Blast from the Past: 50 Shades of Grey.

A post from August 5, 2012:

Here we go again; the denegration of women's reading

To be clear; I have not read 50 Shades of Grey yet. I have been too busy getting Dracula Unleashed (Book Three of the Blood Wings series) into some kind of order. But naturally, I have an opinion about the nasty, denigrating comments about books that women like to read.

I have touched on these themes before in my Defense of Twilight posts, (here, here, here, here, here), but they bear repeating.

In no particular order, I want to point out the following things.

1. Women are not stupid.  
 Some critics think that the people who read 50 Shades are going to jump right in and start doing unsafe sexual practices, such as untutored BDSM. There are millions and millions of people tying each other up and spanking like crazy without having been to a single workshop at a leather conference and somehow they survive. Guess what. We do know how to do research.

2. Women are able to separate fantasy from reality.  
 Teenagers who watched the Batman series in the late 1960s did not try climbing up buildings crouched over with a single rope.

3. Women are not illiterate.
50 Shades is considered to be horribly written, with cliches and redundant phrasing. Here's a little rebuttal from Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing, pg. 129:

Women always write in the vernacular....

In the vernacular, it is...hard to be "classic", to be smooth, to be perfect. The Sacred Canon of Literature quite often pretends that some works can be not only atemporal and universal (that is, outside of history, a religious claim) but without flaw and without perceptible limitations. It's hard, in the vernacular, to pretend this, to paper over the cracks. It's also hard to read the vernacular as Holy Writ...

Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art.

4. Women's sexual fantasies and arousal are important.
Portnoy's Complaint is considered Great Literature. Susie Bright gets assassination attempts. Say no more.



5. Ultimately, it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS what a woman reads.
Adult men can read comic books, war novels, spy novels - anything they want, really. Because it is none of our business what they read. Same for women.


Will I read 50 Shades of Grey? After I meet my deadline, for sure. I'm sure parts of it will annoy me and others will get my motor runnin'.

Just like any other novel.

Hafiz break!

I'm a big fan of Hafiz (or Hafez), a Persian poet who lived 1325-1389 CE.

Sometimes, when I am completely stressed out, I open a book of his poems and read. I always come away refreshed and enlightened.

Here is one for you today, translated and re-imagined by Daniel Ladinsky, called I Know the Way You Can Get.

I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of love:

Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to cahng
To help your mind and soul.

Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world

Tomb of Hafiz in Shiraz.

And throws sharp stones and spears into
That innocent
And into one's self.

O I know the way you can get
If you have not been out drinking Love:

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.

I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.


That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep Remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so playful
and Wanting.
Just Wanting to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me,
For I am a Sweet Old Vagabond
With an Infinite Leaking Barral
Of Light and Laughter and Truth
That the Beloved has tied to my back.

Dear one,
Indeed, please bring your heart near me.
For all I care about is quenching your thirst for freedom!

All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!