Cover Image: Rough

Rough

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Member Reviews

I thought this book would be a real eye-opener and spark a lot of debate. The topic is something that is getting more and more news time so I thought it would educate me.
However, this book was a lot more difficult to read than I had initially anticipated. It was very heavy going. Particularly at the beginning. It took me a long time to get through purely because it was so dense and heavy.
It certainly was an interesting read, and the section about the trans sexual crime and the way the police treated the poor people people involved was shocking! Something has to change!!
Overall I learnt a lot from reading this - I'm not sure I can say I enjoyed it, but it was very detailed.

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A polemic and important work exploring sexual oppression, consent, and boundaries. Rachel Thompson gives a voice to people that are not normally heard and their experiences, which we'd rather not confront. This should be essential reading for everyone.

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CW: sexuale violence (in many forms!) sexual assault, rape

“If a woman says she feels harmed after a sexual experience, we rush to ascertain ‘was it consensual?’ If she answers ‘yes’, the tendency is to close down those conversations, as if she doesn’t have the right to feel violated… Is the bar for sex so low that all we require is for it to be consensual? Consent is mandatory, but let’s not forget, it’s also the bare minimum.”

This is an incredibly important and enlightening book. Thank you so much to NetGalley for the EARC!

Rough is primarily about the nature of consent, and the danger of assuming a yes/no binary of consent during sexual encounters. It offers a stark analysis of the ‘grey areas’ of sex (for example stealthing, non-consensual ‘rough sex’ and other intersectional-specific sexual aggressions) in order to highlight the prevalence of sexual violence occurring behind closed doors. It also raises essential questions regarding the legal and social frameworks we use in discussing these encounters.

What I found the most resonant was Thompson’s approach. Facts, statistics and examples were presented without judgement. For example, she suggested some of the problems stemming from the prevalence of pornography without demonising consumers or sex workers, with practical and reasonable solutions to these problems.

She also highlights the importance of language. For example, seeing in writing the implicit bias in language towards heterosexual sex showed really clearly the ways in which the LGBTQ+ community struggle (especially in legal terms) when dealing with instances of sexual violence. There are also a few chapters focused on the need for decolonisation in the bedroom and how racial micro and macro aggressions can have a detrimental affect on sexual experiences. In each chapter, Thompson debunks how societal systems of oppression towards misogyny, racism, fatphobia, ableism and LGBTQ+ phobias cause problems for all of the oppressed, resulting in a culture of victim blaming and/or denial.

Overall, I couldn’t recommend this book highly enough!

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'Rough' explores tricky topics around consent and the so-called 'grey areas' of sex and sexuality, and argues powerfully about the need to address them, both through wider societal change and education, and through individual approaches around how we talk about sex and consent.

The book brings in personal stories from a variety of women, and is not easy reading, but it is crucial for understanding what a lack of consent can look like and feel like, and especially what 'grey areas' can look like.

Thompson also investigates how consent can be affected by various power dynamics within wider society, in terms of gender, race (especially stereotypes of women's bodies and perceived 'ownership' of their bodies), and sexuality (bringing in ideas around how lesbians are sometimes seen as existing for a male gaze). This makes for fascinating reading, and I appreciated how she took more of an intersectional lens here.

I think the middle section of the book perhaps lost some of the momentum and thread of the argument started at the beginning, but the end tied it all together again well. Although the book was very intentional in separating BDSM/rough sex and non-consensual sex, occasionally the argument got lost in trying to articulate this difference, and it meant that it was up to the conclusion to clearly re-state and build on the main thrust of the book.

Ultimately, this is an important book about a critical subject, and I think it is insightful reading that many people should take heed of.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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This book is more about education than anything. It covers many sensitive subjects such as forced sex, rape, choking. Told from different women’s perspectives. How they felt at the time and how they feel about it now. Hard read at times but interesting.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to see an arc

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Every book I read and review starts off with the full five stars and I start every book with an open mind and hope that it finishes with the five stars still firmly in place. This book is no different, so lets get on with reading and reviewing it!

