The Journal of Sex Research, 2025, First published online, 15 January 2025

The term “rough sex” is widely used, but it is not always clear what it means. Through exploring people’s working definitions of “rough sex,” we asked what they revealed about the underlying phenomenon it is applied to, and whether it is actually a thing. Our online survey of 567 New Zealand respondents (73.7% women, 21% men, 5.3% gender diverse; mean age, 35.6 years, SD = 10.8) identified various behaviors that many considered to be part of “rough sex” – including hair pulling, holding down someone forcefully, slapping and “choking.” While this behavioral profile was similar to previous U.S. studies, our survey was designed with novel features that allowed us to look more closely at the variation in how people make sense of “rough sex.” Embedded within a critical psychology approach, our descriptive analysis highlighted areas of ambiguity and difference, including points of contradiction across people’s working definitions. Critical qualitative analysis of open-ended textual data further examined categorical misalignments and the difficulties in interpreting behavioral indicators as defining of “rough sex” – especially without more contextual information. Overall, we found considerable variability and some contradictions in people’s definitions of “rough sex” and the meanings they ascribed to it. Our findings led us to argue that the term “rough sex” does not map onto a coherent phenomenon, and that use of the term can be misleading, with potentially problematic implications. (Authors' abstract). Record #9125