Saturday, July 26, 2014

The Real Reason "50 Shades of Grey" is so Popular

I think women gravitate to 50 Shades of Grey (and other similar erotica) because they haven't embraced the proper roles in sex and marriage. Feminism has taught them that they can never, ever, in any fashion submit to a man...unless it's during sex, if that sort of thing is their cup of tea. Anything goes in the bedroom. Feminism told them that it's degrading to be a stay-at-home mom or to submit to a husband or to want a lot of children. They should never have sex with their husbands unless they feel like it. They should never let a man make decisions for their family. But having a stranger use and abuse you sexually? Well, that's empowering, don't ya know.

The other factor at play is that women are most attracted to men when men are most masculine. It's masculine and attractive to women for men to be in charge, confident, powerful, and robust. But feminism taught men to suppress these characteristics and taught women that any man who shows them is chauvinistic and oppressive. Thus men have learned to become passive and women have learned to hate and fear masculine men. 

In much of life, the feminization of men may seem to turn out fine for both sexes. We live in a culture where we don't often need a man to fight invaders and women can do most jobs. If the gender roles are rather blurred or even reversed, we can still survive. But in the bedroom, women have a hard time being turned on by a wuss. During sex, the natural differences of men and women are more noticeable and important. When that difference isn't emphasized, it makes arousal more difficult. Women are turned on by a man's more masculine traits. Opposites attract.  

When women find their sex life hum-drum because they either have a feminized man or have effectively emasculated him by forcing him to bow to their demands in order to get sex, they often get excited at the thought of being dominated. Erotica, like 50 Shades, appeals to their innate desire to feel a man's power and leadership, to be led and give up control. They may or may not realize it, but I think this is, for many women, the issue. They play a game of make-believe in their minds because feminism has told them it's taboo in real life. 

Of course, the male dominance in 50 Shades of Grey is a twisted and warped version that is debased and harmful. But in a culture of women yearning inside to find some semblance of real masculinity to submit to, it still appeals to them deep down. They don't have the real thing, so they fall for twisted counterfeits that have small glimmers of the masculinity they desire. They're like hungry people eating out of garbage cans, not realizing that they've ignored the gourmet restaurant down the street.

17 comments:

  1. Good insight. I think you have it figured out. It is all a really sad reflection of what we are now.

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  2. Oh yes! Excellent analysis here! Love the last line. As a wife for 25 years and mother to 8, I'm notorious for going against the tide of feminism, but this may be due to being from the last generation to grow up with gender roles still in tact. My husband, however, raised by a single mother, did not escape the emasculation of the 70s and 80s as he came of age and our marriage has suffered considerably because of it. The current book, "The Married Man's Sex Life Primer" is very good at addressing what went wrong in the dance of masculine and feminine energies and their value in sexual arousal and fulfilment in committed relationships. Readers can find answers to what plagues them today if they are willing to look to the past without poo pooing the importance of gender roles and male/female energy integration.

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  3. Excellent comments!! The last sentence is so powerful, and spot on!

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  4. Correct in that the books do not depict a healtby relationsbip. I'm curious as to what your understanding of BDSM is? What are your thoughts on it? These books created a huge backlash in the BDSM community for a few reasons you stated bere. And justly so. I doubt the film will do much better. I find amusing and disturbing that people are going to sites like Fetlife seeking their own "Mr Grey" without knowing anything about this lifeztyle. I tried reading the first book, couldnt finish it. Sure as hell doesnt represent my 24/7 D/s relationship.

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    1. My thought on "BDSM" is that it lumps a lot of things together that do not go together. Mild bondage and domination, when done as part of spicing up a marriage and agreed to by both parties, is perfectly fine. Mild pain infliction (such as playful spanking) can be arousing and non-damaging. However, when these things become harmful (whether emotionally or physically), become a fetish (where one has difficultly being aroused without them), are not done willingly by both individuals, or take place outside a marriage relationship, they are wrong. Thus, one cannot make a blanket statement that BDSM is wrong. Some things which could be classified as BDSM are simply fun activities for married people. At the same time, what most people think of when you say "BDSM" (unmarried couples engaged in kinky, pain-inflicting activities as a fetish) is wrong and unhealthy.

