I’m grateful for Fifty Shades of Grey. It is low-grade, escapist smut, filled with misconceptions and wildly inaccurate portrayals of BDSM but as the French dominatrix Catherine Robbe-Grillet has said, it has “opened up new possibilities that did not exist before” to its female readers.
As a professional dominatrix and lifelong kinkster, I welcome this but also offer a warning. While Fifty Shades can be hot, it is designed to arouse, not educate, and in doing so it leaves out the things that differentiate BDSM from abuse, as the newly previewed film trailer has highlighted.
Foremost among these is consent. Consent isn’t merely the absence of a no, a contextless acquiescence. For the kink inclined, it’s explicit and ongoing. Consent can make anything within the bounds of safety and reason fair game – from an hour’s experimentation with handcuffs and a riding crop to a considered, long-term agreement to cede a great deal of your personal power to someone else.
It may be awkward to sit across from someone and admit you like a good spanking, but communication undergirds safe kink. Being open to talking about mutual likes, dislikes, needs and limits gives you and your potential partner the confidence to explore more fully when play begins. Over time, respected consent builds trust, which is what unlocks the true intensity and power of kink.
Consent must be informed. Before play, you should know what you’re getting into and with who. Thus, we kinksters have something else that is absent in Fifty Shades – a community. At regular casual meetups (called munches) and at organised play parties staffed with experienced monitors, we get to know each other. We teach and learn the skills of BDSM; there are practical lessons, such as caning or rope bondage, and intangibles such as negotiating a play or screening a new partner. We watch each other’s backs, freely offering a listening ear or frank advice. Our community is far from perfect, and it’s often a tall order for a socially anxious person – or one with a sensitive job or home life – to meet in public. But we give what has been a private practice an institutional memory and we self-police to keep bullies and predators out.
Fifty Shades also leaves out much of the joy of BDSM. The dominant, Christian Grey, is given a sordid backstory for his kinks but in the real world we play because it makes us happy; it feeds us, it nourishes our souls. In my work, I tie people up, spank them or humiliate them. Their joy is to submit to me within agreed boundaries and to lose control for an hour or two; mine is the power rush of that control and their exquisite reactions. They come back to me because of who I am, because they can see that I love kink; when I push them further than they have ever been, they can see they have truly pleased me.
Yet despite Fifty Shades, kink is still taboo. Not everyone can come to a play party but anyone can take charge of their desires. If you’re interested in exploring kink and BDSM, a factual guide is more useful than the purple prose of Fifty Shades. When you find a potential play partner, ask for references and check them out. Find a friend you can talk to about kink and make sure they know where you are going to be when you’re on a date with a new partner; arrange a safe call. These guidelines also apply to partners learning together; kink uncovers things in ourselves and our lovers, and it helps to be able to talk them through.
Of course, talking freely would be easier in a society without moralism and that’s another reason why I welcome Fifty Shades. It is riddled with problems but if it brings kink out of the dungeon and into the light, that’s probably a good thing.
