Then I got thinking about it. What is 50 Shades of Grey (gray?) but a chronicle of one mans quest to secure a woman’s permission to beat her? It is impossible to listen to women’s stories about their problems with men and not think at some point that some part of them LIKES abuse. I have listened to countless stories over the years. Thousands of hours. As I say from time to time, I am a good listener.
Now, we are supposed on the one hand to decry men who beat their women, but on the other to support those same women when they want to be tied up and hit, controlled and abused. I don’t know what to make of this. The abuse of women is likely as old as humanity, and we assume that it serves no purpose, that no sane woman would seek it out, but then you have the sales for 50 Shades.
One woman I was talking to who had read it 2-3 times, who obviously related to it in important ways, said that she liked how Christian (can this name be a mistake?) would give the girl unlimited funds to go shopping, and then when he would abuse her, she had his undivided, complete attention. This was what she liked: how much attention he lavished on her. This was her fantasy: to be the absolute center of attention, to be his whole world for a time. It was not about the pain, but his focus on her.
Now, I don’t know if he was serious or not, but one of the respondents to the post I mentioned at the top said that in his travels through Africa a common editorial question from women was “how do I know my man loves me if he doesn’t beat me?” Obviously, men run the papers in a lot of these countries, and this is no doubt a question they would love in the public domain, but is it impossible that this was something on women’s minds? I introduce, again, the sales of 50 Shades. 100 million copies. A movie. The series is on par with Harry Potter and Twilight, with virtually all sales made to women, and the author a woman.
Again, all this relates to the idea of hierarchy, dominance and submission. All of these posts started as another post I still haven’t gotten to, but will at some point. Do women need to feel their man is in charge, and is this need driven from instinct? Is Feminism in some respects angry and aggressive not because this is false, but precisely because it is TRUE?
Are things like BDSM emerging into the public domain precisely because egalitarianism, the ethic that everyone is equal to everyone, is unnatural? Clearly, historically, all attempted egalitarian projects have ended in radical inequalities. Did human nature simply take over? Is this one idea we can and should add to the mix? Do we simply displace one inequality with another? Is this need always satisfied over some time horizon, in some way, and simply changed from blatant to obscure? Are our true motives occulted in self delusion and deception?
Can we see in rising interest in Satanism not just emotionally clouded reactions to religious hypocrisy-and of course the equally emotionally clouded desire to attack religion itself–but also a powerful symbol of inequality itself? Is Satan not a powerful symbol of power–of dominance and submission–itself? Does this interest meet the need which is thwarted by our daylight preoccupations, with our allegedly innocent and dispassionate concerns for erasing power relationships? I think so.
And for what are we erasing them? What is the purpose of life which is best served by this obsession? What do the people in an absolutely equal industrial/post-industrial society do all day? What passions stir them? Who are they when they are alone? What fills their minds? What constitutes beauty, and how can beauty exist when the concept of ugliness has been destroyed?