Fifty Shades of Masochism

Fifty Shades of Masochism

Masochism:

1.     The deriving of sexual gratification from being physically or emotionally abused.

2.     The deriving of pleasure from being humiliated or mistreated, either by another or by oneself.

(www.thefreedictionary.com)

I was recently at my monthly Crisis Response Advocate meeting, and we were talking about the continuing education we are all required to complete for the year. (For those who don’t know, as CRAs we answer a 24/7 sexual assault crisis line, including meeting someone at the hospital after they have been sexually assaulted) One of my fellow volunteers jokingly asked if she could count reading Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James as continuing education hours. “It’s full of sex, rape, power, everything!” she said, a little too excitedly for me. Hearing an advocate peer say that made me even more curious about the whole Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon. When a book becomes that crazily popular, I am usually skeptical of it (except for The Hunger Games… those are actually pretty good), but especially with the erotic nature of the Fifty Shades of Grey series, I was super skeptical. So I thought I’d do a little research online and see what it was all about. Below is the excerpt I found and base this blog entry on (excerpt from http://darhkportal.com/2012/04/frisky-friday-fifty-shades-of-grey-excerpt-with-giveaway/).

“Oh dear, Anastasia, you moved," [Christian said]. "What am I going to do to you?” I’m panting loudly. All I can concentrate on is his voice and his touch. Nothing else is real. Nothing else matters, nothing else registers on my radar. His fingers slip into my panties, and I’m rewarded with his unguarded sharp intake of air.   “Oh, baby,” he murmurs and he pushes two fingers inside me.     I gasp.

“Ready for me so soon,” he says. He moves his fingers tantalizingly slowly, in, out, and I push against him, tilting my hips up.

“You are a greedy girl,” he scolds softly, and his thumb circles my clitoris and then presses down.

I groan loudly as my body bucks beneath his expert fingers. He reaches up and pushes the t-shirt over my head so I can see him as I blink in the soft light of my sidelight. I long to touch him.

“I want to touch you,” I breathe.

“I know,” he murmurs. He leans down and kisses me, his fingers still moving rhythmically inside me, his thumb circling and pressing. His other hand scoops my hair off my head and holds my head in place. His tongue mirrors the actions of his fingers, claiming me. My legs begin to stiffen as I push against his hand. He gentles his hand, so I’m brought back from the brink. He does this again and again. It’s so frustrating… Oh please, Christian, I scream in my head

“This is your punishment, so close and yet so far. Is this nice?” he breathes in my ear. I whimper, exhausted, pulling against my restraint. I’m helpless, lost in an erotic torment.

“Please,” I beg, and he finally takes pity on me.

“How shall I fuck you, Anastasia?”

Oh… my body starts to quiver. He stills again.    “Please.”

“What do you want, Anastasia?”

“You… now,” I cry.

“Shall I fuck you this way, or this way, or this way? There’s an endless choice,” he breathes against my lips. He withdraws his hand and reaches over to the bedside table for a foil packet. He kneels up between my legs, and very slowly he pulls my panties off, staring down at me, his eyes gleaming. He puts on the condom. I watch fascinated, mesmerized.

“How nice is this?” he says as he strokes himself.

“I meant it as a joke,” I whimper. Please fuck me, Christian.    He raises his eyebrows as his hand moves up and down his impressive length.

“A joke?” His voice is menacingly soft.

“Yes. Please, Christian,” I beseech him.

“Are you laughing now?”

“No,” I mewl.

I am just one ball of sexual, tense, need. He stares down at me for a moment, measuring my need, then he grabs me suddenly and flips me over. It takes me by surprise, and because my hands are tied, I have to support myself on my elbows. He pushes both my knees up the bed so my behind is in the air, and he slaps me hard. Before I can react, he plunges inside me. I cry out – from the slap and from his sudden assault, and I come instantly again and again, falling apart beneath him as he continues to slam deliciously into me. He doesn’t stop. I’m spent. I can’t take this… and he pounds on and on and on… then I’m building again… surely not… no…   “Come on, Anastasia, again,” he growls through clenched teeth, and unbelievably, my body responds, convulsing around him as I climax anew, calling out his name. I shatter again into tiny fragments, and Christian stills, finally letting go, silently finding his release. He collapses on top of me, breathing hard.   “How nice was that?” he asks through his gritted teeth.    Oh my.

I lie panting and spent on the bed, eyes closed as he slowly pulls out of me. He rises immediately and dresses. When he’s fully clothed, he climbs back on the bed and gently undoes his tie and pulls my t-shirt off. I flex my fingers and rub my wrists, smiling at the woven pattern imprinted on my wrists from the tie. I re-adjust my bra as he pulls the duvet and quilt over me. I stare up at him completely dazed, and he smirks down at me.

“That was really nice,” I whisper, smiling coyly.

