“In the context of online dating, we are talking about people who might have only met for the first time, or a couple of times. New Zealand has high rates of intimate partner violence. Paulette Benton-Greig, a lecturer and researcher in gendered violence at Auckland University of Technology. “One guy went to spit in my mouth and I stopped him afterward and said I didn't like it.
“I noticed the younger the guys, the more violent they are in bed,” one woman in the survey said. Researchers at the University of Auckland are among those, including from the United Kingdom, who argue this can normalise violence against women.
The results come at a time when researchers here and abroad raise concerns with the use of “rough sex” as a rape defence, including claims by defence lawyers that women “wanted it,” even in cases where they had been strangled to death, such as in the case of Auckland woman Grace Millane.īreath play or choking is a recognised practice within BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism), where its used consensually and with rules – such as a safe word and other protections.īut it is now prolific in popular culture and pornography and, anecdotally, violent acts against women in the bedroom are becoming more mainstream.
