On 50 Shades of Grey and the Erotization of Male Domination
Freedom is slavery.
Submissiveness is empowering.
The above are just a few of the lies that patriarchal culture has served up for women in the best selling BDSM novel 50 Shades of Grey.
First-time female novelist E L James began the piece as short fan fiction based off of the Twilight series whose main relationship between a 104 year old vampire and a teenage girl meets all the criteria for domestic violence.
Given its source material, it’s not surprising that 50 Shades of Grey and its sequels tells the story of a billionaire who convinces a young woman to agree to be his full time sex slave. E L James’ story is not new.
The Story of O is a BDSM novel published in 1954. It details the “training”, sexual degradation, and final suicide of a woman named O (Woman Hating Andrea Dworkin p 55-63). The book was written by a woman and, similar to 50 Shades of Grey, documents female enjoyment of male domination.
In our male-dominated culture, women are socialized to enjoy being dominated sexually. As Womon On a Journey says, “The cultural of women-hatred f*cks with ALL of our brains, so that we really have no idea as women what our desires would be in a sex-equal society.”
Given this fact, what are we to make of the fact that some women enjoy fantasies of being dominated?
The enjoyment these women feel is described by Dee Graham in her book Loving to Survive as Societal Stockholm Syndrome. Because women as a group cannot escape from men, we have found ways of dealing with their violent and destructive behavior. We eroticize it, and internalize the desire for it. As Cherry Blossom Life says, “Perhaps when women talk about the empowerment of submissiveness, they are actually talking about the power of the double bluff: “You want to hurt me? Screw you; you’ll never hurt me more than I want to be hurt myself.””
By “choosing” to enjoy male-dominant sex, women are able to develop a sense of power, however limited.
BDSM practitioners often engage in a classic patriarchal reversal. That is, they claim that they are actually an oppressed group in society who lose social power due to their kinky sex practices. They claim that non-practitioners, that is, those whose sexual practices do not involve explicit domination and submission, have “vanilla privilege“, which means that non-BDSM practitioners oppress them.
Radical feminists see that since all our desires occur within a patriarchal context wherein women are submissive and men are dominant, the explicit enactment of this dynamic in the bedroom is in direct conformity to male-centric sexual norms. We recognize the framing of BDSM as” transgressive” as a patriarchal reversal (where the opposite of what is being claimed is actually what is true). In fact, BDSM practices actively oppress women.
Note that I am not blaming these women for attempting to carve out space for female agency in an exceptionally coercive, abusive, and traumatic patriarchal society. Nor am I blaming the women who buy and read 50 Shades of Grey, or as it has come to be known, mommy porn. Rather, I am analyzing the context under which this glorification and erotization of male domination has become an outlet for female sexuality.
Radical feminists see the justification of BDSM- whether in erotica, or in practice- as a form of orgasm politics, which we reject. We do not agree with Barbara Seaman, who said, “The liberated orgasm is an orgasm you like, under any circumstances.” We do not believe that activities should be immune from criticism simply because they occur in our minds or our bedrooms.
Rather, we agree with Sheila Jeffreys when she says,
“Traditional forms of male-supremacist sexuality based on dominance and submission and the exploitation and objectification of a slave class of women are being celebrated for their arousing and “transgressive” possibilities.”
There is nothing transgressive or feminist about BDSM erotica or sexual practices. The popularity of this new novel, as well as the Twilight series, show the way in which women cope with male violence and oppression by eroticizing male dominance.
Liberation Collective 
So true. My daughter writes YA fiction and says that “Twilight” has ruined the once-somewhat-feminist culture, spawning a whole subgenre of supernatural teen rape romances.
The sex-poz insistence that any orgasm is a GOOD orgasm just demonstrates how unable some “feminists” are to make connections between their bullshit platitudes and female reality. It is a FACT that men have orgasms when they rape. That is how and why women become pregnant as a result of rape. Every orgasm is not a good orgasm. Every orgasm is NOT justifiable by the “innocence of pleasure.” Pleasure is not always innocent or “harmless.” The sexualization of VIOLENCE is indefensible.
