It was what I would consider your fairly standard hookup. After talking on a handful of occasions, passing back and forth flirtatious comments, and seeing if she wanted to chill, I was set to go to her room that evening. There wasn't a qualm in my mind that she didn't want to hook up; after complaining about the heat, she told me I could sleep over in her room, and she had even told me that I looked hot. I made my way up to her room, sat on her bed alongside her and talked just as we had before. After telling me she didn't get social cues, I moved my hand to her hip and asked if she got what this meant. We started kissing, as I moved my hands towards her breasts, I asked if this was alright to which she said yes. After a while, she said things were going a tad fast, so I lightened the intensity of things. A few minutes later she asked to stop, and we simply did. We sat in her room, talking about Russian politics among other things for a while before we decided to go our separate ways. I walked out of her hall thinking that I wished things had gone farther, but that the brevity of our encounter was by no means problematic.
Both of us soon enough started seeing other people romantically, but we nonetheless remained in touch as friends. At some point later in the semester, I returned to her room with some mutual friends and we sat there talking for at least an hour. The subject of our hookup, now a matter of public discourse, came up. What she told me then entirely changed my views on sex and hookup culture in general.
1. Apparently, she thought I was gay the whole time. OK, fair enough. It's happened before, but the reason why I was particularly surprised was because I felt so certain she was into me. What I presumed to be social cues were to her nothing more than compliments and friendliness. And I thought about it, and I realized that telling someone you think is gay that they're hot and that they can stay over is by no means an invitation to have them fuck you. The only thing that one can really define as being an invitation to have sex is an actual invitation to have sex.
2. She told me I was a great guy, not because of my asking her if it was alright to touch her breasts, but because I had stopped when she wanted me to stop. When she told me this I wanted to cry. To think that someone's conception of the sexual status quo is entirely non-consensual is heartbreaking. I have never had a sexual encounter without consent because I had always thought that was how sex was supposed to be. To the vast majority of other guys out there however, I fear that this is just not the case. I should not be considered a great guy just because I didn't rape someone. It disgusts me that rape is the status quo, that women feel they have no say in sex, and that such misogynistic views still exist here. Formal consent is not the status quo, and as long as it isn't, we need to continue to let those around us know that it happens here.