A phenomenon. An international best-seller. And a horrible misrepresentation of the BDSM (bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism) community and the glorification of abusive relationships.
This is the only way I can think to properly represent Fifty Shades of Grey, the prolific book trilogy and soon to be blockbuster movie written by E.L. James for god knows what audience. People have consumed this novel and its contents in overwhelming numbers, and the projected sales for the movie's Valentine's opening weekend are horrifying considering how disgusting its contents are.
Remember that Fifty Shades started as a Twilight fan-fiction, and names were changed to prevent copyright issues. The core relationship in Twilight is problematic as it is, but Fifty Shades, which has wrongly been hailed as a story of one woman's sexual empowerment, takes the abuse in its parent text to a new level.
Christian Grey forces Anastasia Steele, a younger woman looking for employment and fresh out of college, to sign a contract agreeing to be his submissive. He details their responsibilities and other details of their physical relationship. This could have been good. What ruins this start is his choice to track her phone, follow her around, verbally abuse her, ignore her use of their safe word, and tell her that she will never escape him because he can find her anywhere. Christian Grey crosses a line between protective and obsessive, where he finds himself controlling and abusing her. BDSM is a community heavily focused on consent and respect. A large part of the cycle of a BDSM encounter is aftercare, where partners debrief their experience and ensure no lines were crossed. Christian Grey disregards not only Anastasia's lack of consent to acts, he abandons her after he's decided he's done. He manipulates her and abuses her throughout the book and people who misunderstand BDSM let Fifty Shades be their image of it.
Some of my friends have said "It's just a fantasy!" but these sorts of abuses are very real for millions of women around the world. If you want to write a book about a BDSM couple, you should be a responsible writer and do your research. No fantasy should include abuse, because it normalizes it. No fantasy should include a misrepresentation of a community like BDSM, because it solidifies public misconceptions about the nature of their interactions. I don't know about you, but being physically, mentally, and sexually abused and stalked does not sound appealing.
Instead of taking your significant other (or your friends if you're flying solo this Valentine's) to this movie this weekend, show them that you don't support intimate partner abuse in any way shape or form by donating to the grassroots campaign 50 Dollars not 50 Shades, a campaign trying to raise awareness about domestic abuse and encourage people to endorse protection for the victims and not glorification for the abusers.
