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.

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!