Read the article from the student who accuses girls of crying wolf over sex they regret

A fresher has accused girls of crying wolf when they regret a sexual encounter. Making his case against sexual consent workshops and the general state of modern feminism on campus, he said: “A girl can cry wolf over something as simple as a regrettable drunken fumble… Third-wave feminism is more harmful to gender relations than beneficial.”

These are both quotes from an article published yesterday where a fresher discussed his opinion of consent classes and sexual assault at Bristol University. You can read the piece, titled “HAVE WE GONE TOO FAR WITH GOING TOO FAR?” here.

Published yesterday, he also wrote: “The hysterical and statistically wanting speeches to which we were subjected seemed to suggest that any form of virility and male sexual compulsion was a cancer in urgent need of excision, while simultaneously painting every girl in the room as a defenceless weakling of Doris Day proportions. This infantilising depiction of women is, to me, not feminism.”

Unsurprisingly, the piece has led to widespread anger and controversy all over social media. The Bristol Feminist Society were one of the first to show their alarm.

Word to the wise, make your research evident when you write an opinion piece on a controversial topic, because this guy didn’t. I first became aware of this piece when it was shared on the Bristol Feminist Society Facebook page and was totally disgusted by some of the things that it said. From more tame statements about what he defined as ‘the sex obsessed wing of third-wave feminism’ to his confusion regarding how relationships with consent work- ‘how are millennials to approach relationships when all they are told is how narrow the parameters are for acceptable romantic conduct’.

However, the excerpt that concerned me most in this article was what he called ‘the deeply misinformed approach to victimhood campus brand feminism propitiates, in which a girl can cry wolf over something as simple as a regrettable drunken fumble months after the fact’. Seriously? That statement in itself is rape apologism.

Do you know how few survivors of sexual assault and rape actually come forward? A pretty small amount, the taboo in our society around sexual violence means that victims are often not believed or will take a long time to come forward. That’s one of the reasons why the Jimmy Savile abuse revelations only came out years later. I don’t know if that statement was written out of naivety or just plain ignorance but in writing and publishing it it shows that this guy has a very narrow idea of what defines sexual assault.

Because this article made my blood boil with rage I found it’s author on Facebook and asked him to comment on his piece.

Some of his best quotes from the conversation were:

“Nobody wants to stop the problem of sexual assault more than I do.”

“The way sexual conduct is described as this incredibly dangerous thing which must involve the input of the university propitiates dysfunctional attitudes towards it.”

“I don’t like the way third wave feminism spreads ideas like the patriarchy or rape culture.”

“I think it is problematic to conflate a regretful sexual encounter with felony rape.”

So this guy is not only blaming the university for the rape of its students because it is teaching so called ‘dysfunctional attitudes’ through consent education but is echoing the victim blaming rhetoric from his article by saying that people who say are raped are just overreacting, or crying wolf as he so poetically put in the original piece.

This guy, however well intentioned, seemed to be more concerned with sounding clever than taking the experiences and realities of survivors into account.

Sex is supposed to be fun and pleasurable, but experiencing sexual violence is most certainly not and by suggesting that those who experience it are lying you are causing direct harm to them. He assured me that he had done loads of research on the topic and therefore was in a position to write about this. I have to disagree, if he had researched this properly then he would have known that trying to divide and conquer by comparing ‘genuine victims’ with those who ‘cry wolf’ is not going to do you any favours, much less the people you are discussing.

Despite the societal compulsion to questions survivors and suggest that they are lying, statistically you are more likely to lie about being burgled than you are about being raped.

Rape is a serious issue and is not to be taken lightly, by writing this, this person is being hugely disrespectful and dismissive of the survivors.

@snazzlebazzle