Sunday, March 31, 2013

EL James Sexy Tweet Game


Are those your hands on my breasts are are you just looking for some easy innuendo, Christian?

Increasingly, the big Internet aggregators are publishing the same boring crap published by mainstream magazines -- regurgitated press releases, articles that are pretty much copies of what all the other big aggregators are publishing (example: "Everyone is all abuzz over the new rumor that (blank) is being considered to be cast as Ana in the Fifty Shades of Grey movie!) and well, generic, boring, inoffensive crap.

So when I see an article that has some element of originality, even on a big aggregator site, I'll happily point it out. Here's a nice article: a writer has noticed that EL James likes to put a little sexual innuendo in her tweets, so she put up some actual tweets by James and made up some fake tweets. You have to guess which is which. Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Seventy Million Copies Sold, Oh My!


"I know you want to scream in pleasure, Anna, but we must keep you silenced!"
"Then why are you using a ring gag, Christian?"
"I'm sure I can think of something to put in that ring in your mouth to silence you, Ana."
Image source: Public Disgrace.com.

A recent article in Jezebel.com has announced that Fifty Shades of Grey, having sold 70 million copies in 2012 (half of them ebook sales) singlehandedly helped the Bertelsman group (the company that owns Random House) maintain overall group profit levels despite stagnant conditions in its TV, magazine, and music publishing businesses.

I'm very pleased that Fifty Shades has been so successful, it's my hope that it ushers in a whole new era of acceptance and enjoyment of kinky erotic romances, even if some publishers are trying to prevent that. But Jezebel.com is a lot more conflicted on the topic of Fifty Shades. On the one hand, they probably understand that many of their readers bought and enjoyed Fifty Shades. On the other hand, a lot of their readers, either because they are antisex gender feminists who hate any depiction of maledom/femsub anything, or are lit-crit types who can't tolerate sexy romances and the slutty women who read them, absolutely HATE Fifty Shades of Grey.

That's why I love the article, because short as it is it almost explodes with the tension between happily reporting Fifty Shades' success, and snarking the hell out of its success. The article has snark going in opposite directions. On the one hand, it describes Fifty Shades of Grey as "E.L. James' cult sadomasochistic masterwork" implying it's a cultish porn novel (that Somehow sold 70 million copies). But it also takes a slam at the lit-crit crowd, pointing out that Fifty Shades' high level of ebook sales may be because unlike other books, it invites "the book-shaming eyerolls of MFA-holding Barnes & Noble cashiers."

A nice commentary on our economy, the value of a Master of Fine Arts degree, and the probable status of the lit-crit crowd's louder voices.

A very tasty bit of writing, very revealing to the discerning eye. Enjoy!

Friday, March 22, 2013

Interesting Analysis of Fifty Shades

A writer name Nathan Branford has written an interesting analysis of Fifty Shades of Grey. I liked it because it seemed honest. He clearly, actually read the book, came up with his own ideas about it. He correctly saw it as coming out of the romance novels' Byronic romance tradition, and that it's not as badly written as the lit-crit types keep complaining, but he kind of ignores/dances around the BDSM aspects of the novels. Like, he completely misses the fact that the readers just DIVED IN to the kinky aspects of the story.

It's very much the response of a vanilla type who hasn't thought things through and doesn't really want to confront the kink, but it's honest. That's refreshing.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Nothing Happening in Fifty Shades Land

Today my flying monkeys pulled in a dozen stories related to 50 Shades of Grey. One was about Mila Kunis not playing the female lead. A second was about Kate Moss reading from Fifty Shades of Grey. The rest are all about Emma Watson issuing a tweet that says she will not play the lead in Fifty Shades of Grey. Ten different reports about that. That means there's no news out there about Fifty Shades of Grey worth reporting, or someone would would haved reported it. Carry on!

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Another Writer Prefaces Comments On Fifty Shades of Grey with "Have Not Read It"

The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy section has a post where an indie moviemaker, Kieran Evans, compares his indie film, "Karen+Victor," which apparently has a femdom/malesub relationship, to Fifty Shades of Grey ... which he prefaces by saying, "I've never read Fifty Shades of Grey." But ... he's heard a lot about it, so that's all right.

I wrote a response to his post, because I'm really sick of all these people who never read the book confidently going out there and making fools of themselves by getting their facts all wrong and, of course, drawing wrong conclusions. So I straightened him out on a few points:

I have not seen your film, know very little about it, so I can't say if it's any good or not, and won't. If only you would be as fair to Fifty Shades of Grey. Anyone who says they have not read the book and then makes pronunciations about it loses all credibility, in my opinion. You get basic facts wrong: you said, " While the sex act may be viewed by outsiders as “S&M,” unlike “50 Shades” these two people have never before been involved in BDSM culture." Well the fact is that Ana is a virgin at the start of Fifty Shades of Grey and had never had ANY experience with BDSM. So ... poor comparison

Also, Fifty Shades is not ABOUT a maledom/femsub sex. Both Ana and Christian enjoy the sex, but the central story of the relationship is how Christian tries to set up their relationship as a purely contractual relationship, and how Ana refuses it, and it evolves into something more like a regular romantic relationship. That's really what it's ABOUT, the sex, while important, is not the central element because there's no conflict over it ... they both like it.

Now all you need to have said to make the point that your movie is different from Fifty Shades is that the relationship in your movie is femdom/malesub (i.e., it's Karen who does the tying-up) whereas in Fifty Shades it's maledom/femsub. Gender makes a huge difference to MOST (not all) who like BDSM, and for the readers of the romances and erotic romances, who enjoy maledom/femsub stories. You're in a different genre already. But I get the impression you don't know that, which is another strike against your credibility.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Welcome!

Welcome to Fifty Shades of Grey Considered, a blog that will look at the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy as a media and social phenomenon. I've been watching Fifty Shades of Grey happen for the last 18 months as it went from a curious publishing anomaly to something that has "distorted the adult book market" as one disgruntled competing publisher put it. I've been posting articles about it over on my main blog, Politically Sexy, for the entire time, and it's occurred to me that I've written enough posts about Fifty Shades of Grey that I might as well start my own blog on the topic. Therefore, this blog.

Basically, I am a big fan of Fifty Shades of Grey as a phenomenon. Romance novels don't interest me all that much, being a guy, but I do like the kinky, and I also like the way that Fifty Shades of Grey arose from fanfic rather than being foisted on readers by some big corporate publishing entity. (I know that Random House is the official publisher of the Fifty Shades books, but they only negotiated for the rights to publish the novel in traditional media after it had become a bestseller as an ebook, beating out THEIR books with all their marketing muscle behind them.)

I'm also interested in it as a social phenomenon, a genuine grassroots success whose 65 million copies sold worldwide indicates a definite interest in kinky reading fun among the "soccer moms" who were its primary audience. And though the books definitely had Random House's considerable money and marketing muscle behind them, they faced considerable hostility from many groups with vested interests: ordinary prudes who didn't like the strong sexual content, feminist prudes who didn't like the maledom/femsub relationship between Christian and Ana, literary types who hated that a romance novel was kicking ass in the marketplace with unparalleled success, less successful writers (i.e., almost all writers) who resented the books' success when THEIR work was OBVIOUSLY better, and smaller groups of people with various social and political axes to grind.

And I LOVED the way the soccer moms just kept on buying, reading and enjoying the Fifty Shades of Grey books without the least concern for all the media types badmouthing it. I felt a sense of renewed faith in readers' willingness to follow their own tastes, and I savored the media types' frustrated anger as they were unable to control the readers.

It was a delicious experience, and this blog is my attempt to share it with you, and speculate on what comes next ... and no, I'm not just talking about who will be cast in the movie.

OH, yeah, and the artwork? It'll be redone. I think I've nailed Ana: bright, fit, shapely, happy ... but I got an off-the-rack Christian Steele avatar in Second Life, and ... nope, just not right.

Slate's Saletan: Dinosaur Stupidity or Hatchet Job?

First published on 3/9/13

Well I brought you a bit of dinosaur-stupid reporting on BDSM from ABC News online a few weeks ago, and now Slate has decided to follow suit with a truly boneheaded blog post from William Saletan stating that BDSM will NEVER gain popular acceptance.

But I wonder if the post was simple boneheadedness. Sure, he spoke from dire ignorance that got his ass thoroughly kicked in the comments section and also provoked a pretty good ass kicking in this detailed response to his post on buzzfeed.

But there was some sneaky, subtle use of language in the post that made me think it was more of a hatchet job than a simple case of stupid meets sexy. Particularly Saletan's use of the phrase "consensual domestic abuse" to describe consensual kink. What a wonderfully sleazy bit of misdirection! This disgusting phrase links consensual kink and domestic abuse as if one were not the opposite of the other. Abuse is by its very nature nonconsensual. It's like saying "cold hot" or "good bad."

But if you don't like BDSM in the first place, or are butt-ignorant about it, you might just let the phrase slide. After all, women's shelters in England have recycled Fifty Shade of Grey as toilet paper, their leadership also having problems with detecting the difference between consensual and nonconsensual.

Saletan also makes the dubious claim that Americans find it easier to accept homosexuality than to accept BDSM. A moment's thought will convince you of the silliness of that claim. Which is Joe Average gonna find scarier, Mark tying Patricia to the bed, or Mark kissing Patrick? Mr. Saletan apparently thinks they will be more alarmed at Mark tying Patricia to the bed. Mr. Saletan is nuts. Or dissemblig.

Early on in his post Saletan makes the point that "mild bondage is no big deal" and my tastes are very mild. A lot of the stuff I see on Kink.com promos make me wince, not to mention what I've found on other BDSM sites. Kink.com is supposed to be the very pinnacle of safe and sane and consensual, but I don't care for pain at all. I understand that others like pain, but it squicks me past a certain point. But I'm not going to oppose individuals' right to enjoy what they like because it squicks me. And I sort of have the impression that that is exactly what Saletan is doing.