I've got the Kindle version and Penguin Random House are a huge, well-known publisher, so I'm hopeful this book will give me a glimpse into the lives of those living with domestic violence. I never have, fortunately, but my heart goes out to all those who have and please make sure that you're in a safe place with support available if you need it before you read any more of this review and especially the book.

I like that the author has put a trigger warning before the first chapter starts - that's reassuring and makes me hopeful that the rest of the book will be supportive too.

Wowsers! I've just read the introduction and first chapter and it's been incredibly intense and well written. I was wrong at the start of this review when I assumed it'd be about domestic violence... it's more than that and I feel it's filling a huge gap that has needed to be filled for too long, so I want to thank the author for taking the initiative to write it.
I'm immensely proud of the author for including men as being the victim at only 4% of the way through! Most people seem to forget that men can be assaulted too so I'm glad that the author has brought it up so soon in the book... I'm hoping that it'll be more than just that sentence and that it'll be talked about in equal detail to female and non-binary assaults too!
The first chapter was truly incredible and I hope it's an indication of the quality of the rest of the book. I'm gonna stop reading now, purely so that I don't emotionally overwhelm myself, but I'll be reading it again tomorrow. I was approved to read this in advance of its publication on 13th August 2021 by the publisher and right now I recommend you only read a chapter or two a day so that you don't get overwhelmed either. So far it's been a definite must-read for me though and each of those five stars it started with are still firmly in place.


Mornin' all, I'm back for the day and I'm wondering if it's just the resolution (or whatever it's called) of my Kindle, but the first letter of the first word is considerably larger and on a line of it's own which is a touch difficult to read. The new chapter starts on the same page as the previous chapter ends too... is that how all Kindle books are or is the first star wobbly already please?

Chapter 3 was an intense and slightly worrying read. I didn't realise that choking had become such a normal thing to do during sex and that some people don't respect their partner's dislike of it. It takes a large amount of courage to say "no" so it's awful that some people don't respect their partner enough to immediately stop as soon as the request is made... consent is everything and some people don't feel comfortable enough to assert themselves so each partner should be aware of how the other person is feeling. Is it really so hard to ask "does this feel good/OK?" or even just more generally "is this still OK with you?" and instantly respecting the choice if there's even a glimmer of doubt for either partner!

A quick bit of advice - this isn't an instruction manual, obviously, but "rough play/sex" and BDSM are regularly talked about so please be aware of that before you get this book. It talks about them honestly and consent is totally necessary but not everyone wants to read about kinky sexual encounters - it isn't graphic with descriptions at all, but if your mind tends to wander at the mere mention of that kinda thing then please be very very careful.
Gonna read one more chapter before my lunch - so much for last night's advice to only read a couple of chapters a day eh? lol

Up to chapter 10 now and the previous chapter was almost entirely about race rather than helping me to understand about sexual things that I have no experience of... I started reading this book expecting it to be about domestic violence but it's been all about sex up until chapter 9 when it suddenly turned into race with barely anything about relationships... almost like the author felt they had to put in a chapter to prove how inclusive they were?
Just finished reading chapter 10 and that was mostly about race too, so I'm getting mightily confuzzled now - is it a book about domestic violence (as the title made me wrongly assume to start with), sex (as chapters 1-8 made me think) or race (as chapters 9 and 10 are making me think)? Unless the author makes up her mind and sticks to it in chapter 11 and beyond, that first wobbly star is gonna fall off. Don't get me wrong, it's been good so far, but I'm not sure where the author is going with her book - it's changed direction three times so far after all!

Chapter 11 is back to LGBTQ discussion which is more like what I was thinking than the previous two chapters, so the fifth star is still just about hanging on, just not as firmly as it started out and I was hoping for, unfortunately.

Ah-ha, back to sexual relationships now, but with people who are disabled this time, so I reckon those couple of chapters about race/ethnicity were likely a part that either the author or publisher felt needed to be in the book so that everyone felt represented. I'm 56% of the way through and up to chapter 13, so I'm hoping for around 60% before I take my last pills of the day and maybe 70% by the time I head to bed... let's see what happens before setting it in stone though.

The second half of the book is maybe more about relationships than sex judging by chapters 12 and 13 which I reckon is a bit back to front... the way I see it, the race bit should have been at the start, then the relationships and finishing with the sex so the book seems to be back to front for me, sorry.

