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Sunday, March 15, 2015

I have finally got to know Mr Grey with his 50 Shades!



To me, the headline I have given this is funny, because in my country we call your sunglasses your shades.

I have been a long time getting to know what all the fuss was about. When the three books were released by author, E.L. James, "The 50 Shades of Grey," a great stir was caused among women, particularly of middle age, so I thought it was some kind of idealised love story. I bought the series for my wife so that she might read through them to satisfy herself, but she didn't explain much to me, nor was I particularly interested.

Now a movie has been released, so I got to watch it and I had an Ah Ha! moment. If you have not read the books or seen the movie I am not going to spoil the story line for you, but it is fair to say that the movie appears under the classification of BD, DS, and S&M. That's Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochisim. This is where in a relationship between two people one is the dominant and the other the submissive. I have no doubt that there are cases where the woman is the dominant one, but we seem to be dealing with cases where the man is dominant and the woman is submissive.

I wateched the movie and immediately concluded that the movie must be a pale version of the books as it was apparent to me that care was being exercised to avoid a triple XXX rating.

It occurred to me that a very long time ago I had sat through a similar film with a strong male character, also named Mr Grey, and his relationship with his secretary. The film was called simply, "Secretary."

When we enter into subjects under the above-noted headings we enter into a very strange world indeed where people like me might jump to the conclusion that this is all some sick shit, but I am reigned in by the number of serious scholary papers on the subject. Basically we see one set of people who have the need to control others exercise that control over, hopefully, willing subjects, and probably even better would be to control unwilling individuals. Men pay women to beat them up, and women go back time and again to subject themselves to thoroughly sadistic men to be physically degraded and seriously hurt.

Here is where I have a problem: on the one hand women of the world are calling for men to stop violence against women. yet, a whole cult following of women seem to exist for subject matter of this kind. If you want to know how many films of this type for general release there are you need only Google the subject S&M films. I found thirty-three titles. However, these will all be sanitized entertainment films, for the real thing you need to go to a sex store. A "friend" offered to show me one such film and after only a few minutes I said, sorry, I have to go.

I consider myself to be a strong and robust man but images of what people do to get off sexually I find so disturbing, that I simply don't want to know. I suppose the thing that would make it alright would be if it all takes place between willing adult participants who exercise free will.

I somehow doubt that in every case. Where there is one person who is drawn into such activity against their own free will the experience must be so horrific to supersede regular-style torture. That cannot be acceptable by any standards.

Copyright (c) 2015   Eugene Carmichael