This is so endless. This shit’s been going on for centuries. Nothing new. Pathetic…. but nothing new.
Oh, dem orgasms. Some weeks ago I saw a funfem saying something like:
“How to have feminist sex:
– Use protection
– Have an orgasm”
What is this orgasm obsession? Do libfems think when every woman orgasms liberation will occur? This just sounds like the same old PIV, but with a new face – Now ladies will orgasm, and orgams will change everything, right? They won’t get pregnant if they orgasm, right? Because the only pleasurable thing in sex is the orgasm, right? An orgasm is the most important thing to women… Right?
This orgasm thing sounds so malecentric! I don’t know how to explain, but this “sex must end in one because PIV ends in one and if you don’t orgasm this is bad sex and your partner is bad in bed” feels so wrong and pornified.
Good post! BDSM is pure conformity it is not transgressive, it enacts absolute obedience to the establishment. Rebels don’t take part in BDSM, if they can help it.
I agree Witch, that orgasms are pitiful substitutes for dignity and they can feel extremely bad under bad circumstances. The idea that they should be some kind of aspirational goal for women is just a joke. We can all do them better ourselves they are as workaday as sneezing. The cervix opens after orgasm though, they might actually increase your chances of getting pregnant; and who wants that from some wally with a whip and a domination complex?
Have orgasms in the safety of your own company, or in the arms of a woman you love, or just don’t bother and get on with the important things in life.
Thanks to all for your responses.
Laurie: I’m sorry to hear that Twilight has infected your daughter’s YA fiction community. That is very sad. However, you must be very proud of her for noticing, and for sticking up for autonomous female characters.
All: In liberal circles, consent is seen as the gateway to healthy sexuality. Why are some practices immune from criticism simply by occurring under the umbrella of consent? It’s baffling.
Men think that if a woman doesn’t want or enjoy sexual slavery, she has ‘sexual inhibitions’ and there’s obviously something wrong with her, because there’s no other way they can think of her sexual energy than submissive and masochistic, which is of course a patriarchal lie that enables them, given that there are women brainwashed into it, to vampirize our sexual energy. Do they really think they can fool us who suffer the systemic opression at their hands into believing that sexual male dominance is something other than the skeletal form of the whole engine? Do they really think that I can’t see violence against women and misogyny just because it’s sexualized and/or romanticized? LOL. Since always I’ve been able to recognize that there was something really rotten about how romance and sex are understood and portrayed in the patriarchy and I wish clarity for every woman and girl on this planet in order to see it too.
What is interesting about this book, and about The Story of O, is that they are written by women. These women have so internalized their oppression that they are handing it back to other women in the form of “empowerment”. I’ve even heard 50 Shades described as having “revitalized women’s marriages”; as if convincing women to PIV their Nigels is a positive thing.
Again, I’m blaming the culture; not the women who have internalized the “male dominance is erotic” narrative.
Nobody human wants to be hurt.
Period.How sad, that benighted women react in male-defined masculine fetishistic perversions. It’s a psychopathology. They need help.
Who can be anything but terribly sad. There is no joy here. It is so dreadful to become an object. Sickening. Please think about that, women. Run from it. You can.
The Story of O was written after the author’s lover tossed her aside for a younger woman. I guess the idea was that her complete body and soul devotion to the assh*l*’s superficial power trip would get him back. It’s painfully sad.
Witch, I get what you mean by the orgasm being male centric. It is hard to make a case for this as women’s pleasure has been so constantly erased, marginalized or co-opted, it is still very much a foreign territory. I do think that the focus on a linear-style climax which is consistent with male excitement and ejaculation disorients us from our own bodily joy and pleasure. And I loath the trope that insists that if I am not a sexual masochist and am both unhip and repressed.
I believe those women (both this one and the one who wrote Story of O) have been asked to write those books, or have been directly handed those books but asked to figure as their author publically. I know there are people who disagree but it’s just my opinion, maybe it’s too conspirational, but I honestely believe the level of conspiracy in the patriarchy to keep women enslaved is very high.
