I remember, in my last year of high school, we had a case study of a girl whose parents wouldn't let her ride her bicycle on a certain road, and she wanted to go and see her boyfriend. Her neighbour, who had a fizzed up panel van, gave her a ride but on the way, he raped her. When she told her boyfriend, he said that she "must have asked for it." So, she went and told his neighbour, who was a black belt in judo, who gave him a kicking. There was a girl in my class, who was a conservative Catholic, who claimed that she did ask for it.

To be honest with you, if I had a girlfriend and some guy raped her, I would want him dealt with by the police and I would support her through it. As many of my readers know, I feel that abortion must be legal (the Catholic girl didn't) but if I had a girlfriend who feel pregnant as a result of the rape, hell would freeze over before I would claim that the foetus was "a gift from God." I would hope that she would abort it or give it up for adoption with the door as to who its parents were firmly locked behind it. Now don't get me wrong here, if I had a girlfriend who was a single mum, and I loved her, I would treat the child as if it were my own, and that's different. If, however, I had a girlfriend, and she was raped, I would be angry if the legal system said that she had to carry a baby full term that she hadn't planned for, in a sexual encounter that she hadn't wanted, and then give it up for adoption.

I remember, the year before that, we were told of reasons that we could give as to why we didn't want sex. As a relatively naive and sheltered then 15-year-old. I was horrified when it was suggested that a girl could say to a boy, "No, but I don't mind if you go and masturbate." (I remember, when I was about to start high school, a boy in my class asked me if I masturbated. I thought it sounded like something that chooks did (thinking incubate) and he laughed. I went home and told my mother and she looked at me and whispered, "I hope you don't!" And I said to her, "I don't know what it means, so I don't know if I do it." She told it meant, "Play with yourself to make your willy go hard." I said, "No, I don't." I remember her saying that she took my brother to the doctor because he used to reach down the front of his nappy and sleep with his in his hand, and the doctor laughed and said, "He's having erotic fantasies.").

No women anywhere in the world should be stereotyped as easy. I remember reading an article where a misogynistic US sailor went to Thailand and said that the women there would, "wash your back, fold your clothes, f*** your brains out and smile while doing it."