A Note About Sexual Ethics by Clifton Evers May 18, 2009

National Rugby League culture in Australia is under fire for the attitudes towards women and sexual consent. There have been a number of sexual assault allegations over the years. In 2005 some of the Bulldogs National Rugby League football team allegedly gangbanged a woman in Coffs Harbour. No one was prosecuted even though there was a rape allegation. At the start of this year Manly Rugby League star Brett Stewart was charged with the sexual assault of a teenager after a booze-fueled season launch in Sydney. Now a New Zealand woman says a night of group sex involving former rugby league star Matthew Johns when she was 19 has led to significant trauma.

These scenarios got me thinking about surfing, and some of the ugly stuff that I have come across in our culture.

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The Party

At the party the boys are drinking, hard.

The text goes out to Emily, a girl who is known to put out and has a few friends who do too. By the time the girls arrive everyone is pretty messy, and the music is blaring as the boys imitate their garden tools as dances, like 'the sprinkler'. A few crew throw old boards on a bonfire as a sacrifice for better surf, the swell has been flat for weeks.

The party spills out of the house as more crew turn up. There's a big shed in the backyard, and the light doesn't make it behind the shed.

Dark. Black. Spiders.

Emily is stumbling around, charming all the boys with a touch or a flick of her hair. She's hot. Tanned body. Bikini lines. Short shorts. Her friends look untouchable, they're all hot too. But then again the boys have beer goggles on.

Mick's blood boils and heart beats faster as he ushers a drunken Emily behind the shed. He's the most brazen of the boys, always ready to have a crack at the ladies. And Emily is called fair game because the cooler wine is having a dramatic effect on her, and she's had sex with some of the boys before.

A few other blokes creep behind the shed to see what is going on. They peer and stare. Most have not had sex before.

Emily is on her stomach. Mick's panting. One of the boys crawls forward and asks if he can join in. Emily nods her head groggily, turns over and unzips him. The boys line up, each wanting a go. None last long.

Emily gets fed up.

It's pathetic. She wrestles to get up. The boys keep taking turns.

Fear.

The boys don't realise their large muscled bodies tower over Emily, or how strong they are.

Tears.

Laughter. Slapping of backs. Handshakes. Some boys don't join in, and just watch. They're unsure at what is happening, or what to do.

The last boy finishes, and stumbles back to the party and music and dancing and fun.

Emily lies there until everyone goes home, and then sneaks away.

Sobbing. Emily's favourite dress is torn.

The young surfers at the party were not prosecuted. Nobody found out they had raped a girl. Some didn't think of it again, others thought that Emily was a slut and asked for it and would do it again, while some didn't understand at all what had just happened because they weren't thinking about Emily.

Was that her name?

 A wise old bloke called Laz inspired this story. He once told me, "surfers can be sexually brutal, like many other boys and men, and sometimes without realising it".

Sometimes group sex - gang banging - can go very wrong. When you take part other blokes may make you feel like a bit of a legend as they egg you on. You can be swept up in the bodies, sweat, heat, and action. The girl quickly becomes just a piece of meat the boys are using to bond through. Her name may mean nothing to them.

Some blokes will talk about the gangbang the next day. It can feel like a bit of an adventure. The sexual experience ends up not being about sharing the experience with the girl, and everything about bonding with the boys. The opinions of the boys can become paramount, at the expense of the trauma of the girl who will remain emotionally, if not physically scarred, for life.

Imagine the terror of being controlled sexually, and the horror as you felt and dreamed it over and over.

Think about it, hard.

What if it was your friend, sister, cousin, girlfriend, aunty, mum?

Mateship can get ugly when teamed up with sex, if you let it. But the truth is this sort of behaviour is pretty far from mateship. A real mate does not refuse to stop what is happening when someone is being hurt, abused, or sexually assaulted. Being a complicit bystander means acquiescing to this sort of behaviour, and not caring about what the girl is going through and the consequences.

Rule number one about sexual experiences, whether group or otherwise, is consent. I repeat, consent.

