Emily Atack has opened up about times she's experienced situations that she says would now be recognised as rape.
The Inbetweeners star and new mum, 34, is fronting the Affirmative Consent campaign, by CPB London, in which the actress urges the government to change the law on rape and sexual assault. Emily has spoken out about the "awful" times she slept with people while drunk and woke up knowing she didn't "say yes".
Speaking to Made In Chelsea's Jamie Laing on his Great Company podcast, she revealed that she rarely enjoyed sex and there were many times she couldn't even remember it. But as time has passed, she admits that now her experiences would be seen differently, with women expected to "repress" their feelings about sex and consent.
Emily shared: "My situations have only been uncomfortable - yeah, literally. Honestly, I can only count on one hand probably where I've actually enjoyed sex. Growing up, I'm sorry, as a teenager it was awful.
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instagram)"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."
Emily explained: "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. It's like there's no way anyone's going to....it's just not worth going down that road of 'but I don't remember, I don't remember any of that'."
"'Yeah, awful," she added. "I've woken up so many times and been like 'I definitely didn't say yes to that'."
She believes that men are 'getting away' with sleeping with drunk people, and when asked if she ever felt shameful or angry following her sexual encounters, 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 - that 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 that was like normal."
"The problem is now," Emily continued. "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. 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**k, I've done that before.' And they probably regret it and feel really terrible about it, but to be told now that 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 a lot of people, loads of people."
"That's why it's so difficult to go there," Emily said.
Rape and sexual abuse - If you've been the victim of sexual assault, you can access help and resources via www.rapecrisis.org.uk or calling the national telephone helpline on 0808 802 9999
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