Sex as validation and control

Sex as validation and control is a pattern Queenie Jenkins comes to recognize in therapy: casual sex offers her a way to feel wanted and to exert control over intimacy, but it cannot provide the tenderness and security she longs for. The pattern connects her experiences of racialized sexual attention with an earlier history of being ignored and with her fear that closeness will end in rejection.

Recognition and Context

During counseling with Janet, Queenie identifies casual sex as one of the means through which she seeks validation of her body and a sense of control. She also considers how dependent she has become on friends’ reassurance, and how fear of dependence affected her relationship with Tom. These strands make sex part of a broader effort to manage uncertainty about whether she is valued, rather than an isolated choice or a simple expression of desire.

Queenie’s account of being approached by men underscores the racialized conditions surrounding that effort. She contrasts the romantic invitations her friends receive with men’s sexually explicit attention toward her, including unwanted touching. The disparity leaves her feeling that she is treated as sexually available but not as someone to be loved. In therapy, she connects that experience to a painful expectation of rejection: being desired physically does not assure her that someone will care for her beyond sex.

Earlier Neglect and the Need for Attention

In counseling, Queenie traces this pattern back to a childhood in which Roy alternated between screaming at her and ignoring her. She recounts that when she stopped speaking in the hope of avoiding his criticism, he found other ways to upset her: he broke her belongings, falsely accused her to Sylvie, and made her sleep in a car. Over time, Sylvie spoke to her mainly about daily routines, while the adults spoke to one another. Janet challenges Queenie’s tendency to minimize this history, stressing that being screamed at or ignored was important to her development.

Queenie also describes the precarious arrangement that followed when Roy made Sylvie sell their home and the family moved into a house he expected to be kept spotless. A flat was initially rented for Queenie and Sylvie, but Sylvie returned to Roy, leaving Queenie to live there alone at eleven. Janet identifies this as a dangerous situation for a vulnerable child; Queenie, by contrast, had understood the separation as preferable to continuing to live with Roy. The gap between her matter-of-fact account and Janet’s alarm shows how she had learned to treat severe neglect as something ordinary or necessary.

When Queenie becomes overwhelmed in a later session, she makes the connection explicit: years of being told she was nothing and being ignored have left her willing to accept attention even when it comes through sex. She describes seeking closeness from Guy after sex, only to be pushed away, and concludes that she is treated as an option for sex rather than love. Her insistence that sexual encounters at least remain under her control sits beside this longing for care; control is a means of protecting herself from rejection, but it cannot guarantee the affection she wants.

When Control Fails—and When a Boundary Holds

The encounters with Adi and Welshman show how little the idea of control guarantees when Queenie is responding to sexual attention shaped by other people’s demands. In Adi’s car, she objects to his preferences and offers him the option of driving her home, but later follows his directions, describing how acting without thinking feels easier than confronting what she is doing. His focus on Black women’s bodies makes the encounter another instance in which desire is directed at her through a racialized expectation, rather than an assurance of mutual care.

With Welshman, Queenie discovers that some of the roughness she had learned to accept exceeds her limits. She remains silent through pain and later reflects that she did not ask him to stop, while associating the encounter with the belief that pushing love away leaves her with this instead. At a subsequent examination, a clinician identifies bruising and tearing; Queenie offers rough sex as an explanation. The gap between the injuries observed and her tentative description illustrates how difficult it is for her to name an experience that does not fit neatly into her claim to be in control.

A later encounter with Guy offers a contrast. When he approaches her while staying in her bed, Queenie clearly refuses sex, asks him to sleep, and states what she will do if he presses the issue. He accepts the boundary and turns away. The moment does not resolve the larger pattern, but it shows Queenie articulating a limit directly and having it respected.

In a later self-assessment, Queenie notes that she has deleted the dating apps that helped her avoid recognizing herself as a person vulnerable to harm, and that she no longer wants to look at men or have sex. This is not presented as a simple cure or final definition of her sexuality. It marks a change in how she understands the difference between being physically desired, feeling in control, and receiving the tenderness and safety she has been seeking.

Control in the Family Home

The pattern also sits against the household power Queenie witnessed as a child. At Roy’s weekly dinners, he used the shared table to belittle her and Sylvie; when Sylvie tried to explain that Queenie might eat later, Roy seized her and forced her face into the plate. He then blamed Queenie for ruining the meal. The scene places control not only in Queenie’s later sexual encounters but in an earlier family environment where Roy dictated the terms of ordinary life and redirected responsibility for his violence onto her.

That history gives her later insistence on control a difficult double meaning. It is a way of resisting helplessness, yet her account shows that asserting control over sex cannot undo the earlier experience of being diminished or ensure that another person will offer care. The concept therefore describes both a coping strategy and its limit: attention may briefly answer the fear of being unwanted, while leaving the need for safety and affection unresolved.