Scientific Articles

• Puigvert, L., Gelsthorpe, L., Soler-Gallart, M. & Flecha, R. (2019). Girls’ perceptions of boys with violent attitudes and behaviours, and of sexual attraction. Palgrave Communications, 5(56), doi: 10.1057/s41599-019-0262-5
• Racionero, S., Ugalde, L., Puigvert, L. & Aiello, E. (2018). Reconstruction of Autobiographical Memories of Violent Sexual-Affective Relationships through Scientific Reading on Love. A Psycho-Educational Intervention to Prevent Gender Violence. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(1996). doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01996
• Torras-Gómez, E.; Puigvert, L.; Aiello, E.; Khalfaoui, A. (2020). Our Right to the Pleasure of Falling in Love. Frontiers in Psychology. https://10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03068

Explanation of the Post

Research has found a coercive dominant discourse (i.e.Puigvert et al., 2019; Racionero et al., 2018) that imposes the link between attraction and violence, pressuring many women to see violent or dominant men as attractive, creating a narrative that those are the ones to have fun with. Many women are pressured or even forced by their peers to hook up with them in order to fit in. However, the first time they hook up with them they don’t like it, being nothing like they had imagined, but they are embarrassed to tell their friends the truth because they think it means they don’t know how to enjoy, or that they’re weird, so many of them tell their friends they liked it and had pleasure with those boys. By repeating this narrative to their peers and themselves, they end up assimilating and actually believing that hook-ups with dominant men are exciting and full of pleasure. However, women who have afterwards critically reflected on such past experiences realize they never enjoyed them, and that it is with egalitarian men that they have experienced the pleasure of sex (Torras-Gómez et al., 2020).

Other sources