#50sofg

The movie is about to come out so I've been seeing a lot of comments about 50SoG lately and I really really wanted to say this for years, so here goes:

I read the first book before it became this big sensation due to amazon's 'if you liked X, you might like Y' algorithm. Sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong. This time, the algorithm was kinda wrong. I didn't particularly care for it - I love romance and occasionally like erotica/erotic romance, but the book just didn't click for me. It might be the first erotic romance I've ever read where I actually wanted more plot! I mean, to someone who read fanfic for years, that sex stuff was pretty tame and not particularly interesting, so I ended up skimming sex scenes and the characters didn't particularly grab me. 

And then it became an insane hit. And then I started seeing a LOT of hate for it. Tastes are subjective and it's perfectly fine to hate a book, even a book much superior to 50SoG but a number of reasons for hating it really really get on my nerves.

1. 'OMG, this book glamorizes an abusive relationship. All these young women will now go and find themselves an abuser.' What the fucking fuck? It reminds me greatly of patronizing comments in 18th/19th century by critics that novels are bad for young ladies because all the romance and sensationalism in them will influence those feeble lady brains. Or the more recent comments that violent video games will lead to your kids shooting up a school. I find that attitude ridiculously patronizing. Women are capable of distinguishing reality from fiction. Shocking, I know. A young woman, otherwise well-adjusted, is not going to go seeking an abuser just because she read a book about it. Anyone who decides to enter into an abusive/controlling/etc relationship based on a book has other issues going on. Not to mention that many people like fiction PRECISELY because it enables them to experience a fantasy they'd never want in real life.  Romance novels of 1970s-early 1990s were full of stuff that makes anything in 50SoG seem tame, and yet do you think readers of Kathleen Woodiwiss' romances (and those of her successors) all went out to find a pirate/mogul/aristocrat to rape them? Somehow I think not. 

I know moral outrage is a low-hanging fruit, but really! Have some respect for your fellow women. 

2. "This book will give people wrong understanding of BDSM! Woe!" See comment (1). I have zero interest in BDSM (not my thing), but I hardly assume an erotic romance is an authoritative source of knowledge about anything except getting off. So I did not assume 50SoG is a documentary take on that lifestyle, even if I have no specific idea of what that lifestyle is actually like. Once again, anyone with a brain, who has read these books either (a) already knows how BDSM works and knows this book is not accurate (b) does not know how BDSM works and researches BDSM because this book sparked something in them and thus is likely to discover how it works (c) is like me and has zero interest in BDSM and how it works but does not generalize from one novel.  I suppose someone could read it, assume that is how BDSM works, not research it and keep believing this is how it is until the end of days but (a) that person would not be the brightest - anyone who learns facts from novels brings any consequences on their own head and (b) it won't matter since they will never interact with that lifestyle due to lack of interest. Not to mention that novels are not documentaries and 50SoG never does say this is how it always works - this is what these specific, quite fucked up characters do, no more no less.