Normalisation of BDSM enabling abusers to justify fatal violence against women, says researcher
Men who kill women are increasingly using the “sex game gone wrong” excuse as a contemporary variation on the traditional crime of passion defence, research has found.
In one of the first academic studies into the issue, Prof Elizabeth Yardley, a criminologist at Birmingham City University, found that the normalisation of bondage, domination and sado-masochism (BDSM) across various media – including novels like Fifty Shades Of Grey and pornography – had generated a “culturally approved script” for men who kill women.