I don't know if Saletan's post is from sheer ignorance ignorant, so I have to consider that this may be a hatchet job. If it is, I doubt it will work. With 65 million copies of Fifty Shades of Grey sold, Saletan is whistling past the graveyard. The mommies like their kinky sex. Saletan is welcome not to like it, but he's an idiot if he thinks he can make a blanket statement about what the mainstream will or will not accept, when the mainstream has ALREADY spoken loudly and definitively on the topic.

Is Fifty Shades of Grey Public Domain?

First published on 3/8/2013

I'm still following the progress of the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon in the media, but there has not been much to report on, as it has mostly devolved into increasingly wild speculation about who will play the leads in the movie. So when a bit of actual news comes along, I'm all ears. And some has.

The first actual news I've seen in a while indicates that Smash Pictures, the creators of a porn parody of "Fifty Shades of Grey," is being sued on violation of copyright grounds by Universal Pictures, which owns the movie rights to "Fifty Shades of Grey." Seems the porn people didn't do an adequate job of filing the serial numbers off!

Now I personally think the story in Fifty Shades of Grey is different enough from Twilight that there's no question that it's not copyright infringement, and I'm guessing Random House's legal department agrees with me, as they greenlit purchasing Fifty Shades.

The defense of Smash Pictures is that "Masters of the Universe," the original story written by EL James, on which Fifty Shades is based, and which was published on a Twilight fanfic website as fanfic, was in the public domain, and that therefore, Fifty Shades itself is in the public domain. For a detailed analysis of the Masters of the Universe fanfic and its relation to Fifty Shades I'll refer you to the Obsidian Wings website's analysis.

Smash Pictures' contention is that since Master of the Universe was published initially as fanfic without any copyright claims, and that since it essentially IS Fifty Shades of Grey, the work is in the public domain and Smash Pictures can't be violating Fifty Shades' copyright.

I don't have the legal chops to speak on the matter of whether or not Master of the Universe's original provenance puts Fifty Shades into public domain territory or not. But my cynical self tends to see that legal cases are generally decided in favor of the person or corporation that has the most money/legal resources. That would be Universal Studios. In any event, publishers, legal experts, movie studios and the fanfic community will be watching this one with great interest.

Domestic Bondage On SMBC Theater

First published on 2/17/2013

A Youtube channel called SMBC Theater has come up with an actually funny bit about sexual bondage play. They called it 50 Shades of Domestic Gray but I think that's just to attract visitors, the skit actually has little or nothing to do with the book Fifty Shades of Grey. Point is: it's actually funny. Lighthearted and fun. Enjoy!

The S.E.C.R.E.T. of No Success

First published on 2/6/2013

This one was so predictable that I am surprised it has taken until now for it to happen. Publishers have decided that then Next Big Thing after Fifty Shades of Grey will be a sexy, sexy novel with lots and lots of vanilla sex and not all that problematical kinky sex, and they've found their book, they think: S.E.C.R.E.T., a relentlessly vanilla sexy novel by Canadian author Lisa Gabriele (writing as L. Marie Adeline).

At the Frankfort book fair, publishers bid the novel up to a six-figure advance against sales in 30 different territories worldwide. The widespread success of Fifty Shades has clearly left publishers hungry for a repeat, but these particular publishers are clueless gits. I predict that S.E.C.R.E.T. will go just as far as the publishers' marketing machine can push it, there'll be no worldwide cascade of interest. After the marketing machine push is over, it'll drop like a lead balloon, going only so far as its astroturf runway permits.

It was the kinky sex, specifically the dominance/submission relationship between Ana and Christian, that made Fifty Shades of Grey so popular. The importance of the kinky sex is so freaking obvious that even the mainstream media reviewers sometimes saw it, but I can just SEE the publishers wishfully thinking, "Well this book has plenty of sex, and none of that problematical kinky sex!"

Fools. If S.E.C.R.E.T. were a stock and I were a stockbroker, I'd wait til it hit a hundred thousand copies sold (the outer limit of where its astroturf sales will go) and then I'd short it like crazy. Of course, I would be foolish to bet actual money on its failure, as I have a personal animus toward the book and would LOVE to see it fail so hard that its publisher's grandchildren wet themselves every time they heard the word "secret."

GQ Fifty Shades of Grey Inspired Photo Spread Features Actual Bondage ... Of A Woman!

First published on 2/6/2013

The flying monkeys brought in news that GQ Magazine's Spanish edition has a hot "Fifty Shades of Grey"-inspired photo spread. I checked it out dutifully, certain I'd see no bondage at all, or a dude in bondage. Because that's fashion bondage for ya. So my eyeballs bugged out a little when the photos included SEVERAL images of a couple with the WOMAN in chains, cuffs, etc. And blindfolded, of course. Good lord, has Fifty Shades become such a powerful media force that even the dunderheads who do fashion photo shoots are starting to get it?

Hmm. This could be an outlier. I'm having trouble giving up the notion that fashion is run by idiots. I'll wait for further evidence. Yeah ... it's gotta be an outlier.

Midori "Gets" Fifty Shades of Grey

First publised on 2/1/2013

I've become so used to BDSM folks dissing 50 Shades of Grey because it does not portray a perfect, idealized BDSM relationship (and honestly, gets a lot of stuff wrong) that I was extremely pleased to discover a positive quote from one of the leading lights of the bondage community, rope bondage expert Midori, who has already made an appearance on Politically Sexy.com. Midori said:

Xtra: Would you say EL James’s novel Fifty Shades of Grey has had an influence on the world of bondage?
Midori: Sure it has. It’s given the general culture permission to explore a wider range of sexual expression. It’s about opening a dialogue.
Source: Xtra Canada's Gay and Lesbian News. Midori gets it! Fifty Shades of Grey, whatever its flaws as a work of art, has allowed people in mainstream culture to explore BDSM without getting the "EEEEWS" and the "double ickies!" all over themselves. For this alone it is great benefit to BDSM culture. But everybody's gotta protect their own special vision of what BDSM is or can be, so a lot of BDSM folks have taken the short & easy road to dissing "Fifty Shades of Grey" as a way of showing their superiority. Sure, we get it, you know stuff. But still ... so short-sighted! So dumb! The folks like Midori who actually do have their act together know better.

Fifty Shades of Grey Seedlings

First published on 1/24/2013

Kink.com is not the only bondage-related thing that is getting mainstreamed of late. "Soft" bondage, whatever that is, is also taking off according to a report in Entertainmentwise.com, which is not exactly a fetish site, as you'll note.

The article, basically a fluff piece, interviews James Deen (known well from Kink.com) who is fast becoming the go-to guy as bondage's most well-known star and a manufacturer of a line of sex aids/toys called Liberator (There may be some sexism going on here, there have been MANY well-known and successful women who have promoted and advanced sexual bondage over the years ... Midori, Lorelei Imboch, Chanta Rose, the list is very long indeed, yet James Deen is the go-to source for the press. Well at least they are going to someone who actually does bondage.)

The Liberator people obligingly ascribe the upward boost in sales of their products to an increase of awareness of "soft" bondage and interest in it, created by "50 Shades of Grey." And they're probably right. I'm seeing other articles in which bondage is being matter-of-factly described as a culture phenomenon rather than some bizarre fetish, like this one on celebrity bondage looks from Hollywoodife.com, which asks which actress looks best in leather "bondage" fashion.

What I see happening is that the effects of Fifty Shades of Grey are beginning to appear in our culture. Fifty million seeds have been planted, their effects are invisible as they grow in our collective unconscious, now we see the first tiny shoots poking above the unconscious into mainstream media. Gonna be interesting to watch and see what grows, and how it grows.

Filthy Shades of Grey?

First pubished on 1/13/2013

Kelly Marcel, the screenwriter for the upcoming 50 Shades of Grey movie, says the movie is gonna be RAUNCHY, that they are going for an NC-17 rating. The news is all over the entertainment blogs.

I'm kind of amazed, and surprised, and frankly, cynical. There is a long distance between a screenplay and the final movie. Frankly, to have the movie come out as raunchy as some of the scenes in the books, you'd need some hardcore scenes indeed, because there ARE scenes in the books where Christian ties Ana up thoroughly, gags her and fucks her.

I'm betting the studio execs will get cold feet at the thought of trying to make an NC-17 hit franchise film. If the film is NOT raunchy, it will be a flop, because the readers clearly liked the raunchy elements of the books. But the conventional wisdom is that NC-17 does not produce blockbuster hits. You gotta get the kids in there! And even though the thought of Fifty Shades of Grey that's clean enough for the kiddies is patently ridiculous, well, anybody who ever read the Gor novels would have said the same thing about a Gor movie ... and look what we wound up with.

Warning Tremors

First published on 1/9/2013

Found an article on Alternet wondering when BDSM became so wildly popular. The interesting element of the article was its date: it was published in June 2010, well before the advent of "Fifty Shades of Grey."

The people at Alternet definitely showed some prescience in running such an article just ahead of Fifty Shades of Grey, clearly someone at the progressive site was feeling the advance tremors of the cultural volcano that is Fifty Shades of Grey.

The tremors were as nothing to the explosion, of course. What the article cites is things like the success of Kink.com and kink no longer being considered a mental illness and Christina Aguilera's kinky outfits she wore in music video, and Aguilera's predecessor, Madonna with her Sex book back in the 80s (which if I recall, was a bomb).

All in all it is weak beer compared to Fifty Shades of Grey, the equivalent of the filler material my flying monkeys brought in for posts to jam in between the tons of stuff they brought in about Fifty Shades this summer -- only scattered over a couple of decades instead of a few months, because there just wasn't that much going on in the mainstream wrt BDSM.

When you got the top three books on the New York Times bestseller list containing a story of bondage, dominance and spanking, fifty million copies sold mostly to soccer moms, and James Deen (see above) an idol of teenaged girls in America, well you are in a WHOLE DIFFERENT BALLPARK. But to be fair, Alternet's contributors knew SOMETHING was up, more than you could say about a lot of the mainstream media.

