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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

There is actually an insane correlation between abuse and sex. Draw what inferences you will from this, but women in abusive relationships overwhelmingly report having fantastic sex lives.

If true, it seems like the research backing this up wouldn't be shouted from the rooftops because it makes people uncomfortable, but I'm unable to find anything backing up your fairly wild claim.

In fact, here's a study showing the opposite (from what I can tell): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5296519/#b14

That study references this one: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10896-015-9744-...

From that second study: For both men and women, greater increases in victimization were related to lower satisfaction.

Would love to see any research backing up your claim.

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One could probably cite the immense popularity of Fifty shades of gray. It's supposed to be "BDSM themed", but actually, it's just a story about an abusive relationship build on "great sex" [0].

Most people familiar with BDSM practices/norms hate those books/movies with a passion due to how they misrepresent BDSM like it's just an abusive relationship.

The article also quotes a 2000 paper about consent by legal scholar Robin West [1], imho it's relevant to the discussion at hand as it argues that even violent and abusive marriages are often traceable back to acts of consent by the woman.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/co...

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1847983

As I mentioned to above poster. Here is a source from "The Science of Trust" by Dr. John M. Gottman, foremost expert on this subject.

"As we interview these abused women, Neil and I were astounded by one consistent story about half of these women told us. They said that the best sex they had ever had in their lives occurred right after a violent beating they took from their husbands. The very thought of having sex with someone who had just hit you was totally out of the realm of our experience. Is that the combined result of dopamine and oxytocin."

There is more but really I'm at a -4 for making this post, so trying to teach people uncomfortable truths is not well-rewarded around here.

Maybe you're being downvoted because you're spouting unsourced nonsense with a wink-wink as to why it might be true, instead of "teaching truths"?

A line in a book about interviews of abused women doesn't really equal actual research sufficient to back up your wild claim here. Further, you stated that women in abusive relationships "overwhelmingly report have fantastic sex lives", but you've posted a line from a book stating that roughly half (of some) abused women said their best sexual encounters had occurred immediately after physical abuse.

That's a world of difference, and it really draws into sharp relief the underlying point you were trying to make (your clever "draw what you will from this, but..." notwithstanding) and how far from the truth it actually lies.

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