers to being regarded by others as someone who is not capable of having sex, someone who is sexually undesirable.” How do we change the dialogue about sex and disabled people?
RT: I think in order to change the conversation about sex and disability, we also need to challenge the deep-rooted societal views people hold about Disabled people. I spoke to many Disabled people who told me they feel they are seen as objects of pity or inspiration porn and not regarded as human beings. So, if you look at how our culture views Disabled people in general, is it surprising that these views don’t also filter into the way people view Disabled people in a sexual context. On the one hand, Disabled people are desexualised and not seen as sexual subjects, but on the other, their sexuality is fetishised, which is another tool of dehumanisation.
3:AM: Often survivals of sexual assault or violence feel unable to report the event for a variety of reasons, yet they’re later blamed for not doing so. The blaming culture is something I find extremely damaging and unproductive. In Rough you offer examples of how “the power of hundreds of stories” can provide a platform and a safety net for survivors of sexual assault to share their experience. But we can’t always rely on campaigns for this to happen, and for change to take place. Who or what, do you think, are other platforms for voicing out our stories experiences in order to be heard?
RT: I think platforms like Everyone’s Invited show the power of stories, submitted anonymously and published on a dedicated website in a way that requires intentional engagement (to avoid triggering and retraumatising survivors) is an excellent model for the kinds of forums for submitting stories. At the same time, I don’t think the responsibility should fall to survivors of sexual violence to have to share their experiences in public or private in order for the world to take note. No one should ever feel it’s their duty to share their story in order to bring about change. So I think it would be really beneficial for allies to shoulder some of that responsibility, to educate themselves and others about sexual violence. I do believe in the power of storytelling for changing people’s perceptions and understandings of difficult and complex subjects. And I think that the people who generously shared their personal experiences with me in Rough have likely helped a lot of people who went through similar things.
3:AM: What about the role of sex education: both at school and at home? I feel we can’t remove the family from the responsibility to ignite these conversations with our young daughters and sons. You quote a study in which half of responding students describe the sex education they’ve received at school as poor. As parents (sometimes unaware of current potentially damaging “trends”), it’s not unusual to feel unequipped to protect our children, or to have access to the tools to explain the possible harm. Books like Rough are a great resource in that respect, without willing to reduce its value to a parenting resource, of course. This means that young people would have no other choice but to seek answers to their sex-related questions from media and porn, both of which could be very damaging by setting unrealistic expectations and even causing harm. What would you consider as safe sources of information?
RT: Robust sex education really needs to teach young people about the ongoing nature of consent; that every new sex act introduced requires consent; how to set, assert, and honour sexual boundaries; how to model ethical sexual behaviour; how to be an ally to people with less systemic power than you. I also think LGBTQ people have been done a disservice by the historic focus on heterosexual sex and relationships in sex ed, and we should be ensuring that our sex education doesn’t solely cover penis-in-vagina sex and ignore everything else. We also need to learn about the history of sex education and the field of sexual healthcare and its roots in the oppression and exploitation of enslaved Black women. People need to know the human cost of how we came by the discoveries and freedoms we now hold dear.
3:AM: Let’s look at a very trivial situation. Everyone knows someone who treats their sexual encounters as big achievements or “trophies”, showing them off and sharing every detail of the sexual act with friends the next day. If the circle of friends is common to both partners, things get even more complicated. The person finds out and feels humiliated. What’s more, none of this has happened with their consent, and yet, they’re made to believe it’s their fault as they had agreed to the sex in the first place. Similar situations occur when nude photos are being taken during the act and shared online. You quote stats about the very high percentage of people feeling depressed, having to leave their jobs and even taking their own life afterwards. Clearly, a seemingly trivial situation can break someone’s life apart. Despite looking at systems and societal behaviour, the role of the individual should play a big part. But where do we start?
RT: This is image based sexual abuse and it should be taken very seriously. In May this year it was announced that it would become a crime to threaten someone with the sharing of intimate images or content. It is also illegal to distribute private sexual images with intent to cause someone distress. So forwarding someone else’s nude to a group chat might seem innocuous, but distributing that content to a wider network (and crucially a network that you cannot control and don’t know what they’ll do with that content) is violating and could cause serious harm to someone.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWEE
Rachel Thompson is a journalist specialising in reporting on sex, relationships, and gender. She is the senior culture reporter at Mashable, and has written for The Sunday Times, CNN, ELLE, The Telegraph, and HuffPost. She is also the host of History Becomes Her podcast, which explores the inspiring stories behind women currently making history.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Nataliya Deleva is the author of Four Minutes, which was originally published in Bulgaria (Janet 45, 2017), where the book was awarded Best Debut Novel and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year (2018). It has since been translated into German, English and Polish. Deleva’s second novel Arrival, is forthcoming in the UK from The Indigo Press in 2022.
W: nataliyadeleva.com | T: @nataliedelmar
