"Eroticising um, violence and power dynamics": Men's talk about 'rough sex'

Abstract

The term ‘rough sex’ has become increasingly used in mainstream media. It is becoming more relevant in the criminal legal field after the so-called ‘rough sex’ defence was used by a man in a high-profile murder case in Aotearoa, New Zealand. However, little is known about ‘rough sex’, and how it is understood by New Zealand men who practice it. In this study, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 men who have had ‘rough sex’ experiences. Though the majority of interviewees primarily discussed experiences with women, two of the participants identified as gay, and their ‘rough sex’ experiences were exclusively with other men. They were asked about their experiences of ‘rough sex’ and their views on the wider context of ‘rough sex’, including gender relations and New Zealand legislation. Interviewees had varying perceptions of what ‘rough sex’ is and how it sits in relation to BDSM (bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadomasochism) and mainstream sex. Most agreed that it is sex that involves some level of force.

In this thesis, I present two analytic chapters. In both chapters, I identify and examine the patterns in the way men talk about ‘rough sex’ in general and their personal experiences, using the analytic concept of interpretative repertoires. In the first analytic chapter, I highlight two opposing interpretative repertoires that men draw on, to account for the relevance or irrelevance of gender in ‘rough sex’. In the second analytic chapter, I examine how men talked about consent and communication in a ‘rough sex’ context, through their use of two interpretative repertoires. All men discussed the importance of having consent and communication, yet most described instances where consent and communication were absent or ineffective. For both chapters, I discuss gay men’s perspectives separately, due to the difference in the patterns and their expressed difficulty in imagining the context for heterosexual ‘rough sex’, which most other men’s experiences are based on. Overall, I discuss the implications of the discursive resources that men drew on to talk about ‘rough sex’ in relation to the broader dominant discourses of heteronormative sexual practice.