Fifty Shades Redux

You are totally right about that, and it's not a bad thing - we should look at it as part of a trend of rising acceptance of non-standard sexuality, even if the books and movies themselves are not of great quality. It wasn't so many decades ago that plain vanilla oral sex was considered 'kinky' and not mainstream, but now nobody bats an eye. Overall it's a good thing for common kinks to be 'mainstreamed.'

When the movie Secretary came out, it also drew mostly laughter from kinksters (she's bruised black and blue the morning after ten mild swats of his hand?? Puh-leaze...) Plus, just like in 50 shades, they couldn't have kinky people also be emotionally stable; the girl in the movie was an emotional wreck who cut herself regularly But surprisingly, the bdsm she engaged in with her boss actually made her better and more mentally stable, for a while. So it was presented in a positive light.

Still, though, at some point I'd like to see kinky people in movies or books where their kink isn't their entire personality, and also where they are not inevitably twisted, damaged people. Cuz most of us aren't, we just like pain, that's all...

Burgundy, I agree with your comments, and I too wish the 'damaged and twisted' assumptions could be annihilated. Such opinions do make us doubt our 'normality' at times, but we do like pain, don't we? Before I joined lsf, I read some marvellous and some horrendous books or stories online that both thrilled and sickened me respectively. The good ones were a learning curve, the bad ones horrified me to think that some people enjoyed them! But we are all different and mild to one person may be severe to another and vice versa. Diversity is the thing we must embrace. I enjoyed the way the 50 shades books were written, but obviously not everyone did, again, different opinions. I just want people not to just condemn them! If they don't like them, ok, that's fine, but it is a step closer to acceptance for the wider population as far as I can see.

Wise women prevail.

I confess I haven't read E.L James, put off (I tell myself) by the reports of her novels being badly written, but if I'm honester then my resistance is because I'm envious of her success, and to discover she achieved it with crappily written fare would be...oh God!...just too painful. But we should be grateful she opened up a market for our genre, even if her portrayal of the kink wasn't helpful.

As for 'normality', like Stanley Kowalski I say 'HA!' to the hypocrisy underlying any definition of it. In my personal and entirely questionable view, and with great respect to believers of all kinds, it is religious dogma that has probably done the most damage to human freedom. It runs very deep in our cultures, Euro and US, and often holds us back from loving and accepting each other without judgment.

Meanwhile...

...Viva sore butts!

But who the heck would ever want to be 'normal'? Normal sounds soul-crushingly boring. I think I've had way more fun being abnormal than I ever would have had being normal.


She did. It's so unfair. Every. Single. Author. on this site is a better writer than her, by far. If she posted here, she would get comments that genuinely compliment her on her astounding skill in writing satire.
I get it, though. What people like on here is way too harsh for the vanilla audience that 50 shades attracts. Our daily fare just wouldn't fly among normal people. I've had female friends tell me they read the books and then discussed them with their moms, okay. I would never, ever burden my poor mom with the gruesome knowledge of the sort of things I'm into. My saintly mother deserves to live and die in peace without ever being forced to know what her hell-bound daughter has done.

In the meantime, "holy cow, his engorged shaft was so big - oh my! - and it bounced in and out of me like a horny sea cucumber, oh my god!"
Millions of copies. sigh.

First of all, I believe the books are far more 'suitable' or 'appealing' for females than males. Believe it or not, it was my daughter who prompted me to read the books and lent me her copy of book one, while she read book 2, then book 3 and I confess, I read them in record time as I felt they were compelling. I thought it was hilarious, and stimulating, rather than bad writing! .
My daughter in law was also hooked on the books and my son admitted to starting to read book one, just so that he knew what the fuss was all about. His comment, after only a few chapters when he gave up on it was 'if that's how women think, there's no wonder they are crazy!'
We discussed certain details, in a VERY general way (I know this is maybe not common for a mum and daughter) but we did. The books came out at a time when I had already been experimenting with reading stories, watching videos, and I was exploring my own kink, (but only in my head) so I have to confess that the books helped me along a bit. I am sometimes tempted to confess to my daughter that I am a member of lsf and a writer of spanking fiction, but I have not yet had the courage. I don't know how she would take it.
I remember watching the documentary about the books and the differing opinions portrayed there, the phenomenon is widespread and controversial, and will always be that, but I still believe it has value.

Why do I feel so odd here? My daughter reads Game of Thrones, watches Walking Dead and her favourite movies of the past year were Deadpool and Fury Road... She does dress in leather and has purple hair though, so I guess there is hope for her.
Burgundy:
But who the heck would ever want to be 'normal'? Normal sounds soul-crushingly boring. I think I've had way more fun being abnormal than I ever would have had being normal.

That's interesting, about being different I mean. With the current pace of registration to this site, it won't be more than 5 million years before every last single person on the planet has signed up. Well, not regarding the population growth, give or take a million years. And then we will all be the same! Everybody will go around spanking each other and the sad few that don't will be considered weird by society. Then revenge will be ours... moa-ha-ha!

Ah... 'normophilia' - a kink so boring it doesn't have a single website...!

Years ago, when the Maternal One wasn't so straight-laced, I shared the stories I had written so far with her. She liked them. Now, she's getting really trippy with religion & if anything doesn't fit her increasingly narrow view; she either disregards it or pretends it doesn't exist.

Sorry to hear that

OK, so I assumed (wrongly) that everyone was like me, who would never share information about sex kinks with their parents (or children, but mine are still very young, so it's obviously not even an option). Maybe I'm more prudish than I thought I was. Out of genuine (but admittedly morbid) curiosity, how did that go? What did they say? Wasn't it super-awkward, both right then and in the long run?

Okay, just got home from seeing 'Fifty Shades Darker' and I really enjoyed it. Although rather disappointingly, it had very little 'kink' in it at all, just a very brief, bare bottom spanking and a smattering of BDSM, a brief look around the red room of pain and a few toys, but nothing very sexually exciting. I enjoyed it as a love story with a few references to 'kink', but I still rejoice that it is there at all in mainstream film!