Kitty set out to have casual sex for a year to see if women really can have no-strings liaisons. What she discovered was the horrifying reality of how men now believe they can treat women in the bedroom

At the end of her third date with a man called Jack*, Kitty Ruskin tried to say goodbye and found herself being seized by the throat. They were standing outside a train station, and Jack held her in this shockingly violent way while he kissed her.

'I'll text you, okay?' he smiled afterwards, as if nothing had happened. The next morning he messaged to ask if she'd got home safe.

He was the second of ten men she'd met as part of an experiment she'd set herself at the beginning of 2019: to spend a year having casual sex. She has written about what happened during that year in Ten Men, a disturbing, tell-all account which will leave many people horrified by its portrayal of internet dating, and how vulnerable young women are to predatory and sometimes violent men.

Her experiment had its roots in a trauma she'd suffered when she was just ten. A boy the same age had asked her to be his girlfriend and had then sexually assaulted her, telling her: 'This is what girlfriends do.' The incident had left her with an aversion to kissing, let alone sex, that stayed with her throughout her teenage years.

It was only when she was in her early 20s, and had watched a documentary on survivors of sexual assault, that she finally accepted that the assault had taken place. She told those close to her what had happened. 'The relief was incredible', she says. 'Sex gradually stopped being a frightening, impure thing.

'Finally, I came to terms with the fact that something bad had happened to me years ago. Most importantly, I understood that it was something I no longer needed to feel ashamed of or push down or ignore. I didn't need to bury it. The shame wasn't mine to bear.'

She was 22 when she lost her virginity to Matt*, whom she had known since she was 14. Although neither of them wanted to continue the relationship, he was kind and gentle, and her anxieties about sex melted away.

'As 2019 began, I had one goal, one New Year's resolution: to stop being so precious about who I had sex with. I decided to have sex with as many people as I wanted to.

'Coincidentally (or perhaps not), it was during this time that I started binge-watching Sex And The City. Samantha became my shining example, with her upturned nose and flicked blonde hair; her hand around a man's tie as she pulled him inside.

'No more guilt. No more self-loathing. No more self-limitation. I was liberated and fearless. I was Samantha.'

She was working for a start-up company in London and resolved to make up for lost time using dating apps like Tinder and Hinge.

Her first encounter was with Joel*, a model who had big brown eyes and a brilliant smile. When they met, 'he smiled down at me like I was something nice he'd fallen upon by accident — a pound coin wedged between two sofa cushions, or the last Malteser in a box you were about to throw away.'

Although she was certain that Joel was just the sort of man Sex and the City's Samantha would have gone home with, she didn't sleep with him until their second date. That was when she discovered that Joel's bedroom contained bondage equipment, which he proceeded to use on her without prior discussion.

Joel sent her a message the day after their date, but she didn't reply. Looking back on the experience much later, she reflects that: 'Women are often led to believe that sex is something which might take us by surprise. Something flattering which we should go along with, in whatever form it takes.'

Two months later, she went on a Tinder date with Jack*, who was studying for a PhD, and was 'interesting, funny and smart'. By the time the evening was over, she was smiling from ear to ear.

'I enjoyed how he made me feel: warm and secure and admired and appreciated.'

The second date also went swimmingly, until they went back to Jack's flat, where things took an odd turn. Once they'd had sex, Jack turned to her and asked casually if she wanted to join a religion he was founding. As she mumbled a polite reply, Ruskin wondered whether she had inadvertently just agreed to join a cult.

When she left the next morning, she was determined not to see him again, but felt pressured to go on a third date when he said he'd bought concert tickets for them both.

And then the date ended with his hand around her throat.

'It probably only lasted a couple of seconds, but they felt agonisingly slow. I couldn't breathe, and my feet weren't quite on the floor.'

Back home, she started sobbing. 'I felt very, very bad on the walk home,' she writes. 'Fragmented and nauseous and confused.'

