Five Things That Worry Me About Fifty Shades of Grey

 By
Allie Lane

There’s a new book causing a craze across the nation, but this time it doesn’t involve teenagers. As you’ve probably heard if you’ve watched any daytime program involving women sitting in chairs, an erotica trilogy by British author E. L. James called Fifty Shades of Grey is circulating in the circles of young mothers and working women. What is the premise you ask? A sweet, virginal college student named Ana Steele is taken in by the enigmatic, twenty-something billionaire Christian Grey. She proceeds to enter into a sexual relationship with him in which she agrees to be the Submissive to his Dominant in a BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism) relationship. There are a lot of explicit sex scenes involving bondage and spanking that have apparently been titillating women of all ages. All the morning shows and the news magazines are talking about why, why there’s been an uptick in these themes in romance literature, why it’s so popular despite the less than stellar writing. This is not the question I want to address. Our society still seems to be somewhat surprised that women are interested in sex, but there are some elements of this series which deeply concern me and which I think others should be aware of.

Firstly, I’m going to admit that I haven’t read the books. Since they’re printed by a small on demand publisher in Australia, who I imagine is currently very overwhelmed, they’re pretty much impossible to get your hands on. I have, however, read all the reviews and articles I can find on the trilogy in publications such as Jezebel, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Salon and the New York Times as well as the excerpts available on the internet. I’ve also perused some of the Master of the Universe series of Twilight fan fiction on which the book was based. All the concerns I will raise are, consequently, general in nature. Also, I want to say that this is not going to be a diatribe against the BDSM lifestyle or any other bondage related sex practice. What consenting adults enjoy in private is not for me to judge or claim to understand. I’m sure plenty of people engage in these practices as part of healthy relationships, although the books themselves do not necessarily support this view (see #4). 

Thing 1: This relationship is not healthy.

When Ana agrees to sign on as Christian Grey’s submissive, this role extends, to an unacceptable degree, into life outside of the bedroom. He stalks her and seeks to control every aspect of her life, even when she eats. He is insanely possessive and jealous and Ana considers this a part of their romantic relationship. These behaviors are all signs of an abusive relationship and they are being set up as part of a romantic ideal. It’s a slightly more explicit version of what has always made me uncomfortable about the Twilight series. Since Fifty Shades of Grey was inspired by those books, I feel that this connection is direct and strong and shows a disturbing trend of equating possession with affection. The “I slashed your tires because I love you” kind of relationship portrayed in these books cultivates a skewed picture of what a healthy relationship is. Yes, it is fiction and yes, most adults can distinguish between what is acceptable in a fantasy and what is acceptable in real life, but these sort of unhealthy, possessive relationships do exist, and these books are nudging them into the realm of pop culture fantasy. There is enough relationship violence out there, enough people denying it, enough people struggling to escape it, that I’m leery of anything—no matter how fictional—that normalizes or romanticizes it.

Thing 2: There’s no excuse for violence.

Christian Grey comes equipped, naturally, with a built in back story that explains his fascination with inflicting pain upon other people. As a child, he was a victim of horrific abuse and his struggle to cope with it brought him into the BDSM lifestyle and the need to completely control his mate. While abuse is obviously always traumatizing, this back story/explanation is a perfect example of what I like to call the Mr. Darcy Amelioration. This is when a romantic hero’s ostensibly unacceptable behavior is explained by tragic circumstances which somehow justify it. Mr. Darcy is a complete asshole to Elizabeth Bennett, but in the end she allows herself to fall in love with him on the grounds that his dark past makes up for and explains all the not so great things he’s done in the present. Likewise, Christian’s traumatic childhood is used as a device to convince Ana (and readers) that hitting and controlling women is something he just has to do. It can’t be helped. Because he rubs lotion on the marks he left from spanking her, he’s really a nice guy. He’s just had a rough life, that’s all.

While this literary convention has been employed to romanticize sinister antiheroes for years (The Phantom of the Opera, Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo) I find its use here somewhat dangerous. Any time a person’s past is used as a defense for violence—even consensual violence—it sends a dangerous message that the person themselves is not culpable. It’s like one of those episodes of Law and Order where someone claims that something like video games, a childhood in a volatile region or an extra chromosome made them unable to resist launching a vicious attack against another human being. What troubles me perhaps more is that this trope of the past explaining away domineering, cruel behavior is mostly applied to men, in books and in movies and television. It echoes the offensive, old-time idea that when it comes to violence and sex, men just can’t help themselves. “Boys will be boys”, as they used to say. Considering that offenses like marital rape and intimate partner rape weren’t crimes in some states up until the 1990s (in many countries they still aren’t), this sort of explanation for relationship violence makes me worry about what kind of ethical windows we’ve left cracked in our society. 