If a girl stops talking, and ceases to have any say in the sex she may be scared. A real mate stops and ask everyone present if everything is OK. The girl is not going to be turned off by this, but happy she is classed as a mate too. And if a bloke is not taking part, he still needs to have the guts to stop what is going on if things are getting ugly. Real mates check that everyone feels safe.

Sometimes people will not say things are getting ugly, but they will feel it. It is important to also pay attention to bodies. Are some people appearing scared or upset? We use body language to work out if someone wants to hook up, so we can also use non-verbal communication to pick up if somebody isn't comfortable. But it is important to not just rely on body language, but to also stop and ask if everything is cool.

Sometimes though, we're too smashed or dumb to pick up on body signals, and need to actually ask questions like: what do you want to do? Are you feeling OK with this? This care makes for better sex because sometimes the girl asks: actually, could we do it like this? It very well could be something new and very hot.

Importantly, a person may consent to having sex one time and in a particular way, it does not mean that they implicitly consent the next time. Safety and consent have to be worked out each and every time.

While older blokes used to give me advice about sex pretty often they were misogynistic and sexist and knew nothing about safety and consent themselves. They were also absent when things got hot and heavy.

My habit was to turn to my mates for sex information, since they were the ones closest at hand - at the parties, beach, sheds, and the like. But they were not armed with much information. They were new to all this too.

Surfing magazines were no good for advice. They do not have practical sex advice on how to hook up and how to be any good at sex, yet they feel free to promote sexual activity, not just surfing. Girls tend to get more information through girls magazines about sex and how to do it.

Plenty of practice is obviously a good way to learn about sex, just as long as you wear a condom and look after who you are having sex with. I've learned to always remember to ask: How was it for her? What can we do now? It's cool to show that you are uncertain about sex, and don't know how to proceed. It does not mean you'll be rejected.

Mind you, it is difficult for girls to practice without being called a slut, slag or whore. An active sexual history by a girl means some boys think it is their right to demand sex from the girl. The thing is, these girls may be the most fun to have sex with.

Girls are also expected to be the 'gatekeepers' of sex, and manage sexual encounters. It is said that girls have much to lose by having lots of sex, for example falling pregnant or being morally reprehensible. If there is access to condoms it's assumed that it is up to the girl to insist on the boy wearing while it's considered OK if the boy is. The scary thing is it is more often than not the girl who is expected to manage sex, even if she is wasted!

Sometimes girls are told not to wear sexy clothing and underwear, or act provocatively, or they may be taken advantage of by blokes. This is stupid. That's like saying that someone wants to be robbed because they have money in their wallet. The girl just wants to look hot, not be sexually preyed on. Some blokes even use this reason to justify holding a girl down to have sex. It is never OK to hold a girl down to have sex with her. Never.

When a girl has flirted with a bloke he sometimes thinks that she has 'led him on' and it's OK to put pressure on her to have sex. It is not. She is often just playing around, enjoying playing with sex, and has no intention of actually having sex. But if you treat her with respect, sex could end up being on the cards.

Despite all the scare tactics and risks girls continue to have sex, luckily for us some like it just as much as blokes do.

Blokes tend to get the upside of a sexual double-standard. While girls who have lots of sex or dress hot are called 'sluts', we are called 'studs' or 'players' if we are successful at getting sex.

It's claimed blokes have an automatic and unstoppable natural urge for sex. This implies that if anything goes wrong it's not our fault but the girl's fault, since we assume she is meant to be the 'gatekeeper' of sex and manage the situation.

But this is rubbish. Everyone having sex has a responsibility for the other person and what happens. If the other person isn't into it, or doesn't want to continue, you can stop. And if you say you cannot you are a liar!

Dr Clifton Evers is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Journalism and Media Research Centre, University of New South Wales. He is co-editor of Kurungabaa: A journal of literature history and ideas for surfers. Clif has a habit of pacing the floor and twitching all night when a new winter swell is on its way.