Of course, some people, such as me, were feeling the tremors six years ago. What can I say? Prescient!

2012: Afterthoughts

First published on 1/14/2013

OK, let's get this out of the way: by FAR the biggest thing to happens in the realm of bondage, ebooks, erotic fiction, romance fiction and arguably publishing itself was "Fifty Shades of Grey." I've already written at length on the topic, so I'll keep it brief. The thing that made "Fifty Shades" special wasn't just that it was a book featuring scene of bondage and dominance, but who read it: it was women, mostly, lots and lots of women, and not just young Goth girls looking for something to read while getting a skull tattooed on their butts, but older women: "soccer moms" which is THE prime demographic for many, many advertisers.

The news that soccer moms like to read about women in maledom/femsub relationships did not surprise me at all: I RP in SL Gor, where women outnumber men almost two to one, and all a guy has to do to find a naked slavegirl chained to him is stand still long enough for them to find him. But I think the news that ordinary women like bondage set the mainstream back on its heels, even though the romance genre of which erotic fiction is a subset has always had more than its share of "bodice ripper" stories.

Nothing else that happened in 2012 that I know of had anything LIKE the impact of 50 Shades of Grey on the bondage community/industry/whatevs (though having said that, I am totally prepared to find history proving me wrong).

Another trend I am liking is honest, straightforward blogging by women who are either real life submissives talking about their lives like the author of Down the Rabbit Hole, or sex industry pros like bondage model Cherry Torn and former prostitute The Honest Courtesan, who are talking honestly about THEIR lives and interests instead of just using their blogs as marketing tools.

I think it's great that these voices have found expression online, and I hope they become more popular, and teach everyone that people who are submissives or who work in the sex industry are not mysterious others who can be marginalized and ignored, they're people, just like anybody else. Soccer moms who took the dare their subconscious minds made with them, perhaps.

People call this the "mainstreaming" of BDSM, as if it were merely the inclusion of BDSM topics in mainstream media, but I see it as something more profound, or at the very least, I HOPE it is something more profound, a sort of cultural maturing about matters sexual, a recognition that sexual power fantasies can be acted out in real life, that does not make them any less fantasies, nor justify treating people as the object of such fantasies without their consent.

Now, would somebody please call the prudes and the prudo-feminists and let them know we have this matter all hashed out?

Friday, March 15, 2013

Fifty Shades of News Bits

First published on 12/21/2012

Fifty Shades of Gray has inspired a workout. Do tell. Bandwagon-jumping continues apace. They've also got a new video out of George Takei reading Fifty Shades of Grey aloud which is SUPPOSED to be hilarious, and to have gone viral, but I watched it, and ... meh. So no link!

Also, a cogent and interesting analysis of the prospects for a Fifty Shades of Grey movie that predicts the movie will be bizarre. If it's bizarre, I think that will be a success, because that means somebody will have TRIED to make it work. I think it will just suck. But do read the analysis, and if you like, my response in the comments section.

Fifty Shades of India

First published on 12/15/2012

A report in The Times of India announces that the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon is sweeping through country, sparking interest in BDSM in this one billion strong nation. The Times is reporting on the formation of The Kinky Collective a Delhi-based 15-person strong group that provides support for lovers of BDSM.

Wait ... 15 people? India? In India, 15 people is an empty room! Good lord, this is a trend sweeping the nation? Really?

One sense that the author fervently hopes so. If it were, they might have something sexy to report on in a nation that the story admits has a reputation for being very conservative sexually. To wit, it's prudish.

In addition to being prudish, Indian society is sexist and violent. So the search for good news about sex in India that's not completely bad probably gets kinda desperate at times. Here's a good article on all the sexism and violence toward women in India. Most of the violence and sexism appears to be in the rural and poor elements of India, which despite the rise of a detectable middle class in India, still constitutes one hell of a lot of people, the majority of that one billion. Jezebel recently got in on the issue, but Times of India does a much better job of covering it, as you might expect.

In an overwhelmingly violent, sexist culture like the ones many Indians live in, all sexual relationships are going to be profoundly affected by the sexism and violence. I guess if you are wealthy enough and sufficiently privileged, or sufficiently alienated from Indian society (the Kinky Collective was started by a couple, one of whom is transgendered -- hmmm) you might be able to figure your only sane path is to just go your own way, but most women are probably too afraid that men will tie then up and rape them for real to enjoy pretending that a man is tying them up and raping them for consensual kinky fuckery.

I don't know, it's a knotty problem, figuratively speaking. It's tempting to feel cheap moral superiority from the outside, but probably a bad idea, which is why I'm not gonna do it. I suspect that the only reasonable path is to take on the sexism and violence and put an end to it, which is what most reasonable people can agree on. How? Gonna be hard, gonna be a rough slog, as many of the originators of the sexism and violence are illiterate, young, poor and male, a hard group to reach. But most of them have mothers and sisters, and with the same kind of full court press that has been applies in other societies, they'll learn. Sadly, they will almost inevitably learn ... eventually, which will do little good for the women being victimized now.

In the meantime, maybe Fifty Shades of Grey will provide a nice fantasy of kinky, romantic love for those Indians that are at liberty to enjoy it, and perhaps it can preach the subversive message that pretendy sexual submission is all fun and can last throughout a lifetime, while the real thing is nasty, short and brutish.

Random House Buys Lena Dunham's Grocery List for $3.7 Million

First published on 12/12/2012

E.L. James and Lena Dunham have one thing in common: they are both women who won the Writing Lottery, gaining incomes in millions of dollars for writing books. (Dunham hasn't written her book yet, she scored a $3.7 million advance on the basis of a 66-page book proposal).

The other thing that they have in common is that their talent does not at all match the rewards they have won (that's why I call it the Writing Lottery -- more on that later). I'm not saying that neither of them is talented, or hard-working, just that the products they produce are, well ... kinda mediocre.

If there were some sort of meritocracy involved in who got money for writing, John Crowley would have scored a 500 million dollar advance for his novel "Little, Big" which is so much better than anything that James and Dunham have ever written or done that it's literally (not figuratively) beyond comparison.

(You may think I am not in a position to judge Dunham's book, as it has not been written yet, but it just so happens I am: Gawker got hold of her entire book proposal and published it online. I didn't read the whole proposal, just glanced at it when the flying monkeys dropped it off. And I CAN'T read it now and you can't either, because Gawker took the proposal down after Dunham's lawyer threatened legal action if they kept it up. However, Gawker DID leave up 12 lines from the proposal which they hilariously appended to demonstrate how self-involved and silly the book proposal is. Read it, it's hilarious.)

Also, I have seen or tried to watch several eps of Lena's HBO series "Girls" which is a lot better than her book proposal but still kinda mediocre. Of course, I am not the demographic for her series (self-involved coastal twenty-somethings who are either wealthy or wannabe wealthy -and who doesn't wannabe wealthy? But still, I know mediocre when I see it, and this is high mediocre ... it doesn't challenge you on any level, unless you are one of those people who is perpetually challenged by the thought that twenty-something women have sex and like it, in which case I'd have to say you're just plain old challenged. Some of the dialogue is kinda witty, the characters are not entirely superficial, impressive for someone Dunham's age, but not brilliant stuff at all.

I think the reason Dunham won the Writing Lottery are almost entirely demographic. She's a rich, pretty (I mean real life pretty, Dunham is Hollywood ugly), smart, Jewish woman living in New York City. Now there are a TON of rich, pretty, smart, Jewish women living in New York City who have not won the Writing Lottery. But Dunham did a few things right. She made a an indie film called "Tiny Furniture" that got some buzz, parlayed that into her HBO series "Girls", and has parlayed the premium cable success of "Girls" into a $3.7 million book deal.

In fact, the art that Dunham has show the most skill at is The Art of the Deal, arguably. I don't see the book deal so much as a reward for great achievement as a case of rich, Jewish, New York publishers anointing One Of Their Own with $3.7 million for being able to do the literary equivalent of toddling about without falling over.

I mean, when Stephen King was writing bestsellers every time he put pen to paper and each bestseller became a successful movie, people were joking that publishers were bidding on the chance to buy his grocery lists. Well, guess what? According to the Gawker article, "Fully 13% of the proposal's pages are devoted to reproducing a diary Dunham kept of what she ate in 2010." Yes, Random House ACTUALLY IS buying Dunham's shopping list for $3.7 million!

Now I can't blame Dunham for being willing to accept this largesse -- I'd be willing to accept it too, if it were offered to me, even on the basis of me fitting the demographic and my grocery lists being the thing to be published. But it does exemplify everything I HATE about the traditional publishing industry -- centered in New York, insular, greedy, myopic, and prone to exploit anyone it can for money, while wasting money on mediocrities that fit its demographic. (Remember when about half of all mainstream novels were about middle aged men, generally academics or publishing industry folks, who were living in the Northeast (often New York) and cheating on their wives while experiencing Mid-Life-Crisis?).

Contrast this with E.L. James and Fifty Shades. I give James higher points for originality and challenging work -- the reason Fifty Shades succeeded was that it did beautifully integrate its BDSM themes into the traditional romance novel structure. Of course, James had a lot of help, after reading the Obsidian Wings website's account of how the Twilight community helped her with editing and feedback, it might reasonable have been given the byline, "By E.L. James, with considerable help and support from the Twilight fanfic community."

But the fact that James started her book out as straight up fanfic under the name “Icedragon Snowqueen” shows me that she started out just wanting to write a story that she enjoyed and cared about, working with the Twilight community to make her book better in a very humble and creative way. There was no Art of the Deal here, just Art, pure and simple.