Just read about up-skirting etc and the lack of law surrounding it and it was a necessary addition but pretty dull compared to the rest of the book so far. It's not even 6pm yet, so 70% seems pretty do-able before I take my pills again.... maybe even 75% before I head to bed!

Not quite 75% but I'm 72% of the way through, so I'm thinking I should be finished well before I head to bed tomorrow so that I can put this review up in the appropriate places. The fifth star is still there, it's just teetering unsteadily so I reckon that this'll be a 5 star review unless something happens in the last 28% of the book tomorrow.
Right now I reckon the title of the book is misleading, but maybe that was deliberate? If it had been a better title then I wouldn't have been so confused at the start and the race bit, I personally reckon, is unnecessary, but that's just my own personal opinion, as is this entire review lol

Good morning again everyone. I've done everything I need to do on a Monday morning, so I can settle in to finish reading this book until our groceries are delivered now.

Just finished it with literally 5 minutes to spare lol

The last few chapters were good, but not as intense and well written as the first few. Still a five star must-read by everyone, and I stand by what I said at the start about it filling a huge gap in the market, but the fifth star is wobbly instead of solid... still very much hanging on by its fingertips though!

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I found myself nodding at a lot of the scenarios the author explores in the book. She conducted research and shares the stories of 50 woman and non binary people. The book covers the sexual violence we don't speak about that happens in nearly all our lives.- "the grey area".

Although not easy reading it's informative and thought provoking and there are chapters which I may go back to read again.

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(Thanks to Vintage and Netgalley for the ARC.)

There are some inaccurate words in the book description given here: this book is not revolutionary, it's not kink-positive, it's not sex-positive (which for the record it doesn't need to be, it's just notable that the book does not really have a sense of sex being fun), and I wouldn't say 'intersectional' is correct either, though it tries to be.

Rough was a frustrating book to read because I know it will help some readers - most specifically, I'd imagine a lot of cis, particularly cishet women will find relief and inspiration in its depiction of the cultural water we all swim in. There are survivors who will find recognition and solace here. It covers a bunch of stuff that needs to be covered, has good capsule introductions on things like fat women's and disabled women's experiences of sex, and overall does address a sexual culture in desperate need of change. But there is so much this book misses; so much it just can't deal with.

Fundamentally, Rough is deeply committed to the idea that cis straight women are The Victims of sexual violence and cis straight men are The Perpetrators. Despite noting that men do experience sexual violence at significant rates, and evoking 'marginalised genders' a lot (which does include trans men, at least), it makes the decision to erase male victims of sexual violence altogether - men are only evoked as perpetrators or allies - in order to further that idea of cis men's misogyny as the root of all sexual violence. Gay men aren't mentioned. The book cursorily mentions lesbian experiences of violence on a couple of occasions, but runs away the second it looks like we might get a more complicated view of who perpetrates violence.

This connects to what I think may be the book's most defining flaw: its inability to question 'harm' as sovereign. I understand the difficulty here - we still live in a culture where women who have experienced sexual assault are challenged and cross-examined; in that culture, it is absolutely necessary to assert the authority of lived experience. However, cis white women asserting sexual harm has a troubled history both in reference to Black men - who basically have no place in this book - and to trans women, who are often socially punished by being accused of nebulous sexual harm, since society sees trans women as sexual predators basically by virtue of existing.

This means there's a big hole in e.g. the chapter on trans people (which is otherwise unusually good for a book by a cis woman, though the bar is Very Low). It explicitly talks about trans women being excluded from shelters because of transmisogyny; it's inherited that language from Moya Lothian-McLean's work, but at least it uses it. What the chapter misses is that trans women are excluded from shelters because of the transphobic argument that they're secretly predatory men in disguise & must be lying about being assaulted. Without questioning the whole framework of who is believed and who isn't when it comes to 'harm', you're missing a huge part of how this works. (Also notable that there's nothing about how trans people have sex differently to cis people; trans people are of interest mainly when they're closest to cis people, i.e. knocking on the door of the battered women's shelter.)

