Reconfiguring the relationship between the ‘good (hetero)sexual subject’ and the grey area between sex and rape

The grey area

According to Gunnarsson (2018), the public tends to view sex and violence as two radically different, and mutually exclusive, phenomena. In contrast, feminist researchers have noted the difficulty in drawing the line between ‘just sex’ and sexual violence. In the 1970s, feminists began to argue that the patterning of normative heterosexuality permits far too much ambiguity over whether an act is rape or not (Gavey, 2019: 2). This observation may be articulated as a continuum of sexual violence, whereby ‘“typical” or “aberrant” male behaviours shade into each other’ (Kelly, 1988: 75), or as an ambiguous grey area between the categories of sex and sexual violence. These dimensional perspectives on why some women in particular have difficulty distinguishing between sex and rape operate on two often implicit levels: sex and violence can be difficult to distinguish during the experience, and an overlap exists between the discursive scripting of heterosexual sex and violence (Gunnarsson, 2018: 7). The combination of a dimensional experience of, and a binary discourse on, sex and sexual violence contributes to the ambiguous character of experiences that fall into a grey area between these two possibilities.

The ‘grey area’ is itself a contested term (Cahill, 2014; Gavey, 2019; Gunnarsson, 2018; Hindes and Fileborn, 2020), as some fear that it can be used to minimise harmful sexual experiences and discursively reinscribe a binary construct of real/not real, serious/not serious forms of sexual violence. Claims by Amnesty and others that there is no grey area can be interpreted as a response to this fear. In contrast, Hindes and Fileborn (2020) argue that by focusing on experiences that fall outside the dominant sex/rape narrative, the term ‘grey area’ can potentially open up definitions of sexual violence in a way that avoids collapsing or flattening all experiences into the same conceptual category. The term recognises and encapsulates encounters that exist in the interstitial or liminal spaces between dominant constructions of sexual violence/non-violence.

Normative heterosexuality as a scaffold for rape culture

Heterosexuality is often a central component in explanations and theorisations of sexual violence. While a mutually constitutive relationship exists between what is seen as normal and what is not (Cresswell, 1996: 21), sexual norms are by no means static (Beasley, 2010). We can understand the way the term ‘rape’ has been essentially contested (Reitan, 2001) by looking at how expectations of sexual freedom, sexual agency and sex itself have shifted (Taylor, 2019). The norms that constitute the ‘right’ ways to do and approach sex are dynamic, contextual and located in time and place.

According to Gavey (2019: 228), rape culture is one where heterosexuality is organised in such a way that the boundaries between what is right and what is not blur. Heterosexual norms and scripts with ‘complimentary’ active and passive roles for men and women shape and guide patterns of identity, behaviour and interaction that arguably authorise sexual encounters that are not always clearly distinguishable from rape (Gavey, 2019: 238). Gavey uses the metaphor of a scaffold to describe how heterosexual norms and rape culture simultaneously found, shape and support each other. Gavey’s scaffolding model draws on Foucault’s (1979) theory of disciplinary power. This form of power works not simply by punishing behaviour that steps outside discursively prescribed norms, but also by rewarding acts that are generally valued within a particular discourse. Within Foucauldian thinking, ‘normativity is a field of power, a set of relations that can be thought of as a network of norms, that forms the possibilities for and limits of action’ (Jakobsen, 1998: 517). Norms and ethics are closely tied to normalisation, which involves the construction of a ‘self’ (Jakobsen, 1998: 520).

In the context of sexuality, people can obtain gratification and reward by being ‘good’ sexual subjects (Gavey, 2019: 137). According to Gavey, Foucault’s approach illuminates how culturally shared patterns of meaning and normative practices limit us in various ways, not by repressing our ‘true self’ but by instilling frameworks of meanings and practices that guide us in how to be normal members of society (Gavey, 2019: 7). Gavey (2019: 228) argues that we need to look at everyday norms, actions and values that make sexual violence possible and that cover up such violence when it happens. Because Gavey’s model serves as an entry point into the grey areas between rape and ‘just sex’, I apply her model as a heuristic device.

