The state of Britain today....

This image pretty much sums up how I feel about the way things are in Britain at the moment. The media peddles misinformation and diverts attention to meaningless things such as celebrity gossip and soap operas instead of intellectual or philosophical matters, leading to an ignorant population. Then events are exploited to cause fear, whether it's the economic crisis and fear of financial ruin, or the events in the middle east and fear of terrorism and war. This emotional response of fear is then used to turn people against those supposedly responsible for the fear-inducing circumstances - benefit claimants for the economy, or Muslims for terrorism. Meanwhile those actually responsible, the elites who profit from war by dealing in the arms trade, or who bankrupt the state by dodging their taxes, can go about their business without scrutiny or opposition, as public criticism is harmlessly diverted to convenient, powerless scapegoats.

Zero shades of grey

Now, just to be clear: As a sex positive feminist I absolutely believe that consenting adults should be able to engage in whatever sexual activity they prefer with no interference from anyone else, and I am fully in support of the BDSM community's right to enjoy themselves having all the kinky sex they wish without fear of judgement or reprisals from the rest of society. I feel strongly that criticisms of BDSM and other unusual sexual lifestyles should be challenged as just another way to restrict people's sex lives to one society sanctioned norm (heterosexual sex in the missionary position between married/long-term partners) and to limit people's freedom of sexual expression. I would therefore be the first to complain about small-minded people criticising the BDSM element of fifty shades of grey.

However, as I understand it, what the majority of people protesting against the release of this film are actually protesting is the emotional part of the relationship in this series, not the sexual part, and I am in complete agreement with them. Having read the books I can see that Christian Grey is portrayed again and again as a complete control freak: tracking Ana's phone, having her followed, buying the company she works for, getting ragingly jealous every-time she talks to another man.... these are all examples of Grey's behaviour from the book and they are clearly presented in the book as a sign of Grey's intense love for Anna, when what they really represent are something much more sinister. These are instead classic behaviours of an abusive partner which are highly recognisable to anyone knowledgeable about domestic violence. 

Fifty shades of grey is not the only work of fiction to present controlling or obsessive behaviours as a sign of passion in a romantic relationship; in fact these tired and completely false representations of love are all too common in our popular culture and media, whether it's films, books, television shows or music. And herein lies the problem; popular culture is one of the things that shapes and forms our attitudes and beliefs about the world, and the conflation of passion/love/romance with abusive behaviours in mainstream fiction is therefore incredibly damaging as it may lead to those two things becoming linked in the minds of ordinary people. We often hear that women in abusive relationships mistake their partners behaviour as being the sign of passion or deep love, and this will be in large part down to having received these exact messages time and time again from wider society. Anything promoting  abusive behaviour as normal or even romantic definitely need to be loudly challenged. Disappointingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the furore over the BDSM aspect of this film has over-shadowed the perfectly legitimate criticisms of the emotional abuse demonstrated in both the books and the film.

The New Statesman has a far better piece on this exact issue here.