Sex and Violence By J. A. Stroud “Yeah, he hit me, but I asked him to.” I will call her Mary. This was her response to my asking about the bruise on her cheek. “It took me three or four weeks to get him to do it. He didn’t want to because he’d never hit a girl, but he finally gave in. I don’t know why I like it, being slapped in the face during sex, but I do.” When my young friend began telling me this story, I was outraged that she would allow anyone to hit her. Yet my need to understand why she would be involved in such behavior prompted me to ask more. "I just like it. It makes me feel helpless, vulnerable. I like the way I feel when I am being humiliated during sex. It’s exciting." She paused and added, "In some sick way." Mary is twenty-three years old and first experienced this type of relationship three years ago. She’d met an older man online (this man cruises the AOL chat rooms looking for underage girls) and their chats had turned into sexual conversations. He intrigued her and she agreed to go to his home. This was to be the first time she’d met anyone from the Internet. “He'd told me he would leave the front door open for me. I'd never met him before, but I'd seen his picture online. He came up behind me, grabbed me, I didn’t even see him. He put my arms behind my back. He pushed me into the living room, and forced me down onto the carpet. He held my head down, face forward and began telling me what he wanted to do to me, talking dirty to me. Then he pulled me up by my hands, which were held behind my back and forced me upstairs. All the while I was feeling scared because I didn’t know he was gonna be that way.” “He took me into his bedroom, still holding my arms behind my back, and pushed me onto his bed. He straddled me, then flipped me over onto my back , took off my pants and panties and tied me up; arms and legs raised and extended forward. I was in shock. I knew he’d told me in our online conversations that he was a Dom, but I didn’t fully understand what that meant. “ I listened to her tale, and encouraged her to tell me more. “Then he pulled my head to the side and made me go down on him. I kept my eyes closed, ‘cuz I didn’t know what to do. Through my closed eyes I could see the flash , and knew he was taking pictures.  I kept giving him head , but he didn’t ejaculate. I stopped a few times and pleaded, begged him to just have sex with me. I was still scared and wanted this over with. He began to have sex with me while I was still tied up but then he untied my legs. Once he’d ejaculated, he untied my arms and laid down on the bed, holding me.” “It was like he was another person, he was nice and funny; like the man I’d chatted with online. He didn’t talk about what had just happened. Neither did I. After twenty minutes or so, I told him I had to go home. I got up, and dressed. He walked me to the door and said he would talk to me later.” “While I was driving home, I was thinking that I was lucky he let me go. I was so scared! I could have died. I had no idea he was going to be so aggressive. You hear stories about people meeting other people from the Internet and that they disappear only to be found murdered later on” Mary had other casual, sexual relationships with men, but rarely incorporated violence into those relationships, until she met the man she’s with now. “I think kinky sex can ruin a relationship. And when I do initiate it into my sexual relationships I think I sabotage myself.” My question to her was, if you feel that way, why do this in your new relationship? “I don’t know. I don’t know how to have a relationship without sex. I feel that maybe boys won’t want to be in a relationship with me if we didn't have sex. And if I bring the kinky stuff into it, then it would only be sexual and they won’t hurt me emotionally. I don't think I even know what a healthy relationship is." I asked Mary, if you love this new man in your life, why are you sabotaging the relationship? (Her words, not mine.) Her reply, “I don’t know.” As I listened to Mary, I kept feeling the need to reassure her that I was forming no judgments. I love this young lady like a daughter, and her trust and friendship are important to me. Yet this side to her life was upsetting to me. Coming from my own personal background in a violent relationship, and having been raped by someone I knew, her story was horrifying. The description of her encounter with the man from the Internet is a tale of rape. Although she may not see it that way; this man raped her. Sex and violence don’t go hand in hand, no matter what some people believe. Role playing or fetishes can have a place in a sexual relationship, but when violence comes into play, it makes me question the self-worth of those involved. And violence in not a fetish. Mary’s admission of self-sabotage, of bringing violence into her new relationship as a way of protecting herself from being hurt emotionally, screams out, to me at least, that she doesn’t believe she is lovable. And that as she gets closer to this new man, this is her way of pushing him away. If she can make this relationship all about sex, then he can't hurt her emotionally, even though she is encouraging him to hurt her physically. Mary has weak sexual boundaries. She confuses sex with love. She believes that she has to have sex with someone to feel loved. So allowing, even asking for violence is all a part of that blurry boundary. All a part of that need to feel wanted and loved. Yet this isn’t just about Mary’s life, this is about how we all view violence. Violence in the bedroom seems somewhat acceptable. We couch it, cover it by calling it by other names - domination, aggresive sexual fetishes, someone even used the term, "healthy violence." A true oxymoron! We are inundated with sex and violence in the media and have become indifferent. It’s in print ads for men’s colognes and certain men’s clothing lines that incorporate sex and violence against women, in oh so subtle ways. So subtle, that we fail to recognize it for what it is.  An example of this, is an ad I viewed for a professional photo lab. The ad features a group of young boy scouts lighting a bon fire while a few others are tying up a scantily clad woman in a much smaller, simuliar uniform - the caption reads: "To get the job done right, you have to get the right people". Or the fashion ad for a major couture showing the dead bodies of two females, laying in a pool of blood ... in their lingerie. Or the ad for a men's clothing line - the woman, barely clothed, laying on the stairs, heading facing downward and all you see of the male is his legs, from calf down, in socks and shoes. I asked Mary what she would do if her boyfriend slapped her during a playful conversation, outside of the bedroom, and she said, “If it’s not in a sexual situation and he just slapped me for fun, ‘cuz he wanted to? I think I would be angry.” Negative, or lack of self-worth, allows us to stay in violent relationships, and in Mary’s case, it has initiated the violence; made violence during sex okay. I asked Mary if she truly loved her Self. If she was happy with who she is and did she feel she needed a man to validate her self-worth. She answered, "I don't know. I know I have low self-esteem. I mean, I'm a great person! I would do anything for my friends and family. I just don't get it. When it comes to boys, I don't know how else to be." If Mary did have a high self-esteem, would she still indulge in such violent sexual escapades? Would those encounters hold as much excitement as she thinks they do? Would she still let someone slap her, in order to feel loved? Or would she realize that in embracing her Self-worth, nurturing her Self image in positive ways, that she is worthy of so much more? I think it all comes to down to this: How much do you really love your Self? Violence, no matter where it takes place, be it in the bedroom, on television, in the movies or in advertisements, no matter how it’s portrayed, is unacceptable. And violence in a relationship is inexcusable.