Steele

As promised, I've seen 50 Shades and was very confused by it, at first.  I have NOT read the books, so wasn't sure what to expect.  The story is of a 4.0 gpa grad student with the name Ana Steele.  "Pro-ana" is the phrase for pro anorexia, so I am wondering if the author chose the name to suggest that the main character might have anorexic tendencies of needing a lot of control in her life.  Steele suggests a steel carbine knife blade, strong as steel, used for cutting.

Anastasia meets a very rich and attractive business magnate (I hear the lyric "You are a magnet, and I am steel" playing in my imagination) and though she feels intimidated by him, he is intrigued by her obvious attraction to him.  He thinks he reads people well, but I think she intrigues him specifically because she beguiles him.

He courts her, he swoops her up like a true Dominant would, to protect her from putting herself at risk, ie. being drunk in a public bar.  When she wakes up the next morning in his bedroom he warns her with the sexiest line in the movie, "If you were mine, you wouldn't sit down for a week..."  Later he takes her on date flying her in his helicopter. Ok . . . so we know he is rich, attractive, man who literally can fly, he is so free and self-determined that he can fly, and oh yes, he's a Dominant who likes to protect and spank naughty girls.

If Ana wants to date him she is asked to sign a contract that identifies her as his submissive and lists rules and regulations she should follow or punishment will be earned.  Spoiler alert:  she does not sign the contract, but they continue to play anyway; and she submits to him spanking her even though she does not get turned on by it.

Christian Grey's name suggests that he is in need of redemption, of forgiveness for sins that are hidden, murky and grey.

I couldn't figure out what was going on this movie. Why was she in a relationship with him when she is obviously not into kinky fuckery herself, she is only doing it to stay with him?  Then I realize she is him, except she is a woman.  And women have been the chattel or possession of men for 1000s of years and only recently in the west have women the choice to be completely emancipated.  And Ana is emancipated, she is in complete control of herself and will not accept life on anyone else's terms but her own.  With very few women in history who have had the opportunity to be self-determined she is forging ahead and creating her own version of a free woman.  She is attracted to Christian's freedom she wants it for herself and she refuses to sign his contract naming her as submissive.  She is her own woman.

And that ladies, and gentlemen, is how I was able to make sense of the movie, 50 Shades of Grey.

Grey

Fifty Shades of Grey, the movie is opening tomorrow night.  I want to see that movie.  The trailer looks funny and sexy.   I think a lot of the trouble in the world of relationships comes from people not being honest about what really turns them on, and being afraid to play.

I recently watched the 2 Ted Talks by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love; they were so relevant.  In one she discussed the relationship between art and mysticism.  In the other she mentioned how women have been chattel of men for 1000s of years, and only recently have we become free.  We have no historic examples of free women to model ourselves after, we are creating our lives unfettered from old models.  Actually she said it, as if that was a bad thing, having no examples of free women to take advice from; but I'm choosing to see that it is an exciting birth too, the birth of the free woman after 1000s of years of servitude.  It's remarkable, and that realization is due entirely to Elizabeth Gilbert.

So I can choose to be romantically involved with a dominant man, I being a submissive woman, but by choice rather than the role being forced upon me.  It's wonderful.

That's what I see as the excitement behind  Fifty Shades of Grey the trilogy and the movie.  I've not read the books nor seen the film yet, but that is what I suspect is behind the excitement.

So we'll see. . . I hope to update this blog after I've seen the provocative film.

Church

It turns out that I know some women who go to the church I was brought up in.  I stopped going to that church when I was in grade school but some of my family still attend.  I also know one person who attended my church, but who changed religion when she married, and now divorced she is searching for a new church; she would not go back to our childhood church either.

What I'm noticing with the women who do attend, is that 1. they prosthelytize, 2. they are weirdly dedicated to their church, to the point where it takes precedence over their family of parents and siblings.  In fact the church has come between them and their family of parents and siblings in different ways.  The church emphasizes how people should structure their allegiances, putting god (ie. the church) as the central focus of the home, with men as head of the household, and women should seperate themselves from the family they grew up in to dedicate and find their happiness with their husband and children.

All the women who attend, I've observed that their behavior is similar to how I would describe the sexual game of Male Dominant & female submissive, which is sort of a subcategory of the power division in BDSM.  For years I've noticed how the women I know seem titillated and thrilled by being submissive to their husbands in everyday terms, from small things such as letting their husband choose whether they go out to dinner, and where they go out to dinner, to larger things like letting their husband decide to move away from their family of parents and siblings.  This also means that these women take their husbands sides in conflicts between their parents and siblings.

It seems like a simple-minded, and to those women it is perhaps sexually gratifying, way to live your life but at a terrible cost of alienating kin,  thus putting those women in the situation of having more need to, more likely to, cleave closely to the church for social support.

I don't like it. I think its wrong.  It clarifies why I never liked that church, but further more, maybe it clarifies what I did wrong when I was married.  I can't go into it anymore than this, but I needed to write this down so I can think about it more.

I think if a woman wants to take charge of her sexuality by consciously choosing to be an Anastasia to her Mr Grey that's one thing, but to do so under the guise of following the church is an ugly distortion of religion as a way of abusively controlling people.