There are some people who aren’t able to feel connected emotionally unless under extreme circumstances such as when they are being treated badly. This doesn’t have to mean violence, though it might, but it is likely to entail some kind of adversity. These types are liable unconsciously to seek out perpetrators. Objectively speaking, the perpetrator’s behaviour would be worthy of reprimand but in some deep-seated way the apparent victim has been the instigator having a virtual requirement for this rough handling.

Why people need to deprave themselves in such a way is not immediately clear and seems bizarre on the surface. I suspect it is fundamental to want emotional connections somehow, to be ‘penetrated’ however it is achieved. To feel properly human, someone has to get under the skin and connect. It is a primal need but some aren’t able to achieve it in a loving or nurturing way and have to get there by other means. Tough love is a possibility for them. Rough sex is in similar vein where a little pain inflicted might hit the spot. Domination could do the same job for a powerful man whose position insulates him. Some such men have to go to dark places in order to be penetrated. These examples all display the craving for submission at least, sometimes to the point of defilement.

I think deviancy in its various forms is more common than realised. It goes on in many relationships in innocuous and subtle ways. It can be the defining dynamic. In more sinister manifestations it might become violent and so qualify for the strongest sanction, rightly so. Given that physical violence, particularly male to female is ‘ring-fenced’, there are no mitigating circumstances here from a moral standpoint. No matter what these inner dynamics are, male violence upon a female is allowed no justification. A more thorough analysis, taking into account what I have discussed here, might show that all kinds of emotional violations, whether involving physical violence or not, are present and need to be similarly denounced. Deviant practices in themselves are not necessarily immoral but the relationship crimes that bring them about probably are.