Speaking of individual chapters, the book has various chapters on particular marginalised experiences, but they aren't integrated into the book very well. The book literally mentions that queer cis women, Black cis women, and all trans people are at higher risk of sexual violence than cis straight women, but as soon as those chapters are done, it's back to our regular scheduled programming, which is overwhelmingly focused on straight, mostly white cis women.

I also have some bones to pick with Rough's view of BDSM. It does valiantly try to demarcate the lines between BDSM and nonconsensual/violating sex, but the book is also very invested in what sex Should Be Seen As ''Normal'' (wait, why did all my dogs just start barking?). It attempts to form a very hard line between BDSM and Regular, Nice Sex, stresses that we should 'normalise' some things and 'de-normalise' others (when really we should get rid of the idea that there should be a 'normal' with regard to sex at all), and kind of implies that BDSM is a tiny niche subculture where you need to have a degree in it first and fill out a sheaf of papers before you can start fucking. I don't think Thompson intended to be queerphobic here, but I think it's irresponsible to use a word like 'normal' in a sexual context without thinking about how loaded that term is.

Oh, and the book is not great on the solutions front. Most of the concrete suggestions made for change are 1. be more vocal and upfront about consent talk (good, but you've also literally in your own book talked about situations where women have unwanted sex because they know questioning the way things are will lead to violence), 2. have better sex with explicit consent depicted on TV, 3. have better sex ed in schools, and 4. end misogyny (lol), which in the book mainly involves telling the Lads to stop cracking rape jokes. (the section on masculinity implies that the only kind of man is Straight Football Guy. the book really suffers from keeping gay men out of it.) there's no real reference to current activism, campaigns, movements, etc. the book is sceptical of the law and legislation, which I'm happy with, but it doesn't have much vision of how collective action takes place outside lobbying for laws - probably because white cis women's sexual violence activism has been very clustered around laws: upskirting, cyberflashing, revenge porn.

(The book also briefly mentions how legislation hurts sex workers but it doesn't have any place for how white middle-class women are actively harming sex workers and trans people through their legislative activism...that might ruin its whole premise a little bit!)

This is a book that struggles to balance a lot of very good sources with the regressive commitments of its central premise, and has to just not talk about a lot of stuff, or talk about it briefly and then scurry away, in order to make it work. I found it disappointing: comprehensive as an introductory educational resource, but never really piercing down into the deeper layers of its material.

(Finally, since when has violence 'found its way into the bedroom'? Was there ever a violence-free bedroom?)

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Rough is a non fiction book that talks about sexual assault, rape and violence in the bedroom. Obviously this book deals with very heavy and hard hitting topics so don’t go into this book lightly. It was very informative and had a personal though with the stories from other women and survivors.

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This is everything you want from this type of read. Its thought provoking, well researched, informative, challenges perceptions and more importantly is that conversation starter. This has already kickstarted me talking to friends and getting their views. I think most women will have encountered a "grey area" as the author puts it.
This, despite being comprehensive (and incredibly inclusive) feel like it only scratches the surface of what we know is a huge, broad and at time controversial subject. I hope more comes out of this, but an excellent starter for ten to provoke, shout about, and raise awareness of. Brave and incredible.

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Thanks so much to Vintage for letting me read Rough by Rachel Thompson. I'd heard about this one a few months ago, so snapped it up when I saw it on Vintage's NetGalley - and it didn't disappoint! Exploring the ways that violence has entered people's sex lives, it covers a lot more than I was initially expecting - although, now that I think about it, I'm not quite sure what I *was* expecting. Rough goes into detail on topics like stealthing, cyberflashing, non-consensual so-called rough sex, painful sex, and the particular intersections faced by marginalised people during sexual experiences. Rachel Thompson makes clear the importance of consent and constant communication to ensure that consent, and if you're interested in reading about these topics then I would highly recommend. I think the sad truth is that most women will probably have something to relate to in this book; some of the statistics should be appalling but sadly didn't surprise me at all. To be honest, I would have liked to read more about what was classified as the 'grey areas' of sexual experience, as I think there's so much of this topic to delve into, but overall Rough felt like a very comprehensive, well-written, important book with so much information to absorb. I'm tempted to reread a few chapters, actually, to ensure that I've fully soaked up this book as much as I can. Also: the whole time I kept thinking about how people raved about Normal People's depiction of consent during Marianne and Connell's first sex scene, so I felt very vindicated when it was mentioned in the chapter on sex scenes and their impact on people's understanding of sex! (Something I also feel is v important.) 4.5 🌟

