Big Ups To Mommy Porn

Now it might not be a popular opinion to defend the erotic mess that composes the "Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy, nor may it be to my benefit as a supposed literary scholar. To be fair, I don’t know much about the books -- as I have not read them. So how can I proffer a defense? I am aware of them vaguely, superficially, struck first by the sheer expansiveness of its demographic.

Women of all ages, creeds and races clenching their knees tightly on the six train, brandishing their books in a variety of ways: the shy pressing their covers to lap, the clever reading by eBook, while the brazen hold theirs upright, cheeks unblemished by the pinkish hue of embarrassment. These are my favorite, for truly the series is a thing to be wielded, a powerful weapon of female sexuality -- forty million copies in eighty million hands.

Now its premise isn’t terribly innovative, nor is its plot fantastically evolutionary for the feminist cause. There is a simpering heroine of sorts, young and vulnerable, seduced by the power and raw sexuality of a wealthy business magnate. Like the basis of its erotica, the trilogy perpetuates the disparity of a dominant/submissive relationship in the context of a male/female relationship.

Baited by gifts and her own naiveté, the heroine is left relatively powerless to the devices of Christian Grey, the enigmatic and controlling male presence. Hardly revolutionary when stripped to its bare bones, its execution buoys the fiction. Sure it may be muddled by tenebrous prose, static characters and it may even relish in escapism; but it's fantasy -- and that’s what it provides.

Talk of "mommy porn" circulated after the commercial success of the project and of course such euphemisms tend to belittle the achievement. It offers a less than pleasingly crass explanation for the sexual phenomenon that exploded in its aftermath, making "Fifty Shades of Grey" the fastest selling paperback of all time, surpassing Harry Potter. More importantly, it took a fairly radical fetishism and made it accessible. EliteDaily itself reported a massive spike on Internet porn streaming sites of videos featuring BDSM. It aroused in its readers a curiosity.

"Fifty Shades of Grey" has exposed the dark and seedy underground of female desires that sit outside the established norm -- it’s no "Kama Sutra," but like a gateway drug, it opens the floodgates to a whole new world of unexplored fantasies.

Now generally women weren’t admonished as children, told that too much slapping it might make us blind or told that each time we touch ourselves a kitten dies -- but the very absence of these discouragements are statement enough. With the success of this particular series and similar media, the stigma diminishes from the act of female pleasure.

Ask a man if he masturbates, extremes aside, you’d receive a scoff. Ask a woman. According to the Kinsey Institute in a survey conducted in 2002 of undergraduate college students: 98% of men admitted to having masturbated where only 44% of women reported ever doing so. Now either these girls are ashamed and lying or ashamed and refraining -- either way is frightfully unacceptable.

Sure, society gently (and not so) nudges us into these informed patterns of gender expression. But we’re no longer these painted, artificial representations of delicate femininity. We’re not placidly smiling from the cover of Good Housekeeping. Sometimes we want it rough, sometimes we want to get kinky with no shame in our game. I, for one, would like to end the blow up doll approach to sex: where a woman is a dead-eyed, gape-mouthed, limp and lifeless receptacle.

The mainstreaming of such explicit content has allowed women to emerge from the shadows of repressed sexuality. It has breathed new life into a host of previously dormant "mommies" and, of course, with such, we are plagued with questions and accusations of morality. As the erotica is dismembered scrupulously -- there is judgment.

The very judgment that kept over half those women in the study from yielding and/or admitting to their own sexual needs. The difference now is absolute strength in numbers, women knowing that they are not alone. Yes, every movement will have its dissenters, hissing angry words and claims of sluttiness -- but sorry if I can’t hear you over the sound of my own orgasm.

And now, to reiterate, I haven’t read the series and I can’t be sure if it’s very good -- it might be (and it might not), but I don’t watch porn for the cinematography, for the scintillating dialogue rife with intellectual entendre, historical allusions and philosophical undertones. If this particular trilogy has hit home (and G-spot) of a vast array of women, I find no problem in fully endorsing it.

I am a firm believer in the art and act of female pleasure as something of which we have nothing to be ashamed. I refuse to buy into the inherent, uncontrollable sexuality of men and the sedated, pristine presentation of a woman’s own. It’s time for women to be wild, to assault the gender divide of pleasure and promiscuity. So I say take up arms, fingers, vibrators and pens -- let us push ourselves to every limit. If sex sells, I’m buying.

First round is on me.

Kgazm | Elite.