BDSM is not abuse (necessarily)

50 shades of grey. Yes, more...

Disclaimer: This entry discusses bdsm, domestic violence and sexual abuse

Now I'm jumping on many bandwagons here, I know. But a friend earlier linked me to this: Fifty Shades book burning call by abuse charity. The speaker points out that Ana is naive, and she is, and that Christian is abusive, which I also think he is. But the text says 'beats her up and does some dreadful things to her sexually'.

But i think the point is missed here. The problem in this book is Christian's CONTROL of Ana. That he buys her expensive presents and gets upset when she wants to refuse them, that he stalks her (tracks her whereabouts from her phone, knows where she lives), that he doesn't want her to visit her family or have time away from him, and when she DOES go, he turns up, on the other side of the country, because he couldn't *bear* to be away from her (at this point they've known each other perhaps a month).

You don't need BDSM for that to happen. Most people in relationships where they are being controlled and manipulated by someone AREN'T in a BDSM relationship. I can think of several examples in my own friends and family, where they are afraid to do X thing because their partner 'wouldn't like it', or they can't talk to X person because their partner 'doesn't like them'. I have friends my partner isn't keen on, but that's fine - SHE doesn't talk to them. It's perfectly ok if I do. Even if she wasn't keen on me talking to them, that would be ok. if i was AFRAID to talk to them because she didn't like it, that wouldn't be ok. And that's what happens in the book. Ana is *afraid* to tell Christian things (several of them inconsequential) because she is afraid of what he will do to her. The way she frames these things is abusive. She is afraid of being 'beaten', and she says this to him. This is a place where a non-abusive man KINKY or not, would say 'ah. some thinking needs to happen here'.

The BDSM community, by and large, is VERY about 'informed consent' (the largest UK-based site for kinky people is called just that. Look on the message board (or do a search) and you will find several posts about consent and how important it is to negotiate boundaries and limits. A BDSM person who crossed these lines would be seen as abusive. In the book, Ana is given a contract and they talk about it, but frankly, the woman's never had sex (or it seems, given any thought to the issue of what she likes - she has never even masturbated). How can she give *informed consent* to any of this? THIS is where the abuse lies, not the individual acts themselves

Many women (and men) like to have 'dreadful' (by which the speaker is talking about being spanked, and cropped and presumably is also including having an experience with ben wa balls (link goes to the wiki page)) things done to them. If they have some idea of what they are talking about, if they feel that they can stop this at the point they want it to, whether this is a single one-off handspank, or spending hours being hit with a crop, then THIS IS NOT ABUSE. This is BDSM. It's a way of having sex, and/or a way of having intimacy. It only becomes abuse when they cannot consent, by way of not knowing what they're consenting to (like ana) or if they are afraid of what will happen to them if they transgress.

The problem with equating these 'dreadful things [being] done to her sexually' with abuse is that we will make hundreds of women and men across the country into abuse victims. We will make people reticent about discussing things that MAY be important to them for fear that they will be seen as abuse victims. This will stop many people into BDSM from seeking therapy, and will stop many people already in therapy from being honest about their lives with their therapist. These problems will be encountered by people talking to therapists who aren't educated about BDSM, and who haven't done any research (or perhaps not enough). Training (in the UK at least) does exist for counsellors and therapists wishing to understand more about alternative sexualities, and for those interested, here is an interesting page on the differences between BDSM and abuse. Many of the 'red flags' are present in this book.

50 shades of gray is a book about a controlling, abusive man who happens to be in to BDSM. It's not a book about BDSM. It does not warrant burning because it has BDSM in it (it warrants burning possibly only because it's terribly written). It is not reflective of the BDSM community as a whole. It is reflective of one unpleasant man who also is into BDSM.