Last night I watched the documentary on C4 about the 50
shades of Grey books (this post is not about the books, it’s about the documentary
about the books). To its credit the program did try to be balanced by including
a D/s couple to offset some of the other more negative comments being made by
some of the other guests, but I couldn’t help but get annoyed at one particular
female guest who was not only ignorant (like many of the other women
commenting), but openly (and cluelessly) hostile towards bdsm in general.
I hate seeing women like that on TV, they give feminism and
fetishists a bad name. I am both, and I couldn’t disagree with her more. Me and
my Dom are intelligent people; I just graduated with a degree in sociology in
which I gained a great deal of understanding of feminism, and my Dom (also a
sociology student) has studied these same issues and has taken an interest in
feminism, and we would both consider ourselves to be (in our own way) feminists.
The woman speaking who looked to be in her 50s, was clearly
a bit of a man hater (how come it’s ok to hate men when you’re a feminist?) and
obviously did not have a kinky bone in her body! Indeed she seemed to have the innocence
of a virgin, sex was clearly a dirty word to her ears. Perhaps she is one of
those feminists who believes all sex is patriarchal and something women would
free themselves of. Women clearly cannot enjoy such treatment afterall if it
debases them (oh the capacity of the human mind…;) ). Needless to say she had a
very judgemental and moral high ground stance on the whole issue. Basically she
was saying two things 1. How can anyone want to do these ‘abhorrent’ things?
(she made a clear ‘moral’ judgment) 2. This is oppression and goes against what
feminists have been trying to achieve.
First of all whether or not someone finds bdsm practices abhorrent,
they can still be turned on by them. In fact some people may like a certain
practice because they think it is so,
but obviously not everyone will think this way. Not only did she show herself
up to be very vanilla lol and very ignorant. But she went on TV making
misinformed comments about a lifestyle choice which she clearly knows nothing about. Her disgust at the
practices in the book also surprised me because many bdsmers like myself
believe the books to be quite vanilla in the way they depict bdsm scenes like I
have said before, Mr Greys hard limit list contains a lot of things that a lot of
people in the scene enjoy (as the documentary later pointed out).
Anyway, her second belief I feel is quite damaging to us
as a community, and unfortunately it is often held by more radical feminists
who seem to overlook the golden rules of bdsm (sane, safe on consensual) and
make harsh judgments based on..what exactly? These women are shocked by it,
they have no real life experience of it, have they ever spoken to someone who
does even? (Unlikly-who would come out to them!) I think her hostility actually
borderlined on discrimination, and I would certainly consider her comments to
be of a fundamentalist nature especially considering that most couples these
days play around with some bdsm equipment even if they do not identify with the
bdsm community.. However she was certainly not the only one to criticize bdsm,
another woman joked ‘who wants to be analy fisted on a Friday night?!’ (Which isn’t
even in the books so I don’t know where that came from) but I accept that anal
fisting is not for everyone (it’s not my thing either) but her comment wasn’t really
about anal fisting, it was another moral judgment i.e. how can someone want
that to be done to them, it’s horrible, it’s a joke even.
Thankfully however, the D/s couple did help even out the
balance a bit more, although they may have outed a few of us along the way
because the sub was wearing her eternity-collars-style steel collar on TV! My
mother and future mother in law have both been reading 50 shades of Grey and therefore
may have very well decided to watch that program. My mother I know to be a bit
of a kinkster herself (although I don’t know the details) and she has a good
sense of humour and understanding nature and is no prude -so I don’t mind about
her, but other family members are not so understanding. I wear an eternity
collars wrist cuff (I used to wear one on each wrist) which they are both aware
of but do not know the meaning of. If they were watching that documentary I’m
sure they could have worked it out and no doubt there are many other subs who
also wear these ‘not so discreet anymore collars/cuffs/anklets’ around their family/friends/colleagues
who may come under closer inspection in the future if someone makes the
connection.
Other people had a good joke at the contract. The contract
was in my opinion the only authentic thing about the 50 shades trilogy and was
no doubt copied from the blog/site of some other sub. That also annoyed me because
many people (including myself) have these contracts and take them very
seriously. They can be very important to some D/s couples who want to be able
to outline the specifics of their relationship to ensure each partner knows their
responsibilities and their roles and what the other expects from them. They
also facilitate safe and consensual play which is of course very important, particularly
if either partner is interested in ‘edge play’ or is inexperienced.
I was not surprised that this documentary had been made, I
have been waiting for something such as this to be shown, but it would be nice
for there to be a proper film made about bdsm which did not contain negative stereotypes
or hatred but the lives of real people who enjoy this lifestyle. Not that im
calling for some big awareness campaign…I’m happy keeping my sex life a secret!
I do not want bdsm to become trivialised and turned into some fad and become divorced
of all meaning by the masses. But I would like to combat hate and ignorance.
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