In fact, it was the Twilight and online community that made "Fifty Shades" a success. They bought the online version in droves, and when Amazon's numbers showed Fifty Shades beating the crap out of the sales of the traditional publishing industry's bestsellers in the online marketplace without a BIT of help from all the publicists, agents and marketers that were flogging THEIR books, well, it didn't take a LOT of brains to see that the thing to do was to get that book printed up and in stores and get the hype machine going for it.

So, even though E.L. James just an average-looking Brit middle-aged housewife with no connections to the New York Publishing industry (the book had originally been published by Australian outfit that specialized in publishing converted fanfic to non-fanfic after the process called “filing the numbers off” had been completed), the publishing industry started a bidding war over her manuscript, netting her milions when Random House won.

But here's the difference between what Random House bought from James and what Random House bought from Dunham: James' book was a completed manuscript that had already been proven an online bestseller, beating THEIR bestseller. It was NOT a 66-page writeup, 13 percent of which consisted of a listing of what foods James at in 2010.

You see the difference? A purely economic decision, no demographics involved, for the seven-figure advance James got for her book. (I can't find any more definite figure for E.L. James' advance than “seven figures” so it could be as little as $1 million or as much as $9 million … I would not be surprised at all to learn that it was less than what Dunham got for her book proposal.)

Now in my opinion James' book is a pretty good romance novel, but not a great one, and not a great book. It is mostly a triumph of technique, like John Norman's Gor novels, of seamlessly integrating BDSM sexuality into an existing genre (in Norman's case, sword and sandal fantasy adventures).

But the point is, it got bought because it was loved by its readers and fans, not the publishers whose first instinct would be to ignore such a book. “Fifty Shades” got thrust upon the publishing industry, the publishing industry did not thrust it on readers, as is their usual practice. That in my mind has merit. The book may not be great literature, but people love it.

If you want to read a GREAT novel, try John Crowley's fantasy novel “Little, Big.” It has no BDSM sex in it, and although there is sex it is not at all graphic. But what it is, is beautifully written, with an imagination on a scale that takes you completely into another world, in a very sly and intelligent way. THIS is a book that succeeds of merit. All I know of John Crowley is that he lives in the Northeast and does research for film and video documentaries for a living. He may be Jewish, wealthy, a New Yorker, or not, I don't know, and I don't care. HIS book has merit. WHATEVER the means by which it was published (I'm betting an editor read it and fell in love with it as so many have) is all right with me.

But I'm pretty sure that Little Big did not get any seven figure book advance. I REALLY doubt it got six figures. Five figures … maybe, I think Crowley had several books published by the time “Little, Big” came out. But it could easily have been just four figures, it's fantasy. But, damn … what a MASTERPIECE. Read it, I dare you. Used copies are for sale real cheap over at Amazon if your finances are straightened.

Now the marketing machinery is going to grind out its releases for Dunham's book, and for all I know, it may be good, but I doubt it. It is clearly, “Item designed to appeal to readers for a variety of demographic reasons.” So do yourself a favor. Buy Little, Big, instead, or search out some good fanfic that might appeal to you. Don't let Random House recoup its stupidly given advance to Dunham with your dollars.

5000 Shades of Grey

First published on 12/11/2012

I read with pleasure that Random House is giving $5000 to each and every employee of the company who has been with them for more than a year, right down to the lowliest janitor and administrative assistant, in celebration of the tremendous success of "Fifty Shades of Grey" which has sold almost 50 million copies worldwide, at one point constituting one out of every five books being purchased by adults.

I applaud Random House for their brave generosity at a time when corporations in general are behaving with incredible stupid dickishness toward their employees and customers in reaction to the Democratic election victory. For example, Applebee's Restaurants, Papa John's restaurants, and Darden, the Corporate Monster that owns Red Lobster, Longhorn Steaks and Olive Garden have all announced moves that will decrease employees' wages, hours or status (moving from full time to part time) explaining that the now-likely continuation of Obamacare into law "necessitated" it.

In contrast with this sort of corporate dickishness, Random House looks really great!

However, I am not entirely delighted by the bonus, because I think part of it comes as a result of a capitalist organization looting a gift economy. I am referring of course to the Twilight fanfic community from which Fifty Shades of Grey. Remember, it started out as a straight up fanfic called "Master of the Universe" by Icedragon Snowqueen (James' pen name for fanfic) with characters lifted straight from the book.

And a key part of what made "Master of the Universe" and by extension, "Fifty Shades of Grey," so successful, was the work that some Twilight fans put into Master of the Universe for free, editing it skillfully to take it up another notch. Obsidian Wings wrote about their work, with examples. Clearly they had a LOT to do with the story's success, much more than most Random House employees.

Of course, the Twilight fanfic editors got nothing for their work. They did not sign a contract or anything like that, they just edited a story they liked, because they liked it, expecting nothing more in return than the thanks of the community and the chance to read the story.

Still, it does.not.seem.right!

Now I know legally the Twilight fanfic editors are entitled to nothing. But so often, what's legal has little to do with what is ethical. And I don't think this is a problem that could be solved by giving some Twilight fanfic editors a few thousand dollars (though it WOULD be the right thing to do!). But I do believe we are going to have to eventually deal with the moral issues of capitalist organizations essentially looting gift economies, and giving nothing in return. Perhaps quite soon, if publishers continue trolling the Twilight fanfic community for new works to publish.

Coming up soon: E.L. James vs. Lena Dunham vs. John Crowley. Really!

Fifty Shades of Lame Party Game

First Published on 12/72012

As Fifty Shades of Grey the book has spread out into mass culture, one of the things I've envisioned happening to it has happened: in at least one instance, it has had the kink bowlerized right out of it. I mean, completely: let me introduce you to the Fifty Shades of Grey party game, a game that has no kink in it whatsoever.

Basically, it's a card game in which people are asked a series of vanilla questions and then they try to guess most accurately who would be a good match for the answer, or something along those lines. It's generic embarrassing sexy-ish party drivel. As one commenter on the Cafe Mom post but it, "It's one of those games designed to be a gift you give someone to embarrass them at a party, but which will never be played."

I've tried to figure out why anyone would sell a "Fifty Shades" branded item that is sure to disappoint all of the 50 million people who have bought the book, and all I can figure is a combination of greed, short-sightedness and cynicism. The game-makers objective is to sell as many units as possible, that's all. And they figure that having branded the game "Fifty Shades" they've done all they need to in order to attract people who read the book, so now they are after the dollars of people who have not read the book and probably don't even like it's subject matter. So they squeeze the bondage content right out of the game, so Aunt Sarah in Dubuque who doesn't like sex at all won't find it too offensive.

Of course, word of mouth will kill this game dead, and I'm happy to report that all three reports I've read about the game in various media point out that it's very vanilla, in varying degrees of subtlety. (CafeMom is the most blunt of the group, but then, they've got an active group of readers and responders who won't let them get away with crap.)

There IS a Red Room Expansion pack, totally undescribed in any report I've read, which MAY have kinky content, but really, if there is a more classic case of throwing good money after bad than buying the Red Room Expansion Pack, I don't know what it might be.

Celebrity Bondage Safety Tips

First published on 12/2/2012

The Celebrity Cafe, a big fan of Fifty Shades of Grey, or at least publishing posts about it, is doing what is very much the right thing by publishing a set of celebrity bondage safety tips by practicing submissive and erotica author Joey Hill. We're passing the tips along to you. A lot of the imagery of bondage you'll find online is very complex tie ups by the folks like those at Kink.com. They know what they are doing, both tier-uppers and tie-ees, so don't try this stuff at home unless you've had some training. Emergency room visits will suck the fun right out of any bondage session.

The other reason we're posting about it is, more evidence of a sea-change brought about by Fifty Shades, when a blog entitled "The Celebrity Cafe" is publishing BDSM safety tips. How long before we have celebrities giving bondage safety tips? Oh, about as long as it takes for the Fifty Shades of Grey movie to hit the theaters, and the cast to be doing publicity tours. Will they be as good as Hill's? Doubtful in the extreme.

By the way, the post's opening line is worth quoting:

There is a growing interest in bondage in the bedroom, and many of my readers are giving it a try in an effort to spice up their sex lives. It’s fun and feels a little bit dangerous, like a roller coaster, right? But you know why a roller coaster is so thrilling? Because deep down you – the rider – know you’re safe, and the designer and operator intend to keep you that way from beginning to end.

Good BDSM practices are the same.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Ahead of My Time ... Six Years Ago

First published on 11/27/2012

Found this old thread I started on Literotica six years ago ... wow. I had noticed a lot of mildly kinky stories in various "hot" imprints of various romance publishers and correctly deduced that there was a lot interest in BDSM style romances among those readers. I wondered if the form would evolve further.

What I did not anticipate, of course, is that romance readers would abandon traditional romance publishes for ebook publishers en masse, or that fanfic would be the source of a whole new generation of romance writers with much more direct and powerful ways of writing about sex.

Resulting in Fifty Shades of Grey, of course. But still ... I knew SOMETHING was up ...

Why There Will Never Be Another Fifty Shades of Grey

First published on 11/23/2012

I didn't like Fifty Shades of Grey as a read. Not because it was badly written, it struck me as well written in many respects. I didn't like it because it was a romance, and I generally don't like romances. Too much characterization and plot development, not enough sex. I'm a guy, what can I say?

I was pleased, however, that the kinky sex was quite kinky, I had feared that the kink would be watered-down stuff ... you know, blindfolds and eating strawberries off the tummy, etc., ... the old 9 1/2 Weeks treatment. But it was not. Cuffs, chains, gags and ben wa balls, oh my! Also, the characters really loved and enjoyed their kinky sex, and James did a great job of portraying that, something she did not get much credit for, among other things.

Also, I don't read a lot of kinky fiction, since I write kinky fiction, thus, reading other people's kinky fiction is a busman's holiday kind of thing.

