50 Shades of Awful

I just want to take a moment to appreciate this.
I don’t really know how to label this other than, #PlotDeviceisaBadPlotDevice

There’s a whole sequence where Christian’s mother is practically banging his door down while Taylor-the-Butler-Ninja is trying to politely convince her not to. Christian forces Ana to meet his mother, just out of the blue… Oh you know honey we were just fucking and have known each other a week, here’s my mom!

I think this is the author’s horrible attempt at establishing that, like, Christian has feelings for Ana because “omg none of his other subs ever met his family” and his family apparently was also super-worried that he was gay (…Why do you care if he’s gay?!) But of course, Ana is too dense to come to that conclusion, so instead she spends the whole time using Mrs. Grey as a means to feel bad about herself because Mrs. Grey is *le gasp!*  pretty.

So the whole intro to this scene is that Mrs. Grey Desperately. Needs. To See. Her Son. And how DARE Taylor. Try. To. Stop. Her. From Barging. Into. The Bedroom. Of a 27-year-old Man…. Or something.

And then like 2 minutes later it’s all LOLWELL “DON’T WANT TO INTERRUPT YOUR DAY!”

Yeah. Okay Writer.

Why?! WHY IS SHE BRAVE?! WHY WOULD YOU SAY THIS?!

I don’t understand. This happens right after he shows her his dungeon/playroom, and some of the rules, but then he says “fuck the rules,” so apparently none of that actually applies, and he asks her to spend the night so that he can “rectify the [virginity] situation.”

WHY ON EARTH would you say “you’re really brave” to someone you’re about to have (non-kinky, mind you!) sex with?

Why does this book want SO BADLY to convince us that Christian, and the things that he likes to do, are dangerous, sick and twisted… When the author is generally insisting that the books are a “love story”? WHY!

You cannot tell me that this is not a book about creepy stalking abuse. You just can’t. I refuse. Clearly even withinthe book’s own universe, everything that Christian does is wrong. Not just, “oo this is so kinky and wrong, hee hee!” But actually seriously dangerous and unhealthy. …I do not understand. I think this line is supposed to be a compliment or something, but I just don’t even…

This is one of those moments where I really wish this book was something other than what it is. I reeeaaalllyyyy do.

I want this book to be about the awkwardness of being uninitiated, about not having the experience to even be able to articulate where your limits are or what you do and don’t like. I want this book to be about not knowing whether you like a particular toy or not because not only have you never used one, but it’s a foreign word and you don’t know what it means.

I want this book to be about how uncomfortable and nervousness-inducing that is. And that it’s okay. And that when people expect you to be able to rattle off this long litany of specific hard and soft limits like you’re reciting the pledge or the capitals of all 50 states, that they’re flipping insane and that’s not how desire works anyway.

… But instead, he just gets irrationally angry with her for not having told him beforehand that she was a virgin— AS IF THAT WAS WHY SHE COULDN’T GIVE SPECIFIC LIMITS FOR A BDSM RELATIONSHIP GOD THIS BOOK IS STUPID, and I’m immediately disappointed.

… Did he just imply she shouldn’t use her safe words? Did he really? Really Book, Really?

I think, if you don’t know anything about BDSM at all, this line reads something vaguely like, “I hope I never accidentally push you too far, because I don’t want to hurt you.” I think it’s supposed to be reassuring, and sweet, or something.

However, what this actually says is, “Lol I am Lord Domly Dom I know what I’m doing, Of Course I would never push you too far, and if you are really submissive you will never safe word!” Especially because this comes right after the “I Never Make Mistakes” glare, and not even 5 minutes ago, he was actively intimidating her.

It’s also important to understand where Ana’s mindset is, and what her motivations are… We’ve already been told numerous important and alarming things about her: she “desperately wants to please” Christian, she is totally star-struck by him, she doesn’t believe she is “worthy” of him but desperately wants him to continue liking her. She believes that he is incapable of love and that BDSM is the stuff she has to do, to suffer through, in order to have any kind of relationship with him. And, she’s regularly intimidated by him anyway. …Are we really supposed to believe that this is a situation where she feels empowered enough to use her safe words if she really needed to? (Answer: Fuck No.)

The BDSM community has a lot of conversations about safe words and such, and what it means when somebody uses them, and they can become quite contentious debates sometimes. Some people take it as a personal insult, like safe wording is like the most awful thing because it suggests that they make a mistake or they went too far. Some people also seem to treat safe words as an automatic end to all sceneing, that all play not only stops, but ends any future play for that scene.

I don’t agree with either of those perspectives. The first is an ego-centric response and indicates to me, someone who thinks too highly of themselves and isn’t capable of admitting their faults. All dom/tops have faults. All of them. We all make mistakes because we’re human. The second makes safe wording ‘dangerous’ because it becomes an all-or-nothing situation. When using a safe word to try to protect yourself turns into a punishment, maybe because all play stops when you really just couldn’t do that one particular thing, you have a problem.

There is also sometimes an attitude of competitiveness towards who can be the most “extreme”, who can take or give the most pain, do the most intense scenes, people who look down their noses at the concept of safe words because it’s not “extreme” or “real” enough. Or that safe wording out means you are weak or “not a real [sub/bottom/slave]”.

These things together create a coercive environment against bottom/subs using their safe words, which is dangerous and unhealthy.

In MY Opinion… A safe dom/top would encourage a new sub/bottom to use their safe words, because playing with someone you don’t know very well means you can’t be certain whether they’ll safe word early, or too late, or try to prove themselves and refuse to safe word at all even though they have long passed the point of enjoyment into actual torture. A safe dom/top wants to reassure their play partner that they truly care about their safety, and thatit is in fact safe to use a safe word, that they will never be disappointed or angry about having to stop play unexpectedly. A wise dom/top also knows that treating their toys well and caring about them enough to do this means they get to play more often.

Personally I’m in favor of check-ins and green/yellow/red (or similar) safe words that allow frequent communication when something becomes uncomfortable or starts to go beyond what they can handle. Ideally, regular communication means you can distinguish between when something just needs to “change” versus “everything needs to stop, now, end scene.” No one should ever feel intimidated about using their safe words.

Also, back to the point about abuse… Abusers will regularly intimidate their partners out of using their safe words, while simultaneously arguing that “you had a safe word, and you didn’t use it, therefore you consented to everything I did to you, and this is not abuse.”

There are so, so many things wrong with this book.

This is how you know that this relationship is abuse:

Christian warns threatens Ana not to “make” him apologize. Make him apologize? I thought apologies were for when you fuck up, hurt someone, or make a mistake?? Christian Grey never makes mistakes? Fuck you book. Fuck. You.

Ana is visibly fearful and falls back in line. She’s cowed and subdued. In her head she vaguely acknowledges that maybe this is sort of inappropriate, but she does absolutely fuck all about it. This is either a conditioned response of survival by someone in an abusive situation who knows that it’s dangerous to push their abuser too far, or she’s just an idiot and has no backbone.

This is during a “negotiation” conversation about limits. Is he trying to Dom her while negotiating?

Ana has just been told that Christian never makes mistakes, to never question him or force him to look at things from her perspective under implied threat during a conversation about what her limits are, where she needs to be clearly and firmly setting boundaries. Where the communication channels need to be as open and honest as possible.

Worst. Dom. EVER.