‘I can remember my ex-boyfriend coming home one day with under bed restraints and bondage equipment that he’d bought from the local sex shop,’ recalls Sarah*.
‘I was 16 and he was 24.’ she adds.
‘I knew that they were for me, and I knew that it wasn’t something I wanted.
‘But I felt like I couldn’t say no, or ask questions about what was happening, or stop it, even if I wanted to.
‘Why? Because I felt like I needed to perform; like I’d seen the women in porn perform.’
Sarah had grown up in a strictly religious family and, at that point, the only sex education she had experienced was being told, ‘don’t do it.’
This led the then-teenager to do her own research and, inevitably, she turned to the internet, where she discovered porn. Something, she admits, wasn’t hard too find.
Hardcore videos, often of women being degraded, soon became Sarah’s main frame of reference when it came to intimate relationships. ‘I was taught that sex was about blow jobs and cum shots, and anal sex,’ she says.
‘It wasn’t about women’s pleasure. I…
