50 Shades of Grey

[chiqui]

Let's discuss this lame sexual fantasy disguised as literature here.

I'll contribute this thought-provoking article.

[Coffeecakes]

Jesus, the horribleness of this book. It took me 10 months to read that piece of shit.

[Freelance Exorcist]

Presented without comment (NSFW liek whoa!)

OK, maybe one teensy comment: "bald-headed yogurt slinger" is a work of art.

[Mugsy]

Several women at work were gushing about this book series, although they are the "don't get out much" types. I read the first one and found it dull. I don't care if it's cheap pulp, as long as it had a decent storyline holding the sex together. But.... No. Nothing. I kept waiting for something to happen to link the individual sex scenes together. The women at work said that it finally happens in the third book, but I wasn't going to slog through another book just to find out. I just don't care.

I have no issue with this book as a hit, whatever people want to read, and that some writer is making millions. I just don't see the fuss.

[Neurochick]

I read all three books last year; mindless summer reading, that's all they were. What I laugh at is all the hatred of this book. You would think the author committed capital murder or something.

Now, these books weren't great literature, but they weren't pretending to be. The thing is though, these books, bad as they were, touched some nerve in people. Sometimes I feel a lot of the hatred is sexism because this is "chick fic" and "mommy porn."

I also think that people play fast and loose with the word "abuse." What is abuse to one person may not be to another. There are some types of abuse that are obvious, but others really aren't, I think it's abusive to hit someone, I think it's abusive to control someone to the point that they can't take care of themselves. But in the end of the book, Ana is still working, Christian doesn't like it but she's working anyway. Ana knows how to take care of herself. Sure there is a price that she paid. But everything you do has a price, that's just life.

I used to watch this show on TV called "Get To Work." It was a reality show with people who were trying to find jobs. Many of these people had been to prison or were on welfare. What all these people had in common was they had no clue as to how the world worked, they didn't know how to get to a place on time, they didn't know how to dress, or shake hands, or even smile. They had never learned simple basic skills. To me, that's the worst type of abuse, plain old neglect.

[prada]

This series is horrible. Plus it glamorizes a clearly emotionally abusive relationship. I side eye anyone who likes it.

[Mutagen]

I think there is "chick lit shaming" attached to some criticisms of 50 Shades, but I also think it's twisted to brush off criticisms of the abuse/stalking/etc. in the book in the name of feminism. I think a lot of women who wouldn't otherwise care about 50 Shades get justifiably resentful at the popular perception that abuse/stalking is what they really want.

What I find most confounding is that people defend the book on the grounds of "kink", which is fair in the sense that people generally shouldn't be judged on what they get off to. At the same time, it seems like if you really care about people's kinks being respected, you would be critical of book presenting BDSM as pathological and something that needs to be cured.

[Deleted]

What's funny is that I read the book (the first one- I never made it as far as the second) waiting for all the "kink" everyone had been talking about, and I never found any. To me the book's biggest crime is being boring as hell.

[Deleted]

The Secretary and Lisa Ling's Our America episode on BDSM are much better references for what the BDSM lifestyle is about. Unfortunately, neither of these had the benefit of being simplistic or glamorous enough to garner much attention. I started reading 50 Shades because of the hype and had every intention of seeing it through, but I had to stop once the contract came out. I was already put off by the predatory nature of what was supposed to be the romantic hero, so the contract with its demands that had nothing to do with consensual BDSM and everything to do with cruel control made it easy to throw it right in the garbage.

I also think that people play fast and loose with the word "abuse." What is abuse to one person may not be to another. There are some types of abuse that are obvious, but others really aren't, I think it's abusive to hit someone, I think it's abusive to control someone to the point that they can't take care of themselves. But in the end of the book, Ana is still working, Christian doesn't like it but she's working anyway. Ana knows how to take care of herself. Sure there is a price that she paid. But everything you do has a price, that's just life.

If you have to pay a price in life in order to remain with your partner it's abuse, and there are many victims of abuse who have successful careers and otherwise ordinary lives who are treated like absolutely shit behind closed doors but choose to carry on day after day, year after year, wearing their "I'm okay" mask out of shame and fear due to the harsh judgment they might suffer from their peers, especially if their abuser happens to be a charmer that everyone likes. There are many types of abuse with varying degrees of severity and many types of victims with varying levels of intelligence and capabilities, but there isn't any type of abuser who has the right to abuse another human being or any type of victim who deserves to have been abused.

It's very simple. If your partner robs you of your dignity by denying you the freedom to be true to yourself and enjoy your life as you choose and to the best of your abilities, you are a victim of abuse, because when this happens, your partner isn't being a true partner, they are being controlling and cruel. Abuse isn't a word people play fast and loose with. It's a word that's not spoken enough. It's that secret millions of women and children keep inside of them, largely due victim blaming and flippant attitudes of others that perpetuate the feelings of inadequacy and shame that their abusers have already beat into them (physically or verbally).

[darlingnikki]

I think what offended me the most about these books was not that it had a normalizing influence on bad-behavior-taken-for-romance (though that's damaging), but rather that it made people violate MY personal boundaries. I felt like I was being inundated with other people's sexual thingies. Like, I get it, this book has sex in it. Okay, so you're reading it, and you think it's sexy, and you're having fun with it. Okay. So now I know your porn habit. Yuck.

If I have a porn habit, there isn't a single person that I'm not sleeping with that knows what it's like. Because I think it's tactless, tasteless and juvenile to involve people you're not sleeping with in your expressions of explicit sexuality. I'm fine with you having them, really I'm a big fan of sexual happiness for all consenting adults, but it's like giving me the details of your colonoscopy, and it's not endearing. It's just gross.

For instance, I had two people on my Facebook feed, a husband and wife, talking about the book. It started innocently enough (the husband asked what the big deal was), then the wife jumped in and, because I know her, I know it wasn't sarcasm, she says "maybe I'll read it to you as a bedtime story". Ick, ick, ick, eeeeeeew! None of my business!