Fifty Shades

I guess I should know better than to write on a book/movie that I’ve never read/watched, nor do I think  I would care to.  I am a prude.  BDSM does not seem titillating to me at all. It seems scary and unpleasant.  

I’ve read a couple of blogs about it recently, tho.  That makes me an expert right? (Hah!)

Here are the blogs

http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20150217/NEWS/150219352/13831 (arguing that 50 Shades is antifeminist)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mara-shapiro/fifty-shades-domestic-abuse_b_6689254.html (arguing that some women, especially the main character in this book/movie may actually enjoy being subs)

Friends of mine on my real name FB account posted these links to blogs about the movie.  That made me want to talk about it.

I briefly dated a dom, myself.  Once I became clear about what it was that he was saying about himself, it also becomes clear to me that he was not the right person for me.  Shudder.

I just don’t think I could ever enjoy a game that would involve even play acting erotic violence and abuse against myself.  

Normally, if I had met this guy on an e-dating website, if he had started out telling that he was into BDSM,  I just would have blocked him.  Since this guy was a professional colleague and friend, I could not do that or at least i did not feel comfortable doing so.  We did stop dating; tho not before I spent a lot of time bashing my pillow against the wall pretending it was his head.

But we stayed friends and he explained that his former partner really loved BDSM, mostly because it was a role reversal. She was very dominant in her professional life and enjoyed playing the sub privately.  By contrast, he was not very dominant out in the world so he enjoyed playing a dom privately.  It was a game, he insisted, that they both enjoyed.  

She wasn’t around for me to verify this story with, so I tried to believe him, tho, for me, being a sub would just never, never be fun, so it was hard for me to imagine.  I did find that one of my friends claimed to have enjoyed being a sub and another of my friends was constantly fantasizing about being a sub, so obviously my revulsion was not universal.

Then a couple of celebs were connected with BDSM.  One, a Canadian talk show host, was accused of non-consensual BDSM activities and lost his job.  The other, a US pop singer, was privately accused on micro-blogging sites by women who did not use his name, but who were connected enough with the singer that his fans would figure out that he was the person referred to.  In the latter case, it was not non-consensual, but apparently he sometimes got a bit too rough, which was apparently not appreciated.

This led to a lot of twitter DMs, which raised some more issues issues that came up in discussions with friends.

For instance, one friend mentioned that, since men are usually larger, more aggressive, and control the money in a relationship, isn’t it questionable that the woman ever really consented? Maybe she just went along with it to avoid making waves. 

Also this friend worried that, if the dom is a celeb, a non-celeb might feel too pressured to please the celeb and not dare say no to BDSM if the dom/celeb insisted on it.  

It seemed that there was inherently some kind of abuse of power in a celeb/non-celeb relationship — but also in  most male/female couples.  Certainly in the 50 Shades situation, where the dom was a wealthy man who pursued a a much younger, less wealthy woman, it appeared that an abuse of power would be likely.

Still, in the book/movie itself, the woman was said to enjoy being a sub — indeed she was more than enjoying it — she was thrilled with it.

I’ve always taken the view that what happens between consenting adults in the privacy of their own home is no one’s business, so long as no one is injured.  So, technically, this should be ok with me.  If, in fact, both parties *are* consenting.

This brings me back to the a possibility that the adults participating in BDSM are not actually both consenting, but instead the smaller, financially disadvantaged one may be coerced.  Possibly, if she says she enjoys it, mightn’t it even be Stockholm Syndrome?  How would you ever disentangle what was truth and what was fiction?

Also, in BDSM, there can be injuries.  For instance, I had a friend in college who was persuaded by her much larger boyfriend (she weighed about 90 lbs and he was close to 300 lbs) to let him stick pins into her.  She disliked this activity, but put up with it to placate him -- tho eventually she broke off the relationship.

In any case, I remain uncomfortable with the concept of BDSM.  I certainly have no desire to see the movie and completely fail to understand those people who like to watch this stuff.