Method and context

The context for this article is Norway, a country ranked highly on international scales of gender equality. Norwegian sexual culture is often perceived as liberal (Löfström, 2007; Nielsen and Rudberg, 2007). In Norway, the right to sexual freedom and integrity is an important and protected value (Skilbrei et al., 2020). Sexual activity is expected and encouraged in society, and the importance of healthy sexuality is communicated through formal institutional channels, such as sex education in schools (Røthing and Svendsen, 2009; Svendsen, 2012).

In Norway, as in other Western countries, nightlife and other alcohol-related contexts are important arenas for initiating and engaging in sexual relations for youths and adults alike (Fjær et al., 2015; Tutenges et al., 2019; Vaadal, 2021). The age between 16 and –25, when young people are expected to explore their own sexualities, coincides with the age span when rape is most common (Thoresen and Hjemdal, 2014). Norway is said to have a binge-drinking alcohol culture, and there appears to be a relationship between alcohol consumption and rape (Kripos, 2020; Pape, 2014; Thoresen and Hjemdal, 2014), as well as between alcohol consumption and casual sex (Erevik et al., 2017; Fjær et al., 2015; Vaadal, 2021). In Norway, as elsewhere, undesired sexual encounters that take place in party-related settings are often described and labelled as ‘grey’ or confusing rather than rape, independent of whether they fit the legal definition of rape (Cowley, 2014; Peterson and Muehlenhard, 2011; Stefansen and Smette, 2006; Vislie, 2015; Weiss, 2011). The participants in such encounters are usually young and have some sort of relationship prior to the assault (Kripos, 2020; Pape, 2014; Thoresen and Hjemdal, 2014). Because casual sex is a normal and expected part of being a young adult, the participants might initially have desired and actively sought out the setting or the encounter, before it turned into something else (Demant and Heinskou, 2011; Hansen et al., 2021). This factor, combined with gendered norms and expectations for sex, arguably creates a context where both wanted and unwanted sex becomes possible (Cowley, 2014; Pedersen et al., 2017) and may contribute to blurring the line between sex and rape.

This article is part of a broader study of how alcohol-related heterosexual encounters can slip between being wanted and unwanted, acceptable and not. The study builds on two different but overlapping sets of qualitative data. Although slightly different in scope, both studies were designed to collect stories about sexual experiences. The first data set consists of interviews with 14 women and two men who had been subjected to rape; the focus of the interviews was on their choices of reporting or not. In this material, most rapes happened in alcohol-related contexts. The participants were between 23 and 45 years old (median 27) at the time of the interview. The rapes they described happened when the participants were between 13 and 27 years old (median 16).

The second data set consists of interviews with ten men and four women about the good, bad and everything in between of alcohol-related sexual encounters. The age span of this group was 26–40 years old (median 30). I recruited the participants for the first data set in collaboration with The Domestic Violence Research Programme at Oslo Metropolitan University in 2017, and the second the first half of 2020. During both recruitment processes, I used a combination of social media and my own social network. I conducted the interviews face to face, either by phone or Skype. The interviews were recorded after securing informed consent, and I later transcribed them verbatim and anonymised the text. ¹ For both data sets, I employed a narrative style of interviewing (Chase, 2005) and encouraged the participants to describe their backgrounds, including where they came from and what their social circumstances were like. The interviews focused on how the participants made sense of their actions, choices, circumstances and thoughts about sex.

Many of the stories this article builds on are retrospective, and most of the experiences of rape disclosed in the interviews had happened 7–9 years earlier. The data set on casual sex was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the nighttime economy was shut down and possibilities for casual sex had diminished. These stories included the participants’ whole ‘career’ of practicing casual sex. When recounting a story, the storyteller adjusts it, based on their perception of the audience and the situation (see Butler, 2005). The stories thus ‘reflect the memories of the speaker but draw on the collective tropes that are shared among a given speech community’ (Atkinson and Sampson, 2019: 64).