Mind you, this is all I’ve read of the book. I don’t know the characters or the entire context of their relationships with one another. However Wikipedia is a pretty great resource for the synopsis of the book (which is where I gathered all of the following quotes). I’ve gathered that Christian Grey is the boss of the main character, Ana. Before Grey will engage in a relationship with Ana, he plans to have her sign two contracts: one is a non-disclosure agreement forbidding her from discussing anything they do together, and the other is a contract of “dominance and submission” which also states that “there will be no romantic relationship, only a sexual one.” The contract “even forbids Ana from touching Grey or making eye contact with him.”

The relationship between Grey and Ana is one characterized by BDSM…

BD: Bondage and Discipline

DS: Domination and Submission

SM: Sadism and Masochism

…..equaling BDSM.

Of course a relationship based on beating and bonding can’t be all sunshine and rainbows, and the tension between Ana and Grey “eventually comes to a head after Ana asks Grey to punish her in order to show her how extreme a BDSM relationship with him could be… Grey fulfills Ana’s request, beating her with a belt.”

To be honest I’m quite bothered by this book being so crazy popular. I’m bothered that my fellow Crisis Response Advocates not only read these books, but also enjoyed them and joked about them being a guilty pleasure. I’m not trying to argue that Ana was being raped, because from what I can gather she was a willing participant in these sexual activities with Grey. Whether or not she was coerced and brainwashed is another story (interestingly, she was a virgin before her first sexual encounter and contract signing with Grey).

What really bothers me is this: most of the women I know (yes this is a generalization) are, or strive to be, independent and successful; they long deeply to know themselves and to love themselves; they want to find someone (or perhaps multiple someones) to be connected on a deep level, to share in that sexual experience together and to be empowered by it (sex is a pretty empowering thing…. I’ll do a blog post on that later).

I’m not trying to just shut down anyone who reads and enjoys this book series. However, I feel that it is so important for both men and women to be filling their minds with stories that build us up, that bring us closer together and help us understand one another, helping us see each other as real human beings and not just genitalia and hormones and a means to getting off.

 And yet…. Here are the housewives, young professional women, and moms of America, reading a book about some handsome powerful asshole who thinks it’s okay to use a woman just for sex, and a woman who is not only okay with that but who longs for more. More physical abuse, more humiliation, more spanking, more blindfolding…… When does this end? What about her soul? What about who she is? What about Grey’s sexual objectification or her? What about Ana’s sexual objectification of herself? As women we seem to be fighting for equality and fairness, but when it comes down to it do we just want to be spanked and told what to do?

The Women's Room by Marilyn French

I was assigned to read TheWomen’s Room about five years ago in a Gender, Politics, and Law class. Istarted reading it and enjoyed it, but I never finished it. It was always muchharder for me to read a book because I was being assigned to read it, not justreading it because I wanted to. Over the last five years I’ve prettyconsistently been trying to read it all, and this summer I finally accomplishedit! The book itself is pretty heavy and dense, and even though the languageisn’t hard to understand, there are so many concepts that hit close to homethat it takes a while to work through it all. The parts I am going to highlightas the ones that stuck out to me the most are mainly towards the very beginningof the book. I think that is because the book starts out with her as a child,and then details some of her experiences in college and as a young woman. Iidentify with that part of her life the most because that’s where I’m at. Therest of the book is definitely thought provoking and made me think of otherwomen in my life – my mom, sister, grandma, older friends, etc. But for mepersonally, this is where The Women’s Room really hit home….

“She saw her choiceclearly as being between sex and independence, and she was paralyzed by that.Since she always risked pregnancy, which meant dependence, a sexual woman livedwith Damocles’ sword always over her head. Sex meant surrender to the male. IfMira wanted the independent life, she would have to give up being sexual. Thesituation was a terrible incarnation of her masochistic fantasies. Women wereindeed victims by nature.”

This part really stuck out to me because I’ve never thoughtabout sex in this capacity. In Mira’s situation, she is dating a guy namedLanny whom she will not have sex with. In the paragraphs before the abovequote, Lanny tells Mira that because of her he was forced to resort to datinganother girl described as “the campus prostitute.” Mira’s reasoning for nothaving sex with him is that she was too scared of sex to risk it with himwithout having a sense that he would be there for her. So that’s the capacityin which Mira sees sex and independence as being mutually exclusive: sex is a riskthat she will not take if it’s not with someone she can trust. That makesperfect sense to me. A little later in the book, Mira talks about herrelationship with her husband Norm after she finds out she’s pregnant:

“She thought she hadescaped, but all she had done was to let the enemy into her house, let him intoher body, he was growing there now. He thought in the same way they did; he,like them, believed he had innate rights over her because he was male and shewas female; he, like them, believed in things they called virginity and purity,or corruption and whoredom, in women.”

