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There’s a reason 50 Shades sold so well love

The Dilemma I am a woman in my early 20s, about to graduate from university and consider myself very independent with a healthy, normal, happy life. About two years ago I started watching porn. I didn’t even know what to look for, then I began to develop my own tastes and searched for specific things. What worries me is that my searches are for simulations of abuse – something that doesn’t reflect at all what I feel about the subject. I hate patriarchy and rape culture. Another issue that worries me is that now, when having sex with my boyfriend, I invent abuse stories and play them in my head in order to reach orgasm. I don’t like to role play any of those fantasies, I like to feel loved when having sex. I feel like none of this is healthy nor nurturing for my self development. Is it really that worthy of preoccupation?

What you think you know about the world isn’t quite what you do know about the world perhaps?

19 thoughts on “There’s a reason 50 Shades sold so well love”

  1. So Much For Subtlety

    Another issue that worries me is that now, when having sex with my boyfriend, I invent abuse stories and play them in my head in order to reach orgasm.

    Woman thinks she wants a sensitive, caring, effeminate feminist boyfriend. Finds she can only enjoy sex by imagining him as a dominant, abusive male.

    Still waiting for the penny to drop.

    Modern Western civilisation is a long exercise in delusion. We should stop lying to girls.

  2. Tim – “There’s a reason 50 Shades sold so well love”

    i think mariella made that point in her reply.

    “Meanwhile, in a world where Fifty Shades of Grey sold in the millions to readers who wanted to imagine a domineering sexual dynamic they certainly weren’t campaigning for in real life, I think you can relax.”

  3. No time for her non-problem, please just stop bullshiting people are like what you like and dont hate yourself for it.

    Yeesh.

  4. “Woman thinks she wants a sensitive, caring, effeminate feminist boyfriend. Finds she can only enjoy sex by imagining him as a dominant, abusive male.”

    Yes. She’s just a normal healthy woman, who merely needs a good seeing-to, on a regular basis, from a man with some balls. Something you aren’t going to get from a Guardianista boyfriend.

  5. ” I hate patriarchy and rape culture…….I invent abuse stories and play them in my head in order to reach orgasm.”

    Feminist ideology is a social construct and has no basis in reality. Or – feminists are mental.

  6. Plenty of people have fantasies that as fantasies are great but they would be horrified by them in real life.
    Blokes into girls wearing school uniforms, violent sex acts, water sports, fisting etc.
    Fantasies can help a person, with a very trusted partner they could even be acted out with appropriate props, safe word etc.
    The fantasy and the reality can be extremely different. The ‘rape’ fantasy isn’t that uncommon in women, pretty much all of them would be appalled by an actual attack. As would most of their partners.

  7. She hates the patriarchy and rape culture but couldn’t get past 21 before getting hooked on internet porn. And although she claims to want to be loved when having sex, now she has to play back violent porn in her head to have an orgasm.

    No problems between the ears there.

  8. I’d say she’s about five years away from bullwhips and cattle prods.

    I can see her next letter to The Guardian:

    “As I was hanging upside down being whipped by a leather-clad stranger at the local BDSM club last night, I started to reflect on how little love there seems to be in my life. I hate the patriarchy and rape culture in all its forms. Is that why I can’t find a sensitive, caring, normal guy?”

  9. Surprised it took her so long to get onto porn.
    Round here the 11 year olds are watching it. By 14 they are filming it themselves or taking part in it. So the teens say.

  10. Tainted Love: Why is 50 Shades of Grey so Popular?

    There isn’t one reason, of course. For some, prior abuse or victimization will be a factor. But there is a major theme that I have observed that contributes to the tendency for many–even, apparently, a majority–of women to desire and/or submit themselves to this kind of treatment. Namely, our prevailing culture’s secular-feminist ethic makes it taboo for women to want to be vulnerable in any healthy ways. Women are told they must expect to take care of themselves. They must be strong, self-sufficient and powerful. Of course there is nothing wrong–and everything right–with being a capable, competent woman. But many women are taught that they must take this a step further. They can never allow themselves to be vulnerable. They must be competent at all things, and at all costs. They don’t let themselves need anyone, least of all a man. Even in a healthy relationship, there are many women will will not allow themselves to let their guard down, give up control, or open their hearts.

    The problem is that this isn’t natural. The Theology of the Body asserts that an inherent character of femininity is receptivity. That is, the ability to be open, generous, receptive to others. Not dependent, or needy, or a victim, but intimately relational in character. The secular feminist culture pressures women to deny their basic receptivity, but nature will not be denied. The receptive, feminine impulse continues to assert itself, and if it cannot find legitimate expression in healthy relationships, it will assert itself in more insidious ways.

    In essence, many women who have been trained to reject their natural, healthy vulnerability, can only allow their feminine impulse to be expressed by permitting themselves to be dominated. Unable to allow their feminine nature to emerge in any other way, many women either fantasize or actually place themselves positions where they are no longer given a choice in the matter. Domination is, in essence, Satan’s counterfeit of the healthy submission (as opposed to subjugation/dominance) that naturally expresses itself in subtle and psychologically affirming ways in a healthy, nurturing relationship.

    Improperly formed men will seek to dominate women rather than love and serve them, and improperly formed women will seek to be dominated rather that willingly allowing themselves to be loved and served. The popularity of 50 Shades is the bad fruit of a culture that denies the healthy interdependence of men and women and rejects the natural dynamic of mutual submission that evolves when well-formed men and women boldly express their respective masculine and feminine genius in a nurturing, mutually generous relationship with one another.

  11. @Anita Gutwell

    Fucking hell- if I ever need an example of something that is simultaneously terrifying and patronising, I’ll use that link.

    “Imperfectly formed”? Jesus.

  12. Fucking hell- if I ever need an example of something that is simultaneously terrifying and patronising, I’ll use that link.

    My question is this: How much money did that bimbo pay a college to drill that shit into her foot thick skull?

  13. @DtP

    Perhaps we’ve been wrong all this time- some people do need protecting from themselves

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