I was the same age as the median age in the two data sets at the time of the interviews, which allowed the participants and me to draw on shared background knowledge and social expectations vis-à-vis being young and exploring sex and alcohol (see Holstein and Gubrium, 1995). In cases where participants were 10–15 years older than me, our age differences seemed to lead to broader and more comparative discussions of the topics at hand. Our shared cultural knowledge probably helped facilitate our discussions and conversations, but it also led to some normative ‘taken-for-grantedness’. Alcohol and parties form the backdrop for most of the stories, but neither the participants nor I mentioned or discussed them, other than to set the scene, as if drunkenness was taken for granted in the interviews. The participants did know that the premise for the interviews was sex under the influence of alcohol, and they may have focused on sharing and recounting their sexual experiences, thus implying the influence of alcohol.

While we often consider topics related to sex and sexuality sensitive and difficult to discuss (Lee, 1993; Liamputtong, 2007; ’t Hart, 2021), Rodríguez-Dorans (2018) notes that interviews may create a space of intimacy where people can tell otherwise-sensitive stories about sex and love. Participants may be pleased to talk about these aspects of their lives, which was my impression from conducting these interviews. The interviews conducted during the COVID pandemic were done by phone, which means I conducted most of the interviews with men by phone. Although the absence of visual cues and lack of contextual and nonverbal data when interviewing by phone may compromise the rapport between the researcher and the participant, phone usage may allow respondents to feel relaxed and able to disclose sensitive information (Novick, 2008), which seemed to be the case among my participants. According to Schwalbe and Wolkomir (2001), the ways men ‘do gender’ may create problems in flexible and open-ended interviews. The phone may have counteracted this tendency, or it could have made the tendency less obvious to me.

After transcribing and anonymising the interview data, I conducted a thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008). My initial interest was how the participants spoke about and described sex they considered right and wrong. While I sorted the material accordingly, the participants’ reasons for having sex drew my attention. The underlying importance of being sexually active, fitting in and being like ‘everyone else’ stood out in both data sets. These themes seemed to have explanatory power for the sexual acts and circumstances the participants described and perceived as ‘good’ and ‘right’, and those that were not.

The participants shared multiple stories during the interviews. When we compared these stories, the binary between right and wrong dissolved and opened up space to discuss the more confusing experiences and encounters that for different reasons never quite fit the binary. The aim of the analysis was to explore and contribute to an expanded understanding of why the delineations between those alcohol-related sexual encounters people generally consider wanted and acceptable or unwanted and unacceptable sometimes seem to become murky and slippery.

Becoming the good sexual subject

The theme of one’s sexual debut, especially the questions of when and how it should happen, is openly discussed in popular culture, as portrayed in Norwegian films such as Turn Me On, Dammit (2011), Cupid’s Balls (2011) and Bare Bea (2004). These films portray the desire to have sex for the first time as normal and expected and losing one’s virginity as an urgent matter. The mean age for Norwegians’ sexual debuts (16.7 years for women and 18.9 years for men) has remained stable in recent decades (Bufdir, 2021). The material in the data reflects both this position and the expected age for one’s sexual debut. As one participant noted:

No, I never felt that I had to [have sex], but in high school, I felt, looking back at it now, that I just wanted to get it over with – to just get laid for the first time. I was by no means the first one. It wasn’t until the end of the first year that it happened. It wasn’t because someone said I should do it; it was just something I felt I should do, because everybody else probably had. But, you know, this is what everyone tells you now, in retrospect (Rakel, f ² ).

The way the participants spoke about losing their virginity reflected the urgency to ‘do it’. Whether participants first had sex at age 14 or 20, a feeling and fear of ‘being late’ was recurrent throughout the data, pointing to a normalising expectation to have sex as soon as possible. This feeling of pressure and urgency to have sex seemed to be exerted both within and outside the participants. They expressed an inner desire and curiosity about sex but also mentioned an expectation that sex was something they should have. According to Gavey (2019) the pressure to have sex stems from shared cultural knowledge, with people arguably producing and reproducing their experiences within dominant discourses of heterosexuality. The data revealed no shame about having sex or being sexually active; the participants considered wanting and having sex to be normal. The flip side of this feeling, however, was that in order to be normal, one should want and have sex.