That's why I read the book, not recreationally, but because I realized it was an IMPORTANT book, part of several important breaking cultural phenomena, the most important of which was the more widespread acceptance of BDSM sexual fantasies among women (“mommies") but also the rise of fanfic as an acceptable form of writing, and hopefully, the demise of traditional big publishers in favor of self-publishers and small publishers that actually serve their authors and readers' interests. (it's hilarious the way the big publishers are now trolling the Twilight fanfic community for "the next 50 Shades of Grey").

I also think much of the criticism is incredibly superficial, concentrating on minor stylistic errors ("Oh my!" and dancing inner goddesses) which bothered me not at all when I read Fifty Shades. Or they criticized Fifty Shades for having a male protagonist and a relationship which were not poster children for good BDSM practices. (HELLOOOOOOO! It's a work of FICTION! It's supposed to be DRAMATIC! If Ana and Christian's characters and relationships had been role models for BDSM, NO ONE would have read the books because they would have been TOO FRICKING DULL!!!!)

Also, the critics have left out some VERY GOOD ASPECTS of Fifty Shades of Grey in terms of social responsibility that are not present in most romances. The topic of contraception comes up early in Christian and Ana's relationship, plans are made and carried out, it's not ignored or neglected as in so many romances. There is also much emphasis on communication and trust in the relationship. Christian almost always is very careful to get Ana's explicit, enthusiastic permission for whatever high-jinks he is up to. It's something that NEVER happens in your average bodice ripper (which is OK, they're FICTION, they aren't sex eduation manuals, just as Fifty Shades of Grey is fiction) but it's nice to see it happen in Fifty Shades. The WHOLE STORY is about the way Christian and Ana build a real, trusting relationship instead of the superficial paid sub/dom contractual relationship that Christian initially offers Ana.

(Ana NEVER signs the contract in the book, you have NO IDEA how many times I've read posts by writers who inadvertently revealed themselves to be lazy, lying idiots because they say at some point that Ana signed the contract. It's a KEY point and they missed it … probably because they never read the book. Of course some admit straight up that they never read the book when they write articles dissing it, and that's all kinds of sad. Do your homework, people.)

Reading all the stupid, stupid criticisms of the book has been tough. I set up news agents to bring me articles about Fifty Shades of Grey and related topics early in 2012 (like, February or so) and I would estimate I have read well over 300 articles a month (a conservative estimate, probably more like 1000 a month in late spring and summer when the media finally caught on to the phenomenon) on the topic of Fifty Shades of Grey, and the vast majority are incredibly stupid and superficial. I realize that that's largely because big aggregator sites like the Huffington Post, Gather and the Examiner hire whatever stupid-ass word monkeys they can get to write for them for the glorious sum of … NOTHING … and the ones who DO pay, pay so little it wouldn't keep a budgie in sunflower seeds so they get intellectual mouth-breathers writing for them, too … but still, it's MADDENING to see so many thousands of displays of stupidity and butt ignorance displayed as if it were intelligent, insightful commentary, completely missing the key points about Fifty Shades time after time after time.

It's exactly like being a progressive and watching Fox News, only Fox News is everywhere and nobody knows it's Fox News. Whenever I find intelligent, insightful analysis of Fifty Shades I post it to my blog immediately because, at last, a pony under all that horse manure!

Still, I am glad I did set up those news agents and read all those articles (OK, the obviously stupid one like “who will they cast to be Christian Grey in the movie?” got no more than a glance, and they constitute the majority of the posts I've seen) because it's put me in a catbird seat to see the way the media responds to a big cultural phenomenon.

I first became aware of it via publishing sites which started taking note of this former fanfic ebook that was THE best selling ebook, selling hundreds of thousands of copies despite the fact that it had virtually no marketing muscle. Fifty Shades was beating the books that the big publishers were hawking with ALL their marketing muscle, primarily because the Twilight fandom from which it arose were completely behind it. The Obsidian Wings website still has the best coverage of this part of the phenomenon.

The early articles tended to be more intelligent and accurate and on point than what came later, mainly because they were looking at Fifty Shades as a phenomenon. One thing the early articles didn't do that later articles DID do, massively, is miss one of the KEY issues of Fifty Shades, which is that it was ALREADY an ebook bestseller when Vintage Books bought the rights to it in a fierce bidding war. THAT'S why James got a six-figure advance for the rights to the book -- they were buying a book that was already a bestseller, all they did was buy the right to print it in paperback and hardback and put their marketing muscle behind it. Publishers don't have bidding wars over books that are not sure things.

It's kind of suspicious that so many reviewers, posters and commentators missed the importance of the fanfic community in promoting Fifty Shades and making it what it was: it gives the impression that it was just another instance of the traditional publishing meme of a Wonderful Big Time Publisher giving an Unknown But Deserving Writer a shit-ton of money for being so good at what she does, when it was actually Big Time Publishing using money to muscle in on a sure thing created by Internet fandom.

Once Fifty Shades started selling in the millions, the coverage immediately got dumber. It started off with a lot of posts showing genuine bewilderment: what were all these “mommies” doing liking hardcore BDSM porn (which was how Fifty Shades was portrayed, and to be fair, it did have strong BDSM scenes and content)? There was a combination of prurient interest (“Soccer moms wearing ballgags, oh my!”) bewilderment (“Women are reading … BDSM porn? Bwuh?”) and some but not much viewing with alarm (“Women are reading porn! The sky is falling!”)

Once the book was selling in the tens of millions and showed no sign of slowing down, the viewing with alarm increased, and people started coming up with reasons why Fifty Shades is a phenomenon, most of them shallow and bogus. And people started bandwagonning furiously. Every erotic romance that any publisher bought the rights to was “The next 50 Shades” (and still is). Every poster on every blog had to call at least ONE post “Fifty Shades of (fill in the blank)” no matter how unrelated it was to the book. I mean, I think there was some kind of Internet law, or maybe a contest.

Criticism of the book cranked up, as the author's copious use of “Oh my” “inner goddess” and lip biting apparently rendered Fifty Shades unreadable for many delicate souls – but it was NEVER (well, rarely ever) the BDSM content or the romance novel elements that bothered any of them, they had NO ISSUE with those, oh, no! These delicate souls could HANDLE BDSM.

This is when viewing with alarm started happening, as many did not welcome the trend toward mommies reading BDSM porn. Religious types didn't like it because of the sex. Prudo-feminists didn't like it because maledom/femsub was not one of their approved sexual modes. And there were also the people who think that bestsellerdom is a meritocracy, so they viewed it with alarm too, because it had all those stylistic errors and it was a romance, let's face it. It's been going on since, but has never really drowned out the overwhelming message of surprise that greeted Fifty Shades and continues to be its main message: “Mommies like kinky porn!”

Plus, as the sales figures indicate, those who dislike Fifty Shades have not made any noticeable dent in its success.

Another thing that happened when the book really cranked on the mainstream media is you started to see how the media machine was working on the Web. With traditional print media the machine's work is seamless: stories get placed, planted, picked up, often in conjunction with advertising. There's never a quid pro quo, of course, but everybody who plays the game knows how the game is played. Favors get done, deals get made, the wheels of commerce spin and the big publishers, distributors, etc., get their products publicized as they like and are willing to pay … how else do you think Snooki's book got on the New York Times Top Ten bestseller list?

But the Web is different, not everybody is part of the traditional media machine, and even those that are sometimes don't behave like they are. But it was interesting to see the big aggregator sites like Huffington Post, Gather, Patch, etc., and the online versions of traditional media, picking up the stories about Fifty Shades like they were on a schedule. Or more likely, passive receivers of whatever came in on the transom, and the agents and publicists were making sure that what came in on the transom was Fifty Shades stuff.

Whereas the way independent, weird sites like Politically Sexy covered Fifty Shades was much more random, because nobody was trying to place stories (or, sigh … ads) with us.

Over time the surge of stories directly about the book Fifty Shades of Grey have lagged. They have been replaced by endless speculation about the movie, mostly who will be cast in the lead male role. (There has been speculation about who will play the lead female role as well, but I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of people who read the gossip blogs that are totally covering this story are primarily interested in the male lead.) There has also been plenty of bandwagon-jumping, and an increase in prudo-feminist and social conservative viewing with alarm.

Oh, and a huge proportion of the bondage-related scandal and crime stories that deal with female submission/enslavement have had Fifty Shades tied in with them. The most egregious: a recent story about a wealthy female banker in Britain who sued to divorce her husband because he would not give her any Fifty Shades type fun, and a women's shelter, also in Britain, which plans to recycle copies of Fifty Shades as toilet paper. (Well if you can't distinguish between consensual BDSM and domestic abuse. I can see how Fifty Shades might alarm you if you ran a women's shelter.) Basically, any story about human trafficking has a potential Fifty Slaves hook, however inappropriate, and it gets used very often.

It's obvious to me that the media buzz for Fifty Shades is being expertly milked by the publicists for whatever movie studio has the contract to make Fifty Shades, they've stretched out the casting of the leads forever. And of course there is also news of a new book being written, almost certainly new books, because as the James Bond movies show, if there's one thing those Brits know how to do, it's milk a franchise.

So I don't expect news of Fifty Shades to ever become RARE, certainly not in the next few years. Even if the movie flops, and just on general principles it probably will (see: Nine and a Half Weeks, the Gor movies and, well, everything based on a kinky book except Story of O, which was a French film) there will always be new books.

What there WON'T be, I feel confident in predicting (which generally means I am wrong) is that there will not be ANOTHER Fifty Shades of Grey. There will be other kinky erotic romances that do well in terms of sales, though probably not as well as Fifty Shades did. But there will never be another book that makes the same kind of splash that Fifty Shades did, because its success was the product of time and tides.

My theory, which is worth exactly as much as you are paying for it, is that Fifty Shades succeeded because it was a romance which featured the hot, kinky sex that most readers of the bodice-ripper species of romances have always enjoyed. However, traditional publishers like Harlequin have long acted as a brake on romances. Oh, sure, they've published “spicy” romances but there were no butt plugs, ben wa balls, ball gags or other fun stuff in them because, “Oh no, too kinky for our readers.”