I was talking with a group of younger women – late 20s to mid 30s – about the Edward character in Twilight. I told them in so many words that everything about Edward screams “creepy stalker guy who would probably kill you if you dared to break up with him”; you know, the kind you hear about on the news about every other week. Their response? Oh no, he’s just so in love with her and he doesn’t want her to get hurt by anyone (else, I suppose, is the word they forgot to tag on at the end here).
Jesus christ, Harry Potter was radical feminist manifesto compared to the shit that Twilight and this now a Fifty Shades of Grey* are teaching girls/women…
*Oooooh, is that a reference to moral ambiguity in a sexxxxxxay book? How subversive of them! Give them some po-mo cookies for that one stat!
Freedom is slavery.
Submissiveness is empowering.
How el bizarro that they don’t apply that “principle” to racism.
I meant, that if the “principle” they used was any good, then it would work on any subject. Obviously the orgasm is supposed to be a special snowflake exemption. Ha, ANY OTHER subject would also have to be an exemption. Which is why the “principle” sucks.
How el bizarro that they don’t apply that “principle” to racism.
*nodding*. I went to an anti-porn feminist workshop several years ago, where they showed different sexes and different races switched around in various dom/sub sexualised imagery and scenarios. Interesting how the audience automatically recoiled at obviously racialised images of sexual dominance and submission. Indigenous peoples or poc are not expected to respond with sexual arousal and pleasure to images of these same peoples in overtly sexualised lynching/whipping poses etc? Only with females is it considered totally socially acceptable, and even “desirable”. Or even ‘feminist’ – which is where I get rather angry.
If there was similar celebration of consensual masochistic sexual torture of Black people, would they call it “empowering” for Black people? A “celebration” of their progress in achieving human and civil rights and building a non-racist world? If there was similar celebration of consensual masochistic sexual torture of Jewish people, or communists, or environmental activists, would this sexualisation be seen as an essential and critical part of these people’s social-political identity, and necessary for their socio-political struggles? For women to promote this behaviour as ‘feminist’, is the ultimate insult. That is like poc saying “please enslave us, please whip us and lynch us, for its my right to consent to slavery, to further empower us “. But am totally anti-racist and pro-civil rights etc… DUH ?…. Does not compute. Its like folks into practising bestiality, then turning around and saying they are pro-animal rights activists! (And promoting sexual bestiality as “liberating” for the animals)
This book is just another example of the terribly adverse affects that so much of the media that is disseminated has on our society. Freedom is not slavery. Submissiveness is not empowering. (Although at the time it may seem so because the ‘sub’ reserves the right to utter the safe word and ‘sets’ the boundaries. I used to be in a lesbian BDSM relationship, so I am well aware of the promotion of ‘the sub holds all the power rhetoric.”) And BDSM erotica is not feminist. These ‘principles’ can not be applied to empower any oppressed group of people (ie women, lesbians, people of color, etc). These ‘principles’ are just more propaganda tools to be utilized in further attempts to socialize women to enjoy sexual and other forms of domination.
Rainsinger, what a great example that is. Thank you for sharing.
Ditto. That is a really good example Rainsinger.
As always the issue of racism applies only to males never to females. Pornstitution is littered literally with men subjecting women of colour and women of non-white ethnic origins to sexual violence and sadistic sexualised torture and the general public ‘doesn’t bat an eyelid.’ Only when these images are juxtaposed wherein it is non-white men who are the ones being subjected to racism and sadistic sexual violence is there an outrcry of ‘racism’ racism.’ All women are dehumanised beings according to Male Supremacy and the Male Supremacist System has successfully conned many many women into believing being men’s disposable sexual service stations is the epitome of what it means to be a female. That is a dehumanised female who has no autonomous desires or ambitions apart from passively accepting men’s sadistic sexual violence as supposedly ’empowering.’
Denial is a very powerful weapon because for many women recognising the reality of male domination and male control over women and their lives means what women believe to be ‘reality’ is not reality but just men’s lies. Not forgetting denial is a coping strategy because for women it is far easier to deny the truth and claim ‘I am really in control’ or ‘I am empowered’ because all too often reality is too horrible to accept. Loving to Survive by Dee Graham et al analyses and explains why so many, many women prefer to deny their reality than take a long hard look at men’s definition of women’s reality and experiences.