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A real thought provoking read that I think will have a lot of people reading it and nodding their heads and identifying strongly with parts. Covers a wide range of topics in regards to sex, though I would have like the topic of fatphobia to have expanded upon more, I felt it’s chapter only scratched the surface. But the book covers so much I understand the need to keep things tight.

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Genre: Non-Fiction

Release Date: Expected 26th August 2021

Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK - Square Peg

"For every women, every femme, every non-binary person who's ever experienced something they didn't have the words to define. For those who've experienced something they'd rather forget. Who felt that what happened to them didn't match up to what they consented to. Who felt their experienced was just a 'gray area' or 'just bad sex' or 'not rape, but...'. Who were harmed, and didn't believe they had the right to feel that way."

Rough is a collection of the stories of fifty different women and non-binary people at their experience with sexual violence. It read more like a collection of personal anectodes with some facts and statistics alongside, so was (writing-wise) very easy to read and absorb, despite the content being very hard to read in places. It had a very personal feel to it, as though the writer is talking directly to us through these stories and reaching a familiarly painful place in all of us.

"There is a very specific type of lonliness that comes with not being to speak about these things. I didn't know that the women in my life were silently dealing with the very same thing."
Dealing with a range of issues that we are taught not to talk about, from the use of language such as 'unconsensual sex' that waters down the violence and the violation that is rape, to more subtle acts of sexual violence such as 'stealthing', the way we excuse non-consentual kink if someone has previously engaged in BDSM or other kinks and how we often view forced sex in relationships as a totally normal thing. Also bringing an open conversation into the 'gray' areas of sex, like consentual sex that is not wanted or desired but done regardless - this book may not have told me many things I didn't already know, but gave me a further insight into people from different backgrounds who've lived through similar experiences. This book is a conversation starter.

This book is kink-positive, sex-positive and consent-postive - looking into the other issues that tie in with sexual violence like racism, ableism,transphobia, fatphobia and other driving forces, blatant and microaggressive behind violence that the world is now starting to pay attention to.



RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐



Thank you to Rachel Thompson, Random House UK and Netgalley for this ARC in return for an honest review.

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“The fact that most women who experience forced sex don’t call it rape is shocking”.

Trigger warnings: sexual assault, rape, sexual violence repeatedly throughout the book.

Rachel covers the varying levels of overt and covert sexual violence both men and women experience throughout their lifetimes. She delivers cold, hard facts using contemporary examples and confidential, related anecdotes, breaking them down and leaving no stone unturned. She addresses various 'grey area' points and displays the disparity in understanding around ‘consent’ as well as the legal protections in place in the UK.

The book paves the way for future discussions on consensual behaviour. Rachel also covers violence we face in sexual experiences outside of the obvious, covert violent rages we see displayed in the media and online. She applies an intersectional approach to each chapter, addressing issues faced by specific groups, including the LGBTQ+, black, brown, disabled, fat and male experience. I'm grateful to have learnt more in-depth about specific issues each community faces, with discussion directly led those directly affected. If we don't listen, we can't learn and improve.

External to the intersectional experiences of sexual violence, Rachel covers various behaviours that can turn toxic, including unwanted sex, fetishes, over-sexualisation and kinks, as well as addressing dyspareunia - sexual pain. Sexual pain is increasingly common and the author shifts from the usual framing of a woman being broken to providing very real explanations and solutions. As well as that, she provides hope by presenting first-hand accounts and draws on popular current examples we see on Netflix to help understanding.

I learnt so much more than I expected in this book. Sexual violence is engrained in our policies, in our laws and in the media we consume. Men, women and non-binary people deserve to be safer and increasing discussions and awareness alongside recommending resources and next steps is a great step in the right direction. Bravo.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House UK, Vintage for the ARC!

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