We Need to Talk About Consent During Sex — Not Just Before

Dec 2
14:32

2015

Anne H. Brown

Anne H. Brown

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What does and doesn't qualify as sexual assault, what happens when the initial "yes" suddenly becomes a "no"?

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I was lying on my stomach and Tyler* was having sex with me from behind when all of a sudden,We Need to Talk About Consent During Sex — Not Just Before Articles something started to feel off. I asked him to stop and turned around. He had taken off the condom without asking me.

"Wait, what happened to the condom?" I asked. 

He explained that he had recently had blood work done and knew I was clean, so he "made a judgement call that it was OK." But it wasn't OK — not at all.

Before we had sex, I told Tyler multiple times that we absolutely had to use a condom. Thankfully, I noticed before he came, and a trip to Planned Parenthood afterward confirmed that I was clear of any potential sexually transmitted infections. But I was still furious. I felt dirty and violated. Yes, I'd agreed to have sex with this person, but that didn't mean I'd also agreed to whatever the hell he wanted to do in bed.

My experience with this man raised a question that I later realized was shockingly common: If you consent to having sex with someone, what happens if they do something that you hadn't said yes to? What if they slap you in the face, for instance, or pull a bait-and-switch and try to go for the butt without permission, as seen in an episode of the Mindy Project in which Mindy's boyfriend claims his penis "slipped"? Read more ..

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