By Ann Oldenburg
July 24, 2014
USA Today
We knew it wouldn’t take long for the complaints to roll in.
(And we don’t mean these Twitter reactions.)
Morality in Media, a group devoted to fighting porn and indecency, blasted out a statement from its executive director, Dawn Hawkins, condemning the newly released trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey. The trailer, she says, “deceives the public with a visually appealing melodramatic love story that romanticizes and normalizes sexual violence.”
This argument came up when the first of the hot trilogy of “mommy porn” books was published in 2011, as the story centers around sexy millionaire Christian Grey, who is into dominant bondage sex with submissive, innocent, college grad Anatasia Steele.
The controversy has been a constant topic for discussion and debate. In August 2013, a study published in the Journal of Women’s Health found that Fifty Shades perpetuates “dangerous abuse patterns,” such as stalking, intimidation, humiliation and isolation.
So now that the trailer is here, Hawkins is reviving the issue, noting that the Fifty Shades story sends all sorts of wrong messages:
A warning to the women lining up to see this film: There is nothing empowering about whips and chains or humiliation and torture. Women as a group will not gain power by collaborating with violent men. Women would be serving only as an agent to further their own sexual degradation, handing themselves on a silver platter to exactly the sort of men who want to use and abuse them, and take away their power.
