A Letter to My Children About Fifty Shades of Grey

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

67. The patriarchy has been such a powerful and influential force over a long period of time that we can

safely assume that it has has significant influence on just about everything, but particularly things related to male-female relationships and sexuality in general.

You want to talk absurdity? Denying that one's sexual preferences, including kinks, within one's sexual orientation can be taught is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. Not in the least reality-based.

Most things are learned and what is learned is overwhelmingly influenced by the society in which one lives. And most things about the society in which we live have come down to us though the system of patriarchy. That's the reality.

Questioning whether what we've been taught to enjoy is ultimately positive for us as women and for humanity in general, is not a "Church Lady" thing.

And here is an extremely insightful article that addresses that in relation to 50 Shades.

The real reasons for the popularity of Fifty Shades, and for the persistent role of domination and submission in women’s sexual imaginations, are rooted in what it actually means to live life in a female body—and the truth about that is so dark it makes Christian Grey’s Red Room of Pain seem as innocuous as a backyard sandbox.

So when people pontificate about women’s intrinsic sexual nature, I find myself thinking: How do you know? How can we ourselves even know? From earliest childhood, women’s experience of sex is so inextricably intertwined with all forms of male control that submission is forever eroticized in more ways than we can possibly unravel. As females, we have been dominated physically, politically, socially, legally, and economically, and pop culture endlessly reinforces the message. Hip-hop derides bitches and ho’s, an entire genre of blockbuster videogames depicts female characters as sexualized corpses or disposable prostitutes, fashion sells bondage dresses with leather cages, and Hollywood recycles domination themes from 9 1?2 Weeks to Secretary to Venus in Fur. Sex is fused with violence for countless women who suffer domestic abuse by husbands and lovers. More than a third of all female homicide victims are killed by intimate partners.

Given those realities, who can say what we would be like in a world where our sexual desires, and the way we express them, were freely chosen instead of imposed on us by a lifetime of social conditioning? Fifty Shades of Grey may represent the ultimate appropriation for capitalist consumption of themes that have resonated throughout history, but one thing its popularity can’t tell us is the truth about female sexuality.

Such a great article I think it needs its own OP. I'll try to get to that.