50 Shades is absolute garbage but at least it made BDSM go mainstream, right?

Let’s take it back to a time when E.L. James wasn’t relevant, when grey ties only conjured images of Sears in your mind, and when the music video for Rihanna’s song “S&M” was just released, quickly restricted by Youtube and banned in 11 countries for its “inappropriate content.”

I mean…

No one was ready to openly admit their sexual fantasy outside of their circle of close friends, especially if it involved equipment that wasn’t pink fuzzy handcuffs or a nurse’s outfit. As far as we all knew, wanting anything kinkier than that was just straight-up weird.

When 50 Shades of Grey came on the scene, initial shock set in everywhere and literally everyone was blushing. I vividly remember just after the book was published, I was in a coffee shop eavesdropping on a group of women whispering about the “scandalous scenes,” not in disgust but rather in hushed excitement. As though enjoying the book was in itself contraband.

The truth is that accepted or not, BDSM communities have always existed. Underground societies thrived for decades undetected and both brought together like-minded people and provided sex education.

One such group, The Eulenspiegl Society (TES), has been active since 1971. They probably have given more support and information to their members than your shitty little sex ed class would ever cover.

So ultimately, the issue for me isn’t with the content. It’s with goddamned E.L. James.

Her literal copy-and-paste method for entire scenes is heinous. I can’t actually count how many times I reread Ana saying “holy crap,” or Christian asking Ana if she knows how beautiful her body is. Like bro.

When she did stray from her shallow bank of underwhelming phrases, her choice of descriptive nouns was, in all honesty, fucking strange. Example A: Ana “erupted” multiple times throughout the book, or my personal favorite, “detonated.” Girl r u ok???

 

The movie was slightly better — Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan surely made the most out of the material they were working with, Johnson naked 99.9 percent of the time and Dornan clean-shaven, yet dirty-thrusting. Though, I have to admit even I experienced a lot of discomfort watching it:

But it wasn’t just me. It was everyone.

Immediately after the premiere, it was obvious that despite her dumpster-fire verbiage, E.L. James opened a door no one else dared to open. She managed to normalize a group and a practice that until recently had not been acknowledged, let alone discovered by the mainstream.

Because of her, couples began experimenting more, sales in sex toys skyrocketed nationwide and it’s actually become normal to talk about spanking your bae.

And though BDSM experts argue that “50 Shades” isn’t an accurate representation of a dom/sub relationship, it did spark a conversation that I know I’d like to join.