Fifty Shades of Weird, Part Lebenty-Million

First published on 8/13/2012

Time for another post covering all the weird, fun and funny things that 50 Shades of Gray is popping out of the culture like toast from a toaster -- a toaster running on the unbridled sexuality of mommies!

To get off to a refreshing start of weirdness, here's a story of how the novel Fifty Shades of Gray saved the small town of Millinocket, Maine.

The Forbes.com UK site has a really NASTY critique of the British literary establishment's generally stupid and short-sighted response to the success of Fifty Shades of Gray, which was basically the equivalent of monocle-dropping followed by extreme harrumphing and tut-tutting that such a smutty and poorly written novel should have achieved such success. In short, the usual stupidity. Writer Cecilia Rodriguez argues that it's just the usual traditional sexism, with the literary establishment belatedly discovering that the vast majority of books are bought by women, and that they buy books that are written that spark THEIR interest, not some middle-aged literature major's interests. Let's get our tiniest violins out and play them a tiny little song, shall we?

Well what's more likely to get a horny soccer mom up all bright-eyed and buzzy-tailed than the Little Rooster Alarm Clock Vibrator? Worn inside the panties but outside the body, the Little Rooster starts out with gentle vibrations but has 30 different levels of power to step up to, until Mom wakes up with her buzz on. Mom will be SURE to get her kids to soccer practice no matter HOW early it is, and do it with a smile on her face. Maybe a little bit of a flush, too.

Dublin, Ireland, will be hosting the "Fifty Shades of Bliss" sex festival, a Fifty Shades of Gray inspired event that will feature generally sex-positive events and lectures and some good old-fashioned BDSM training. Ireland, traditionally mired deep in religion-inspired guilt and shame about sex, has found the runaway success of Fifty Shades to be a great way to get the public discourse going on topics sexual in ways that do not involved priests shaming young people into not having sex, or having sex with the young people themselves.

Aaaand while we're on the topic of Irleand, the Fashion.ie website has an article on kinky fun 50 Shades of Gray style that features pictures of comely colleens in ropes and love cuffs and lingerie.

Will there be more weirdness and fun ahead from 50 Shades of Gray? How could there not?

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?

Fifty Shades of Revolution

First published on 7/25/2012

As I mentioned in a previous post, I found one article about 50 Shades of Gray downright fascinating and thought-provoking. This one, by Anne Parramore, that ran on Alternet, which compared Ana and Christian's relationship to the relationship between the one percenters and the rest of us.

Way back in 2007 I had explored the same topic, though without the touchstone of 50 Shades of Gray. In this early post I pointed out the issues that dominance/submission behavior can create in politics. A short time later, I wrote this post, about the relationship between culture and politics, which essentially said that the rules of culture were murky, unwritten and voluntary and the rules of politics were much clearer but also tended to be matters of one group imposing its will on another in a nonconsensual manner.

In that article I promised a subsequent article on the Grand Pooh-Bah of hidden memes which relates to bondage. But I never delivered on that article, because, "look a slavegirl wearing a butt-plug shaped like a fluffy tail!" It was a hard article to write, because it dealt with how dominance and submission behavior is imbued throughout human behavior and culture and how the culture that has evolved to deal with sexual dominance and submission behavior has some really subversive implications for the dominance and submission behavior that exists in human culture generally.

Hell, it's a hard article to describe, much less write.

So you can see where Parramore's article really lit me up. It sort of APPROACHED the theme I was working at way back then but then missed it entirely. Parramore's mistake resulted in some minor flaws and one major one in her article, both products of her missing the Grand Pooh-Bah meme. The most glaring minor flaw ... Ana NEVER signs the contract that Christian offers, though Parramore claims she did. Ana instead negotiates with Christian, essentially using his fascination for her as her leverage, to eventually wind up in a contract-free relationship of something like equals even though she continues to enjoy the smutty, submissive-y sex. The book is a lot more subversive than Parramore realizes it is.

