There was the time when, 19 and naive, I was guilt-tripped into entirely unwanted physical intimacies with a much older married man. And the time, three or four years later, when I went to visit an on-and-off long-distance boyfriend and quickly realised that it was over for me – but he assumed we were still on, and I didn't have the nerve to say no to sex. And the time I told a man, "Look, I'm not going to sleep with you", and it was taken as "try again in a couple of hours".

When they happened, my view of these encounters ranged from "a mistake" to "it's complicated". It still does – even though, these days, we are encouraged to reinterpret such experiences as sexual violations. To many feminists, stories like these are evidence of a pervasive, misogynistic rape culture. "Kids see movies where there's an aggressor who gets pushed away, but keeps trying until the girl relents," writes advocate, author and filmmaker Kelly Kend. "This is a rape dynamic that has been played off countless times as just how it works." Canadian feminist author Anne Theriault laments "the still-pervasive and very flawed idea that if she doesn't say no, it's not rape" – clearly referring not just to attacks involving violence or incapacitation (for which few would demand a verbal "no" as proof of rape), but encounters in which a woman yields to unwanted overtures.

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis

To me, this crusade against "rape culture" over-simplifies the vast complexity of human sexual interaction, conflating criminal sexual acts such as coercion by physical force, threat or incapacitation – which should obviously be prosecuted and punished whenever possible – with bad behaviour.

Was I a victim? Even in the first incident, in which the man knowingly pressured me into something I didn't want, I could have safely said no. Consent for bad reasons is still consent; despicable behaviour is not always criminal. (Getting guilt-tripped into giving money to a freeloading friend is not robbery.) In the second instance, it would be an infantilising insult to deny my responsibility for a mutual misunderstanding. In the third, what happened was not only consensual but wanted; my initial "no" was sincere, but it was mainly an attempt to stop myself from acting on an attraction against my better judgment.