"likes it rough'

[Fluffymule]

I'm not sure which board this sits on today, but this is the one I have bookmarked so I'll go with it.

ITVs Love Island is back and this years participants have been announced across the tabloids and social media.

Leaving aside the wider issue of this type of reality show and it's messaging about young women, I saw something that really made me stop in my tracks when I saw it.

It's an article dedicated to one of the girls, prominently displayed on the newspaper website with the headline ' Love Island's Shannon Singh has sex 8 times a day and 'likes it rough'. Accompanied by two large photos of her posing in underwear.

Am I alone in finding this irresponsible? Shannon is, of course, totally free to do, say and wear whatever she wants. I've no issue with that, or her. My discomfort is the media yet again casually reinforcing careless and dangerous language around women.

Surely when women have lost their lives to men using the 'she wanted it rough' defence, casual normalisation like this is irresponsible?

[Sonofabiscuit]

I've read the interview on a different site ,
She contradicts herself ..she has sex 8 times aday including in a toilet
Next sentence is not every day some days I dont .
Through out the "interview " shes trying to hard to fit into what she thinks they want to hear.she mentions she has always been sexually active from a young age .next sentence she says regrets it.

[littlbrowndog]

No one is shaming you. What you on about

Don’t care if you like having sex hanging upside down dressed up as peppa pig or whatever. You do you

You do know that rough sex has been used as a defence by men for the murder of women

It’s a dangerous message.

[BernardBlackMissesLangCleg]

This kind of bollocks really turns me off feminism

Someone asking you to think about why you find violence towards yourself satisfying makes you question the need for women’s liberation from sex based oppression?

Wow

[BernardBlackMissesLangCleg]

Who are you to shame my sexual preferences and that of other eomen?

And any shame you feel is entirely of your own making and nothing to do with me

Asking you why you enjoy violence against yourself is not intended to make you feel ashamed

[Beamur]

It's not kink shaming.
It's asking people to just look a little deeper. We can't and don't live in a world free of external pressures, expectations and unconscious bias.
What the kind of feminism u am interested in, asks me the question - is it actually my free choice or am I being influenced by the (male) structures in place in society? And, even if I am, am I still happy with that choice?
So much of the criticism you might feel from feminism really isn't personal, even if at that moment it feels it, it's looking for the structural influences that guide our decisions.
Do I wear make up because I like it? Or have I unconsciously over many years absorbed the narrative that I need to look younger, fresher, more sexually available?
That's the question. One of many.
Btw. I do still wear make up but am regularly quizzed by my radfem 14 yr old DD about my internalised misogyny!!

[BernardBlackMissesLangCleg]

Btw. I do still wear make up but am regularly quizzed by my radfem 14 yr old DD about my internalised misogyny!!



Me too

Easy to disdain makeup when you’re dewy skinned!

[mangojango]

Even if she does like it like that - it's a bit unclassy.

[Deadringer]

Jesus do whatever the fuck you want in bed with whoever you want, no one here cares, but what is the point of teaching boys in school about consent and respect when they see this stuff every day in the media? And anyone who thinks rough sex is just a little spanking and light hair pulling is naive, that might be your definition of it, but women have been strangled, beaten, raped and murdered and the defence? Rough sex gone tragically wrong.

[Flakeymcwakey]

@mangojango

Even if she does like it like that - it's a bit unclassy.

Now that is shaming. Not kink shaming, just standard patriarchal women-must-be-both-demure-and-endlessly-sexually-available shaming. Misogynistic is the succinct version of that. With a side order of class-based snobbery. Yikes.

I don't think pp are trying to kink shame ftr. It's about placing this in a (sexist) public sphere. It's not just a woman living her life and minding her own business. It's a woman contributing to a dominant perception of women as receptive to pain as pleasure, which has had violent consequences for numerous women. This isn't contextless and about her individual private life because she has put it in the public domain. It stops being about a private individual when it is put into that domain.

[ShallWeStartTheMeeting]

One generation down and sex feels like a competition on how far girls go.
Anal, choking, hair pulling... the latter two in any other context would be classified as assault but in a sexual context they're normal.
I find it so depressing.
Female pleasure has been reduced to man-pleasing.

[Fluffymule]

When I started this thread my comments were actually about the media not Shannon personally.

I was taken aback by the bold brutality of the words 'likes it rough' in the main headline (now on the two biggest tabloid media sites in the UK).

I don't care what Shannon does or doesn't think, or do, in her personal life, it's none of my business. I do care what our media chooses to highlight and push in terms of messaging about women.

This message seemed to me to be irresponsible and damaging.

[littlbrowndog]

Yeah fluffy totally agree. The message

A 15 year old girl in my country died She was strangled bitten on her breast and left to die of hypothermia . She was given vodka by him

By a not much older boy. He was 18

Where did that boy get the idea that a 15 year old girl would like to get bitten and strangled and then left to die

[PearPickingPorky]

@WeeBisom

What a happy coincidence that young women are CHOOSING to do things that happen to align with what men want!

