Traumatised by swinging

[guinnessguzzler]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c87q7g48y4po

This brave woman, Ruth O'Grady, has spoken out about what her vile husband and lots of other men put her through, facilitated by a swingers website. It must have been incredibly difficult for her to speak out as she will know the level of doubt and judgement she will now face.

These men. I know I say it every time but what the actual fuck is wrong with them?

Sending strength, love and gratitude to Ruth.

The bit which disturbed me most wasn't even the coercive husband and his kink, grim though that was, it was the fact Ruth said a lot of the men wouldn't make eye contact or speak to her during what was supposed to be a meeting between two consenting adults.

WTF is that about? I have no issues whatsoever with casual sex but the last time I engaged in any was before the ubiquity of dating apps. No strings sex is supposed to be fun, right? Why were so many of these men creeps and unable to treat Ruth like a human?

Edit to add: extremely brave of Ruth to speak out. More people need to understand coercion and power differentials between men and women.

Bloody hell! There are so many porn-addled pervert men in the world these days! These awful men literally don't see women as human beings/people deserving of respect. And once again, the Police are inadequate to the task of punishing this form of abuse.

Ruth is very brave to speak out and to tell other women that they don't have to go along with their partner's fetish.

I heard some of it - grim. They had talked to one man who was involved in threesomes with the husband watching who said he often felt the women weren’t really consenting ; he was asked if he felt as though he was raping them and he said yes.

Ruth said she’d come forward about this because of Gisèle Pelicot. Courage calls to courage.

Really admire this woman for coming forward with this story. I hope she gets the healing and peace she deserves.

I have some experience with the swinger community including fab and I felt uncomfortable with it. It seemed obvious that some of the women were being coerced into it. Lots of unpleasant misogyny from the men. I wouldn't have bothered involving myself if there weren't some very sound and nice people but there was clearly a lot of unpleasant men involved, not just a few bad apples.

There's a couple I'm aware if through my workplace and I get DA vibes from the fella, and they are involved in the local swinging community. The woman looks sad and downtrodden.

Completely agree. Nothing she described sounded enjoyable for anyone involved. All just really grim. The quotes from the bloke they interviewed were astonishing. What is with this particular fetish of watching other men with their wives? I saw another article just today about a bloke in Sweden who was convicted of coercing his wife into similar but at least it was recognised as a crime. Is this happening more nowadays or is it just being reported more since Gisele Pelicot?

I heard this.

Sadly the police would not prosecute her husband because some messages with him seemed acquiescent.

What the police would not have realised is that a woman feeling she must acquiesce can be part of her being in a coercive relationship. Dr Emma Katz has written about this not very well understood aspect of abusive relationships.

I’m 26 and already know two women with somewhat similar experiences. She is doing a great thing by speaking out and she’s very brave because she is absolutely going to get abuse from trolls and some members of the kink community who think just because they’ve had a good experience then there’s no issues ever.

Brave woman. So many men are coercive. We have to work much harder on giving girls the skills to recognise and short circuit both their own people pleasing tendencies, and other people’s tendency to take advantage. But particularly coercive men.

To clarify, I only suggest working on women because men aren’t going to want to stop doing something that’s working for them.

Christ, the poor lass.

I totally agree with this and I think the sooner we as women realise that we need to focus on this over changing men the better. I think that’s when we might make real progress.

Every single day the relationships board on MN demonstrates just how much shit from men many women have been socialised to put up with.

Completely agree @GreenCaterpillarOnALeaf and @PrizedPickledPopcorn It's not about victim-blaming or anything like that but recognising that there are a lot of manipulative creeps out there who right now are in a pretty good place. We should focus our energies on protecting women and teaching them how to protect themselves. Men can then get with the programme or fuck off. At university I had a 'Mr Right, Mr Wrong' poster on my bedroom door that outlined red flag behaviours. It was nice and clear and should probably be given to all our girls.

It must be very hard to get a jury to convict, if there are videos, photos, text messages and witnesses that show/claim the woman was 'enthusiastically consenting'.

I saw this article and was also impressed by this woman coming forward. It is so worrying for our daughters how violent porn has seeped into wider society with disturbing and dangerous behaviours normalised. Bloody ‘comedy’s’ introducing choking as a ‘funny’ incidental but could only be written by young asshole SWs getting their own fetish introduced into the script.

More people need to understand coercion and power differentials between men and women. Definitely this and the issue of consent is not just saying ‘yes’. I worry again about young girls are ‘consenting’ to behaviours that will leave them traumatised. Somehow we’ve gone in just a few decades from being shocked by Elvis Presley shaking his hips to saying drugging, filming, BDSM, pushing women into traumatic sexual encounters is fine. It’s not fine. It’s damaging to women and girls.

Damaging too to the men. Why couldn’t they look her in the eye? Why did that man interviewed feel guilty? They know it’s wrong. Fucking online platforms making money of other people’s misery and exploitation. I’m sick of it.

Dreadful. The poor woman. 😢'Swinging' really is utterly vile and perverse. People do it to 'open up their relationship:' WTAF does that even mean?! I reckon it's almost always pushed by men. What woman would choose to do this?

I will have to look for something like that poster to share with my nieces!

On Elvis Presley: he did date (and later marry) a 14 year old, so I wouldn't want to look back at the past with too much nostalgia. But I agree that technology now makes it easier for the gross men to find and encourage each other.

Unfortunately I don't think it's a new fetish (but maybe its easier for men to indulge it now). In the past there were cases of women being manipulated into those sort of arrangements only for the husband to turn round and make out he was the victim for being cheated on etc. It can form part of a very nasty coercive pattern where women do what their husbands want but then are threatened with "exposure" or public shaming if they don't comply in other ways. So it becomes an additional tool of abuse.

At least there's more awareness now and hopefully the shame goes where it belongs.

I read this straight after I heard an MP saying that she didn’t think people could be coerced into assisted dying.

Here's the link to the poster, its by The Freedom Program;

www.freedomprogramme.co.uk/docs/dominator-mr-right.pdf

Thanks @Thelnebriati that's even better than the one I had, which was a bit more basic. This is great, thank you. If only every woman had one of these!

Listening to the podcast is hard - I can't begin to express my revulsion for what Ruth's husband did to her. There are so many dangerous men out there being given cover by our society's political/social/judicial elite accepting the concepts of kink and that sexual behaviour is legitimised or delegitimised by 'consent'.

I just finished listening to the podcast, what happened to her was horrific and it was grim to hear that the men on that site often suspect that the women are being coerced but ultimately in most cases have sex with them anyway. I saw the discussion on the UK subreddit and it was predicably a dumpster fire of men with zero empathy and endless entitlement. They seem to take it very personally which I think is quite telling about their attitudes to women and consent in general. I think she's been massively brave in telling her story and its really made me think a lot about the concept of consent and about the fact that we do as people owe each other more than just taking that at face value.

Just why on earth would any woman do this? I just cannot fathom it.