Collectivity
by Lindsay Schrupp
I watched 50 Shades of Grey last night, and all I could think about through that long, sloppy, and ultimately failed orgasm was Gigli.
Oh, you remember Gigli. How could anyone forget Ben Affleck as a disgruntled hornball in a leather jacket who holds hostage and verbally abuses a differently-abled man? Or Jennifer Lopez as the lesbian turned straight by Affleck? That one is seared into our collective memory forever.
Unsurprisingly, Gigli walked straight into a Sandlot-style smack-down of criticism following its release, including disapproval of its anachronistic plot device of ‘curing’ a gay person into becoming straight. People were like, “It’s 2003! We know Mel Gibson just won a People’s Choice Award so no one is going to look back on this year as a landmark time for progress, but… seriously?”
Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic romance novel by E. L. James that originated as fan fiction for Twilight enthusiasts, is now bringing its Gigli-inspired non-conventional sex shaming bullshit back to the big screen. Just in time for V-Day.
Mr. Grey Just Up And Decided To See You Now
50 Shades tells the story of Laney Boggs from She’s All That, err… I mean the young, white, ponytailed virgin known as Anastasia Steele (played by Dakota Johnson), who falls in love with the closeted BDSM practitioner, Christian Grey (played by Jamie Dornan). Christian has a ‘damaged’ past that leads him deep into the Conradian heart of kinky darkness with a Regis Philbin haircut to boot. The story revolves around Anastasia’s descent into Christian’s kinky underworld, with her playing the Submissive and Christian as the Dominant. Throughout the film, Anastasia works ridiculously hard to ‘cure’ Christian of his interest in kink through a combination of dopey eyes, sad faces, and compelling arguments, like “can’t you just not?”
Now, pretend you’ve never heard of 50 Shades for a moment. Journey deep, deep down into the recesses of your televised memory (if you hit Cool As Ice you’ve gone too far– get outta there). Try to picture the last BDSM practitioner you’ve seen characterized on screen. It’s probably not an Oscar-worthy moment.
“Kinky people are really discriminated against because of the misconceptions out there,” said Susan Wright, spokesperson for the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), over the phone. “We were considered mentally ill. We had to fight that misconception.”
NCSF has been leading the charge for years to dispel that myth that kinky people are mentally-ill or somehow damaged. “Millions of people do this,” said Wright. “Some people are just wired to like intense sensation. Some people like extreme sports and some like extreme sex. Look at Christian Grey—he had a hard life, right? 50 Shades really repeats that tired old stereotype. But that’s the romance novel trope; the wounded hero has to be saved.”
50 Shades might be able to play the “romance novel trope” card to get away with advancing the denigrative stereotype that an interest in BDSM, kink or fetishes is derivative of childhood abuse or qualifies someone as mentally-ill, but really this misconception is much bigger than one giant ejaculation of box-office garbage. It speaks to a larger issue of oppression and vilification of non-normative sexual expression by larger social and political structures, including psychiatric and medical institutions, mainstream media and pop culture.
In a 2008 survey conducted by NCSF, 26 percent of nearly 3,000 kinky people reported being discriminated against because their SM, leather or kink fetish or perceived fetish. Six percent reported a loss of child custody, 20 percent reported a loss of job or contract, and an additional 13 percent reported a loss of promotion or demotion due to their sexual expression or a perception thereof. NCSF hit a landmark moment in 2010 when the American Psychiatric Association agreed to change the diagnostic codes for BDSM, fetishism, and transvestic fetishism in the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) for 2013. This pathology had real repercussions for kinky people–particularly when used in court battles over child custody.
Does any of this sound familiar? It should. NCSF is up against a battle that LGBT and queer activists have been fighting for decades. In fact, it wasn’t until 1974 that the listing of homosexuality as a mental disorder was removed from the DSM-II, and only to be replaced by ego-dystonic homosexuality until its removal in 1987. …