Well, the readers did a student body left on the publishers and started reading ebooks which, being self-published or published by small publishers like the one who initially published Fifty Shades, were just as raunchy as they wanted to be, and what was more important, just as raunchy as their readers wanted them to be. That phenomenon cannot be repeated, though it may continue to create surprises for traditional publishers. It may be that the new model for writers will be to grow from fanfic communities and succeed on ebooks and then get bought up by traditional publishers as James did. We shall see.

But Fifty Shades will always be the book that broke the traditional publishers' stranglehold on bestsellerdom and brought BDSM relationships (as opposed to BDSM scenarios disguised as damsel in distress stories) into mainstream romances. There will never be another Fifty Shades of Grey.

Fifty Shades of Good Communication

First published on 10/31/2012

Scanning through the stuff my flying monkeys bring in from the Interwebs, particularly about "50 Shades of Grey," is a task not for the weak of heart. Most of the stories are complete fluff, or are completely stupid, thus suitable only for mocking (see previous post).

So when I come across a SMART story about 50 Shades of Gray, I gotta share. This one's from the Psychology Today website, and it is head and tails above the rest because it appears to have been written by someone who has actually read the books with an open mind, instead of having them described to them by a junior high school boy forced to read Fifty Shades of Grey against his will.

The key point of the article is that Fifty Shades is a book where the characters go to a great deal of trouble to communicate their sexual feelings. It's a key point of the book, and the focus on feelings is a hallmark of romance novels. The author notes that people may be attracted to each other purely physically, which are triggered by reading stuff like the sex scenes in Fifty Shades of Grey, but it's the play/joy circuit involved in communicating your feelings (as often occurs in sexual roleplay) which combined with trust, can lead to deeper feelings, like love. As the story says:

In 50 Shades, Ana (the main character) constantly battles with the competing urges of approach-and-avoidance, emotions that are controlled by the most ancient parts of the mammalian brain. But Christian Grey (the wealthy male character who fears close intimacy and attachment) tries his best to be gentle and kind. These genuine displays of affection stimulate the caring circuits of the brain which allow the couple to slowly build a mutually loving relationship.
Hell, yes! It's interesting that professionals like the sex educator cited in a previous article and the psychologist cited here tend to like Fifty Shades of Gray, whereas most critics are generally run of the mill bloggers, such as this bit of drivel on something called Cognescenti.com ... though it's nice to see readers giving the author a few well-deserved non-consensual kicks in the ass for confusing BDSM power play with abusive relationships.

Jezebel.com Hypocrisy: Slut-Shaming Fifty Shades of Grey Readers

First published on 10/16/2012

As I wrote in an earlier post on mainstreaming kink, I am seeing signs of a backlash against Fifty Shades of Grey and its readership in the material the flying monkeys bring in of late. All sorts of groups hate Fifty Shades of Grey. Feminists because maledom/femsub, BDSM people because Christian Grey is neurotic, social conservatives because it's sexy AND kinky sexy, literary types because it's not Great Literature ... and there's probably more, but these are the main groups with beefs.

Despite all the different groups backlashing against Fifty Shades of Grey, I felt that there was some vague underlying theme to the backlash, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was.

Until I read this very insightful review by Kristen Elizabeth on the TVequals.com website, of a recent episode of Law and Order: SVU that dealt with a Fifty Shades sort of author who got raped. The review was full of sharp points well presented, but this was the paragraph that really got me going:

It’s like we’ve finally reached a point in our society where we’re willing to let women enjoy sex…as long as it’s straight-forward, missionary position, no-kink sex. Anything else and it’s suddenly all right again to mock and shame them. If you need proof of this, just look at the backlash against 50 Shades or the way romance novels have been treated throughout history, but most especially in the past forty to fifty years. A book that is entirely about a woman having and enjoying sex or even just falling in love is dismissed as being fluff or ridiculed for being implausible…even by other women!!
And that's when it hit me: the women who are backlashing against Fifty Shades of Grey are engaging in a variation on slut-shaming. They're saying: "These women who read Fifty Shades of Grey are NOT LIKE US. They like trashy books like Fifty Shades of Grey, it's not a GOOD book like the ones we read, their fantasies are IMPURE, all WRONG, not the proper sort of fantasies for a woman to have! They like to read sexual fantasies about transforming neurotic billionaires through love! They're trashy, sexually immature, not very bright, oh might as well just say it ... SLUTTY women!"

That was what was bothering me, that hidden subtext running underneath the criticism of ALL the articles I read, most especially in the comments to the various articles and posts, like a crowd muttering obscenities while the candidate speaks, egging them on without speaking any obscenities themselves. That slut shaming.

I'm not too surprised by this sort of thing from social conservatives, they are what they are and I expect hypocrisy from them, it is after all embedded in the beliefs that make them social conservatives.

But c'mon ... Jezebel.com? That's what bothers me, that they engage in slut-shaming while loudly decrying the practice of slut-shaming when it is used with respect to things other than like Fifty Shades of Grey.

You don't have to take my word for it. Here's a list of Jezebel's articles about slut shaming, they're on the right hand side of the page, scroll down them and read as many as you like, you'll see a very clear condemnation of slut shaming.

Now here's a list of Jezebels' articles on Fifty Shades of Grey, look at all the negative, slut-shaming-ish comments embdded in them, like the one in article on "Try Not To Imagine Your Nubile Daughter in Bed Reading Kinky Sexy Books":

The fact that semiliterate sexually inexperienced children are fans of Fifty Shades of Grey actually makes perfect sense.
And you'll find much more slut-shaming type quotes in the comments at the end of the articles listed here, of course. (The article that is highlighted in the list at present is a review of the Fifty Shades of Grey Law and Order SVU episode Elizabeth reviewed. But the Jezebel review completely misses all the salient points brought up by Elizabeth in her review, though some of the commenters brought some of Elizabeth's points up. It's not ALL slut-shaming with regard to Fifty Shades of Grey, though there is far too much of it.)

The thing is, this kind of slut-shaming on Jezebel.com's part (and don't get me wrong, Jezebel is just one with the herd in doing it, all the sites do it, it's almost reflexive in most cases) is not only hypocritical with regard to their stand on the issue of slut-shaming, but just plain dumb as well. All these women who have read Fifty Shades of Grey are potential converts to the cause of sexual freedom.

"You liked Fifty Shades? Oh, isn't it great we can read books like that nowadays? Wasn't reading about all that fun they were having fun? I like that too!"

See, take that approach and maybe you have a new friend now instead of someone who thinks you're a stuck-up bitch for putting down Fifty Shades and its readers so severely. There are fifty million women who have bought Fifty Shades of Grey, more or less. MIGHT be a good idea to see if you can use the book to widen some horizons.

But hey, the appeal of a little bit of cheap moral superiority is intoxicating to many people. Ask any fan of the double standard, or anyone who wants to consider women who wear party dresses when they go out clubbing to be "deserving" rape victims.

Yeah, Jezebel.com, that IS the company you are keeping.

Arizona Women Seek Fifty Shades Online

First published on 10/10/2012

A CBS New affiliate in Phoenix, Arizona is reporting what may be the most obvious and ordinary news report ever: that Arizona woman have gone online to see Fifty Shades of Grey-like experiences!

Channel 5 in Phoenix reports that over 4,000 women have flocked to a website called seekingarrangement.com in order to seek an arrangement, which is about the vaguest term imaginable for wanting to get tied up, gagged, butt-plugged and fucked, but I guess it works in keeping the local authorities off your neck.

/me looks at the title of his blog, "Politically Sexy" and tries to look innocent.

Well what the hell, nobody's buying my secret to keeping slaves from drooling, guess I might as well dye my hair gray and start calling myself "Christian." It's a living!

Mainstreaming Bondage: Halloween 2012 Brings On The Gimp

First published on 10/3/2012

If you go to Target and ask them if they have a Gimp suit for Halloween, you'll probably get told "No.' But if you go to Target and ask them if they have a "Rubber Suit Man" outfit, they'll tell you yes ... and the costume you will find will be a gimp suit. Don't believe me? Check it out!

"Oh my!" as Anastasia Steele might say, and she'd be the one to say it, because you have to believe that the success of 50 Shades of Gray just might have gotten this particular outfit green-lit for Target. Now that's going mainstream!

We'll have to see if there's a backlash against the suit, now that it's being "noticed" by online media it'll probably hit the mainstream media soon.

The flying monkeys have been bringing in a LOT of negative stories about 50 Shades of Gray of late. The social conservatives never liked it, some feminists never liked it, and a lot of literary types never liked it, even a lot of bondage fans never liked it, and now that the books aren't making headlines by topping the bestseller lists week after week after week, the naysayers are trying to get some traction. And a backlash against 50 Shades could very well be accompanied by a backlash against kink. I hope the hell it doesn't happen, and if it does happen that it gets no traction in the media or the culture, but let's face it ... there's a lot of people out there who hate kink, 50 Shades of Gray and sex generally.

As always, I'll keep you posted.

Fifty Shades of Pearl Scratching

First published on 10/1/2012

Bandwagon jumping on the 50 Shades phenomenon has hit a new low. A post on the Babble blog (a parenting blog) by Carolyn Castiglia describes an item for sale on Ebay through October 8: a used copy of Fifty Shades of Gray. And we mean THOROUGHLY used: its being auctioned off by a trio of Brooklyn wives described as "MILFs." They all enjoyed it VERY much, the ad copy assures us, but the blog post makes sure, saying:

Get it? Three hot white girls scratched the pearl to this book!
There are SO MANY things wrong with this. The cringe-inducing metaphor of "scratching the pearl" ("petting the pearl" or even "poking the pearl" work so much better), the notation that it's "white chicks" (why would it matter if they were hottie black chicks?) but most of all, the fact that if you bid on that book, you are pretty much on par with a Japanese businessman stopping along the way home to buy a pair of used girl's undies from a vending machine.

