50 Shades of Legitimazing Modern Day Abuse

Kaitlynn Roach

2/27/2015

English

1886

50 shades of Legitimizing Abuse in Modern Day Society

        On Valentine's day 2015 the notorious film “50 shades of Grey” was released. The parking lot was filled with lines and lines of cars in the cold Michigan February weather. Lines of people stood in the hall waiting for the theater to start seating the audience. All of them were trying to avoid the little kids hyped up on caffeine and excitement from the new Sponge Bob movie that just ended. The air had this feeling of electric excitement. The fan girls were chatting away at a million words per second talking about seemingly nonsense. The amount of people created a humid, stuffy, uncomfortable environment to which most viewers seemed oblivious. The room had a mix of different smells, mostly ranging from the heavy perfumes that the middle aged women wore mixed with the strong smell of popcorn and overuse of salt and butter. The demographics of the audience included some couples, some young women, but mostly groups of middle aged women. These women showed an almost unnatural source of excitement and youth. They were exuding this blind fan girl personality, intent on seeming like someone who breaks the rules to see a “taboo” movie. Some would call these women posers.  Desperate to seem like cool, hip, and sexual rebels. Most of the women were under the impression that this was a movie about a dark sexy kink known as BDSM. The term alone conjured up the feeling of a mysterious dangerous lifestyle with the promise of hotter sex. They all settled into the theater room, and sat down in the dark room.  Everyone in the theater was unaware of how this darkness represented how they were in the dark of what this movie actually stands for.

        BDSM and forms of it started as far back as some of the oldest textual references in the world. From Pompeii to the Kama Sutra BDSM has been preformed for thousands of years. But what is BDSM? In the modern sense BDSM stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism and was first coined in 1969. It's a rather broad term denoting a collection of sexual preferences that involve some form of power play. This is when one of the participants has all of the control and the other fills a much more submissive role. Because of the extreme amount of trust required, these acts need to be ALWAYS consensual. BDSM is so wide ranging that most people practice some form it without even knowing. It can be used to define most interpersonal sexual acts such as roleplaying or restraints, cross dressers, animal players or even those couples looking to add a little more kink to their play.

        Some common misnomers of BDSM are that it's abuse, that it stems from an abusive past, that those who practice BDSM are mentally ill, that BDSM is all about giving or receiving pain, or that you're offending women by practicing it. First of all BDSM is not abuse. BDSM is  always consensual and safe. All acts performed are agreed upon and every act is intended to please the partner, not intentionally harm or use their power to cause the other personal anguish. Secondly, BDSM is a naturally occurring kink. It does not stem from some terrible childhood abuse. “In a phone survey of over 19,000 participants, Australian researchers discovered that BDSM was not a pathological symptom of past abuse -- just a kinky sexual interest that is attractive to around 2% of sexually active individuals.”Thirdly, an individual that practices BDSM is not mentally ill and it should never be assumed that they are. Finally, you're not anti-women if you enjoy the practices. In fact, as a woman, practicing BDSM is a right that should be rejoiced. You have the ability to choose what you like and BDSM is notorious for not following strict gender lines. A woman can fill which ever role she prefers. Not just the submissive role that some enjoy. Women claiming that BDSM is anti-feminist are misinformed because if anything it's the definition of equality.