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    2. I appreciate your response.Thank you. There are various definitions to what BDSM is, even in the community. Everyone has their own views on it. :) Personally I think the acronym is intentionally broad to make room for lots of different ideas. I'm married to my Dominant, but our husband/wife relationship comes first. Interesting discussion.

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  5. As a Christian, I find books like 50 Shades a problem because of the unhealthy and perverted view of sex and what sex should be. I have not read the book but I've heard too much about it to ever be interested in the content. I don't think your assessment is necessarily accurate about why women are interested in this book. You think women are sexually dissatisfied due to an unhealthy view of submission? It seems to me that you may have an unhealthy view too. You seem to think a woman's place is to be a stay at home Mother, pumping out a bunch of children, who is to be silent about decisions in her family, and have sex based on the desires of her husband rather than on any of her own feelings. To the contrary, a husband should not expect a wife to have sex with him if she does not want to. Why would any person expect to have sex with someone who doesn't want to? I think the reason most women don't want to have sex is that their husband doesn't give them pleasure. If sex is only about the husband having pleasure and the wife is to do her "duty" without pleasure - both parties have been misinformed and jipped!!! Women, the vast majority, have failed to get what they want and need during the sexual experience because they don't know enough to ask, and men don't know what to do because they won't ask. It's not like in the movies or T.V. and hey, if a man won't ask for directions while driving, how much more so will it shake his confidence as a man to ask for or receive directions in the bedroom. Men believe what satisfies a woman is the body part God gave him, if it works to his satisfaction it must work for her right???--- Wrong, Wrong, Wrong... Most women do not receive satisfaction this way. People, when not satisfied by the sexual partner God gave them, sinfully look to other ways to be satisfied whether is is in porn, books like 50 shades, or other adultery. It is not about submission per se. Anything outside of God's design can be a problem. It has nothing to do with whether you stay at home, have lots of children, or anything else. I have no desire to be a stay at home mother, and I am glad I don't have to be because of the feminist movement. I am very happy to have the 2, almost grown, children God gave me and I am also happy I do not have to bear any more. I believe that the decision making process in a home is made as a partnership, each person in the marriage has equal right to input and to be heard and respected. I believe that healthy submission in a marriage means that we are partners in life, each in equal position before God but where the rubber meets the road and we don't agree, the husband takes the pole position. If the woman accepts the idea that submission is inferiority then she will eventually find that marriage is only a duty, a misery to be endured, and become bitter and resentful. God did not call us to be inferior. God did not say that women need to be barefoot and pregnant. The Proverbs 31 woman didn't just sit at home with her knitting, nor did Deborah, a judge over all of Israel. The argument over working versus stay at home moms has no business in the discussion of God ordained sex and we must be careful as Christians in judging why a woman works or why she chooses to stay at home. There is no hard and fast rule about this in the bible so, be careful in substituting your judgment for God's.

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    1. "You seem to think a woman's place is to be a stay at home Mother, pumping out a bunch of children, who is to be silent about decisions in her family, and have sex based on the desires of her husband rather than on any of her own feelings."

      Not exactly. I definitely don't think women should be silent about decisions in their families. I think husband and wife should make decisions together as much as possible. See this post for a discussion of how my husband and I make decisions together.

      I also don't think women's pleasure should be neglected during sex or that sex is just for the men. In the other hand, however, I don't think women should regularly say no just because they aren't feeling aroused or wanting sex at the moment. See this post for more on that.

      As for your suggestion that submission is inferiority, that couldn't be further from the truth. Women are not inferior and being submissive to a husband does not make them inferior in any way.

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    2. To further answer your questions about my views on marriage and women working outside the home, I wrote a new post you may be interested in. http://lindsays-logic.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-vital-importance-of-wife-and-mother.html

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  6. Everybody's taking this way too seriously. That book was a flash in the pan and will disappear the same way The Da Vinci Code did (or the Purpose-Driven Life, for that matter). Plenty of social media and promotion can do wonders. "It's hip, cool, and I've gotta try it too."
    From what I've seen it's puerile and silly, but like Michael Jackson is gone (and e-cigarettes, cupcake stores and flashy bikes some day) so too will this absurd and unreal book vanish.

