Here’s something both interesting and disturbing (hopefully not the first thing you’re reading this morning). A friend is conducting an impromptu, informal poll on her LiveJournal:
Mostly for the girls. But if the guys feel they can contribute, feel free.
Feel free to answer this one anonymously.
For how many of you was your first sexual experience consensual?
For how many of you was your first penetrative sexual experience consensual?
Just curious and doing my own little impromptu poll.
Me? Neither.
So far, the responses tally like so:
- Both consensual: 10
- First experience nonconsensual, first penetration consensual: 3
- First experience consensual, first penetration nonconsensual: 2
- Both nonconsensual: 12*
Where both experiences had the same answer, it’s almost — but not quite — 50/50, and the nonconsensual experiences are in the lead. If you combine all instances of nonconsensual firsts into one category, then out of the 27 responses, barely over a third had fully consensual first sexual experiences — and just under two thirds were forced or coerced in some way into their first sexual experiences.
Admittedly, it’s a small sample group to work with, so no real statistics should probably be drawn from this. But I seem to remember hearing fairly often over the years that one out of every three women (people?) would end up being sexually molested at some point in their life. By this sample group, it looks more like two out of every three. Not an encouraging thought in the least.
Just for the record, all sexual experiences I’ve had have been consensual. One of the many things in my life that I’m quite thankful for.
* One comment indicated that both were “technically” consensual, but given the details that were explained, I’ve taken the liberty of adding that tally to this category.