Hecuba, thanks for your comment. I encourage everyone to read Graham’s Loving to Survive; both yourself and KatieS recommended it to me, and it changed my perspective a great deal.
Denial is such a coping strategy! Women don’t want to recognize that men enjoy dehumanizing and degrading them. That’s because it’s such a difficult reality.
It may be difficult but isn’t it also difficult to capitulate? And if all women would face that reality, it would become less difficult because we’d all support our sisters in many ways and validate their suffering.
I think in the long term it’s more difficult to capitulate than to rebel, because if you capitulate you escape from facing the horrendous truth, but in the long term the horrendous truth will get to you and will make you ill, ignorant, poor, exploited, degraded and vampirized. That’s why I don’t know why the hell women are into denial… women who don’t have independence options it’s clear why they capitulate, survival, and these women get radical feminism easily bc they’re very oppressed but not that brainwashed -not necessary.
My question is why western women with some options and even middle-class career women are still capitulating? Why?! It drives me insane. Gail Dines in her book Pornland asks the same question and she concludes human beings are cultural beings vulnerable to indoctrination and construct our reality based on what we see, and since we’re social beings we don’t want to get ostracized either so those are powerful forces being used to enforce heteronormativity and the nuclear family.
I guess that’s true, but some of us have been immune enough to that and we’ve rebelled and faced the truth – yes, it’s really horrendous and beyond, but I bet none of us would return to ignorance and turn her feminist awakening down if we had the chance, and that’s because of a reason -this is ultimately worthwhile and there are rewards to it, if only merely spiritual, but capitulating ends up in a lose-lose game. And for Goddess’ sake, our foremothers have fought hard for the little choices of independence we have now… women should use them.
BDSM is also racist, hearkening back as it does to tools and practices “borrowed” from the antebellum South’s era of slavery of African-Americans. They hold “slave auctions” as frequent tool of humiliation and praise used on subs/slaves in the scene. The slaves sold are required o do whatever their new masters want. Horrifyingly, I’ve seen this trickle into popular culture in schools and high schools as a “fun game” and money raiser for charities. Is it any wonder the “Scene” is largely white people? There are exceptions, of course, but really – look at any online site with pictures, at any public gathering (they gather in public frequently, despite their whining about their “oppression”.)
The story of the Story of O is that the author’s mentor and lover of a dozen years, Jean Paulhan, who reminds me of Dominique Strauss-Kahn because he was much older than she and a libertine and [literary] lion, told her a woman couldn’t write erotica. He had other lovers and it’s true she thought that she could capture him back using the written word. She was 47 and said she wasn’t particularly pretty. By most accounts she did not write for publication, and read her work to him in parking lots and so forth (his wife had Parkinson’s). He thought there was money to be made and got Olympia Press (famous for obscenity prosecutions) involved. The publisher, M. Girodias, got a quickndirty translation into English and the show was on. The writer, Dominique Aury, was a respected literary figure who didn’t reveal that she wrote the book for 40 years except to close friends.
Paulhan died and Aury stayed alive into the late 1990s when she died at 90, saying her life was over when he died decades earlier. I keep thinking of that ass Strauss-Kahn and his wife, the one with the money, who has supported every disgusting thing he’s done, from the “rutting chimp” days on. Now he’s in the indictment process for pimping and I wonder how long the wife will continue defending him. French women are in an especially difficult position because their bourgeois culture is still based around mistresses and cool chain-smoking ugly intellectual men like Sartre. It’s a strange little tangent they’ve been on for 50 years.
This book that you’re describing sounds horrible. I just wanted to say that erotica books that are written under female pen names are not always written by women. I have a male acquaintance who writes erotica novels under a female pen name, because they’re written for women and they sell better that way. He seems like a nice enough guy. I took a Reiki class with him in real life, and he was (and still is) very heartbroken over a wife who he was married to for several decades and who died several years ago. The stuff that he writes is more romantic, not like this crap, so I have no problem with that personally. But I just wanted to let you know that these erotica books supposedly written by women are not always written by women.