Thing 3: Women are people, not commodities.

The aforementioned laws against spousal rape were supposed to put the final nail in the archaic women as property idea, but the idea rears its head in Fifty Shades of Grey. The reason marital rape didn’t used to be a crime was because it was considered a breach of contract when a wife denied her husband sex. By signing a marriage license a woman gave her husband exclusive rights to her body whenever he wanted it, or that was the thinking. In the first book, Christian presents Ana with a contract, a physical piece of paper, a document, specifying the terms of her role as his submissive and guaranteeing that she’ll fulfill this position for a certain amount of time. From what I’ve gleaned from excerpts and reviews, book one comes to a close with Ana not having signed it. I scoured the internet for any indication that she might have done so in future books and found myself worried that she had. The fact that such a thing was even proposed in these books terrifies me. In all honesty that detail was the thing that made me sit up and pay attention to the talk about these books, to do more than roll my eyes and change the channel at the Today Show’s revelation that women like sexy books. By asking her to sign a contract, a legal document, Christian is effectively asking Ana to waive her right to “no means no”. Instead, it would be replaced with “no means yes until your contract is up.” While Christian may not want to use it that way, the implication is there. The very concept of such a contract reduces a woman’s body to a concrete commodity, offensively lowering our sexuality to the level of a car lease. If I lease a car for a year, I can drive it whenever I want, as long as I want, as fast as I want, no matter how much the engine groans or the breaks scream. By putting a contract in front of her, Christian Grey implies that he wants to treat Ana the same way. It is, quite honestly, the most shocking example of a man attempting to objectify a woman that I have ever heard. 

Thing 4: It makes a lot of assumptions.

While a lot of people in the media have been saying that these books are groundbreaking in terms of bringing the BDSM lifestyle out of the shadows and into public awareness, it seems to me that the books are painting a pretty prejudicial picture of it. Christian’s violently possessive behaviors (contract included) are portrayed as a part of his BDSM lifestyle. It’s as if, in the world of the books, that sort of sexual inclination is linked with abusive behaviors. By using his childhood abuse to explain his interest in BDSM, it further links that lifestyle with trauma and abuse. I have had a few friends and acquaintances over the years who have been in dominant/submissive relationships, and outside of the bedroom, the people have had healthy, equitable relationships. They were not abuse victims. I’m sure that people who engage in BDSM lifestyles would be offended by the implication that their tastes are a result of abuse or that they are a hallmark of abusive relationships. It seems to be doing little to remove the societal stigma against non normative sexual behavior and is, instead, reinforcing the Freudian style belief that it’s a result of some kind of complex.

Thing 5: It’s making a lot of people make a lot of generalizations.

This last point isn’t so much about the books as about the things people have been saying about them. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, the media coverage essentially consists of female psychologists and sociologists trying to explain why the books are so popular by saying things about what “women” want, specifically what young, educated, middle class, women—the book’s main demographic—want. As a member of that demographic, I don’t appreciate the generalizations that are being made about how being dominated appeals to women because in today’s society we’re expected to be in charge all the time and sometimes we just want to be vulnerable. For one, I resent the way that they talk about “women” like we’re a collective consciousness. Also, these contributors seem to be saying that it’s a particularly female problem, like we just can’t hack being in control of all of our lives all the time. It’s just too hard for us! It’s also always related as a symptom of our society, like we are attracted to domination because today we actually have the chance to be in charge of something. I find this a strange thing to say considering that western society has constructed the woman as the submissive (sexually and otherwise) for centuries. It’s not an effect of modernity; it’s an archaic archetype that apparently still persists. 

 

Personally, I think that everybody needs a space in which they can be vulnerable, where they can let their guard down. Having a wall up all the time probably isn’t healthy. A woman wanting that, especially in today’s world, doesn’t mean that she wants to be dominated, to relinquish complete control of her body to another person. A woman, or any person, should always have control of her body. So, a bunch of psychologists saying on daytime TV that modern women fantasize about being dominated because they’re asked to do too much in their everyday lives, grates me. I’d be the first to admit that I’m a fan of chivalry, that curling up with my boyfriend makes me feel safe, but the media circus around Fifty Shades of Grey seems to consist of people saying that women across the board want to be told what to do by men. I don’t appreciate it, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Allie Lane is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire with degrees in English and German. She hopes to obtain an advanced degree in creative writing and teach others the power of the written word.