The Guardian

Why are so many women writing about rough sex? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

After #Metoo, it’s no surprise a new generation of female authors is exploring sexual abuse and dominance
‘I found some of the scenes in Kristen Roupenian’s new collection so unpalatable I had to keep putting it down.’ Photograph: Chuk Nowak/The Guardian

Recently I have found myself wondering about the prevalence of rough sex in new fiction written by women. It’s viscerally present in , the new short-story collection by Kristen Roupenian (who shot to fame last year with , published in the New Yorker): I found some of the scenes so unpalatable that I had to keep putting it down. They (spoiler alert) include a woman strangled to death as part of a sex game; a man who imagines his penis is a knife when he has sex; and a woman who says to the guy she is sleeping with: “I want you to punch me in the face as hard as you can. After you’ve punched me, when I’ve fallen down, I want you to kick

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