In fact, it is this very subversiveness, largely unrecognized by the unobservant readers (like Parramore, sadly) that may account for its popularity. 50 Shades of Gray says that even if you are young and powerless, you are worthwhile, and you can use your worthwhile-ness to negotiate something like equality with those around you who may be more powerful than you. You can humanize and improve the world around you. No wonder it is so popular!

Which relates to the major flaw in Parramore's article. Humans in almost any organization tend to organize themselves into hierarchies, with some having power over others. Parramore "got" the parallels between corporatist billionaire Christian Gray and the One Percenters, which worked well for her critique of the relationship between the One Percenters and the rest of us, but she missed the more universal application of dominance/submission behavior to human institutions of all kinds.

In a dominance/submission relationship, the submissive GIVES power to the dominant, and it is incumbent on the dominant to return that gift by treating the submissive in ways that he or she will enjoy. If he or she does not, the submissive can simply walk away, withdrawing the power that he or she gave the dominant.

In most real-world relationships it is not so easy to withdraw the gift of power. If your boss mistreats you, you can quit your job, but where will you find another one, and what will you use for money while you look? And what guarantee do you have of finding a better boss, especially in times like these which encourage every abuse by corporate bosses?

Clearly, most of us can't just quit, we have to negotiate. And one way to begin is to look at your boss and ask, "Has he or she earned the power he or she has been gifted with? What sort of boss would be worthy of the gift of power they have? How would they behave?"

Assume your boss' power is your gift to him or her, even though it is in fact not a consensual gift at all. Then work to make your boss into the person who would deserve such a gift. They do not need to be informed that that is what you are doing. It would probably be better for you if they were not. You can then proceed to subvert the relationship between your boss and you into something more human, because you will know what you are doing, and they will not. The changes in the relationship may be very subtle to start with, but over time could change radically.

And if you have subordinates, you could perhaps stand to ask yourself, "Have I earnd the trust they have given me? What could I do to be worthy of the gift of power here?"

I guess what I am saying is, absorb the lesson that 50 Shades of Gray and, more generally dominance/submission sexuality, teaches about power relationships. Then think globally and act locally. Could have some revolutionary implications!

Fifty Shades of Sexy

First pubilshed on 7/23/2012 Time for another 50 Shades of Gray update, as my flying monkeys continues to dump reams of the stuff on me, but at least SOME of it has bondage-y goodness to it, and some of it's funny, and some of it's strange.

There's starting to be a clear bifurcation in the response to 50 Shades of Gray: reviewers and columnists don't like it (often bragging that they didn't bother to read it). Readers who respond to it in the columns' comment sections tend to love it. It very much reminds me of the difference between official reviewers of "Deathstalker" on IMDB and the fans who write comments: regular folks liked it, the official bloviators dislike it.

A popular tack for many of the nay-sayers is to say the book is bad for bondage. Here's an example with a nice image of a woman with her hands tied behind her scantily clad backside.

Policymic has a very nicely illustrated article showing 5 reasons why women love 50 shades of Gray, very sexy for a political website. Perhaps they are learning from me. It's about time!

A general culture blog called OC Weekly has a nicely illustrated article about the increase in sales of kinky products inspired by 50 Shades of Gray, featuring a hot blonde in restraints and lingerie.

Down in Australia, they're just now getting around to being surprised by the success of 50 Shades of Gray in some cases. The Cleo News writes about their astonishment and includes a nice image of a lingerie clad woman with her hands bound behind her back, albeit very loosely.

A radio station in Ohio encouraged husbands to get together and hold a public book burning of 50 Shades of Gray, in what can only be described as a ceremony of communal dicklessness. Jeebus, guys, can't get it up? Sad. No image with this one, it's stupid all the way through.

