Do these violent delights have violent ends? Deconstructing rough sex portrayals in media, feminist theory and policy

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Within the last decade, rough sex has catapulted to the centre of public discourse, especially in the media. Perhaps in part a response to the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey and its cinematic adaptations, rough sex - physical aggression during sex including behaviours such as hair-pulling, biting, spanking, choking and being tied up - has become a prominent focus of cultural and lifestyle online publications. Indeed, online magazines like Cosmopolitan and Men's Health regularly cover rough sex and related behaviours, treating it as a common and normal part of individuals' sex lives and sexual desires. Yet a counter-narrative that rough sex is a product of criminal and patriarchal wrongdoing is fighting back within news and current affairs, sometimes even within the same publications. Space is frequently afforded to the demands of campaigns like We Can't Consent to This (WCCTT) which seeks to ban what they see as 'the rough sex defence'. This defence is purportedly used when male defendants seek to reduce or dismiss a murder or grievous bodily harm charge by claiming that their victims died accidentally in "a sex game gone wrong" or that they consented to sexually-acquired injuries.Two competing narratives about rough sex, then, exist in the newspaper and magazine media: on one hand it is portrayed as harmful and immoral acts done to women as a patriarchal abuse, while on the other the often-positive response to entertainment and culture portrays rough sex as a sexually liberating practice for women that ought to be destigmatised. It is suggested that such competing narratives follows closely the 'sex wars' of scholarly feminism of the 1970s onwards both in its portrayal of the effects and the public, moral and legal legitimacy of such acts.The research is concerned with the legal and political theories and principles underpinning our rules and laws on gendered agency, and where the state has a right or duty to protect itself or its citizens from harm rather than support individuals' own choices. Online newspapers and magazines will be identified using YouGov's public rankings of popular UK publications and websites. The results will be recorded in Microsoft Excel and filtered based on the category listed online (i.e. 'news', 'entertainment', 'lifestyle' etc.). These materials will then be coded using an inductive approach to thematic analysis.