To varying degrees, most of the participants expressed that if they were not having sex, then they should try to get it. For some, this feeling was more of an afterthought because other things had been going on when they first started going to parties:

Sex and that stuff … I don’t think that became a theme until … the year I turned 18. Then, all of a sudden it became this thing, like, ‘Hmmm … I wonder what it’s like to have sex?’ Still, it wasn’t something I thought much about when I went to parties. There was just so much other stuff going on! It wasn’t until I got home that I was like, ‘Ah man. Should have thought about that’ (Karl, m).

While Karl forgot that he was ‘supposed’ to focus on getting laid at parties, other men in the sample talked about being young, hitting the town and trying to ‘pull’ women. They felt an expectation to flirt and make moves, but they were terrified and did not really want (or even know how) to do that. Although none of the participants mentioned others who were sexually inactive, they seemed to judge themselves harshly if they were not attempting to be sexually active. This situation held true for both the men and the women in the sample, arguably exemplifying how existing and dominant norms can operate on people outside the norm to make them active and complicit in regulating their own behaviour and persuade them to work on fitting in (Olive et al., 2015). This normalising work on themselves validates and reproduces the norm of being sexually active. If we consider the material in terms of the scaffold of normative heterosexuality, then the norm of being sexually active with another human being seems to be one of the main pillars. The data indicates that, if one wants to ‘do heterosexuality’ correctly, having had sex is not enough: sex is something one should continue to have. Eva explained why it was important to have had a lot of casual sex, thus communicating something about what it means to be a good sexual subject and what makes this position attractive:

I call it my ‘slutty summer’. You should have a period of time when you just sleep around, and you should do it because you learn so much about yourself. Meeting new people all the time, people who are into other stuff, you get closer to your own truth and what you like. So it’s about exploring (Eva, f).

Having casual sex with various people seemed to provide an opportunity to learn something important about oneself. Eva’s statement about accessing her own truth through sexual experiences makes sense within Foucault’s (1988) concept of technologies of the self. According to Alcoff (2018), the shift from searching for some innate truth about one’s sexuality to the crafting of a ‘true’ sexual self in turn shifts the question from whether one has a sexual self to whether one has the ability to participate in the making of a sexual self. Exploring sex and figuring out what one likes and dislikes seemed to be crucial for developing sexual agency and becoming a knowledgeable sexual subject. For the participants, this idea seemed to lead to at least an inner expectation to try everything or be open to trying everything:

It’s like, I want to have a threesome, a foursome. I want to have those experiences and have unrestricted promiscuous sex for a while. I want to travel … I just want to have those opportunities. Girls don’t [understand] that. Girls can just text us and ask if we want to have sex. Guys can’t do that … You don’t know what it’s like to want to have sex wherever you want, whenever you want, with whoever you want, and never get it. And yes, sure, I am aware it depends on who you are, and varies from person to person. Of all the stuff my ex told me about, I was never jealous of her having had sex with other men; I was jealous of all those experiences she’d had (Karl, m).

Karl’s envy of his ex-girlfriend’s experiences can be understood as resulting from her opportunities to have experimental, ‘wild’ sex and create a solid, well-rounded sexual self. Mentions of physical desire and ‘urges’ were rare in the data as a motivator to have sex. One of the male participants, Anders, told a story about being at a party and going to urinate, where he encountered a couple having sex on the bathroom floor. They invited him to join them, which he did. He did not attribute this to arousal, but to the excitement of ‘Wow! Now I get the chance to do this, too!’ Material like this suggested that by missing opportunities to gain sexual experience, participants might miss important self-making possibilities. The desire to become an experienced and knowledgeable sexual subject worked as a strong normalising force that the participants based their actions on.

The threat of inexperience

According to Foucault (1980), normalising forces work by sanctioning or punishing those who fail to reach the expected level of their capabilities, and such sanctions reduce deviance from the norm. In this study, these forces also underpinned the motivation to pursue sex as something other than an inherent biological sexual drive or desire for sexual pleasure in the moment. If someone had the opportunity to have sex, then the expectation to take advantage of it seemed to follow. But if being a competent adult and good sexual subject is the reward, then what are the sanctions for not complying with (or, worse, opposing) this normalising force?

