On porn

It's interesting to look at the cooked-up media furor over the FIFTY SHADES OF GREY trilogy (which I still haven't gotten around to reading, but am opining on anyway, as one does) as a reflection of accepted ideas about what I will delicately call the sexy entertainments.

What we "know" about straight-male-marketed video pornography and straight-female-marketed romance novels, based on my limited exposure to both, is that they are both poorly written and laughably unbelievable. ("The sexy teacher wants to see me after class?") Undoubtedly people consume both Academy Award-winning movies and the "After Dark" section of hotel in-room rentals. Perhaps even in the same trip! As people who might read FIFTY SHADES and then move onto THE MARRIAGE PLOT for their book club.

I appreciate the dubbing of FIFTY SHADES as "mommy porn" because it has been mostly read by women and initially earned its viral success among women, some of whom have children. It's fun to imagine all the moms at the playground whispering about Christian Grey, as the New York Post implied in its first story about FIFTY SHADES, even though it was probably their nannies at those Upper East Side playgrounds and not them. Even as it already falls apart, that's the accepted story, but it's problematic because it implies that "mommies" are into a certain kind of porn, and they're into it because something about their sex lives (or if you prefer, lives, generally) is disappointing, and it satisfies some need there. And that no one who doesn't fall into that category could possibly be into it, so if you're into it you must be all of those things, and ugh you are such a stereotype, and how dare you, etc.

There are plenty of strong objections one can make to FIFTY SHADES, but "gross, women enjoy it!" is a weak one. And if your biggest objection to FIFTY SHADES is that it's poorly written, I can only assume that your erotic entertainment of choice is all well-written and/or of Academy Award/ Pulitzer-level visual quality. I'm pretty sure their readers realize how badly written these books are. They read them for other reasons. (This excellent blog post compared that line of argument to "Fast food is bad for you, so we should tell everyone not to eat it as if there are people who don't already know that.")