Isn't is so strange how girls are CHOOSING to have rough sex/anal sex/degrading sex even though they don't actually get any pleasure out of it themselves, only pain and often humiliation. I wonder why so many girls are suddenly CHOOSING to engage in this type of activity of their own volition. Also odd how they are all CHOOSING it, but yet - for example, the BMJ survey of anal sex among teenagers found that 100% of girls had been coerced and/or raped - link to study here: bmjopen.bmj.com/content/4/8/e004996

It's also interesting how and why so many of them are finding themselves with severe anxiety and self-esteem issues, not to mention internal injuries. It's weird, eh, that so many are suddenly choosing that.

Usually when people are CHOOSING to do something that is painful, unpleasant, and damages their health we recognise that they are probably being exploited and put at risk. I wonder why this seems to be different.

It's a mystery.

[Flower8919]

So no one is allowed to have rough sex now then?

I have had rough sex with a partner before and both parties very much enjoyed it. It wasn’t one sided pleasure.

[ArabellaScott]

Consent is all, Flower.

Teenagers and young girls are not in full cognisance of

1. the potential risks of some of these sexual activities and
   
2. the coercive nature of some of the pressures they are subject to and
   
3. informed consent itself.
   

The absolute basic tenet of BDSM is 'safe, sane and consensual'.

Even the most hardcore kink advocates keep this mantra front and centre, and have on the whole VERY strong boundaries for this reason. At least, they used to. Seems in the past 15-20 years those boundaries have been eroded, dismantled and twisted out of all recognition.

[Fluffymule]

This isn't about what consenting adults choose to do.

It is about the messaging that is normalised and reinforced, indeed promoted, about women. It's about words and language used carelessly and irresponsibly and how that impacts the society we as women have to live in.

[ArabellaScott]

I mean, 'rough sex' is so vague as to be utterly meaningless. Clarity, understanding, context and openness is absolutely essential for informed consent.

[StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind]

@ShallWeStartTheMeeting

One generation down and sex feels like a competition on how far girls go.
Anal, choking, hair pulling... the latter two in any other context would be classified as assault but in a sexual context they're normal.
I find it so depressing.
Female pleasure has been reduced to man-pleasing.

This.

Noone is saying that nobody is allowed to enjoy rough sex. I just do not believe that a very large number of the girls and young women who do these things are actually enjoying it. I think they are doing it because it has been so normalised by porn that this is what boys and young men are expecting. So there is a huge amount of pressure on girls to take part in these acts, or face being called 'dull', 'frigid', 'vanilla' etc etc. It's far easier as an older women to know your boundaries, stick to them and not really give a fuck what some idiot bloke who calls you 'frigid' thinks- but that's not easy for a teenager or young woman. This is the point of stupid articles like this- it normalised violent sex which I would honestly say most women do not enjoy.

I just don't understand how lib fem cannot connect the dots? Oh wait.... dick centred.

[TheSockMonster]

My concern with “rough sex” is it’s marketed differently to men and women.

50 Shades of Grey BDSM and “he took her roughly” erotica versus what comes up if type “rough sex” into Pornhub.

[Flower8919]

Well that is a different issue. If that is the case then it truly is sad and girls and boys should be educated by parents and schools to avoid this.

On the other hand a grown woman should be able to post pictures of herself in her underwear without any judgement. Would you censor all images? Where do you stop? What about pictures of a woman in a bikini is that allowed?

[Iggi999]

I've heard teenagers singing that Lady Gaga song with the line "when it comes to love if it's not rough it isn't fun". The messages are everywhere

[BernardBlackMissesLangCleg]

@TheSockMonster

My concern with “rough sex” is it’s marketed differently to men and women.

50 Shades of Grey BDSM and “he took her roughly” erotica versus what comes up if type “rough sex” into Pornhub.

Yup

The ‘rough sex’ on porn hub mostly looks like violent rape

I’m extremely comfortable with shaming anyone who finds watching that enjoyable

[ArabellaScott]

Yes, that's what I mean about the vagueness, SockMonster. 'Rough' can cover everything from 'a passionate kiss' to actual rape. There will be some people happy to make use of that vagueness.

[KimikosNightmare]

@Fluffymule

When I started this thread my comments were actually about the media not Shannon personally.

I was taken aback by the bold brutality of the words 'likes it rough' in the main headline (now on the two biggest tabloid media sites in the UK).

I don't care what Shannon does or doesn't think, or do, in her personal life, it's none of my business. I do care what our media chooses to highlight and push in terms of messaging about women.

This message seemed to me to be irresponsible and damaging.

You say you don't care what Shannon says or does- it's all the media's fault. How can you divorce what Shannon is publicly saying and doing from criticism?

[StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind]

On the other hand a grown woman should be able to post pictures of herself in her underwear without any judgement. Would you censor all images? Where do you stop? What about pictures of a woman in a bikini is that allowed?

Bang. The sound of my head hitting the table.

Is it 'liberating' and 'empowering'? Fucking hell, lib fem may as well be 'get your tits out for the lads' fem

No one on here is judging her- just the misogynistic society which continues to exploit women and see us as nothing more than decoration.