For many of us, I mean … we were pretty inexperienced sexually and had hardly even been with a woman. This whole thing was a very big deal for us, hearing those guys who were older and more experienced say stuff like, ‘Nah, you’re not a real man until you’ve had at least three women’. And then, I got … I felt, well, I felt small because I hadn’t been proactive enough … didn’t have that many ‘lady-stories’ to tell. So I felt … I should … it’s about time I got something going here, too. Everyone else around me seemed to get it. And then I tried more actively to get some results … (Martin, m).

Martin’s statement expresses peer pressure, feeling small and ‘not being good enough’ because of his lack of sexual experience to qualify as a ‘real man’. Having sex for the first time also represented a transition away from childhood and towards the subsequent quest for more experience, and a further move away from the innocence of childhood and into the world of experienced and competent adults. In this theoretical context, this quest seemed to be aligned with establishing oneself as a good sexual subject. The feelings Martin described may be interpreted as a form of self-monitoring, which seemed to have a gendered dimension. Men may have fewer desirable options than women when it comes to available positions if they are sexually inactive. For the women in this study who did not seek out or utilise opportunities to have sex, most available ‘subject positions’ related to being old-fashioned, a prude, a nun or just plain boring. These terms may be derogatory but are still manageable and recognisable positions to occupy; one may fall slightly outside the norm without being subversive or abnormal.

In contrast, men who did not utilise or try to create opportunities for sex seemed to risk being positioned as under-developed, as a man-child or a loser (Kelly and Aunspach, 2020). Positions like these seem to be undesirable at a more existential level than for sexually inactive women. For a man to reach adulthood without ever having sex with another human being involves a greater risk of being perceived as abnormal than for women; hence, the normalising force to produce a ‘good sexual subject’ seemed to work through and reenforce the male sexual-drive discourse and operate more strongly, or differently, for men than for women. Since the participants never separated sex (as in sexual acts) from sexuality, sexuality appeared to be an intrinsic part of the self, which had to be developed and cultivated by accumulating sexual experiences. This accumulation appeared to offer both a gateway to adulthood and a position as a modern, knowledgeable self.

Karl, Anders and Martin drew on discourses on male sexuality in their stories, with the man always ready for sex and the woman positioned as someone who can activate and access this source of self-knowledge. Within this logic, women decide and manage the possibilities for heterosexual young men to become, or to feel like, fully fledged, sexually experienced human beings. Because young men need access to women’s bodies to realise themselves and become good sexual subjects, women may become gatekeepers of sex. Since this form of self-making depends completely on access to someone else and their body, becoming a good sexual subject becomes a precarious process.

Sometimes, the same forces that create opportunities to become a good sexual subject may create the conditions to do (and hence become) wrong. In one interview, a participant talked about belonging to a group of young men whose collective identity was founded upon ‘crazy’ stories of drunken sexual experiences. After a party, when the group gathered to recap the previous night’s events, one of their friends, who rarely had a story to share, bragged about having had sex with a girl at the party. This boast made the others suspicious: first, because they had silently agreed that the girl was too drunk, and second because they found it rather odd that their friend, who rarely managed to have sex at parties, had done so with this girl. They started asking him questions, and he became increasingly defensive. Ultimately, he admitted that he was unsure whether the sex was consensual or not. The rest of the group reacted strongly by attacking him and forcing him to make things right with the girl. An important part of the group’s collectively accumulated sexual capital was their reputation as decent guys. According to the participant, if someone in the group did not ‘perform’, this would reflect badly on the rest. The group’s identity seems to have exerted pressure on the guy who rarely managed to have sex. Like Martin from the previous example, he might have felt that it was about time he ‘got some results’. In this case, the desire to become a good sexual subject, by working through the compulsion to be sexually active and gain experience, may have contributed to the conditions and motivation for him doing wrong. This case shows how the quest for accumulated experience – the same forces that contribute to the making of a good sexual subject – can also contribute to the making of a failed one.

