I live in what has traditionally been considered a very
conservative area of the USA, both in terms of politics and social values and
when I, a flaming liberal, find myself on the prudish side of an issue I have
to wonder if I’ve changed or did West Michigan when I wasn't looking. The
other night on the local nightly news they did an interview with an adult
bookstore owner---you know the kind of business that sells sex toys, X-rated movies
and all the parking is around back so your neighbors won’t see your car parked
in their lot. I haven’t been in one of those kinds of places since a bunch of
us did it on a lark 50 years ago and back then they had the “peep shows” where
girls danced half naked in front of glass windows while guys in trench coats
fed quarters to a timer to keep the curtains open.
Anyway, the interview was a long one and it was all about
how people are flocking in to buy bondage and S&M kits for Valentine’s Day.
The book, 50 shades of Grey, it seems
has mainstreamed tying up your partner, whipping and spanking butts and who
knows what else…I didn’t read the book and I don’t plan on doing so, thank you
very much. Apparently, I’m from the Dinosaur Age where a candlelight dinner, a
red rose and soft kisses on your neck were considered foreplay---not putting a mask and pair
of handcuffs on your partner. It was surreal seeing reporters in conservative
West Michigan talk about bondage kits like they're DVDs of Marvin Gay singing Let’s Get it On. What I find fascinating (and repugnant) about the whole thing
is how a generation of young people, who mostly grew up in an age where
spanking kids was (and still is) a no-no, can find bondage and sadism/masochism
something they want to explore.
The store owner who was interviewed was talking smack about how it brings couples closer together and makes their marriages stronger when they test the boundaries of sex and erotica. Okay, but what if your partner’s boundaries are different from yours and you find yourself chained to a post in the basement for weeks at a time? Call my crazy but when something could lead to a prison sentence if you do it to a stranger it has no place in a marriage, in my prudish opinion. Ya, I know there’s a difference between jumping off a curb and jumping off a cliff but a lot of couples can’t even agree on how they like their eggs cooked so what makes a woman think a guy’s going to stop when she uses the so-called safe word? Trust? Roger that Captain Obvious. Trust is a wonderful thing but, in my book trust and chains don’t go together like peanut butter and jelly. And in case, that isn’t clear enough, I’d trust a guy to pick me up outside of the Piggly-Wiggly Grocery Store at an appointed time, but shoving who-knows-what up my butt while I'm wearing a blindfold? No way! The next thing you know your partner will bring a gerbil home from a pet store and you’ll be making a trip to ER with an embarrassing story to tell. (I'm not making that up. It's happened in the Department of Weird Sexual Antics.) Oops, I understand from reading movie reviews that Mr. Grey actually asks for permission before escalating each episode of inflicting pain. What a peach of a guy he is. I didn't kill-kill her, officer. She was suicidal and she signed a permission slip for me to help her die.
The store owner who was interviewed was talking smack about how it brings couples closer together and makes their marriages stronger when they test the boundaries of sex and erotica. Okay, but what if your partner’s boundaries are different from yours and you find yourself chained to a post in the basement for weeks at a time? Call my crazy but when something could lead to a prison sentence if you do it to a stranger it has no place in a marriage, in my prudish opinion. Ya, I know there’s a difference between jumping off a curb and jumping off a cliff but a lot of couples can’t even agree on how they like their eggs cooked so what makes a woman think a guy’s going to stop when she uses the so-called safe word? Trust? Roger that Captain Obvious. Trust is a wonderful thing but, in my book trust and chains don’t go together like peanut butter and jelly. And in case, that isn’t clear enough, I’d trust a guy to pick me up outside of the Piggly-Wiggly Grocery Store at an appointed time, but shoving who-knows-what up my butt while I'm wearing a blindfold? No way! The next thing you know your partner will bring a gerbil home from a pet store and you’ll be making a trip to ER with an embarrassing story to tell. (I'm not making that up. It's happened in the Department of Weird Sexual Antics.) Oops, I understand from reading movie reviews that Mr. Grey actually asks for permission before escalating each episode of inflicting pain. What a peach of a guy he is. I didn't kill-kill her, officer. She was suicidal and she signed a permission slip for me to help her die.
When I was younger I read the entire two-volume set of The Encyclopedia of Abnormal Human Behavior.
It still sits on my bookshelf. It’s not like my "Victorian-like"
sensibilities would be shocked by anything I’d find in 50 Shades of Grey and while I know it's wrong to write a review of
something I haven't read---sue me!----I also think it's playing with fire to mainstream
S&M and bondage. It also makes me feel old, prudish, and judgmental and
exactly like every stereotype ever captured by a cartoonist’s pen. All I need
now is a rocking chair and a front porch. Am I the only person on earth who
doesn’t get the gravitational pull (or push) towards 50 Shades of Grey?
Speaking of books, I went to a lecture titled Midwinter World Tour. The speaker was a librarian who has a gift for making books come alive. She highly recommended nine books and I sorely needed the recommendations. Why? Because I’ve had the worst luck picking books lately. Four books in a row I didn’t want to finish---but I did and they weren’t worth the time invested. Then I tried a fifth book that was marketed as another Marley and Me, which was a sweet story about a family dog that made me laugh through his puppy-hood and cry when he died at the end. How could I go wrong with another book like that? I thought. But it was nothing like Marley and Me! The dog was a pit bull that had been used to fight and the guy who ended up with him didn’t even want a dog and wasn’t a very likeable character. And I honestly did not need to know the details of how dogs are trained to fight, how they use heavy chains to build up their neck strength, how they tape the mouths shut on the bait dogs and, well, 50 other shades of cruelty and abuse. Dogs and people do not belong in chains while being whipped into submission! There, I said it and I’m not sorry I did! ©
