Did you know that Twilight’s famed Edward and Bella pairing is actually a horrifying example of an abusive relationship?
Did you know that Christian and Ana’s “50 Shades of Grey” relationship is even worse?
Abusive partners are overly jealous, possessive and have unpredictable tempers. They verbally abuse and disrespect their partner's behavior in front of others, don’t listen or respond when their partner talks, damage and destroy their partner's possessions and control where their partner goes and who their partner sees. Sexual violence may be involved also.
Throughout the Twilight novels Edward consistently showed most of these traits, especially when it came to Bella’s friend Jacob. He’d put her on house arrest with Alice when he didn’t want her to go places –even went so far as taking apart her car so that she couldn’t go see Jacob. He overrode her constant objections, bought her a new car and other things, consistently acting jealous and extremely prossessive. He watched her sleep, for goodness sake. The fact that girls still pine for their very own Edward should be extremely alarming.
“50 Shades” was originally published as an adult, “mom porn”, Twilight fanfiction that crudely describes Christian and Ana’s BDSM relationship. Now that it’s being made into a movie, it’s gotten much more media attention – in all the wrong ways.
The slogan of BDSM relationships is “safe, consensual and dd.” Christian breaks all of these rules. He ignores Ana’s safeword, he legitimately rapes her, never explains BDSM culture to her before drawing her into it, and doesn’t adequately draw her out of submissive headspace after sex. (The writing is also appalling, but that’s another story.)
“50 Shades” is doing nothing but perpetuating dangerous stereotypes: that Christian and Ana's relationship is an accurate portrayal of a healthy BDSM relationship; that Christian’s actions are acceptable; that a woman should give everything, including all of herself, to a man; that these relationships are normal. Nothing about “50 Shades” is accurate or normal.
A dom should treat his sub like a princess. Everything is supposed to be consensual and worked out ahead of time, including boundaries, safe words and aftercare. Christian is not a dom, but because of this movie, millions of people will think he is.
They’re going to think it’s romantic, because the movie is scheduled for a Valentine’s Day release date. People in abusive relationships will not attempt to get out of them because they will see this and think it’s normal. People in other relationships will attempt to mimic it because they’ll think it’s how BDSM should be. The truth is BDSM can be very dangerous if not done correctly and safely. All of this horror is going to be glorified, laughed at, enjoyed and thrown into a society that already hails rape culture as the norm.
We should be very, very concerned.
