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.