Isn’t it remarkable nice of these male writers to reserve the emmmpowerfullizing stuff in BDSM erotica always to women?
Like, in virually ALL other books of men, the male persons always do all the powerful stuff. But somehow, when it comes to BDSM erotica, they refrain from empowerfullizing men and give the women all the powerrrr… *cough*
“orgasms are pitiful substitutes for dignity” – Zeph, this hit me like the proverbial slap in the face. How right you are, how right indeed!
I am literally fed up with ‘feminists’ who keep defending pornography, prostitution & BDSM and who keep supporting rape culture. BDSM and porn aren’t feminist, for Goddess’ sake.
Thank you so much for this post, Smash. 🙂 I always love it when feminists oppose BDSM (lesbian or het). It’s the most radical challenge ever to the rape culture out there!
Women need to withdraw ‘consent’ and refuse to re-enact the symbols of captivity, rape, torture and slavery as a ‘turn-on’. Women have to politically rebel against their own degradation.
BDSM is not only racist it is also antisemit. Black clothes and lethear are inspired by the Nazis (SS) and Foucault for example wrote that it turned him on to reanact the suffering of the Jews. The Nazis that still exist in Germany also seem to be above-average into BDSM and it’s women who are humiliated and of course not men. They don’t bother to lie about empowerfization unlike the self-proclaimed “progressives”. So, do male Nazis just not realize that they are indeed and consequently against their own very intention empowering women through their fetishes although they promote childbearing and housewives (conservatism)? *cough*
Two things: First to the moderator, thank you very much for not posting my previous comment in it’s entirety, it definitely needed editing! 😀 And thank you Rainsinger for your insightful comment — that discreptancy (hypocrisy really) between how people respond to sexist violence and how people respond to racist violence is exactly the thing which drives me nuts, yet I do an absolutely lousy job of articulating it. So thank you both again. Anyway, second thing:
The enjoyment these women feel is described by Dee Graham in her book Loving to Survive as Societal Stockholm Syndrome. Because women as a group cannot escape from men, we have found ways of dealing with their violent and destructive behavior. We eroticize it, and internalize the desire for it. As Cherry Blossom Life says, “Perhaps when women talk about the empowerment of submissiveness, they are actually talking about the power of the double bluff: “You want to hurt me? Screw you; you’ll never hurt me more than I want to be hurt myself.””
That. I noticed from a very early age that so many men use the tradtional pattern of domination/submission in their relationships with women, so I personally decided that the healthiest thing for me would be to have as little to do with men as possible. And I have NEVER been able to figure out why more women don’t come to the same conclusion. It’s like women are pre-committed to the idea that they simply MUST have relationships with men — and no other option is possible — no matter how harmful those relationships actually are. For most women, the option to disengage from relationships with men, doesn’t exist.
And please don’t tell me that their failure to recognize all of their options is exclusively caused by “external cultural brainwashing”. I was exposed to the exact same bullshit and you don’t see me falling for it. Sure I’m stuck on the same planet with men, but that doesn’t mean I have to engage in relationships with men, or accept men’s justifications for romanticized violence against women. An internal reason must exist which drives women to accept externally imposed male authored justifications — and I suspect that internal reason might be women’s own lust for cock. If they can’t find a penis which isn’t poisoned by toxic masculinity, then they’ll still take the poisoned one. The reason they hate themselves is not merely because of externally imposed negativity (which is harmful in and of itself), it’s because they realize that they’re voluntarily swallowing what they already know to be poison.
Just as men hate themselves (and project that hatred onto women) for allowing their sexual desire to influence their behavior, so too do women hate themselves for desiring an abuser. The only difference is, women take their self-hatred and completely internalize it onto themselves and other women. one theory, anyway…
Finally, I found a review that doesn’t try to defend 50 Shades of Gray as an example of respecting women’s “choices.” 50 Shades of Gray is anti-feminist backlash. Thanks for the review.