Worse was to come with her next encounter. After a party where she'd had a couple glasses of punch and shot of whisky, she and her friends went to a bar in Camden Town. She had a single vodka and coke — and then blacked out, something which didn't normally happen after two or three drinks. Had her drink been spiked? She doesn't know.

When she came round she was lying in the back of a taxi next to Conor*, an auburn-haired man she had been dancing with in the bar. Although she couldn't remember telling him her address, they were on the way to her flat.

Once they were inside, he carried her to the sofa, tore off her clothes and, although she was far too drunk to consent, had unprotected sex with her. The next morning he seemed quite unconcerned by what had happened.

Months later, she was walking through London when she started crying uncontrollably, unable to shake off flashbacks of Conor forcing himself on her. She came to the slow, agonising realisation that she had been raped. 'My mind was slow to accept that my body had been raped because of self-defence,' she writes. '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.

'That's why I feel angry when I see comments online about it 'taking so long' for victims to come forward,' she goes on, 'as if that negates their claim. It can take weeks or months or years before you're even cognisant of the fact that you've been raped.

'People who haven't experienced rape will never know this, but it doesn't make it less true.'

She was also reluctant to acknowledge the rape because 'I wanted to believe that women could have casual sex … without the threat of rape or assault. That they could be as liberated and fearless as they liked. The alternative was too bleak to consider.'

Unfortunately, she came to realise that this bleak alternative was much closer to the truth than her initial, hopeful vision.

'Carefree, casual sex is just one more avenue closed off to women — another part of life we can't see and feel first-hand.'

A large part of the problem, she believes, is the ready availability of pornography on the internet, where men 'can scroll through an endless stream of videos in which women are hurt and humiliated, in which men are aggressive and entitled and physically abusive. The existence of these videos on porn sites suggests that these things are sexy.

'Ethical, feminist porn does exist, but there's also some very dark pornography out there, and a lack of consent is regularly normalised — even glorified.'

Because it took months to process the fact that she'd been raped, she didn't have any immediate hesitations about dating, post-Conor.

'Perhaps there was a part of me, too, that wanted to rebel against the victim status I was faintly cognisant of, deep down,' she adds. 'By continuing to go on dates, I felt that I was shaking off the chains of victimhood; proving that I could and would have enjoyable, consensual sex. This could be my sparky, lighthearted year of debauchery yet.'

Her next meeting was with Leo*, a photographer, who was 'unbelievably attractive … so handsome, yet so gentlemanly.'

They seemed to have a genuine connection, but after they had sex he didn't text her for weeks. When he got back in touch he repeatedly begged her for another date, then ghosted her after she agreed to meet.

Leo popped up again with another cheery message a fortnight later, but she didn't reply this time.

'All of Leo's quirks and stories and heartfelt words had been nothing more than smoke and mirrors,' she reflects ruefully.

Her next date was with Owen*, who she didn't find especially attractive, but who seemed quirky and funny. He was also an excellent kisser.

Owen appeared totally smitten with her, texting her constantly and complaining when she didn't reply. His intensity made her feel a little uneasy, but: 'There was something addictive about his adoration,' she writes. It puffed 'me up when I felt deflated; buoying me when I felt my insecurities pulling me under. I wanted to keep his compliments in my mind, tight and secure like a precious message in a bottle.'

She agreed to see him a third time, but on this occasion Owen seemed withdrawn and sullen. When he sent her a message calling off their relationship, she felt as if she had been punched in the stomach 'by a guy I wasn't even that keen on'.

Three days later, he was in touch again, asking to meet up, but she refused.

'How had a person who once made me feel so confident pulled the rug out from under me?' she asked herself. Owen, she decided, was a classic 'love bomber', building her up only to tear her down again.

Far from being mutually fulfilling, her encounters with men were increasingly leaving her feeling 'blindsided, messed around, confused.'

She decided that perhaps flings, without any affection, weren't really for her.

'I liked the idea of having sex with someone who cared about me; someone who had regard for my feelings … perhaps sex within a relationship would leave me feeling more satisfied, more empowered.'

