At 13 years old I remember being called frigid for not expressing interest in boys. It was a label that stayed with me through the remainder of my high school days until I got a boyfriend. From my early teens, I was shamed for not living up to what my male peers wanted; I wasn’t flirty or outgoing and I didn’t wear makeup. Unfortunately, these attitudes towards women who don’t conform to some ideal still prevail in adulthood, but in an even more threatening form.
Vanilla-shaming has been interpreted in many ways. The most widely accepted definition relates to people who choose not to partake in rough sex, kinks, or some form of fetish. Essentially, a ‘vanilla’ person is someone with a ‘boring’ sex life, stemming from the notion of vanilla as a plain flavour.
But where has this risen from? Ironically, women were sexually repressed for millennia. A hundred years ago, most women would have been shamed for showing any sexual preferences or pleasure whatsoever. But attitudes towards sex have done a complete 180 in the half a century since. The sex-positivity movement has been a progressive step towards dismantling the stigma surrounding sex. It’s encouraged women (and men) to embrace sex in whatever form they choose, liberating their sex lives and shifting social and cultural attitudes away from the entrenched preconceptions of sex as taboo. Sex positivity should be celebrated for promoting the reality that sex is a natural part of any person’s life that should be enjoyed. Gone are the days of women being idealised as child-bearing domestic goddesses made to feel ashamed for experiencing any sexual pleasure.
Just as body-positivity is about embracing the different types of bodies that exist, sex positivity is about embracing all the different types of sex people choose to enjoy; including 15 minutes of missionary absent from whips and chains.
But using ‘vanilla’ as an insult has become all too common, normalising and reinforcing the idea that being into kink is the only fun form of sex. You’re called a prude just because you don’t want to be tied to a bed, gagged, and choked.
On TikTok, the hashtag #KinkTok has racked up a huge 3.8 billion views. Often, the videos depict or allude to violent sexual acts against women including ‘knife play’, ‘breath play’ and dominant roleplay. These present a sinister world of sex to younger people who are only just starting to learn, experiment and explore their sexuality and their sexual preferences. With nearly 20% of TikTok users in the UK under the age of 18 (a percentage that rises to 33% in the US), these images are even more concerning, especially once you learn that the TikTok algorithm regularly causes these videos to appear on a feed without actively searching for them, providing they’ve been tagged with the ‘FYP’ hashtag (‘for your page’).
In one viral video, a teenage girl shows her grazed knees and large black bruises with the caption ‘decided to watch 365 days with my “guy friend”’, referring to a controversial Fifty Shades of Grey-style Netflix film that centres around a woman who is kidnapped and given 365 days to fall in love with her assaulter.
Glorifying sexual violence is nothing new to pop-culture. Pornography has been notoriously criticised for desensitising men to horrendous videos that show all kinds of violence towards women in the name of satisfying sexual fantasies. In an interview with the Guardian, Erika Lust, a female porn director mentioned how most people’s first exposure to sex is hardcore porn, which subsequently teaches both boys and girls alike, ‘that men should be rough and demanding, and that degradation is standard […] Face slapping, choking, gagging and spitting has become the alpha and omega of any porn scene and not necessarily within a BDSM context. These are presented as standard ways to have sex when, in fact, they are niches.’
Although TikTok videos may seem trivial, the fear with a trend like vanilla-shaming – which is sweeping social media, high-school settings, and university campuses – is the serious repercussions it has on men’s expectations of women, and women’s expectation of themselves. And for those who don’t enjoy that sort of thing in the bedroom, vanilla-shaming can be seriously detrimental to their self-esteem, leading them to believe they’re not sexy, desirable, or good in bed.
One terrifying and serious consequence of all this is the so-called ‘rough sex’ defence in court, a defence that has risen by 90% in the last decade. These are cases where a woman is killed by her partner and the man pleads manslaughter, alluding to a ‘sex game gone wrong’ and hiding the true nature of what this really is: violence. Because of the lack of evidence to indicate whether the act was consensual, these men rarely get charged for murder. Hannah Pearson was just 16 years old in 2016 when she was strangled to death during sex by a man she’d just met, 8 years her senior. He was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for manslaughter.
The death of Grace Millane is a more recent case that was widely covered by the media is. Grace was a university graduate, killed on the evening before her 22nd birthday by a man she met on Tinder while travelling in New Zealand. As her killer’s trial progressed, he called-up apparent evidence of Grace’s ‘rough’ sex interests in his defence. In response, the British press reported on her alleged sex life in insensitive detail, as though it justified her death. For example, a London Evening Standard headline read; ‘Grace Millane was a member of BDSM dating sites and asked ex-partner to choke her during sex, court hears.’ Just another example of how victim-blaming, particularly towards young girls, permeates our society.
In response to the increasing number of women violently killed then later defended as consensual in court, a group called We Can’t Consent This was established. They have campaigned to make non-fatal strangulation a specific and serious offence in the Domestic Abuse bill. The legislation, which will apply to England and Wales, is set to pass through the House of Lords later this year.
Far from a harmless remark, vanilla-shaming perpetuates a conception of rough sex as a standard that facilitates violence against women; violent acts later defended in court as consensual. This is misogyny at its very finest. These systemic prejudices show how misogynistic attitudes have seeped their way into every element of society to work against women.
All sexual acts should be consensual and there are safe ways to engage in kink. Just be responsible about it and respect everyone’s preferences. If it’s not to your taste, that’s totally fine. After all, vanilla is some people’s favourite flavour.