@m Andrea, I do think there is an internal reason, but I disagree that reason is women’s unbridled “lust for cock.” Sorry, but that would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the context. There are some exceptions out there (although I question how they came to be exceptions), but those obsessed with phallics and bulging muscles are the males themselves. I’m of the opinion that many women who identify as heterosexual, perhaps especially the ones that can’t imagine themselves without men, probably wouldn’t have sex at all—and certainly not with males—if it weren’t a cultural requirement for their existing. Anyway, that’s another post…
No, the reason they remain in unhappy marriages and such is because, unlike males, they actually care about their sons, husbands, brothers, and other male friends and family members. Males exploited women’s capacity to love, and like parasites they’ve attached themselves to women in every aspect of our lives. It’s virtually impossible to not be connected to one in some way unless you go out of your way to severe those ties. Destroy the family unit and more women will be able to step back and view men from an objective perspective. Otherwise you’re telling them that their sons and “hubbies” are rapists. I was trying to explain how bad they are for us to another (lesbian) woman and she refused to listen because of her friendship with her twin brother. It doesn’t have anything to do with sex.
There is one thing I’ve noticed that definitely does hold women back: the belief you can “fix” males or “save” them from masculinity. Even in the comments of a well-known radfem blog (the name of which I won’t mention) there was a woman lamenting that she *gasp* had considered giving up on males altogether until her Nigel came along. (presumably with the sun shining out his ass) Women really need to keep prince charming in the books and fanfiction because he doesn’t exist in reality. The sooner they accept that the better. That’s why I internally applaud when some obtuse MRA type goes on a public tirade about how women aren’t doing enough to ingratiate themselves to males. There is a particularly repulsive one at my university, and you can literally see the disgust on women’s faces when he speaks. I only hope they realize he’s right when he says the numbers of males like him are in the thousands and growing.
As for why some women have their awakening more readily than others, well, it’s probably just a matter of personality and lifetime experiences.
Tonight abc 2020 (with a beautiful, feminine woman hostess who has zero authentic feminist analysis) is featuring 50 Shades of Grey and further normalizing male domination of co-opted and colonized women. The footage of workshops being held for women trying to learn how to do BDSM (fanfictive from the book audience) is truly stomach-turning. But I don’t blame women in this force-fed pornographic man-stream media culture as hostessed by fembot token torturers. This smiling horror show is on in the background (abc 2020) as I read this blog; the second course is married (husband-wife) couples who are swingers, now normalizing that male fantasy in mainstream/manstream TV land. The third course of abc 2020 tonight is a beautiful, rich, blonde, under-40 woman being described as “empowered” and exercising “her choice” because she can hire a younger, studly male “escort.”
When Robin Morgan and Andrea Dworkin wrote 40+years ago about the liberal-pornographic sell-out of second-wave feminism to hotness and male domination and female-erasure aka women’s adoption of male values, little could they have known.
Today the extent to which females of all ages have been injected with the male-dominant media brainwashing (on c-phones and pda’s, on laptops and browsers, on billboards, in movies, on TV, via piped-in music) and mass-produced consumer options (from t-shirts to 3rd-grade girls whose working-class parents are being sold, without affordable or available other options, dress-up shoes with little high heels) is an assault to a whole female consciousness in virtually every public space.
Shopping today because I really did need a new t-shirt (and there was a huge sale), the once dignified anchor store in a mall had inane, anti-woman lyrics set to the piped-in music played about 3 times louder than it would have been played 10 years ago. I asked the cashier if the music bothered her because, although I also told her I realized it wasn’t her fault or policy she’d set, it was so intrusive to my mind that I couldn’t stay in the store one minute longer. The cashier (late 20’s) told me that she was “just numb” to it. We had a brief and true feminist discussion but unless the current system crashes or she gets incredibly lucky, what are the good options for her finding better work in a money system run by men, really?
Not that I want to return to wearing the blinders that kept me from seeing the truth. Having set myself free is its own reward, tough though it is to be free in a captive state. I watch all the great women around me being culturally required (for social survival) to practice femininity, and I know that as more of us see, more of us have the chance collectively to get free. And that’s why men hate radical feminists.
Once a critical mass of women get in our bones how hollow are the patriarchy’s rewards (and fleeting, don’t I know, now being in my late 50’s and having no looks to trade against male cultural punishments), mensgame ends. At least I can hope.
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