
Of course, we did do a show on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with nary a peep of protest. A book which depicts brutal rape, gruesome detailed descriptions of sexualized murder, a nearing Boomer sleeping with every woman in his path, including the nubile, barely twenty-something Girl, and sprinkled liberally with multiple male fantasy lesbian sex scenes.

Which brings me to my frustration with all this 50 Shades of Grey hate: since it is a book about a woman enjoying lots and lots of sex, written by a woman, it is automatically wrong, wrong, wrong. Because woman are either virgins or whores and there is no in between.

And yet, if you read the books, the heroine's goal is to actually lift Mr. Grey out of his domineering ways and, of course, she eventually succeeds...along the way, she surprisingly enjoys an orgasmic spanking. Not my kinda hanky-panky, but, as my Nana used to say, there's no accounting for taste. Anastasia, while dabbling in Christian's fetish out of curiosity, is decidedly against the whole submission thing, and even takes to domineering Mr. Grey sexually. So what's all the shouting about?

But a woman...a woman writing about sex...sex that involves red rooms and handcuffs between two consenting, albeit feeble minded and thinly drawn adults, that is a no-no.

Want to talk about unhealthy attitudes about women? What would our world be like if the unfettered hate that has been unfurled upon 50 Shades was turned upon the porn industry? Or sex trafficking? While the Superbowl was sad for the Seahawks, it was horrific for the women forced to service the throngs of disappointed or jubilant men...
But don't get me started.
We can criticize the sexual ethics of 50 Shades all we want, but in the same breath we must recognize the deafening silence when the same stale, pathetic, swoony women are continuously and unabashedly displayed in fiction, television, and film created by men. And for all those women who like their sex and their reading hot around the edges? I hope you painted your bedroom red and posted it on Pintrest. No shame, baby. Oh...my.