of woman bondage
(I had a reply to andrewducker's link post here that got way too long, so I figured I'd bring it over here.)
Okay, so: I get the whole 'censorship is bad' thing, I get that telling ladies 'your brains are too pure to read that!' is bad, and I especially get that accusing grown women of being unable to distinguish fantasy from reality is bad.
But I really wish people would stop excusing Fifty Shades of Grey by saying 'it's fantasy!'. The fantasy part is not the problem; the human race isn't suddenly going to dry up becase vagina-havers decide they're going to save their precious pearls until controlling CEOs decide to tie them down until they like it.
The core relationship dynamics it glorifies aren't just a problem because they're connected here to kinky sex -- they are a problem because they are abusive interpersonal heterosexual dynamics that are glorified in so many pieces of media, though now with the extra-fun spin of having literal pain-causing activities connected to them. Stories from survivors of abuse often talk about the romanticism of enduring their abuser's rages and 'fits of passion', so this isn't remotely something that this book/movie is responsible for introducing into the culture. My gripe against the movie is not that it's invented these dynamics, it's that it reinforces ones already prevalent in culture -- so prevalent, no one would call them "fantasy" -- then slaps them on Valentine's Day and calls them true, sexy love.
So no, don't ban the movie, that's stupid. But I think it's dangerous to shut down discussions of how troubling its tropes are just because they have never-gonna-happen-to-you elements to them. Honestly, I think we should leave this piece of crap alone (and it's going to be terrible, we all know that) and move on to how much of a problem these dynamics are when they appear in any media. If anything, I'm mad that FSoG is so egregiously bad that it has set the standard of badness artificially high, leavinag other movies in the clear. 'Sure, the damsel in distress falls in love with her dangerous kidnapper ... but at least he's not flogging her, right? Har har har.'
...And honestly, I think taking the 'women can distinguish fantasy from reality!' does a disservice to way people -- and women in particular -- have had romance fed to us as a steady diet of fantasy from the first time someone read to us about Cinderella. Fantasy normalizes reality, and doubly so when it's about things people Don't Talk About. Just look at the number of people responding to my post last summer (which will probably never get made into a column, and I'm sorry) talking about how much sex ed they got from fanfic. The odds that you're going to learn how a good, healthy sexual relationship happens by just observing the people around you? Pretty low. So it's in fantasy we hear these discussions, and without lots of good counter-information to contextualize it, yeah, it can be hard to distinguish what you should emulate from what just gets you wet.
I really hope that someone does a study with data from the coming months about increased visits to the emergency room caused by trying to emulate the BDSM practices in that movie. Alas, I am not that person
And that's probably all I have to say about that.
Okay, so: I get the whole 'censorship is bad' thing, I get that telling ladies 'your brains are too pure to read that!' is bad, and I especially get that accusing grown women of being unable to distinguish fantasy from reality is bad.
But I really wish people would stop excusing Fifty Shades of Grey by saying 'it's fantasy!'. The fantasy part is not the problem; the human race isn't suddenly going to dry up becase vagina-havers decide they're going to save their precious pearls until controlling CEOs decide to tie them down until they like it.
The core relationship dynamics it glorifies aren't just a problem because they're connected here to kinky sex -- they are a problem because they are abusive interpersonal heterosexual dynamics that are glorified in so many pieces of media, though now with the extra-fun spin of having literal pain-causing activities connected to them. Stories from survivors of abuse often talk about the romanticism of enduring their abuser's rages and 'fits of passion', so this isn't remotely something that this book/movie is responsible for introducing into the culture. My gripe against the movie is not that it's invented these dynamics, it's that it reinforces ones already prevalent in culture -- so prevalent, no one would call them "fantasy" -- then slaps them on Valentine's Day and calls them true, sexy love.
So no, don't ban the movie, that's stupid. But I think it's dangerous to shut down discussions of how troubling its tropes are just because they have never-gonna-happen-to-you elements to them. Honestly, I think we should leave this piece of crap alone (and it's going to be terrible, we all know that) and move on to how much of a problem these dynamics are when they appear in any media. If anything, I'm mad that FSoG is so egregiously bad that it has set the standard of badness artificially high, leavinag other movies in the clear. 'Sure, the damsel in distress falls in love with her dangerous kidnapper ... but at least he's not flogging her, right? Har har har.'
...And honestly, I think taking the 'women can distinguish fantasy from reality!' does a disservice to way people -- and women in particular -- have had romance fed to us as a steady diet of fantasy from the first time someone read to us about Cinderella. Fantasy normalizes reality, and doubly so when it's about things people Don't Talk About. Just look at the number of people responding to my post last summer (which will probably never get made into a column, and I'm sorry) talking about how much sex ed they got from fanfic. The odds that you're going to learn how a good, healthy sexual relationship happens by just observing the people around you? Pretty low. So it's in fantasy we hear these discussions, and without lots of good counter-information to contextualize it, yeah, it can be hard to distinguish what you should emulate from what just gets you wet.
I really hope that someone does a study with data from the coming months about increased visits to the emergency room caused by trying to emulate the BDSM practices in that movie. Alas, I am not that person
And that's probably all I have to say about that.