I still got my old copies of Playboy and Bondage Life stacked away somewhere, and my Gor novels are right on the shelf ... I wonder ... (/me checks his paypal account for income from his ad for the secret to making slavegirls stop drooling, notices there has been none) ... naaaaaaaaaaah.

All that said, here's the ebay listing. Never let it be said that I stood between the equivalent of a lonely, perverted Japanese businessman and fulfillment.

Fifty Shades of Grey: Suitable for Television Only?

First published on 9/26/2012

Another heartening sign that the people are smarter than the media comes from an article on booksnreview.com, which asks the question, "'Fifty Shades of Grey' Movie: Too Kinky for Film? Fans Rather See Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey on TV Show, HBO Series'.

Hell, yeah! Sometimes you see indie movies that do sexually challenging stuff right, but mainstream movie makers almost never get it right. They always tone the sexy way down. With 50 million in sales, the book clearly has huge potential to be either a monster movie a la "Gone with the Wind" or a franchise a la Star Wars. The studio heads are going to be so hot to protect their monster movie's profit potential that they are going to absolutely avoid doing anything too risky.

Remember the hash they made of "9 1/2 Weeks"? Of "Exit to Eden?" The only reason they didn't fuck up "Story of O" is that it was done by the French. So the odds on a good movie version of Fifty Shades? Low ... way fucking low.

TV cable channels like HBO and Spartacus, however ... different story. They have got some kickass writers and producers who have proven that they know how to handle the raunchy. Game of Thrones and Spartacus are some of the hottest mainstream sexual imagery going right now, combined with topnotch dramatic stories. This would be the best shot Fifty Shades has at a good film adaptation, but it's not happening. Going to be a freaking movie. And almost certainly, a fucking failure.

We shall see.

Fifty Shades of the Big 12

Fifty Shades of the Big 12

With football season well under way, I thought some of you might enjoy this link, a parody of Big 12 football as written by Anastasia Steele. Enjoy! Also, in the same vein, a parody of Big 12 football as written by Cormac McCarthy. I don't even follow Big 12 football, but these parodies had me cracking up. Good fun!

Marie Claire: Mainstream Media Continues To Just Not Get Fifty Shades of Grey

First published on 9/20/2012

The Autralian edition of Marie Claire Magazine's website is asking, "Has Kinky Gone Mainstream?" referring of course to the way 50 Shades of Gray has steamrollered its way into public consciousness via selling 50 million copies.

They ask in that lame, timid way that mainstream magazine articles typically do, "Has kink become mainstream?" Then they refer to a few experts, quote a few random people they know, and go on to draw some safe-sounding conclusions about not following the crowd and doing kinky stuff just because that's what's fashionable, and instead exploring what YOU want to do (or not do) is the key to have a fulfilling sex life. The painfully obvious disguised as wisdom.

And when they are not engaging in a festival of "Duh!" they are getting it wrong:

But is this anything new? “Nobody is reinventing anything. It’s all been done but differently,” says Dr Morrissey. “Think the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days Of Sodom written in 1785, Pauline Réage’s Story Of O in 1954, right through to Nancy’s Friday’s My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies in 1973. What’s revolutionary is the fact that it’s so public.
No, that's not what's so revolutionary about 50 Shades. It's the fact that it's MOMMY porn, not Daddy porn. It's a demographic that has never been associated with porn of any kind, and now they're going for kinky sex. THAT'S revolutionary! If GUYS had taken up some porny book big-time, if them mainstream even noticed, they would dislike it, thinking "Horny guys getting kinky, can't be a good thing."

But since it's mommies it IS revolutionary, which is why Marie Claire's staff have no idea how to respond to it, and really don't "get" it. Really revolutionary stuff has a way of being hard to figure out.

Carla Gugino to Get Kinky on The New Girl TV Series

First published on 9/18/2012

The flying monkeys brought in a little semi-non 50 Shades of Gray news this week, a post on the Cinema Blend website that announced in breathless tones that Carla Gugino will get kinky in season two of a television series called The New Girl.

Well I had to check that out because Carla Gugino is an actress who will do a risky scene, she did the lesbian rape scene with probable panty gag in Jaded, after all, one of only two scenes in the history of television with probable panty gags. Link to a vidcap from the scene showing the gag. (They're "probably" panty gags because they look like panties stuck in the women's mouths and in the Gugino scene, there wasn't a lot else out there on the beach to gag her with but her panties. It would be a certain panty gag if the whole scene had not been shot in extreme chairobscuro).

Reading the post, Gugino will play an executive that forces a subordinate to sign a contact that will "bind his body and his will" to her. The article describes this as "going all 50 Shades on him."

No. No, no and no. Two major problems here. One, doesn't sound very consensual -- sounds like straight-up abuse of power, whereas 50 Shades was all about the consensual -- and two, the genders are all wrong. The women who enjoyed 50 Shades enjoyed a fantasy about a woman submitting sexually to a man, not a fantasy about a man submitting sexually to a woman.

Let me be very clear here: there are women who enjoy fantasies of dominating men, and there are men who enjoy fantasies of being dominated by women, and that's fine. They are as entitled to their fantasies as anybody else is. I'm not entertaining any notions that maledom/femsub is the order of nature or other such bullcrap. It's all good.

But I am saying that the vast majority of 50 Shades readers like maledom/femsub themes, after all, that's what 50 Shades is, and they also don't care for femdom/malesub themes. After all, the popularity of 50 Shades sprang straight from romance readers ready for some hotter action. And while there are thousands and thousands of romance novels about bold pirates capturing spirited wenches and finding love instead of a quick roll in the captain's lounge, there a very, very few romance novels about bold pirate wenches capturing spirited young studs and finding love, etc.

That's because the romance readership doesn't like them. Romance novels, except for that explicit sex thing, have always slavishly followed their readers' tastes, which is why they are now by far the top selling variety of adult fiction. And their failure to get it on with the explicit maledom/femsub kink is why they have lost so many readers to erotic romance ebooks like Karg. (And, well, OK, 50 Shades as well. It has outsold Karg by ... a lot. I'm not at liberty to divulge numbers here, as it would be too embarrassing for the publishing industry, by which of course I mean "me." Not that any other ebook writers' numbers look that good next to 50 Shades.)

Now there is no reason for The New Girl not to chase after the relatively small demographic of women who like femdom/malesub kink, it's their show, they can do as they like.

But my suspicion is that they are introducing this "50 Shades" theme to attract more viewers (television is a numbers game after all) and if THAT'S their goal, they're doing it all wrong. They need to go after the big demographic that likes maledom/femsub themes if they want numbers.

I suspect the reason that they are doing it wrong is that they haven't caught up with the paradigm shift that 50 Shades represents. Most mainstream TV and movie producers will reflexively prefer a femdom/malesub theme over a maledom/femsub themes because they fear offending feminists, and women who are pro-feminism. And they think they can get away with it in terms of attracting viewers because they think anyone who likes anything kinky will like anything described as kinky. If you like bondage, you like nuns and schoolgirls and whipped cream and dwarves and, well, anything. Which is world-class dumb of them, but hey, there's a reason network television is hemorrhaging viewers every year, and it ain't intelligence.

Back to the Eighties: The Right Responds To Fifty Shades of Grey

First published on 9/17/2012

I'm feeling the right wing crank up their anti-sex machine with regard to the success of 50 Shades of Gray. I've already written about the cheap attack on 50 Shades by an almost certainly fictional "expert" which was initially made on an obscure right wing blog. Now Fox News has got an actual "expert" on the attack, albeit in a different way, with more sophisticated techniques, in an article entitled How Women Made Porn Fashionable.

The interesting thing is that both articles make extensive use of lies and misdirection for their attacks. It's like lying has become a habit so engrained in the right that they use it whether they need it or not. So I thought I'd administer a good old-fashioned Straight Dope forums-style beatdown on this article right here on my blog.

To start with:

Women are consuming and endorsing porn such as ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ -- a book recognized as ‘mommy porn.’ Poorly written, it is not a how-to-manual and it’s not poetic erotica.
So it's not a how-to manual, and it's not poetic erotica (whatever that is) so it's porn. Never has the middle felt so excluded!

Then we get:

Pulp/romance novels transformed into a new genre embracing porn as literature - explicitly sexual scenes featuring bondage/discipline, dominance/submission and sadism/masochism
He's way oversimplifying to make his point here. Romance novels still exist. It's obvious that a lot of their readership have shifted over to the erotic romance genre, especially in ebook format, which is what 50 Shades is an example of. But erotic romances are not really the same thing as porn, either. I was EIGHT CHAPTERS into the Fifty Shades before Ana got so much as a kiss. Eight chapters! Who ever heard of porn that went eight chapters without any sexual action? 50 Shades is erotica, not porn, dude. Not that you know the difference, or care to.
More than 20 million copies have sold in the US (40 million worldwide), and it is yet another example of the way porn is becoming more than socially acceptable amongst women. Moreover, it is becoming an aspirational target for women. Women and the media have linked consuming porn or behaving like a porn actress with instant money, fame, power, glamour, prestige, respectability and social acceptability. In other words, if you become a porn actress or behave like one, you will triumph with all of these things. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian became famous and rich for making a sex tape, and they spun off empires of TV shows, fashion lines, perfumes and paid appearances. The message is: one leads to the other.
This is complete bullcrap. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian did indeed make sex tapes and they were indeed leaked to the Internet, but so have many other women. Yet only Hilton, Kardashian and a few others got rich and famous. Why just them? Could it be that Hilton and Kardashian's sex tapes took off because they were ALREADY rich and famous and had the connections to make the media sit up and take notice? Why yes, I believe it could be that. You'd have to be a complete dumbass to think that making a sex tape all by its lonesome was the gateway to fame and fortune. Then again, this article is aimed at women who read FoxNews. So ... I guess warning them is probably a good idea.
Using sex for money and fame, women have found a new way to feel powerful and secure without a man or even necessarily a family – Octomom has openly become a porn actress and stripper.
I would really like to see some statistics that this is being done by women generally, which is how he phrased it. I'm betting the truth is, it's being done by a FEW women, and the rest are watching with an unholy mixture of glee, schadenfreude, and envy.
Mothers, too, are now sexualizing their daughters and dressing them up as sexual candy for the world.
Yet another totally unsupported assertion, save for a few media types. How 'bout some stats, dude? Most women I know think this sort of thing is ridiculous. This unsubstantiated bloviating is getting annoying, but then, that's is why I don't follow Fox anything anywhere.
Porn could never have become mainstream and socially acceptable without the support and endorsement by women.
I guessed you missed the 1970s and 1980s, when porn did exactly that, without the support and endorsement of women. It wasn't mommy that made XXX videos a billion dollar industry, it was daddy. Try to pay some attention to, well ... anything, dude.
And women and the media have linked consuming porn or behaving like a porn actress with instant money, fame, power, glamour, prestige, respectability and social acceptability. In other words, if you become a porn actress or behave like one, you will triumph with all of these things.
Yeah, that's why you see porn actresses on breakfast cereal boxes nowadays. "Wheaties will let you take on three guys at once without breaking a sweat, just like Mindi Boytoy!" Do you not ever check any of your thoughts against reality to see if they make any sense at all, dude?
Accordingly, girls are more fascinated and driven by the desire to become famous than they are to become an engineer, doctor or scientist: Kim Kardashian has 14 million followers on Twitter.
I would like to see some evidence that the set of women who have a realistic shot at becoming an engineer, doctor or scientist overlaps with the set of women who follow Kim Kardashian on Twitter to any degree.
The paradox is that women are becoming more educated than men as women surpass men in attendance and graduation rates – for every two men who get a college degree, three women will do also. But, women are failing to realize the dangers of falling for porn or promoting porn as the new fashionable profession and path to fame, riches and glory. This is the antithesis of female empowerment as MTV, Kim Kardashian and Octomom are teaching young girls to gain power over men by using sex.
So, they are getting the college degrees so they'll get all the good jobs, AND they are learning to gain power over men by using sex? We're TOTALLY boned, guys! And not in a good way! And ... who watches MTV any more? Is it even still on? Did this guy's brain set like cement back in the early 80s?
Women have now created false empty idols and have lost their real sense of self-worth, value and significance, replacing it with fleeting pseudo-power and artificial values and relationships, leaving them feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied.
I had wondered what all those statues of Moloch were doing in the parking lot at Target, Walmart and most shopping centers ...
I appeal to women to beware of being deceived and betrayed into the world of porn and sexual objectification the same way that women were tricked into smoking cigarettes in the 1920s.
Let's see ... how did it go ... a woman who'll chew gum will smoke cigarettes, and a woman who smokes cigarettes will drink alcohol, and we all know what a woman who drinks alcohol will do ...
In April 1929, a PR expert, Edward Bernays, working for a US tobacco company, hired young models to march in the New York City parade and alerted the press that they were fighting for women’s rights by lighting "Torches of Freedom" as they lit up and smoked cigarettes. The media publicized the event and it helped to break the taboo against women smoking in public.
So that's why women took up smoking. I had thought they just wanted to get laid! (Some evidence that this PR event and others like it led to women smoking would be nice.)
Renowned physicist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst Dr. Jeffrey Satinover says porn is “a form of heroin, hundred times more powerful than before.”
Not believing a word of it. I'm betting this fellow works at one of those Institutes of Wacky Science that ideologues go to when they need an alarming quote. Had no idea porn was an opiate!
Forensic psychologist, M. Douglas Reed and renowned pharmacologist Candace Pert reveal that pornography is like a drug that triggers the brain to release a psychopharmacological flood of “epinephrine, testosterone, endorphins (endogenous morphine), oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, and phenyethylamine,” which can lead to addiction and various other behavioral disorders.
More wacky science. But it would explain why I have to put a needleful of Kink.com images into my arm every few hours. But at least here we are told that porn is LIKE a drug, not that it IS one as in the previous quote. I like the way endorphins are described as "endogenous morphine." Does my brain have to go to a dealer located somewhere disgusting like my intestines to get it, I wonder, and pay it off with ... ideas?
Gal Dines, professor of sociology and women's studies and chair of the American Studies Department at Wheelock College in Boston, has written about and researched the porn industry for over two decades. Professor Dines, author of “Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality,” believes porn is a public health issue with documented negative effects on young people, distorting "the way women and girls think about their bodies, their sexuality and their relationships."
I'm betting Professor Dines has some very strong opinions about how women and girls should think about their bodies, their sexuality and their relationships. Note the "public health issue" bit ... it's the approach that Catherine MacKinnon took to attack porn and try to get it banned back in the 80s. Still harping on the same old saw. Hmm, I sense a trend here.
Pornography is equally damaging to adult relationships and social bonds – men are struggling to develop close, intimate relationships with real women with some men now preferring porn to sex with an actual human being.
Because looking at images of other people doing something is just as much fun as doing it yourself. That's why no one bothers to go on vacation any more, too.
Bottom line: porn does not promote love or sex but rather cruelty and hatred to women, and so, while women continue to endorse and make porn fashionable or a new ideal, they are foolishly robbing themselves and undermining all of the positive strides and triumphs they have made in their quest for equality.
Bottom line: get those pillbox hats and white gloves on and go back to church ladies, or you won't be feminists any more! I'm pretty sure that's where this guy is headed. It's a sad day when pornish bloggers have to give political writers savage beatdowns for lying and misrepresentation, but I guess that is where the right has gone with its political discourse.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

A Brilliant Analysis of Fifty Shades of Grey From Feministing

First published on 9/1/12
I'm fascinated by the 50 Shades of Gray phenomenon, that's why I follow the news media about it. Otherwise I couldn't manage it, because by FAR the majority if the articles I find are absolute dreck. I've learned to scan and dismiss them in seconds.

So you can imagine my pleasure when I find a really good, insightful article, like the one I found on Obsidian Wings months ago, or the one I found on Alternet more recently.

I've found another really great analysis of 50 Shades of Gray on the Feministing Community site, entitled "Unconventional Sex Ed Lessons from 50 Shades of Gray". It's written by Mimi Arbeit, a feminist educator who teaches sex education to teens. She says she expected to find the book a huge disappointment because of all that she'd heard about it, but was pleasantly surprised by it, finding it a welcome change from the dominant themes about sex and romance in the media.

By that she means the book covers a lot of things that other books do not. Most importantly, Ana and Christian communicate clearly and honestly with one another about sex throughout their relationship. Christian is always careful to get Ana's informed consent before he has any kind of sex with her. They discuss and plan for contraception before they have sex. And the book directly and powerfully portrays Ana's experiences of sexual pleasure and desire. As I've noted repeatedly, James does a REALLY good job of conveying how much Ana and Christian enjoy their sex play.

Wildly popular books about sex read by teens NEVER have any of this stuff, says Arbeit, so she is enormously grateful to see an erotic romance that mentions all of the lessons she is trying to instill in her teen students, whose media experience does not include ANY of it.

Mind you, Arbeit's opinion of the book is not wholly positive -- she says she could just as easily write a list of ten things she finds problematical about the book, and I believe her. But she is glad of the book as a chance to open up a dialog which allows her to convey the importance of some of these themes to her teen students. And I think that's what opens her up to the positive aspects of the books that a lot of other readers missed. She saw what was there because her experience teaching teens had sharpened her eye to it.

Sadly, Arbeit is one of the relatively few non-romance reviewers of the books who has the guts to say they like elements of it. Most non-romance reviewers project a sort of arrogant, snotty attitude, often confessing that they read very little of the book or that they did not read it at all, following up by condemning it wholesale on the basis of all the stuff they did not read. Clearly, such reviews are all about confirming their status of not being the sort of person who reads 50 Shades of Gray or anything like it, rather than an honest examination of the book.

Here's a great example of what I'm talking about, a post to a fantasy message board called "The Black Gate by someone named "Theo." A choice quote:

So does 50 Shades of Grey go too far? Not on the surface, as according to its description it is little more than John Norman’s Gor brought back to Earth, minus the sword battles and the awesome tarn birds. And it’s not a question I can legitimately even try to answer, since I haven’t read 50 Shades of Grey, nor do I have any intention of doing so.
Didn't read it, so of course he makes a completely wrong comparison of 50 Shades with the Gor novels, which as a guy who read 20 or so of the Gor novels, the slavery was of the distinctly nonconsensual kind (the Gorean slaves just loved it because they were natural born slavegirls) which makes it WAAAAAY different than 50 Shades, which is all about the consensual.

But then Theo goes and accuses 50 Shades of being stealth pedophilia, based on the accusations of an anonymous poster on another message board who relates the story of a purported child psychologist who read the book and decided that Ana is written as a 12-year-old for some reason, possibly the "oh my!"s "Inner goddesses" and suchlike. It smells like one of those classic put-up jobs with a made-up friend who is an authority (child psychologist) is used to attack something to make it seem awful (pedophile porn) with vague evidence (even though Ana is identified as a twenty-one year old college grad, she's "written as a child") hoping it will stick.

Fortunately, a couple of posters on the Black Gate board who responded saw this piece of shit for what it was and gave it a thorough going-over.

To be honest, the Black Gate post is about an order of magnitude worse than any of the other posts which have dissed the book. But there are still plenty who will hate it based on a verbal description and a lot of social prejudice. You can see why I liked the "Unconventional Sex Ed Lessons" article so much ... it was a real breath of fresh air compared to much of what I read on the topic. And "Unconventional Lessons" is a real antidote to the dreck post from the Black Gate.