This is a brilliant, and very entertainingly written, article that ranges over many fascinating themes and issues that 50SOG raises. Thank you so much.

I liked the Shylock/Kinksters comparison, which is very apt (though you don't mention WS also giving him the 'Hath not a Jew eyes..' speech, which, although only one minute of nobility out of two hours of stereotypical meanness, is (at first, anyway) a moving plea for tolerance and understanding). Totally with you on Max Mosley too.

I'm one of those who took a decision not to read 50SOG - I'm too busy, and hate disappointment - so I thank you for giving me a whole raft of reasons to carry right on in that course of inaction.

I'd love to read more of anything you might care to write about!

Flopsy - hire this woman!

A very entertaining look at these books that took the country by storm. I have read the books and found them frustrating to the max and highly unrealistic! Thank you for this great article, I certainly enjoyed it more than the actual thing!!

"Yet, it is not this bad behaviour that gets shaken out of him by the force of Ana's love and innocence, but his perfectly mundane spanking fetish."

Yes, this is powerful and I found myself cheering you on. I haven't read the book (I don't often rush to read a book that gets a lot of publicity: if people still talk about it five years later, then it probably has something) so I can't judge if this is fair.

I do agree with the English Master that a reader who hadn't read or seen "The Merchant of Venice" would get a rather misleading impression from this article. Shakespeare reinforces stereotypes, yes, but also undermines them with that great speech EM mentions ("if you prick us, do we not bleed?") and also shows Shylock tortured verbally by a member of his own community about his daughter's flight, so that his vengeful behaviour is understandable.

I have to say, from a personal point of view, that it's hard to decide what I find the most depressing about these books, the utterly abysmal literary style or the misrepresentation of kink by someone who clearly knows very little about it. Of course, there's always the possibility that the few pages I was able to stomach were not representative of the whole but then having read this excellent and extremely entertaining review I see that's clearly not the case. Perhaps, one of these days we'll get to see a popular work that doesn't let the spanko community down... until then we're stuck with the likes of 50 Shades and The Secretary.

I never read nor will I read Fifty Shades. It's just something I don't think I would be into at all. As far as this article. I loved it. I simply loved the misconceptions list. Each and every one was right on. This was truly a great piece, and well done, Adele.

I only skimmed through Fifty Shades of Grey at the bookstore but what I did see was very bad writing. So what I have never seen answered in any of the reviews of the book is this; why is it so popular?

I read this post before, and am very happy to see it here as well. The more people (kinky and otherwise) who read it, the better.

The parts I read were extremely poor in literary terms and I'm afraid that in books there's simply no accounting for taste. However it does give a lead-in to talking about responsible practice and the ethics of BDSM given that so many vanilla people have taken the initiative in reading BDSM-oriented writing which they would have never have touched had it not been a must-read best seller.

Excellent review from Adele - now THAT should be syndicated in the press!

Haven't read it and have no intension, sounds silly to me but as in the case of Harry Potter we have the seniors not the kid's reading again but I can remember in the dark ages before the web searching for any book that has a mild hint of spanking inside.
Great article. Hate The Bard!

I once read that at the time of Shakespeare, there were no Jews in England, nor had there been for something like a century. So it doesn't particularly surprise me that Shylock comes off riddled with stereotypes.

As for Fifty Shades, calling it "mommy porn" is an insult to both mothers and porn. I've skimmed through parts of the first book, and to say that it is poorly written is a vast understatement. (Though judging from some of other comments, I think everyone here already knows that.) Someone mentioned on the Forum that most of the writers here aren't professional writers, but I think most (if not all) of the authors are far more competent than E.L. James.

I have found the books a wonderful excuse to raise the subject of spanking, so I look out for women with them or use their name as conversation starter. Tame though the BDSM line of the story may be, Ann Summers sales of whips and clips have rocketed.

@Twinklybum: I think no BDSM education at all would be better for these women than what 50SoG has to say on the subject.

50 shades certainly don't belong to the books which made a big impression on me, but I thought it was at least so well written and interesting enough that I read all three parts and didn't regret the waste of money. Okay, after following the 34th sexual intercourse in only two days of Ana's life I skipped the next 340, but the rest was okay. Not better than Twilight, but also not much worse. It's a book written for women and I'm not surprised that the male commenters all condemned it (especially those who never read it) , but most women I know liked it quite a lot. So there has to be something in it what appeals to women.

I agree that 50 shades isn't a BDSM book and much less a spanking book. It's a modern fairy tale about prince charming: young, immense rich and terrific good looking male falls in love with Cinderella. This time the catch is not that the man is a vampire, he is a sadist. At this point the similarity to Twilight ends. Whereas Bella was willing to become a Vampire out of love, Ana is not willing to submit to Grey, despite all his money. Grey will be the one who abstains from most of his sexual preferences because his love to Ana is more important to him than living specific parts of his fetish. I know that many male spankos did and do just the same: Out of love to their vanilla wifes they never lived their kink. That's the theme of the book and that's all. We can't blame a book for missing out another theme we would be more interested in.

