So, my blood is boiling…
I’ve been meaning for a while to write a follow-up to my post in May about “Fifty Shades of Grey”. Whilst I hate the way the lead female character explores kink less to satisfy her own interests than to please the guy she fancies, and loathe the suggestion that he in turn is only kinky because of abuse in his younger years, I am in a way thankful that the book’s record-breaking sales have sparked yet more mainstream discussion of kink.
And then I read The Observer’s take on it yesterday. Those of you reading abroad might need a little context here: said newspaper and its parent (The Guardian) have a long and distinguised history as the UK’s leading liberal / left-of-centre quality papers.
So, read this, from Estela Welldon, who “is appalled by the mass appeal of the Grey series of books”:
“It is a terrible turning back of the clock for a book like this to have such enormous success,” she declared. “It is as if women are now trying to apologise for the success they have had in a man’s world. It is a sort of response to the modern age, but a very primitive response.”
Clinically speaking, she said, she had found there was a big gap between those patients who fantasised about violence and those who had a dangerous masochistic habit, but there was a connection. “One can lead to the other, if someone cannot get it out of their system. They have so little self-regard and then they find a man who is unconsciously designed to perpetrate things they wanted to do to themselves.”
Welldon said she was ashamed that so many women were reading the trilogy…
Dear female readers of this blog: I’m fascinated to hear you’re into spanking because you have little self-regard. After all, it’s a dangerous habit. But maybe you can get it out of your system. Please: use the comments section here to apologise for your success. And remember: it *is*, after all, a man’s world.
I’m sorry, Ms Welldon – and The Obsever – but this sort of prejudice is simply unacceptable. Yes, there may be some folks whose kinky motivation is drawn from dark, sad places. Yet your comments are disgracefully insulting to so many women I know in the scene – who choose to embrace kink because it’s part of their core sexuality.
In next week’s paper: a random attack on another group whose sexual preferences or proclivities are numerically in the minority – the gay community, perhaps, or cross-dressers. No? Thank goodness. But hey, it’s OK to attack those of us who are kinky. I’m disgusted both at Ms Welldon’s comments, and at the paper for giving her a platform to share such offensive and misguided views.
The woman talks cods wallop, I told her so yesterday. I can do that because this is everybody’s world (definitely not just men’s) where I hold myself in quite high regard as I do most others…bar her after this!
*Big sigh* Sadly this doesn’t surprise me.
I like the Guardian and the Observer but they do seem to have a certain contingent of writers who equate any kind of sex / porn they don’t like as degrading to women / symptomatic of underlying misogynist attitudes / a throwback to the Victorian era (it’s always the Victorians) / an abusive situation where the woman is only doing it to please the man (delete as appropriate).
Women like me and the kinky women I know never feature (except maybe in the odd outraged comment below the line) and I can only assume that the writers in question genuinely can’t imagine how anyone could like something that, to them, is so abhorrent. Perhaps they think we’re all lying about liking it to ‘please our men’ (Ff, anyone?!). Never mind that I went looking for kinky people of my own accord, with no big scary man looking over my shoulder and forcing me to type ‘spanking’ into Google…
I live in hope that one day this kind of kink-o-phobia will be as socially unacceptable as homophobia but I can’t help thinking that this would require a sort of mass ‘coming out of the closet’ and I can’t imagine many people would be up for that (sadly, I wouldn’t be).
Great post Abel x.
Nope, not apologising. I hope, one day, to be a successful woman. I KNOW I am a kinky woman, and even though I found my kink through bad circumstances, I believe I am comfortable in it, and learning to be comfortable in my own body, which is something I WASN’T, before the kink, so score one for spankos.
Anyway, I’m not going to apologise for planning to be successful, however I manage it. And I’m not going to apologise for having a kinky side, either. And anyone who wants me to, is cordially invited to take up permenant residence in Hades. I will even draw them a roadmap, if necessary.
As @Faye notes, the Guardian/Observer have a pretty constant illiberal attitude to some issues around sex. They run many articles about the way porn turns men into monsters, for example. I suppose that’s why in articles like this I tend to try to put the, “women who accept this are giving in to men’s monstrous desires” stuff and see what else there is to find.
