Shades of grey, bdsm style
Jun. 8th, 2012 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
syredronningSo lately cyranothe2nd posted an interesting meta about 50 Shades of Grey...
The problem with the book isn't that it's badly written, or that the characters are fan fic caricatures of Bella, Edward and Jacob. It isn't even that the book is created to titillate women who have apparently never seen the internet. It's that this isn't BDSM. What Christian does isn't safe, sane or consentual. It's abuse, plain and simple.
I haven't read the book but I'm not surprised. Most kind-of-kinky literature that turns people on is NOT of the safesaneRACK bdsm stuff. It's meta-consensual at best, usually non-consensual. Story of O, Gor, Ann Rice's Sleeping Beauty - they are a turn-on for many. Most of my non-bdsm-but-still-kink stories revolve around non-cons sceneswhich usually resulted from my own fantasies.
It's essentially erotic fantasy: readers gettings turned on by things that mirror their fantasies. It's fine per se - unfortunately the problem is:
Too many people don't get the FANTASY part of it.
Sleeping Beauty works well here, as it's a fairy tale, but if I had received an EURO for each O and Sir Stephen I've encountered in my life, I'd be richer. And the Gor scene... I only know one Gor fan whom I consider okay, and she's a dominant woman so she already turned the Gor world onto its head.
Fantasies are not reality. What turns on many people in their sexual fantasies won't turn them on in reality.
As long as readers are clear about that, I'm fine with it.
...
.oOAt this point, I should probably admit I had my moments in which I'd wished the Story of O would never have been published ;) Sigh... and still, many old-time BDSM folks started by reading that story and then developing from there. So maybe it's better to have bad bdsm out there to ping the interested parties, in the hope they'll then find out how it truly works for their best interests.
The problem with the book isn't that it's badly written, or that the characters are fan fic caricatures of Bella, Edward and Jacob. It isn't even that the book is created to titillate women who have apparently never seen the internet. It's that this isn't BDSM. What Christian does isn't safe, sane or consentual. It's abuse, plain and simple.
I haven't read the book but I'm not surprised. Most kind-of-kinky literature that turns people on is NOT of the safesaneRACK bdsm stuff. It's meta-consensual at best, usually non-consensual. Story of O, Gor, Ann Rice's Sleeping Beauty - they are a turn-on for many. Most of my non-bdsm-but-still-kink stories revolve around non-cons scenes
It's essentially erotic fantasy: readers gettings turned on by things that mirror their fantasies. It's fine per se - unfortunately the problem is:
Too many people don't get the FANTASY part of it.
Sleeping Beauty works well here, as it's a fairy tale, but if I had received an EURO for each O and Sir Stephen I've encountered in my life, I'd be richer. And the Gor scene... I only know one Gor fan whom I consider okay, and she's a dominant woman so she already turned the Gor world onto its head.
Fantasies are not reality. What turns on many people in their sexual fantasies won't turn them on in reality.
As long as readers are clear about that, I'm fine with it.
...
.oOAt this point, I should probably admit I had my moments in which I'd wished the Story of O would never have been published ;) Sigh... and still, many old-time BDSM folks started by reading that story and then developing from there. So maybe it's better to have bad bdsm out there to ping the interested parties, in the hope they'll then find out how it truly works for their best interests.