Scrolling through Hinge and Tinder, she spotted James*, who was 'almost ethereally beautiful'. When they first met he was strangely gloomy, 'a human raincloud', but as the evening wore on he changed, becoming funny and likeable.

'James wasn't like anyone I'd met before … all of a sudden I wanted to fall deeply and blindly with no hope of return.'

After they slept together for the first time, she almost floated home on a cloud of happiness. When they met up again, they kissed under a streetlamp, 'a perfect kiss: tender and affectionate and blissfully romantic.'

But back at her flat, he suddenly seemed overcome with anger. Pinning her to the bed, he grabbed her roughly, then began having sex with her.

'Wait a second,' she told him. 'Condom.'

To her shock, James didn't stop. She blinked. Was he ignoring her?

'Condom,' she repeated, clearer this time, but he didn't stop.

She never saw him again, and it took several months for her to admit to herself that she had been raped again. Being raped twice in one year brought 'an almost unbearable weight of grief'.

It somehow seemed even worse than being raped by Conor, perhaps because she had felt she was developing feelings for James.

Ruskin ended her experiment 'broken up and dishevelled … convinced that violence was synonymous with sex.'

It had been nothing like the zany, consensual escapades of Sex And The City. She says her experience was not unusual; she has met many young women over the years who have had similarly unpleasant experiences.

Part of the problem of modern dating, she says, lies with dating apps and their anonymity and lack of accountability, which allows men to assault women 'safe in the knowledge that their family and friends will never find out.'

Society's apathy is also a problem.

'Women are routinely raped and assaulted, and it's swept under the rug,' she observes. 'Why are we so okay with this? As a society, why do we shrug it off? Why is suffering seen as part and parcel of being a woman?

'Often, women are the ones held responsible for being attacked by people they meet online. We accept that some men will inevitably assault women, and that it's up to the woman to spot this in a man and avoid him; to turn him down before he gets into her bedroom. We're frequently told to be on the lookout; to be careful not to put ourselves in dangerous situations.

'But the onus should not be on us to avoid sexual assault — the onus should be on men not to assault us. You shouldn't have to get to know a guy before having sex with him, to give him the all-clear before letting him into your bedroom.

'Firstly, because it's deeply unjust that men can have first date sex with as many women as they like free of fear and anxiety, and we can't.

'Secondly, because there is no one-size-fits-all for rapists. They're not always frightening men lurking in alleyways or creepy guys hanging around clubs. Sometimes they're clean-cut businessmen or government officials; sometimes they're sensitive academics who claim to be feminists; sometimes they're your boyfriend of six years.'

Another big issue, she writes, is that so many men don't seem to understand the concept of consent. Many of the men who mistreated her over 2019 didn't seem to be aware they'd done anything wrong, 'requesting further dates and reminiscing about the 'great time' they'd had.'

'Is misogyny so ingrained that these men didn't care if they made me uncomfortable?' she asks. 'Has violent porn convinced them that rough choking is what women want? Is it a matter of cruelty or a matter of ignorance, or both?'

The traumatic memories of what happened still affect her — she was on antidepressants and in therapy for years, and received the diagnoses of Generalised Anxiety Disorder and PTSD. What struck her was 'how far-reaching the psychological impact of rape and sexual assault is'.

'So why, as a society, aren't we talking more about the assault on women's mental health, finances and careers, as well as on their bodies? Why are we expecting women to muddle through a state of psychological overload; nurturing everyone else while they feel splintered inside?

'Why aren't we dismantling rape culture with a greater sense of urgency? Pain shouldn't be synonymous with the female experience, but we act like it is.

'Men: let's take the problem of rape culture off the back burner. 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.

'We're buckling under the weight. We're tired of feeling under siege. And we are so, so tired of being raped.'

* Names have been changed.

• Ten Men by Kitty Ruskin (Icon Books, £14.99) is out now. © Kitty Ruskin 2024. To order a copy for £13.49 (Offer valid to 5/5/24; UK P&P free on orders over £24) go to  www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £25.