ordinary sex
ordinary sex
“And if I did it, then I didn’t mean to. So would it make a difference?”
Alice and Owen met online, fell in love, and built a life together. Then Owen is accused of rape.
Faced with an accusation and a decision to make, ‘Ordinary Sex’ questions intimacy, violation, and the line between the two.
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Summary
‘Ordinary Sex’ is a knotty and pacy thriller on intimacy and violation. Alice and Owen are building a life together but on the eve of their moving in, Alice receives an anonymous message: YOUR BOYFRIEND IS A RAPIST.
As the couple navigate this accusation, we watch their relationship unfold as they urgently and painfully interrogate their sexual experiences.
Owen confesses that he might know who is sending these messages to Alice: his first girlfriend from college, Emily. Despite this, he remains steadfast that he has never raped anyone.
Alice isn’t satisfied with this revelation and so - under the guise of a journalistic interview - secretly meets with Emily to interview her about her work as a barrister. Unbeknownst to Alice, however, Owen is also undergoing his own investigation, meeting with Emily and facing some hard truths about his behaviour in the past.
This is when the notion of “ordinary sex” is introduced, a term from Amia Srinivasan’s scorching essay collection, ‘The Right to Sex’, which puts into words the notion that sex can be bad or unpleasurable and yet is not legally considered rape.
In another clandestine meeting, Alice and Emily meet once more, without false pretence. The two women speak as openly as they can about Owen but the conclusion is troubling; Emily is not the sender of the anonymous messages.
When Alice and Owen finally reunite following a brief break, they confront their guilt and pain alongside their differing understandings of rape, violation, and intimacy.
‘Ordinary Sex’ doesn’t offer a clear cut answer on who sends the messages. This would detract from the audience’s task of unpicking the truth and sitting in uncertainty. Crucially, the audience are left to reconsider their own sexual relationships, asking: what kind of sex do we owe to one another?