Since everyone is talking about it I might as well too. 50 Shades of Grey. I'll admit that when I was 19 or so I read books. I liked them well enough but at the end of the day it's just erotica. The plot line and writing are mediocre at best. Everyone knows that the only reason this book got popular is because of the kink factor.
The older I get the more I see the flaws in this story. The author, E.L. James claims to have done a lot of research for these books but I don't see it. Now I I'm not a sex therapist but being that I've taken classes on the psychology behind sex and I read science based articles on every aspect of sex I think it's safe to say I'm pretty well informed on the BDSM subject of FoG. For those of you that don't know BDSM means bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism (you like to give pain) and masochism (you like receiving pain).
My first issue with this story is that it implies that everyone in the BDSM community has issues. In FoG the two characters, Mrs. Robinson aka Elena and Christian Grey, who are active participants in the kinky are pretty messed up. Let's start with Christian. He refers to himself as "50 shades of fucked up," that's a direct quote from the book. He was neglected and abused as a child and as he became an adult he realized that he liked being the Dom of women that looked like his biological mother. Gross, I know. But before he realized he was a Dom he was a hurt and confused teenager who couldn't even be touched. Mrs. Robinson was his adoptive mother's best friend. Mrs. Robinson made Christian her sub when he was 15 and they continued that relationship for several years. A painful or sexual touch became the only touches he could handle. He says she helped him but I say she raped him.
So there you have it: a victim and a pedo. And I don't know the exact statistics but I won't believe that everyone in the BDSM is either a victim or abuser. There are people that get into BDSM so they can abuse other people but that's not what the community is about at all. The foundations of the community are trust, lots of communication, and most of all mutual consent between adults which leads me to my next point.
Anastasia is a naive virgin when she meets Grey. Throughout the whole series on a scale of 1-10, 1 being vanilla, do it in the dark, missionary and 10 being kinky, dungeons and dragons, BDSM freaky Anastasia is a solid 6 and Christian is a 9 (in my opinion). By the end of the series her love magically makes them sexually capable (that deserves a post all on its own). But before she "fixes" him she repeatedly says how abused and scared she feels. I'd give you some quotes but someone was nice enough to do it for me http://magazine.good.is/slideshows/abuse-is-not-romance#0
If Christian was a real Dom he would have been more respectful of Anastasia's fears and made her feel safe. The fact that he won't let her see her friends, monitors her means of communication, and stalks her are all the signs of an abuser. To put the icing on the cake he buys her something after almost every time he gets too carried away with the sadism. It's like an after school special on domestic violence.
As I said earlier I liked FoG well enough to read them all. I'm not going to berate the millions of people seeing this movie but I feel very ambivalent about seeing it and might not. If one only focuses on the sex and the budding romance without really thinking about any of it it's a fine story. But time and proper education can make you see many things under a different light and the complete misinterpretation of BDSM doesn't sit well with me. Besides the actor playing Christian Grey was supposed to look like sex on a stick and this dude does nothing for my libido, I digress.
Anyway, Fifty Shades of Grey is nothing but a fiction story. Read the book don't, read the book. See the movie, don't see the movie. But stop debating about it all over the internet. Just hope people will be smart enough to differentiate between fantasy and reality.
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