Fifty Shades of Grey pt3

[babydraco]

The “BDSM” is exactly as disturbingly inaccurate as I expected. Christian is a terrible dominant. The best dominants are people who do not fly off the handle at every little provocation. In fact, most BDSM advice leans more towards “do not ever play when you're angry, always always wait until you've calmed down.” Hitting someone because you've both agreed it gets you off is BDSM. Hitting someone because they made you mad is just assault. It's normal for BDSM relationships to include some form of punishment for disobedience but if your partner lives in fear of making you angry (everything they do is calculated on whether or not it will cause you to fly into a rage and hurt them), can't tell when you're playing or serious and you get angry (genuinely angry) over every little thing, no, you're abusing them. It's the Dom's job to consistently draw the line between "play" ("funishment")and "serious" punishments. One Domme whose blog I read prefers to reserve impact play for sex and punishments for actual infractions involve things like washing her car. When someone wants to be your sub, whatever you do to them in the playroom is a reward, not a threat. If you do use playroom time as punishment, then it should be because you're both getting off on that slightly edgier play. If your sub has repeatedly stated (sometimes while sobbing and/or trying to get away from you) that they genuinely hate being hit and they're thinking of leaving you if you keep hitting them, and you keep using threats of hitting them as punishment...that's not BDSM.

You do BDSM because it turns you both on, not because you've scared, coerced and manipulated someone else into letting you do it to them . And no still means no even after they agree to be your sub.

Another red flag- It's perfectly normal for kinky people to be afraid of the police getting the wrong idea. But if a man's ex sub shows up waving a gun around, trying to kill herself in his apartment, slashing your tires, etc, and he won't call the cops...maybe you should wonder what exactly he's afraid she'll tell the cops when they question her. Oh he knows he broke her and that's why he doesn't want anyone else dealing with it.

James also conflates domination with sadism and submission with masochism. Granted, a lot of people do that but they really shouldn't. Ana doesn't like pain, that's fine, she can submit without it if she finds a dominant who doesn't want to hurt people. She could even find a nice vanilla guy who just prefers to take charge. God knows those are hard to find *sarcasm font*.

Having said that, the only time you do assume the correct demeanor for a sub is in the playroom. It seems that’s the one place where you let me exercise proper control over you, and the only place you do as you’re told.

And in the real world, that it is an absolutely fine way to be a sub. There are extreme 24/7 TPE relationships but most people largely separate out bedroom from workplace/night out with friends, there are even people who only see their play partner when they want to scene together. They meet up for a little bondage and then go on with their own lives until their next scheduled meeting. If Christian really didn't want to do hearts and flowers he could use any number of BDSM match up services to find someone who matches his criteria for personality and looks, who will only come over when he wants them to, not ask inconvenient questions or make too many demands, and who will then leave until he needs them again. All for free, even. Yes, I realize that means we'd have no story except that we could because a relationship like that can still become love, jut love between two people fully aware of what they're getting into.

It's quite common for subs to be aggressive, opinionated, or strong willed outside the bedroom and lots of dominants are actually shy or do not come off as particularly bossy outside of sex. Doms don't usually want to destroy their sub's personality and don't demand their out of bedroom personality conform to their playtime persona. But that's because people usually prefer to play with subs/doms who they actually enjoy being around.

But according to Fifty Shades, love, not real love, doesn't exist in BDSM. Doms can't love their subs, dom and sub have very specific meanings in the Fifty Shadesverse and there is only one way to BDSM. there's a lot of talk about "you're not my sub, you're my girlfriend/wife and I love you". But this actually makes their so called "vanilla" relationship even worse. If they're not Dom/sub, then they're just a husband who treats his wife like he owns her. If they're not D/s, and he's still controlling her then he's just abusing her.

When people do get involved in really intense quasi TPEs, there are lines you try not to cross. Interfering in someone's ability to do their day job? Christian constantly sends her emails during working hours and makes her call him and tell him when she's leaving the building. If he hadn't bought the company, he could easily get her fired. Half the time she spends at work is taken up with wrangling her personal life, which consists of problems directly caused by Christian Grey. Most normal doms, that aren't billionaires, prefer their sub have some sort of outside income. Nobody wants to be scammed into supporting someone financially who just feeds off them in exchange for sex (even guys, because the fantasy of having a kept woman only works if you can actually afford to keep her).

If discipline is a thing, then a lot of times it's slanted to in some way help the sub improve themselves, not to break their personality so they turn into a sex robot. So Christian shouldn't, probably, be doing things that make it harder for Ana to become a responsible adult who can hold down a job.

She thinks a belt spanking is too dark and depraved? Granted, they are very painful (there's even a chart out there of what implement hurts the most-I have the link somewhere). But people hit kids with belts. All the time. All over the world. And in a lot of places, it's totally legal. I don't condone that myself, I'm just saying, belt spanking isn't exactly some terrible, dark, fetish we dare not speak of because it's just too shocking. I can think of several fetishes and kinks that I'm not alone in finding much more disturbing. I mean, if your boyfriend did that out of the blue without the two of you having spent an entire book fighting about his love for hitting women with stuff, then yes, that would be shocking. But as an actual fetish in general, not that horrifying.

Spanking...one of the safest, most popular, most mainstream kinks out there? The thing they make jokes about on family sitcoms? If it was featured on I Love Lucy, it's not that dark or depraved. In f act, most of the actual sex they have in Fifty Shades is not that depraved, it's their relationship that's sick.