MAP Forum

Emily Atack has said a number of her past drunken sexual encounters could be considered rape, as she fronts a new campaign on consent.

The actress, who starred in Dame Jilly Cooper’s Rivals screen adaptation, has become a central figure to the “I’m asking for it” campaign, which aims to legally enshrine the need for active, voluntary and mutual consent before sex.

Speaking to Jamie Laing on the Great Company podcast, Ms Atack reflected on her own “uncomfortable” sexual encounters, including several occasions where she could not remember sleeping with someone.

She said: “I’ve woken up so many times and been like, ‘I definitely didn’t say yes to that,’” adding: “As a teenager it was awful.

“There were no barriers, there were no boundaries. Boys didn’t know how to be with girls, girls didn’t know how to deal with those situations. It was a mess.”

The 34-year-old said she now views her past encounters through a different lens and has spoken out against women being conditioned to normalise sex while too drunk to consent.

“I went through life thinking if you wake up after a night out and something has happened, but you don’t really remember it, you just have to suck it up and get on with it,” she said.

“It’s just not worth going down that road of, ‘But I don’t remember, I don’t remember any of that.’”

‘You just carry on, you’re taught that it’s normal’

The actress said her own experiences had been “uncomfortable”, adding that she could “count on one hand” the number of times she had actually enjoyed sex.

Asked if these sexual encounters made her feel anger and grief, she said: “Yeah, you do, but it’s been so repressed for so long. We were taught for such a long time that that was kind of a normal way to have sex – you wake up after a party and go, ‘Ooh, Jesus Christ, I don’t really remember that, anyway.’

“And then you just kind of carry on. We’re taught that was, like, normal.”

The Inbetweeners actress said stories such as hers had the potential to make men feel ashamed while reflecting on their own sexual experiences.

“The problem is now, now we’re all having the conversation more, people are coming out and going: ‘Oh right, well, I was raped then.’ And it’s very difficult to have to admit it to you,” she said.

“But also the reason why it’s difficult as well for the men – men are getting angry because they’re scared, because so many men will listen to this sort of thing and go ‘I’ve done that before.’

“There’ll be men that are getting their kids uniform ready for school and they will listen to something like this and stop in their tracks and go: ‘Oh f---, I’ve done that before.’

“And they probably regret it and feel really terrible about it, but to be told now that was wrong, and that actually that’s now seen as rape, that’s hard for people to digest because they know that they’ve done that somewhere in their lives.”

‘Shift focus from absence of no to presence of yes’

The “I’m asking for it” campaign, which Ms Atack has become a figurehead for, was created by CPB London and campaigning body Right to Equality.

Subverting the phrase “she was asking for it” to demand a right to ask for consent, the campaign’s petition said the current laws on rape allow for “implied consent”.

The petition, which surpassed the 10,000 signature mark in five days, proposed “an affirmative consent model” requiring “explicit agreement at every stage of interaction”.

It states: “We believe the consent model should be re-evaluated in light of international change and to better protect survivors in court, shifting focus from an absence of ‘no’ to the presence of ‘yes’.”

Ms Atack has also spoken out against online sexual harassment and victim blaming in BBC Two documentary Emily Atack: Asking For It.

The actress welcomed her first child in June with scientist Dr Alistair Garner, whom she has known for thirty 30 years.