Author Louise O’Neill is pretty much a fearless writer.
Her first two works of fictions have tackled rape, and the societal pressures on women and girls to look and be “perfect”, and she’s unabashedly feminist on social media and in her weekly column in the ‘Irish Examiner’ newspaper.
O’Neill’s column this weekend is headed “Apparently, Having Sex On The First Date Means You Will Be Shunned”, and in it she writes about the socially and culturally engrained attitude that tells women that sleeping with someone on the first date is a catastrophe from which you can’t recover.
She references Vogue Williams’ recent appearance on Loose Women where she revealed how she and an ex had sex on the first night they met. The panellists reacted in a shocked manner that O’Neill describes as “slut-shaming”.
“Having sex on the first date means you will automatically be shunned as a fallen woman and no man shall marry you — a fate worse than death, surely,” O’Neill writes.
She then says:
“I’ve had sex with people on the first night. I ended up dating some of the men, it became all too obvious with others that the chemistry was severely lacking and I would rather have sawn off my own arm than have to see them again..and I count one or two of them among my closest friends today.
“I don’t have any shame about this. I don’t feel the need to justify my need for food or sleep or water or oxygen. Why would I do so with yet another primal human instinct?”
The reaction to O’Neill’s defence of a woman’s right to shame-free first date sex has been greeted as a breath of fresh air.
https://twitter.com/TaraFlynn/status/754219426539507712
https://twitter.com/TaraFlynn/status/754220464537493504
Good column from @oneilllo on sex and first dates https://t.co/q3vWzppLLa
— Rachel Collins (@OrrCollins) July 16, 2016
There's @oneilllo yet again telling it as it should be. Go girl! https://t.co/nEFrSP00rR
— Alison O'Connor (@alisonoconn) July 16, 2016
Men who shame you for having sex with them on the first date do not deserve your respect….or your sex! https://t.co/Wz9KLE3XBv
— Shawna – Smut Peddler in Chief of Sex Siopa (@SexSiopa) July 16, 2016
This is great @oneilllo Apparently, having sex on the first date means you will be shunned https://t.co/wbZNrZWsAh
— Womenscouncilireland (@NWCI) July 16, 2016
And for her part, O’Neill is happy to clarify something:
https://twitter.com/oneilllo/status/754248081919602688
Before the column’s publication, O’Neill joked on Snapchat that she would have to buy up all the copies of the paper to prevent her relatives from reading about her sex life.
But this was all in jest; in reality, her family are incredibly supportive of her frank stance on sex and sexuality.
“I don’t have to shield my parents from anything I write, as they would never attempt to censor me,” O’Neill told Her.ie.
“I presume my dad would take one look at the subheading and choose not to read it for his own sake, but my mom thought it was great. But I texted all my aunts and warned them not to bring the paper to my grandmother’s house this weekend!”
She also shared with us a screengrab of a great text conversation with her mother:
Nicely done O’Neills.
You can read Louise O’Neill’s full column here.