You may think this is a lot, but it's a tiny fraction of what's out there. Most of the articles I see are mindlessly bloviating opinion pieces by bloggers/writers who clearly have not read the book, illustrated with the usual cover art from the book's dust jacket. I never run those, why inflict them on my readers, they're boring enough for me. Plus the celebrity blogs are constantly speculating on who will be cast to play the leads in the 50 Shades of Gray movie, also very boring stuff.

There is one article in particular, however, which I did not include here, because it is too fricking good. It's from Alternet, and it shows some very shrewd insight into some of the cultural aspects of bondage and dominance and links that to 50 Shades of Gray. I'll be treating that one to an in-depth analysis, it deserves it.

Fifty Shades of Grey Reaches 30 Million in Sales Worfdwide

First published on 7/18/2012

50 Shades of Gray has now reached 30 million in sales worldwide, 20 million in sales in the U.S. alone, according to this report. This in an industry where 100,000 in sales constitutes a bestseller. There are even reports that the book is going to create a 50 Shades of Grey baby boom, as frisky moms read the book and, well, get frisky. They don't call it mommy porn for nothing, sweetheart! (Some are disputing that there will be such a baby boomlet. We should know either way in about a year!)

I think I've finally hit on a metaphor for 50 Shades of Gray that gives some idea of the scale of the phenomenon. Imagine an ordinary marina harbor, like this one. That's bondage erotica. Now imagine a huge cruise ship like this one sailing into that marina. That's 50 Shades of Gray. Now imagine a dude floating on a tiny orange inner tube being swamped by the waves created by the cruise ship. That's inner tube is Karg and that dude is me, and yes, I am shaking my fist in anger.

Fifty Shades of the Gor Novels and the Ginger Movies

First published on 7/13/2012 Came across an old blog post of mine from five years ago, in which I wondered if it was possible for a bondage-centric project like John Norman's Gor novels or the Ginger movies to slip into mainstream culture unnoticed. (This was before I had encountered Second Life Gor, which is hardly a part of mainstream culture, anyway.)

Both films slid easily into the culture in the wild and woolly times of the Swinging Sixties and the Sexy Seventies. Each was well enough tricked out in the habiliments of other genres that they were not obvious porn, and that was enough. The Ginger movies were pure sexploitation, very shallow and lots of fun. The Gor novels had some serious intent behind them, which is why they worked for creating the virtual world of Second Life Gor, but they could also easily "pass" for fantasy adventures.

Now, implicit in my essay was the notion that the only way a bondage-licious book/story/game/movie could slide into mainstream culture, was by "passing" as something else, on some level.

I completely missed the mark there. Because the next big thing to come down the pike in terms of bondage content is what's coming down the pike right now: 50 Shades of Gray. And it's not passing for anything. People were talking about the bondage content of 50 Shades from Day One. it had the form of a romance, but was clearly a piece of bondage erotica, which it was described as in some places.

It never occurred to me back in 2007 that people would openly accept bondage porn, especially the adult women who got 50 Shades of Gray dubbed "mommy porn" by buying it in droves. Completely blindsided me, and everyone else, apparently. I had spent too much time listening to all the "Bondage ... eeeeewww!" talk that was so prevalent in the mainstream media. It had conditioned me to think that bondage erotica would never be accepted in the mainstream.

I should have know better. I had observed on several occasions that the content of many romance novels, especially 'bodice rippers' had strong dominance and submission themes and were very close to being D/s erotica. And that romance novels were developing wilder, sexier lines. But I missed the significance of that.

Here's another thing I missed: that the readership of romance novels had done a "student body left" into online erotica. Everybody missed that. But that's the only way that 50 Shades of Gray could have become a runaway bestseller -- the readers were ALREADY THERE when the book went online, and the Twilight fanfic fans made it a bestseller.

Which is yet another thing I missed ... the fact that fanfic has become the new bedding grounds for writers. As I've already pointed out, mainstream publishing has turned into a winner-take-all lottery, focusing only on bestsellers that they call "tentpole books" and ignoring the midlist books that were once the basis of their sales.