In the situation with Lanny, Mira was scared of dependenceon him if she got pregnant. Even if Lanny had stuck around if she got pregnant,she wouldn’t just be dependent on him, she would be dependent on others to helpget them through it. I wonder if Lanny thought about it that way, if he had anyfear of what would happen if he got Mira pregnant. Maybe because it didn’tphysically affect his own body he didn’t have to think about it. In Mira’srelationship with Ben at the end of the book, he tells her he wants to have achild, which is not really what she wants: “Thechild would still be hers, although he was the one who wanted it.” Itdoesn’t seem to matter to her who the man was: whether it was a boy shecasually dated in college, her husband, or a man whom she deeply loved. Herthoughts on pregnancy and dependence, and also the lack of independence, seemto always be with her.

I’m not completely sure what I think about this. In all ofthose relationships, Mira seemed to lack a sense of partnership. Her relationshipwith Ben was the closest to that, but it was still very much about what hewanted. What he wanted was a child, which Mira knew would mainly be herresponsibility. In many ways she had passed that point in her life, as a 39-year-oldwoman who already had two children. Initially I was a little bummed (spoileralert!) when Ben left without Mira and they never saw each other again.However, if Ben wanted kids and Mira did not, that’s definitely a deal breaker.Ben did assume that Mira would want to have kids, just like he assumed that shewould pick up and leave her life in order to go to Lianu with him. She respondsreally passionately to that. Perhaps the main reason for that is she thoughtBen was different; she didn’t think he was like all the other men in her lifethat had tried to control her. Then in some ways she blames herself for thathappening: “She felt smaller than he, sheflattered him, sincerely, because she found him more important, larger, betterthan herself. That was what he had been led to expect.” She is justifyinghim thinking that his plans are more important than hers by blaming it onherself. Why did she find him more important than she found herself?

When I think about having children, I think of it as anexciting time for my husband and me. I’ve never connected pregnancy withsurrendering myself to a man, or to just letting go of my dreams and goals.Maybe that’s because I’ve assumed the man I would want to have children withwould be my partner, that as much as possible we would be equally responsiblefor our children. Why did Mira not have that expectation? I’m not willing tosay it was just because of the generation she grew up in, because I thinkthat’s crap. Was it her upbringing? Was it just chance that the men she was inrelationships with were not true partners? I don’t think so; it seems to bemore widespread than that. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations, but I don’tthink that’s the case either. Perhaps Mira had internalized through herupbringing, her experiences, and what she heard from other women that she waslargely responsible for raising children on her own. And perhaps some of thatwas the generation. But how much of that is present in our time now? How manywomen are expected to be the ones who take care of the kids, becoming dependenton their husbands? What’s really missing here is a sense of interdependence.Why are the men not dependent on the women? And it seems like even though theyare dependent on the women in some ways, those ways don’t seem important, mainlybecause the women seem interchangeable to them. They are dependant on the womenfor taking care of the kids and household duties, but beyond that there’s noconcern over who the women actually are, their dreams, their thoughts… Thusmaking them interchangeable.

Hmmmmm. What do you guys or gals think?

Here we go again... for real this time!

When I decided to start a blog this past spring, I was feeling pretty gung-ho about it.... Gung-ho meaning that I made a list of all the books, movies, TV shows, and other subjects I wanted to delve into from a feminist perspective. Then it kind of fizzled. Some of that is because my computer doesn't work and I'm at the mercy of my boyfriend to borrow is. Another part is that now I don't have wireless internet at my apartment. For whatever reason, the person whose network I've been using doesn't have it open to the public anymore. So selfish. :)

Anyway, I am going to try this again. I think I was also a little discouraged that I know people are super busy and if I don't have time to be writing a blog, my friends sure as heck probably don't have time to read it. But even if no one is reading I know these are topics that are very interesting to me, and are things I want to write about. So if you have time to read, awesome! If not, no worries. I will be learning either way. Of course I always appreciate input and thoughts from others, and love being challenged by you and your views, whether they align with mine or not.

Cheers!

First things first.....

I have decided to jump on the blogging bandwagon. This might be a total failure, a total waste of time, or it might be pretty sweet. Let's hope it's the latter. I have a few friends that have blogs, and when I thought about writing my own it didn't take me long to figure out what I wanted to write about. I have always been fascinated by the unique bonds women have with one another, what we think it means to be a "woman," what we value, what we long for, how we differ, how we're the same, etc.

A quote I have loved since my years at college is "Well-behaved women seldom make history." According to the internet it was coined by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, born in 1938, who was a professor at Harvard. I believe I first heard that quote in my Gender, Politics, and Law class. I was struck by what I heard it saying to me: screw sticking within the norm, forget doing what is expected.... live loudly, be yourself and fight for what is right. It felt like a great title and intro to my blog.

The issues I plan on delving into in this blog include exploring mediums such as books, TV, movies, ads, the media, etc, and exploring topics like spirituality, economics, sexuality, expectations, and discuss how all of those things affect women, how we see ourselves, how we're portrayed, how we live, how we love, how we thrive.

Thanks for being along for the ride. Please post, respond, and challenge myself and others so we can learn and grow together.

K