There is something here. The argument from Carter that Sade’s female libertines take on masculine characteristics and that gives them power is a good one. In his work you’re always either a victim or a perpetrator, so to avoid being a victim you must exercise your power without constraint. In his world that means doing unfeminine things, like growing a huge clitoris, cutting off penises to make dildos, etc. What Sade’s showing (and quite explicitly) is a way to escape authority, whether that’s the roles conferred by marriage, the Church, the state, and simultaneously satirising those institutions to make them seem corrupt: A perfect enlightenment project. When we look at contemporary writing on kink, it can be said to be making wider social statements than, ‘some women like spankings.’ I don’t know about other kinksters, but there is a part of my kink that’s about not having to take responsibility for my life in the way that women do in this era, but often didn’t in previous ones (I’m not sure that’s not a fantasy of the past, though). Perhaps we should be sad that, hundreds of years ago, people wrote about kink in a way that theorised about how to throw off the shackles of authority, and now we write about it in a way that seems to be an escape from the responsibilities of our real lives into unpleasant gender dynamics. Personally, I suspect that ‘50 Shades’ is lacking a better message because it’s trash, not because it’s representative of our time, but the conversation’s worth having.
I’m not rushing out to buy Estella Welldon’s books, but to defend her second point, I’ll admit that before I got into kink, I *did* have a few relationships with fairly unpleasant men. I suspect it’s more complicated than, “I crave abuse, so my unconscious made me do it!” and I think that Welldon’s missing an important piece of the puzzle in her understanding of activities like C.P., but for some people there might be something useful there.
Sorry for rambling on. Maybe I’d better go and indulge in some self-flagellation to expiate my shame about other people reading such newspaper articles as these.
Hello,
I actually believe what was written is not out of context, in regards to said novel. I have read the books and feel that the characters are anything but a positive example of any healthy relationship, kink or otherwise. I do find the female character to be lacking in substance and tends to ignore her own desires for the sake of the man and I found his abusive past to be a horrible explanation for his desires. Psychologically speaking I find the novel to be a horrible example of any healthy exchange.
~a
“Welldon said she was ashamed that so many women were reading the trilogy…” I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal in the media. Who cares what someone else is choosing to read or their reasons for doing so?
It reminds me of years ago when Janet Jackson’s nipple was briefly exposed at the Superbowl. It went unnoticed by most until the media replayed it over and over, talking about how scandalizing it was, that it was unavoidable to eventually see it. If not for the outraged reviews of this book, it probably would’ve already faded as another flash in the pan.
I haven’t read the series but my understanding is it’s made to be an easy read and slightly erotic romance novel. I don’t think it’s meant to represent the true world of BDSM. Most real kinksters who have expressed dislike of it have the reasons you stated above, not liking kink represented as something only damaged people do. Many dislike Secretary for the same reason.
The books have caused a lot of discussion in the vanilla world and the kink world, that’s for sure. But if one thinks that it means the vanilla world is going to be more accepting of what some of us do, think again. The quotes you cite above prove that. It will always be something that’s sick and wrong to someone who doesn’t understand it. I don’t apologize for what I do in my private life and will keep doing what I enjoy, but I will certainly keep it private from the general public.
You are in danger of over analysing things here. Take a step back and ask why was this piece written in the first place? Come to think of it, why is the Telegraph running 50 Shades stories almost every day? The answer is that the trilogy has been read by just about every woman and so stories about it attract readers – the raison d’être of any newspaper, by the way.
Looked at in that light, of course you are going to get stories that you do not like. The papers are getting desperate for a new 50 Shades angle, and just about anything on the topic will be considered by a desperate features editor.
Look on the bright side as well. I visit the Telegraph stories as soon as they come on-line and make a comment so that I can get in a link to my Amazon author page. Come on, at the end of the day, we go into the porn trade to make money, and that includes E.L. James as well as you and me!
Thanks for so many deep, insightful comments. And sorry for not replying to them sooner.
Glad there’s so much agreement.
NotanOdalisque: great point. Perhaps *I* was slightly simplistic in my response: I’m sure there are kinky women whose experiences fit her mould. It just strikes me as annoying, patronising and dangerous in terms of attitudes towards kink that she assumes that *all* kinky women do so, when my experience is that this is decidedly untrue. Thanks for an insightful comment.
a – I totally agree about the books: my original post was pretty much along those lines. Still, as Lea writes, they have drawn some attention to kink in the wider community, and not *all* in a negative way.
Nic – fair point about newspaper content, although being rude to / about these readers may not endear the paper to them! As for going “into the porn trade to make money”, I don’t think writing this blog (erotica not porn IMHO) classes as being in trade, and I certainly don’t do it to make money. (Yes, I have a couple of books: they’re more for fun than profit, and I scarcely ever mention / promote them in my posts: any returns from them are tiny and go towards the costs of tech support for this site rather than into my own pocket).
Very droll, Abel, very droll indeed. I say that erotica is an amuse-bouche for the middle class palate, whereas porno is what the working class wank over. There is many a true word said in jest, and that comment usually gets a laugh.
Nick – perhaps overly-simplistically, ‘porn’ to me would involve naughty photos and/or writing about sex, and there’s none of the former here and very little of the latter. Maybe I’m just inflating my ego and pretending to by highbrow, though