A woman has opened up about her trauma after embarking on a year of "casual sex" with a handful of men.
Detailing her experiences in her new tell-all book titled Ten Men: A Year of Casual Sex, Kitty Ruskin warned women of the dangers of casual, intimate relationships in a society that has been influenced negatively by violent adult videos.
In the hope of feeling "liberated" and "fearless," Ruskin decided to open herself to the idea of casual sex with men after feeling like she "missed out" because she lost her virginity at the age of 22.
It all started in 2019, Ruskin decided she was going to “stop being so precious about who she had sex with,” revealing she had been inspired by Samantha Jones from Sex and The City, a promiscuous publicist with the desire to live life to the fullest.
“I decided to have sex with as many people as I wanted to,” Ruskin wrote, as per an exclusive published by the Daily Mail. “No more guilt. No more self-loathing. No more self-limitation. I was liberated and fearless. I was Samantha.”
However, things didn't go exactly as she assumed they would.
Instead of feeling that overwhelming sense of freedom, she was left traumatized, even going on to reveal that she was raped twice.
Her year started with a date with a male model. The pair instantly had chemistry and they waited until the second date to get intimate, but the journalist was caught off guard when she went home with him and realized that his bedroom was filled with bondage equipment amongst other things.
He allegedly “proceeded to use [them] on her without prior discussion," which understandably left her feeling uncomfortable enough to not arrange another date.
Her second encounter with a a PhD student also had a similar violent streak to it, leaving her feeling “fragmented and nauseous and confused.”
After having sex with him for the first time, he apparently attempted to try and convert Ruskin to a "new religion" he was creating, making her feel "used".
Even though she agreed to another date shortly after that, she decided something was seriously wrong with the dynamic between them when he allegedly choked her without her consent.
“It probably only lasted a couple of seconds, but they felt agonizingly slow,” she recalled in her book as per the outlet. “I couldn’t breathe, and my feet weren’t quite on the floor.”
Things only continued getting worse as she recalled another moment with an unknown man after one of her drinks was allegedly spiked one night at a bar.
She recalled how the unnamed man took her took her to his house and “although she was far too drunk to consent” he “had unprotected sex with her.”
“My mind was slow to accept that my body had been raped because of self-defense,” she admitted. “After something traumatic happens, you don’t want to acknowledge that it’s happened. You don’t feel ready to face it, or capable of admitting it.”
Regardless, she was determined to see her "liberation" through.
“I liked the idea of having sex with someone who cared about me; someone who had regard for my feelings,” she wrote in the book, changing her direction to dating apps in the hopes of meeting someone more serious. “Perhaps sex within a relationship would leave me feeling more satisfied, more empowered.”
She ended up going home with a man who she said forced her to have unprotected sex despite her pleas.
“He didn’t stop,” Ruskin wrote, stating that the second rape in such a short span of time brought about “an almost unbearable weight of grief.”
In the end, Ruskin concluded that a year of casual sex left her feeling “broken up and disheveled."
Her new book aims to bring attention to the "burden" women are forced to carry at the hands of a society that has allowed men to use violence and coercion to gain sexual gratification, even in the demise of the mental and physical state of a woman.
She concluded with a piece of advice for men.
“Men: let’s take the problem of rape culture off the back burner,” Ruskin stated. “Let’s pull it down from the shelf and look at it, even though doing so might make you feel uncomfortable. Guilty, even.”
“It may make you feel uneasy, but women are tired of shouldering all this fear and trauma," she added.
Ten Men: A Year of Casual Sex is now available to buy at selected bookstores.
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