Fifty shades of consent?

Abstract

Fifty Shades of Grey—often classified as “mommy porn”—is far from a joke when considering its widespread cultural appeal. The trilogy populated the New York Times bestseller list for months and also influenced the sexual entertainment industry. Given its prominence, scholars have sought to understand audiences’ connection to the series, finding that Fifty Shades fans are using the narrative to navigate the post-feminist realities of hook-up culture. In this paper, I argue that existing research on audience engagement with Fifty Shades could go further since these studies are geared toward an audience largely crafted by marketers (heterosexual women who do not practice BDSM in their relationships). Using ethnographic observations and interviews inside a bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism (BDSM) community, I argue that since Fifty Shades continues to frame BDSM as a stigma, it obscures the important ways that BDSM communities work to create a culture of active consent. This is problematic because if audiences are turning to books like Fifty Shades as a form of “self-help,” as post-feminist scholars suggest, Fifty Shades ultimately reifies the fact that consent, negotiation, and communication remain unexamined topics in “vanilla” versions of sex and love.