No one is confusing Fifty Shades of Grey for great literature, but the Twilight fanfic certainly has proven itself a (particularly tiresome) pop culture phenomenon since its 2011 publication.
The insipid defense of Fifty Shades of Grey as a bit of harmless pornographic fun—or even a coup for women’s liberation—is competing now with the recent and strong wave of criticism against the eroticization of violence in the days before the movie release. Such responses as the 50 Dollars not 50 Shades hashtag campaign are attempting to raise awareness on domestic violence and garner support for women’s shelters instead. Tellingly, the two stars themselves have expressed their discomfort with the film in their underwhelming press tour.
Before evaluating pornography that romanticizes abuse, let’s first review some unsettling statistics on domestic violence in the United States:
- Almost 1 in 4 American women have experienced violence from an intimate partner.
- 84% of spousal abuse victims and 86% of dating partner abuse are women.
- Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States, which is greater than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.
- 1 in 3 female murder victims were murdered by intimate partners.
- 2 in 3 female victims murdered by firearms were murdered by intimate partners.
The rise in pornography and the rise in domestic violence are two social problems that seem to grow concurrently. Pornographic material is a major catalyst for society’s objectification of women. Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior that degrades, isolates, and controls a family member, or in other words, objectifies them by denying them their personal dignity and freedom. Just to clarify the cause-effect relationship, not everyone who indulges in porn will turn into an abuser. However, the psychological damage caused by porn can mean one less moral barrier in perpetrating or accepting abusive behavior.
One of the more disturbing trends of domestic violence is the chronic underreporting by its victims, which is where the popularity of books like Fifty Shades of Grey comes in. Underreporting of domestic violence is another part of the nightmarish labyrinth created by the abuse. Violence in families—and by extension, societies—creates a cycle of behavior. For example, children who suffer from or witness domestic violence in the home are at a greater risk of growing up to consider that behavior the norm.
Like the cause-effect complexity of domestic violence itself, a victim’s refusal to report domestic violence should not be oversimplified; a sense of protectiveness towards the abuser, self-blame and doubt as a result of a long-standing pattern of systemic verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse, personal humiliation, the desire to reclaim a sense of strength and self-sufficiency, and fears for safety all factor into the problem.
What is poisonous about the influence of Fifty Shades of Grey is that it portrays clinical signs of strategic, dehumanizing abuse dressed up as a romance. The hero perpetrates abuse such as stalking, initiating isolation, controlling behavior and intimidation, sexual degradation, and physical assault while the heroine’s behavior is typical of abused women. She suffers from an increasing sense of disempowerment, depression, loss of identity, and constant perceived threat. Convincing her that she has accepted the abuse willingly, and that her continued presence is the hero’s only liberation from misery are both typical layers of complex abuse.
An August study published in the Journal of Women’s Health found that women who had read the series were more likely than non-readers to have experienced abusive behavior from an intimate partner and to have engaged in other risky behaviors. According to the study, this correlation would indicate that the novel has the potential to normalize and even romanticize violence that women are experiencing in their own relationships, with serious real-world consequences:
In particular, attention must be given to the possibility that normalized representation of abuse in Fifty Shades illegitimizes the experiences of women suffering from abuse in their own relationships and possibly hinders their ability to recognize abuse when it is occurring.
You can draw your own conclusions about what damage might be caused in teens and young women still developing their conceptions about personal boundaries and romantic expectations.
The acceptance of Fifty Shades of Grey in our culture should not be dismissed with a mere eye roll about “mommy-porn.” Any factor that contributes to normalizing abusive behavior in any way directly contributes to the problem itself. To eroticize violence and abuse against women through entertainment is a particularly insidious poison that needs a real antidote. People need to react to the widespread acceptance of Fifty Shades of Grey as they should react to abusive behaviors in real life: with horror for the acts of abuse and a call for healing for both abusers and victims. If the toxic effects of abuse and objectification are ignored, minimized or dismissed as other people’s problems, the tendency to victim-blame women will only continue.
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