"The line of consent has become so blurred"

This week I thought it would be important to discuss the feedback we got from last weeks

article, which was obviously quite hard hitting. We received multiple really positive

messages of encouragement as well as people reaching out. However, there was one message I received in return which was pretty much a full other blog post. I thought it would be important to share this with you as a way of showing what The Noisy Movement is doing.

"I don’t even know what this is? It isn’t an article, I haven’t been asked to write anything or

to share my experiences, but recently I’ve been reading and hearing more and more stories

that have made me want to share my own, with that comes the acknowledgement that I even have a story to share, which isn’t something I would have ever admitted.

I was 16 and had not long lost my virginity to the first boy I’d ever properly been seeing at a

house party. That in itself was an undignified experience which somehow gave me a

reputation at the place I worked with this boy. That, and all the questions it raises about the

standards we set for boys and girls, is a story for another time. The boy had ended things

with me and it was time for our work Christmas do. I didn’t have much experience with

drinking and was absolutely bladdered at the party, surrounded by a group of people around my age. Work parties themselves have a reputation for outrageous behaviour where people who spend lots of time together, get drunk and unleash! And this one wasn’t far from that; we drank, danced and had a great time! The corridors saw their fair share of couples getting off and rowing- and I was not an exception.

Parts of the night are considerably blurrier than others, but I somehow find myself

somewhere I’d never been- at the house of one of the boys I worked with, with another boy.

Let’s call them Bill and Ben. Bill and Ben are both at University; around 21 or 22 years old.

Bill says we can both crash there- he’ll sleep in the spare room, Ben can go on the sofa and I can have his bed. Great, my mum didn’t have to come out in the middle of the night and I

could get a decent sleep before I went home. In reality, I was just drunk and tired and done

crying.

I chugged a glass of water, settled down to sleep fully clothed in Bill’s bed. I fell asleep. The next thing I remember is light coming through the door, and Bill saying he couldn’t sleep in the spare room- his Dad was in there, and he got into bed next to me. I turned over and went back to sleep. The next memory is what has lingered right at the back of my mind for a really long time. I woke up, and Bill was on top of me, having sex with me. I don’t remember how long for, but this memory exists in flashes where I think I fell in and out of sleep, and in and out of participation. My next recollection is pushing him away, and walking out of the room- I remember wanting to leave. I opened the door and Ben was stood at the door. He looked at me and laughed as if he was in on a joke? The next few hours were a stumbling series of events that saw us walking to Bens house, where my mum picked me up. I think I kissed Bill on the walk. We ate cold pizza in Ben’s living room before I went home.

The next time I walked into work, I heard our manager say Bill’s name and my stomach

dropped. Somehow, everyone had heard that we had sex and I now had a reputation at work as the girl that sleeps around. Ben told everyone he heard us. It just became a fact, I

questioned whether maybe we did? Maybe I did want to? Even though I had this patchwork

of memories that said otherwise. But now I know that he wasn’t ‘having sex’ with me- he

assaulted me. He raped me. And I struggle to even type that word let alone say it out loud.

But it happened, and the ramifications in my life since are so obvious. But the issue I think is

so important is the time it has taken for me to even recognise this incident as having

happened.

The line of consent has become so blurred.

We allow ourselves to take into account what someone said or did before something

happened, what she did afterwards, what she was wearing even, to impact our assessment of whether there was consent to what happened.

I was not able to consent to what happened to me, I knew that at the time and I know it now,

almost 6 years later. I’m more cautious when I do go home with someone, and honestly I

pretty much don’t. I had trouble trusting the intentions of my ex-boyfriend. I worry when I

hear that most of my friends have just given in and had sex with someone because it’s easier than arguing.

We live in a world where we still aren’t sure. What is consent exactly? What is sexual

assault? Where is the line between sexual assault and rape?

Definitions and criminal prosecutions are not our job.

There are trained professionals who can charge, try and convict. Our job, as a generation of increasingly empowered women and girls is to create an environment where people feel comfortable enough in the first place to say something- to question what happened to them, so that these authorities can do their job.

We are in the midst of an epidemic of people like me coming forward- the me too movement

is at the forefront of that. And it’s amazing- it’s empowering and worrying at the same time,

that so much of this goes on in silence behind closed doors.

I have to question why, and how we can fix it. A lot of it comes from a culture of blame and acceptance. Blame for getting too drunk and going to places they shouldn’t go, acceptance by us, that if we hadn’t drunk so much we would have got picked up or had the sense to sleep on the sofa. Acceptance by everyone around us that we did sleep with the boy, and the acceptance and reaffirmation of the label we are given because we did.

What can we do to fix it? I don’t have all the answers, but I think movements like the Noisy

Movement are the place to start. Awareness and conversations are the key to success here. Allowing people to share what they have experienced in the past creates a greater awareness of what is ok, and what you are fully within your rights to say was not ok. It doesn’t matter how drunk you were, or how well you knew the person, or why you ended up where you did. What matters is that you feel like you can tell someone, you can call that behaviour out for what it is. Rape.

So, let’s keep talking, and raise a generation of men and women who understand that is

simply comes down to consent, and if someone does not, or cannot consent, then you’re

doing something wrong if you keep trying. We can unblur the line."