The Fifty Shades of Grey franchise has became a pop culture phenomenon fueled by equal parts fandom and furor over its kinky storyline. It was a suburban porn sensation when it came out in book form and the movie launch last weekend only further ignited talk over the BDSM focused relationship of its main characters. The movie set records, raking in $81.7 million in sales and boosting it among the top debuting R-rated movies in history, according to Variety, so discussions over its erotic themes aren’t going away anytime soon.
I recently checked in with the smart and sex-savvy folks in San Francisco’s kink scene to weigh in on the sensation and discovered five main themes to the things the book, the film, and the public are getting wrong.
Christian Grey is a pretty bad dude
“He’s textbook bad-news boyfriend,” says Kirstie Haruta, a sex educator and sales associate at Good Vibrations. Haruta didn’t finish the book, but then one doesn’t have to get too far into Fifty Shades to discover his creepy behavior. He keeps finding excuses to pop into Anastasia “Ana” Steele’s life, showing up at her work and her house uninvited and literally tracking her cellphone.
Danorama, the director/dean of the series Kink University who has read the Fifty Shades series, agrees that Grey is less than ideal. “The abusive manner in which Christian Grey is portrayed likely has a negative effect on the public’s view of the kink community,” Danorama says.
Kink isn’t a disease that needs curing
In Fifty Shades, Grey claims that his kinky proclivities stem from [spoiler alerts] childhood abuse and being introduced to rough sex too early life — which of course left him “fifty shades of fucked up.” At the end of the series Grey is “normal” and lives a happy, vanilla life. Danorama thinks this portrayal of the kink lifestyle as something to be cured of reinforces a fallacy that “the BDSM community fought so hard to correct.”
Kink is about community, Fifty Shades is not
Danorama also takes issue with Christian and Ana’s lack of involvement in the larger kink world. “There’s a thriving, worldwide kink community — [which includes] Seattle — full of workshops, gatherings, retailers, parties, support groups, artisans, etc.,” he says, and he considers the fact that they only “play” behind closed doors to be a “major blind spot.”
Consent is key
Master Stefanos, producer for Kink.com’s “The Training of O” series, finds the implied consent in Fifty Shades the most troubling part of this story. “A healthy relationship is an equality of expectations,” he says. “Replace ‘a healthy relationship’ with ‘a power exchange’ and then this fails to portray healthy power exchanges between two loving/caring people.” He and his partner Shay work together to combat this notion that “BDSM’ers are controlling abusers” by teaching workshops on how to incorporate the erotic elements of Fifty Shades safely in real life. He hopes that people who are titillated by the series will do their homework and research the community more because he says “there are a lot of hidden parts of our psyche that can be triggered if there is not good communication and consent.”
In the book, [spoiler alert] Christian gives Anastasia a hefty contract outlining exactly what she can expect as his submissive. She has the opportunity to opt in or out of certain activities such as cunnilingus, anal fisting, and other garden variety Sunday night activities in the kink community. She verbally agrees to many of these activities after discussion and persuasion, but never officially signs the document. I’d like to note here that author E.L. James goes out of her way in the book point out that both parties understand their sexual agreement isn’t a legally binding document, rather it’s really just a device by which Christian can fully explain his brand of kink to the reader.
It’s just a story, one among many kink-infused books
Carol Queen, resident sexologist at Good Vibrations, read and enjoyed the entire Fifty Shades series, though she does think it has some issues. “I don’t think that’s problematic per se, but the romance genre has certain requirements about the way relationships play out and people behave, and those supersede representing BDSM in an informational way,” she says. On this issue, Kink.com’s Stefanos agrees. “You wouldn’t learn to drive from Fast and Furious,” he says, “so please don’t learn about consent and how to do BDSM from Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Having read the book too, I’ll say this. Personally I don’t think Fifty Shades is really anything new; other kinky mainstream books (I’m looking at you Story of O and The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty) are more issue-laden than this series and have gotten far less attention. I’d be more worried about Twilight, a series with an equally problematic relationship but marketed directly to teens, who have less critical thinking skills than your average adults.
In the end, I’m happy if the Fifty Shades franchise exposes people to the possibility of exploring the kink scene in their own communities, especially with such a rich network right here in San Francisco, and people come to their own conclusions about how to spend time in their bedrooms from there.
Image via Flickr user Lucy Burrluck