In this material, the ideal of being an active sexual subject was at the core of being a good sexual subject, but the level of activeness must be managed in an acceptable way. Some gendered differences appeared to exist in how the activeness should play out. None of the participants in this study spoke favourably about being out on a ‘girl hunt’ (Grazian, 2007). When mentioning such a hunt, they framed such behaviour as too eager and too predatory and indeed borderline ‘rapey’. On the other hand, most of the women felt the importance of being sexually active. They often mentioned going out on ‘man hunts’ in liberating terms: an outlook that accords with former studies on Nordic sexualities (Nielsen, 2004; Pedersen, 2005). Meeting with sexually liberated, and quite active, women seemed to influence how the men in the sample engaged in casual sex. Sandberg et al. (2004) found that some young Norwegian men were reluctant to take sexual initiative. This finding resonates with some of the male participants in this study: a man may contribute to create the moment, but the woman is the one who must take charge, and when she does, the man must be as ready as he can be. The male participants explained this situation as fear of rejection, of crossing someone’s boundaries, making unwanted moves and ‘being that kind of guy’: in a worst-case scenario, being labelled a rapist or similar term.

Based on the analysis so far, the men in the material seemed to manage their activeness by being inherently ready, without being too eager. Women, in contrast, may be active in a way that men cannot, which points to a gendered difference in how agency is enacted. Women can become sexually experienced by actively seeking out and pursuing sex, but they should be the ones in charge. If women passively let men have sex with them, then they are doing something wrong. The common phrase ‘not that kind of girl’ usually indicates disapproval of a sexually active girl, but, similarly to Fjær et al. (2015), the girl the participants did not want to be was the sexually passive girl: Ones who let sex happen to them or who are inexperienced. For the men, being too eager was wrong, while for the women being a passive recipient of another’s sexuality was wrong.

Winch’s (2016: 907) reflections on slut-shaming can illuminate this scenario. The shame of being a slut is not connected to being sexually active as much as to a lack of control. According to Winch, the word ‘slut’ is associated with porous borders and abjection; the shame of being a slut thus relates to a lack of control over one’s own sexuality (Winch, 2016). The stigma of victimhood is traceable to its association with passivity (Mardorossian, 2002). The shame of being a victim seems to be connected to finding oneself in a passive position and failing to control the sex that happens to you. According to the data, being ‘that kind of guy’ referred to being overly eager and lacking control. Being too eager – like being too hungry, and hence a passive victim of one’s own hunger – implied a lack of control of sexuality and the self. This association between passivity (for women) and activity (for men) means that victimisation and shame seem to work differently among women and men.

Meeting sexually liberated women who knew what they wanted and aimed to get it, combined with the classic expectation of men never saying no and always being ready for sex (see Kulick, 2003), seemed to contribute to a certain murky territory between sex and rape. Some of the men explained that, even if they were blackout drunk and hardly remembered anything (but they knew they had had sex), they assumed the sex was consensual because they were men and never said no. Within this logic, the woman was the person who needed to consent (and preferably lead the way), whereas the man’s mere presence indicated consent. A couple of these men also shared stories of waking up with a woman sitting astride them, having sex atop them when they themselves were almost blackout drunk. They described this activity as unwanted, but they did not label it as rape. The possibility of being raped, or having one’s boundaries crossed, especially when the active part was taken by a woman, seemed unavailable to the men or hard for them to comprehend.

For a couple of the men, when normative compulsive sex and identity-making worked together through the male sexual-drive discourse, the boundary seemed to become blurred between ‘just sex’ and rape. The men who shared such experiences told of a strong sense of confusion, because after all, someone (a woman) had slept with them, which should have worked as a compliment and an accomplishment they should have felt happy about, but it still felt wrong. Still, these men did not express a feeling of failure. If they had connected their experience to a less gendered perception of rape and victimhood, then one possibility is that the stigma of being a passive recipient of someone else’s sexuality may have stained them. Alternatively, their investment in the male sex-drive discourse could have protected them from the experience of victimisation (and hence failure).

This idea indicates that although the norm of being active is strong, people must manage it in acceptable ways. To become a good sexual subject, the subject needs to move away from a position of inexperience to a position of experience. Based on the stories analysed and discussed above, high stakes are involved in the process of becoming a good sexual subject, with very little room for trial and error. The path to becoming a knowledgeable sexual subject, who knows, manages and governs their boundaries, may simultaneously lead one astray and into murky and ambiguous territory.