"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?

[LangClegsInSpace]

Relevant feminist history - 1987 conference in NY: The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism.

Some sound recordings available here:

www.catwa.org.au/historical-rrecordings/

Outstanding speeches from Sheila Jeffreys, Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon.

The book of the conference can be downloaded as a PDF here:

radfem.org/the-sexual-liberals/

So many of the issues we are dealing with today were hammered out at this conference. They discussed porn and prostitution, BDSM (sadomasochism as it was called then), surrogacy, left / right politics and why feminism sits outside of both, choicy liberal 'feminism' vs. straightforwardly opposing things that harm women, 'gender neutral' - i.e. we can have 'equality' if we pretend there's no difference between men and women - in the 1980's this meant no right to maternity leave but equal access to pornography.

If you only have time to listen to one speech then Sheila Jeffreys is probably the most relevant to this thread.

[SmokedDuck]

@ArabellaScott

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

Yeah, I think this is probably part of the reason people talk past each other so much about it. One person is thinking of some romance-novel guy sweeping them up the stairs manfully, or a little light hair-pulling, and another is thinking about some woman being actually chocked or slapped around, and worse.

But a lot also seems to be down to people not having good boundaries around privacy too. That's really the whole necessary condition for a show like that. Maybe in her intimate relationships she does like the man to be pretty assertive, fine, but actually the rest of the world doesn't need to know about it, and it doesn't make for very healthy sexual lives for anyone when those boundaries to be so poor.

[SmokedDuck]

It's also funny how many of the male murderers seem to ignore that the BDSM community has an emphasis on safe, sane and consensual

I don't know. People say this but I've heard some pretty awful descriptions of very disturbing psychological currents and pressures, including a lot of women with histories of abuse, in the BDSM community. I think the idea that it's all super-healthy people making choices is over-blown.

[LangClegsInSpace]

Gail Dines is also very good on this.

TED talk:

Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism:

These are a few years old, things have only got worse since then.

Except for the feminist movement itself. That has grown massively in the past 5-10 years and has become much more sensible. I don't think slutwalk would happen today.

[LangClegsInSpace]

@BernardBlackMissesLangCleg

I’m not interested in coming up with excuses for the woman in the OP, nor am I interested in vilifying her

I am interested in why she thinks appearing in the paper in her pants and talking about enjoying being on the receiving end of male violence is a good thing to do

I am also interested in why that might actually further her career

And I am interested in why the media are talking about a woman enjoying male violence as if that were a healthy way to feel

Yes, this.

[LangClegsInSpace]

Yes there are loads of abusive shits in 'the BDSM community'. It's the perfect cover.

[LolaSmiles]

SmokedDuck
I was clumsy in expressing myself there. I don't mean to suggest there's no abusive people there for that everything in that scene is fine. There are abusive people in all walks off life.

It was more that I find it interesting that a group full of various kink doesn't seem to be all over the papers for various murders and rough sex gone wrong, which undermines the idea that people criticising the 'rough sex gone wrong' defence are prude kink shamers. Contrary to the don't kink shame posters, challenging the rough sex defence for murder is not about shaming adults for having non-vanilla sex.

If someone has a kink then that's for them to enjoy safely and consensually as an adult behind closed doors with someone else who enjoys the same thing. I dislike the cries of 'kink shaming' any time people raise questions about sexual boundaries and violence because it's often done to dismiss debate by wrongly suggesting that people are objecting to adults' private sex life, rather than objecting to the normalisation of murdering women.

[PankhurstConnection]

@LangClegsInSpace

Gail Dines is also very good on this.

TED talk:

Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism:

These are a few years old, things have only got worse since then.

Except for the feminist movement itself. That has grown massively in the past 5-10 years and has become much more sensible. I don't think slutwalk would happen today.

I really like Gail Dines. She is always worth listening to. I listened to her in a conference earlier this year on Zoom. Some great links there and the earlier post LangClegsInSpace - thanks for posting.

[SmokedDuck]

@LolaSmiles - yes, there are some questions around privacy which people somehow assume means something is being shamed. This is something that used to be tied up with ideas like modesty which people have perhaps unwisely poo pooed without ever really considering that there is some important ideas embodies there, especially around respect for the body.

And then the question of whether something that we are calling a "kink" might also be potentially harmful in a way that means it's reasonable to question people doing it, even in private. Which some are, I think, people doing things like inflating their scrotums for kicks is just a bad idea, private and consensual or not.

The thing though about the BDSM community is something that sticks out to me because I think it is commonly assumed to be very respect based, because of course it's just people's personal sexuality and that has to be affirmed, but as far as I can see a lot of the time it really really isn't respect-based.

[Metabigot]

[quote SmokedDuck]@LolaSmiles - yes, there are some questions around privacy which people somehow assume means something is being shamed. This is something that used to be tied up with ideas like modesty which people have perhaps unwisely poo pooed without ever really considering that there is some important ideas embodies there, especially around respect for the body.

And then the question of whether something that we are calling a "kink" might also be potentially harmful in a way that means it's reasonable to question people doing it, even in private. Which some are, I think, people doing things like inflating their scrotums for kicks is just a bad idea, private and consensual or not.

The thing though about the BDSM community is something that sticks out to me because I think it is commonly assumed to be very respect based, because of course it's just people's personal sexuality and that has to be affirmed, but as far as I can see a lot of the time it really really isn't respect-based.[/quote]
I've found there are respectful and disrespectful men in the bdsm scene.

Doesn't mean bdsm is 'wrong' and shouldn't be done by respectful consenting adults.

But yes it can attract some wrong uns.
Would you rather it was made illegal?

[LangClegsInSpace]

BDSM is a cultural practice and like any other cultural practice it is open to analysis and criticism.

[LangClegsInSpace]

Would you rather it was made illegal?

This is like in the olden days when nobody was allowed to criticise porn without being accused of wanting to ban it - 'And how are you going to do that, eh? eh?'

Doesn't mean bdsm is 'wrong' and shouldn't be done by respectful consenting adults.

The poster you are replying to said nothing about 'wrong' so I don't understand why you have included that here in quotes as if she said it.

Here is my opinion though - BDSM is not compatible with feminism because it fetishes male domination and female submission. You can't fight the patriarchy if you are getting off on it. Yes I know all about dommes, that's just extra kinky because it's the wrong way round.

Queering the patriarchy =/= feminism