Sex Freedom & BDSM

Fifty shades of Grey

While media and social columns report that women, girlfriends and wives are often abused, raped or killed, on the other side, they signal the success of the book “Fifty shades of Grey” in which, on the contrary, it is spoken of female desire to be submissive, where publishers have vied to have the exclusive. “Submission” that, in this case, is synonymous with violence and a couple of steps before the ego killing. The echo of the discussions around this best-selling book came to us, and the Mondadori publishing grabbed this first part of the hot trilogy of the author E. L. James, with the Italian version to be released in a few days. For some, this is a post-pornographic novel that uncovers the hidden desires of American mothers (or mommy-porn, the epithet used in USA), a generation of women now conscious and free to say whatever they want. The Marquis De Sade and the evolution of the female emancipation have even been mentioned, also if the plot of the book simply refers to Anastasia, a young girl who falls into the clutches of Grey, a man in career rich and handsome, who, however, derives sexual pleasure only by strong practices of subjugation and BDSM, where he is the dominant subject. The facto is that the helpless and innocent virgin, initiated to such practices, rather than give up and flee, she plays the game and likes to be submissive, repeatedly and willingly getting in what she calls the “red room of pleasure“, but then the situation reverses. The subordination is reversed and the total submission becomes ransom (?). This has sparked criticism and fantasies of feminist or post-feminist with some who have transposed this story as a demonstration of their emancipation, as saying that the act of submission is a free choice of themselves and therefore an act of freedom, “cogito ergo sum”.  The debate sparked by the book can be summarized by Katie Roiphe’s words, the editorial Newsweek writer: <the submission is a women’s dream because these fantasies give a relief and a moment of escape from the hard work of being equal to men >. Some psychologists and ethologists speak of a return to origins, the longing of a brutal male as it was in prehistory or, instead, a simple choice of an “animal-woman” towards an “animal-male”, in order to ensure what the evolution asks: genetic heritage, protection and sustenance. At this point, we should understand whether this voluntary decision to be sexually “subjected” to man, it is to say, if this submission, which in most cases is only a fantasy or perversion of the imagination, and that from involuntary becomes voluntary and premeditated, is then indeed a moment of emancipation and redemption for women or if, instead, is just a way to release ancestral sexual inhibitions, with the pleasure to infringe the prohibitions. The submissions has a double face, is slippery and can turn into a violence alibi. Furthermore, where there is subordination can be no full freedom. This doesn’t means that, like man, woman can be dissolute, licentious, fond of pleasure without limits and give vent to erotic fantasies, even if this has always been stigmatized by the moralists of turn. Myself, personally, beyond such a fuss, am more favorable to this conclusion because I’ve always been an avid supporter of free sex with no taboos, and in this case even this discussion would have no sense, because we will speak nevermore about dominant or submission, weaker sex or perversion, but simply and solely of SEX, done as anyone likes to do it, and not for this tried and convicted. But I realize that we are very, very far from such a conception.