I personally know too little about BDSM to estimate how accurate the book portraits this subject. But it certainly describes how a Vanilla looks on BDSM. If it's not your thing it just doesn't interest you to read pages and pages about the right bondage methods and submission ceremonies. I would have skipped more detailed and more accurate descriptions just as I now skipped the sex scenes. For my specific kink the book was even more disappointing as the canes have been the first item which Grey removed. But to the several points you mentioned above I got a very different impression out of the book:

Grey was always insisting on a safeword, but Ana still forgot to use it.
I can't remember any scene where physical punishment without consent was accepted. Ana always consented to everything what happened. The more important problem for Grey was that she consented only to very few things.

I didn't got the impression that dominants are portraited as being always strong and submissives always weak. In contrary Grey turned out to be very weak and Ana never submitted anyway. The portraits of the other subs are - there I agree with you - the weakest point in the book.

So what I think is that a Vanilla who reads the book doesn't convert to BDSM, but she won't convert by reading a real BDSM book either. But all the hidden subs and spankees will be attracted by some hints (Normally one expression like "Young lady" in a book is ample) and they will search further on. So all in all I think it's good if a book, even one of questionable quality, is raising the public interest and may lead women to do further research on the subject.

It's all dreadful hype! Cosmopolitan about sums it up! I too admired Max Mosely for the way he stood up to the gutter press and refused to be cowed by tabloid inspired morality! Wonderful review of a book I have not yet read and never will read.

An elderly lady (80 at least) that works in our local charity shop presented me with a copy the other day with strict instructions that I should give it to my better half to read! But she would never read that rubbish I told her! I am sure I offended her but standards of literary merit must be preserved. Give me Billy Bunter any day!!

Haven't read it either, and know very few people who have. Those that did read it have all said it was boring rubbish.

Having said that, I really enjoyed the article particularly the Shakesperean references. Like most of The Bard's plays, "The Merchant of Venice" is quite a complex work, which shouldn't be dismissed as pure anti-semitism.

An ex-lover of mine contacted me recently telling me that she read 50 shades and in her words "now knows why I'm so incapable of love." The fact that mainstream society now has Christian Grey as the model of a Dom is very distressing to me.

Amen Sister Adele. And thank you. It would be appropriate for me to send you the royalties the author will not see and I will still be much in the black. Much appreciated and pithy review of something I have watched ascend like a comet. Perhaps it will flame out quickly as well.

I feel justified and unrepentant for choosing not to read 50 shades. I have saved countless hours of slogging through a mundane novel regarding a fascinating subject that will deeply disappoint me. I thank you for this brilliant service and your thoughtful article. I do agree that our community does grow excited when there is a hint of media interest in our kink. Just as the Elizabethan society characterized all Jews in the same stereotypical role, I see this is the same treatment society grants to the ideas of alternative consensual sex remains.
Great Article!

Excellent article. It's always very difficult for an author to write about a subject he/she doesn't have a clue with the exception of religious and moral preconceptions. Well succeed authors and actors spend an enormous time researching the subject they decided to write about or the character they will impersonate.

Certainly both Shakespeare or E. L. James had no time, interest or means to do so. As a result Shylock is a miserably biased portrait of a Jew (inspite the first scene of the third act speach) and 50 shades is not even a good book and certainly not a BDSM novel.

Ms Adele Haze presents her arguments brilliantly and the comparison is quite proper.

I totally agree with every word of Mat's post, having read all 3 books myself. There are many things I disliked about the book (its portrayal of spankos /BDSM practitioners as damaged in some way was well off beam... but I interpreted it as the author's portrayal of her character Christian Grey and not ALL spankos... It is incredibly overgeneralising to say that from one character portrayal all readers will consider ALL spankos to be emotionally damaged... right?). The main thing that majorly bothered me about Christian Grey's character was that all his subs/sexual partners (including Ana) had to look like his neglectful mother. It was just too much creep factor for me to stomach when his interest in spanking appeared to be attributed to punishing his abusive parent. However, as far as opening up curiosity in vanillas about our kink is concerned, it has certainly achieved this in spades. Vanilla friends of mine have opened up discussion of the books with me and I have been surprised about their curiosity with spanking and the revelation that I wrote spanking fiction and knew what I was talking about haha! According to many reports the 50SOG trilogy has also increased sales of spanking toys amongst the uninitiated!!! Surely... that has also got to be a good thing, right? So, despite its corny writing style (bodice ripper overkill, which as Mati points out has far too many unrealistic, laughable, page-skipping worthy sex scenes) and supposed stereotypical portrayal of spankos, I believe that that the trilogy has got many vanillas rushing for the chocolate sauce!

Thank you Adele for summing up your impressions of 50 SoG. I can now save myself the bother of reading it. Nevertheless, the book has dramatically entered the public consciousness in a way that is very rare for its genre, and has perhaps made the public more accepting and appreciative of BDSM literature in general. Hopefully the book has blazed a trail or opened a door to more worthy literary efforts.