50 Shades of Abuse

So the 50 Shades movie is released this week. Women around the world are getting wet in the knickers at the thought of actually seeing the badly-written sex brought to life on the big screen, and how Christian Grey's jeans actually sit on his hips.

I personally won't be seeing it. Much as I couldn't get past the second page of the book (the WORST published fiction I've ever read, and worse than a lot of the unpublished fan fiction in the Pit of Voles) I have read a lot of articles and blogs that take the trilogy apart chapter by chapter detailing not just the bad grammar, worse sex descriptions and passages that pretty much rip the source fiction (Twilight) off shot-for-shot. And the one thing I take away from it is this - what is described between Ana and Christian is abuse. Pure and simple.

Having sex with someone against their will is rape. There's no other word for it. Forcing them to do sex stuff they don't want to do is sexual assault.

Threatening to hit a woman, not because it's part of a sex game but because she has pissed you off, is domestic violence.

Imploring someone to stay with you, not see their friends etc etc because you don't know what you will do without them is emotional blackmail.

Monitoring emails/phones to see what your girlfriend is doing and who she is talking to is weird and stalkerish. I know the CIA does it, but that doesn't make it right.

Christian does all of those things on multiple occasions in the books.

But Ana's no better. She's a mean girl dressed up as a nice, normal, 'plain-Jane' type. She's shitty about any woman within a three mile radius, she has no sympathy for the mentally ill and she too emotionally blackmails her way to "true love".

I understand that not everyone sees the sinister side of 50 Shades. I hope those people don't ever get into a relationship with an abuser, because I don't see a happy ending in their future. However, how people don't recognise the above as wrong and not sexy astounds me. Maybe I just have my eyes open to that stuff. Or maybe I don't need to drop myself into a fantasy to get my rocks off. But if I did, it would be someone who loves me for who I am, not someone who tries to make me "better" (again, a big part of these books). Someone who doesn't command me to eat when I don't want to and threatens to smack my arse in the middle of a restaurant if I don't. Someone who doesn't go mad if I choose to go topless on the beach because other people can see.

So don't go and see it - stop giving money to EL James and her badly-written abuse-fest of a book series. Donate that money to a domestic abuse charity instead. You will feel better for doing it.