I’m glad Nick Conrad has stepped down – it’s never OK to minimise rape

I’m glad Nick Conrad has stepped down as Conservative candidate for Broadland in Norfolk.

These days, politicians can get away saying horrible things: a bit of casual racism here, a great deal of casual racism there. But it seems that folk draw the line at rape apologists and most of us are real sticks in the mud about blaming the victims of sexual assault.

Soon after Conrad’s candidacy was announced, a radio discussion was unearthed where he was heard giving his views on the rape trial of the footballer Ched Evans. He said, on air, on a radio show: “If you don’t wish to give out the wrong signals, it’s probably best to keep your knickers on.”

So confident was he about being the spokesperson for roughly half the population, he ploughed on with all the morality of a porn rape-roleplay plotline: “It’s very difficult for many men to say no when they are whipped up into a bit of a storm.”

This was all two years before Ched Evans’ conviction was quashed at his retrial.

If I was a bloke, I would be mightily annoyed by the attitude that men just can’t help themselves. Actually, if it’s alright with everyone, I’ll be annoyed anyway. They can stop themselves in the heat of the moment. I’ve seen it. For example, when someone else walks into the room: a hotel maid, his mum… I’ve been there, they jump off you in a flash. They stop when you realise either of you have a condom, they sometimes stop when they remember they have a girlfriend, they can certainly stop when they realise the person they are with has changed their mind and isn’t into it; is too off her face to consent. Most men stop there.

Yet there is a culture amongst the likes of Conrad who spread this tosh about “once we start we can’t stop”. We are talking about rape here, not Pringles.

I used to be a problem drinker. In my twenties I regularly got black-out drunk. I was often with men, at university or on the male-dominated comedy circuit, or in nightclubs. My overwhelming experience was that they looked after you. They found your friends, they saw you home safe. Once at a club, my friend and I were so trashed that two men, strangers, drove us home.

Back in the Nineties, no one talked about mental health. No one. I have a family member who is in and out of maximum-security mental health wards and that was the only kind of mental illness we recognised. The disorder in my own head was, well, just my personality right?

Those of us with social anxiety, feelings of isolation, paranoia or OCD thinking had no internet and no way to find out that we weren’t alone in feeling like this. For me, booze was confidence juice and I threw myself into vats of it. I often went on dates where nothing sexy happened because I’d got too wasted. The men I hung out with understood not to have sex with women too incoherent to give consent.

I remember one chap who had pursued me for ages and when I was drunk, we were in bed at a party, snogging and he suddenly detangled himself from me and said: “Can we do this when you’re sober? You keep falling asleep.” He was a sweet, adorable man, but not a hero; he was normal. It is normal not to stick your penis into someone who is too drunk to know what’s going on. The ones who don’t, the ones who rape, are an anomaly. We women never deliberately put ourselves in danger. If we trust you won’t rape us, it’s because most men don’t.

Only once in the chaos of my twenties was my trust betrayed. Back then, I didn’t know it was a crime, or at least I’d had it instilled in me that it was almost impossible to prove a crime had been committed and did I really want to put myself through reporting it.

Nick Conrad’s comments were not daft, forgivable, youthful “well I didn’t know I’d be famous one day did I?” tweets. They were the considered comments of a grown man in his job as a broadcaster. So he has stepped down, and apologised and cited the fact that he didn’t want “media attention” on this distracting from the election.

It’s not the media, though, it’s people. Some of us can’t get past his comment regarding rape victims: “It’s the old adage,” he said, “if you yank a dog’s tail then don’t be surprised if it bites you.” I prefer a more modern adage, attributed to Maya Angelou, which I hope will mean he will never be a public servant: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”