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  7. Get your definition of feminism straight and then write about it. You went to college because of feminism, you can have a blog because of feminism, you can choose when to get married and to whom because of feminism, what's so bad about it? Real feminism will never say a woman is better than a man, real feminism says men and women are different but their differences make them complement each other in order to be a team, a team with equal rights for both members. If you want to be a stay-at-home mom, that's fine, and if you want to have a job and stay single, that's fine too! and you have the options you have because of feminism. Please try to understand the movement more before talking about it, and if you hate feminism so much, then stop your daughters from getting a college education and let men disrespect them, do not let them vote or dream of getting jobs and teach them to be treated as properties, because that's what life was like for women before feminism.

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    1. Feminism may have started out as a movement to gain equality for women, but it has moved far beyond that. People define it as they want it to sound, but they use it far differently. Feminism today is not the same thing as it was 40 years ago.

      Feminism today says it just wants equality, but it berates men for being men, sees chivalry as being sexist, claims there is a "gender wage gap" when it's just the different choices men and women make, tells SAHMs that they are less than women with a career, punishes little boys for being boys in schools when they are naturally fascinated with guns and turn a PopTart into a shape that looks like one, tells women that they can't be equal until they can kill their children via abortion and have sex without consequences like men, etc. In short, feminism is no longer about equality, even if it once was.

      I'm all for women having equal rights, but that is not the same thing as women being exactly like men. Trying to redesign society to erase any and all gender differences by pushing men and women into unnatural molds and ignoring their inherent differences is NOT equality, it's social engineering. And it's bad for everyone.

      See this blog post for more http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/04/22/christian-women-feminism-is-not-your-friend/

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    2. How intriguing this topic is... I am here because tonight, I heard my wife mention this book to my son's teenage-female friend. I felt a bit disappointed in her judgment to open up this topic to someone I consider a child. It makes me wonder what this book has done to her mind, or where her mind was to begin with. I stand strong in my moral beliefs, and try not to judge, lest I be judged. But I think the book "50 shades..." is a window into the hearts and souls of today's woman and allows people to view how so many woman have lied about their repressed feelings through silence and are disingenuous about so many feelings. We see these revelations all the time in the media. Men have been truthful about their darker aspects for years. I say that if you want to partake in your guilty thoughts and fantasy secrets - be honest and fend for yourselves and not dupe some poor guy into taking care of you while you lust for every guy with a wry, slick smile behind your husband's backs. Likewise, if your husband is a brute, he should be kicked to the curb as well for someone who is willing to listen to and validate your needs as an individual.

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    3. Here's a blog post I wrote about the problems with feminism and how today's feminism is not about equality or choices for women. It's about female domination and about erasing the innate differences between men and women.

      http://www.lindsays-logic.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-problem-with-feminism.html

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    4. Actually none of what you said is true. My great grandmother went to college (I'm 28), so did both my grandmothers. Obviously that was well before feminism. Women from rich families have received education for centauries. My sister just read a book in renaissance literature written by a lady who was their equivalent of college educated. Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and the like obviously weren't written by uneducated women either.

      Women get disrespected a lot more now then they ever have been. If you impregnated a women you were not married to in the 1700's, your father or brother had the full right to challenge then man to a dual. No the guy can just walk away. Or demand you have an abortion. It used to be ladies' dignity was defended. Now women get pressured into dancing around practically naked on stage if they want to be a musician. There was a time when men would be kicked out of decent society for calling women his hoes and bitches. No men make millions of dollars for doing it. Women used to be treated like goddesses in song and poetry, no women are just treated like a source of sex.

      You should read some stuff written before 1940. Feminist have a bunch of their own propaganda.

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  8. I don't understand why so many Christian Blogs are giving this movie so much time and notoriety? I hope you don't mind me asking? I just don't understand why is everyone talking about it, all it is doing is giving publicity to an evil movie.

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    1. I actually wrote this before I even knew there was a movie in the works. I don't keep up with that sort of thing. I wrote this in a comment on another blog about the books. It got a lot of attention, so I figured it must be striking a chord with people and posted it on my blog also.

      I certainly don't want to advertise the movie, but I do want to warn people about the content. Maybe analyzing why women are drawn to it can help them see that they don't need a book or a movie about an unhealthy and immoral sexual relationship to meet their innermost desires. Instead, they should strive to work on their own marriages to make them healthier and more satisfying to those inner longings.

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