Of course, mainstream publishers are now frantically struggling to "get into" the online erotica market, looking for new tentpole books. And they are bringing their books to the online world at TRADITIONAL prices. Now I created Karg all by my lonesome, as many online erotica writers do. And I get 75 percent of the money when the book sells. If I had the kind of sales that E.L. James had BEFORE she signed with a big mainstream publishers, I'd be rich ... probably a millionaire. And Karg sells for less than $5 US. Like most online erotica publishers, I keep my prices low.

My point is, most online books from traditional publishers cost just as much as the hard copy -- often twenty bucks or so. What is your money paying for? Presumably, the hard copy costs are covered by hard copy sales. I'll tell you what you are paying for: the CEO's house in the Hamptons. The marketing manager's biannual vacations to Europe and the Caribbean. The sales staff's Lexuse and BMW. That's what you are paying for. And these people are useless, really. They are NOT responsible for the success of E.L. James' books.

And the overall point of this article is that it is good to look at your past predictions, even if they are wrong. Because you can learn a lot!

Fifty Shades of Kinky Imagery in Mainstream Media

First published on 7/10/2012 Well the 50 Shades of Gray tsunami keeps rolling in, and as it rolls in gives mainstream sites all kinds of excuses ... er, reasons ... for showing images of sexy women in bondage. Here are a few more for your consideration:

Yahoo Lifestyle Australia has an article on 50 Shades of Gray spurring sales of sex toys that features a lingerie-clad cutie trying on a pair of black fur-trimmed love cuffs.

The Sun over in the UK boasts an article proclaiming that 50 Shades of Gray Fans Want Bossy Sex which features a large photo of a woman clad in a skimpy pair of red-hot panties with her cuffed hands crossed over them.

Mommy non-porn site The Frisky features an article entitled "Girl Talk: I Want To Be Dominated," about what a turn on it is to be dominated, that's illustrated with a cutie wearing red fur-lined love cuffs, white stockings and not a lot else.

Aaaand just to show that old dumb dies hard, Female First, which bills itself as a celebrity gossip and lifestyle magazine features an article entitled How To: Bondage," which is illustrated with an image of a well-endowed blond in a boustier, thong and blindfold being held by a romance novel cover-looking guy ... but no actual bondage.

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.

Fifty Shades of Gray Brings More Images of Women in Bondage to Mainstream Media

First Published on 6/16/2012

Fifty Shades of Gray is still roiling around the media, totally overwhelming all other bondage-related content to judge from what my flying monkeys bring in, but this week I noticed a subtle change: more actual images of women in bondage associated with stories. I mentioned the naked woman in the cage in my story about the Swedish bondage bunker. But there are other stories featuring images of women in bondage. For example, on TV there was a talk show where a female participant was spanked while blindfolded and holding a ball gag in her hands, during a discussion of the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon. A discussion of the sexiest music on the 50 Shades of Gray playlist conducted by a radio station was highlighted on their website with a picture of woman in a leather bridal corset and lace with her hands cuffed behind her back. All of this stuff is weak sauce by Internet bondage porn standards, of course. But compared to NO femsub bondage imagery, which characterizes almost all of the stories I have seen about Fifty Shades of Gray, it is a definite improvement.

Fifty Shades of Second Life Gor

First published May 30, 2012 Well ten million people have bought Fifty Shades of Gray ... hmmm. That means that if even one percent of those ten million people decide they want to do some kinky sexual roleplay, that's ... a hundred thousand new sexual roleplayers, which is TWICE the current population of Second Life Gor roleplayers by even the ROSIEST estimates.

That's why I wrote 50 Shades of Second Life Gor, a blatant attempt to recruit 50 Shades of Gray readers into roleplaying in Second Life Gor. If they're coming, might as well let 'em know what they're in for ... which is to say, tons of kinky, sexy fun! If you're into that sort of thing.