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.

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.

Fifty Shades of Grey Update: 20 Million Sold Worldwide

First Published 7/4/2012 To a certain extent, writing about anything other than 50 Shades of Gray feels almost futile, it's that big a phenomenon. New sales figures show the book has sold 20 million copies worldwide.

I think by now the explanation for its success is in part its success: it now has "plausible deniability" going for it. The fact that everyone else is reading it makes it OK to read. You can enjoy the dirty, dirty scenes in the book knowing that you are not an extraordinary freak, or even out of the ordinary, while doing so. Like Slave Leia, it's entered the popular culture. It's "OK" to enjoy it.

But here's the thing. It's being described as a new "tentpole" book by traditional publishers. Such publishers have pretty much neglected their midlist books ... once the staple of the publishing industry ... in hopes that sales of one or two bestsellers will compensate for the lack of the lower-profit books.

Here's the thing, though. 50 Shades of Gray owes NONE of its success to the big publishers. It was a runaway bestseller as an e-book, long before Vintage Books moved in and made E.L. James a multimillion dollar offer she would not refuse. All the Vintage Books people did was add traditional sales to the success of 50 Shades of Gray as an e-book.

So, there is no guarantee that publishers can generate such sales in the future. They did not create the book's success in the first place. All they can do is jump on the bandwagon and hope that fan writers or erotic romance writers sends a new tentpole their way. It's no way to run an industry. In fact, it's down right stupid. Then again, we've seen bankers and politicians behave like idiots for years. Why shouldn't traditional publishers do the same? Personally, I hope the lot of them go out of business, if they can't do better than they have done.