Fork U: Cosmo's Horrible BDSM Sex Tips Inspired By Fifty Shades of Grey

As Midori and others have noted, Fifty Shades of Grey has been an overall good thing because it's allowed people to start talking in public about BDSM without the endless EEEEEWW bookending that once had to surround any commentary about BDSM in the mainstream media.

But this is not an unalloyed good thing. When the conversation opens up, everybody gets into it. At least now the conversation can be balanced between the knowledgeable and the not knowledgeable and not totally dominated by the witless old dinosaurs of media that once dominated the conversation. But now you'll get voices like your horny post college grad little sister who thinks she knows everything about sex and intimacy because shes' been on a few dates and fucked a few boys, but really doesn't know a hell of a lot, but that won't stop her from telling you how to do EVERYTHING sexual.

In the media, that would be Cosmopolitan magazine. So I was delighted when I found this hilarious, wonderfully snarky article on Nerve.com about 17 really stupid pieces of BDSM sex tips from Cosmo. I was chortling, guffawing and sniggering throughout. Check out tip number four if you don't believe me ... then go read the article.

4. "Press a fork (firmly, but don’t break the skin or anything) into different parts of his body — his butt cheeks, his pecs, his thighs."
This was clearly written at lunchtime, after a morning spent rummaging around the office for kinkspiration. Rejected options: "Hold a blueberry muffin in your fist and punch him in the mouth." "Pretend to be a naughty piece of printer paper and tell him to 'staple' you." "Act like a PDF and order him to 'fax me hard.' Make all relevant noises."
Incidentally, if the women who read Cosmo need to be cautioned against stabbing someone with a fork hard enough to break the skin, then their partners are going to need more than a safe word.

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!

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.

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!

Fifty Shades of Grey Gets Fifty Shades of Weird

First published on 8/8/2012 Time for more news of 50 Shades of Gray, the erotic juggernaut of modern publishing. How much of a juggernaut is it, you ask? It's so bad that Penguin Books's profits are down, way down, like down more than 50 percent down, and they are complaining that Fifty Shades of Gray is at fault ... it has "distorted the overall books market" with its 30 million and counting in sales. Sounds like that analogy I wrote about here was quite accurate. Not surprising ... my hindsight is 20/20.

Some of the hoopla around 50 Shades of Gray has an almost forlorn, desperate quality, like this article claiming that the sales boom in books and sex toys spurred by the novels might "save the economy." I guess it IS a stimulus ... but not THAT kind of stimulus. It's better than all the nothing and WORSE than nothing that our government and business leaders have managed to do, of course, and you can be sure that if Fifty Shades of Gray DOES help the economy, those selfsame leaders will line up to take credit for it. Though Mitt Romney has been telling the social wing of the Republican Party he'll censor the hell out of everything if elected, which I guess would include Fifty Shades of Gray. Sadly, that's the sort of promise Republicans generally DO keep.

We're starting to get some oddballs jumping on the bandwagon, too. The British energy company npower has started a promotion called "Fifty Shades of Green" to encourage energy conservation. Well, perhaps that's not too odd. They're an energy company, they are all about forcing their customers to submit. Old hat for them, really.

Even the little guys are getting in on it. An amateur theatrical group in the village of Llanrwst, North Wales (that's in Great Britain, in case you are wondering) has created a theatrical presentation based on Fifty Shades of Gray. It has the local theater packed every night as the participants "talk about their sex lives as if they were talking to a qualified therapist." I guess the book MAY have a huge ripple effect in England with stuff like that going on. Question is: will there be a Fifty Shades of Gray bubble?

Will The Fitness Industry Ruin Bondage For All Of Us?

First Published on 5/28/2012

Here's a hilarious piece from The National Post by Darrin Rose, a Canadian writer, about the way the fitness industry ruins sexuality whenever it becomes popular. Specifically, the popularity of BDSM among suburban moms inspired by 50 Shades of Gray. It's a wonderfully snarky bit of viewing-with-alarm. Here's a quote from it:

And now Fifty Shades of Grey has BDSM lined up next for the exercise treatment. That way middle-aged women can take flogging classes, where personal instructors literally beat you into shape. We’re probably a couple years away from spending 30 minutes on the elliptical machine while a personal trainer whispers in your ear “do you like that?” and “you’re such a dirty little jogger.”

Now go read the rest and laugh your ass off.

Hello!

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.