[6] Former chief of sex crimes for the Manhattan district attorney's office, Linda Fairstein, states that while "in the criminal justice system there's no such thing as gray rape, [it] is not a new term and not a new experience.
[7] The concept was mentioned in Katie Roiphe's 1994 book The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus[2] where she writes, "there is a gray area in which one person's rape may be another's bad night.
[3] Ford "identified... the need for 'more definitive language' to facilitate nuanced conversations about the 'spectrum of harm' inflicted on women physically and psychologically as a result of these experiences".
[5][13] Reina Gattuso states that women have sexual "experiences that feel violating yet ambiguous", which "challenge us to think of violence as a spectrum of power and coercion, rather than a simple dichotomy between 'good sex' and 'rape'".
[9] Gattuso states that the "gray zone" "...idea has often functioned as a tactic to minimize or dismiss violence [in couples], and therefore evade accountability, by claiming that sex is inherently a murky, illegible realm".
[14] Amanda Sileo states that the "gray zone" was "...constructed by a society engulfed in rape culture and should not exist", because "open communication is missing from so many sexual encounters" and because "women feel too unsafe to speak up".
"[14] The University of Florida stated that a "debate has erupted over a particular kind of encounter, one that may not be viewed as sexual assault but which constitutes something murkier than a bad date.
In the summer of 2014 while working at a women's clinic that helps sexual assault victims, Jane spoke with staff and later reassessed the encounter as rape.
We need to make no-guilt-attached sexual refusal the norm" and it "should be easier to say, 'I don't really feel like having sex' without the addition of an adamant push, or a neighbor-alarming yell"; she says discussing these issues could "help men to distinguish between genuine enthusiasm and silent reluctance".