The Feminist Community are not fans of Fifty Shades.

Feminists and readers with taste have been making their dislike of Fifty Shades of Gray known. Go to Google.com and type in Fifty Shades of Grey feminist criticism, and you’ll see plenty of online responses to this BDSM erotica trilogy. The book has as it roots fanfiction for the Twilight trilogy, but it has moved very much away from that.

The book is not brilliantly written, but huge bestsellers are rarely highbrow literary fiction. What seems to really annoy feminists (of which I am one) is the fact that the sexuality in the book is so asinane, so stupid and potentially so damaging. The BDSM conduct is disrespectful and with none of the built in safe guards that are normally expected. It seems wrong to many in that community, and should not be encouraged.

This book is not fostered upon us

Be that as it may, there are some things about it that need to be considered. Firstly, there is the undenialable fact that it is extremely popular. I know, I hate that fact too, but it is seemingly what a lot of women in the western world are reading at the moment. And by a lot, I mean the majority of us. The book has sold 40 million copies world wide. Think on that. That isn’t a cultural impostion, that is a cultural phenomenan. This ‘ideal’ is not being fostered on us, it is instead one that a lot of us seem to have had within us for quite some time. This is us, Ladies, looking back at ourselves and it ain’t so pretty.

And just what are the men up to?

Of course, it’s nothing compared to the porn industry created for men. Websites now exist that provide free porn, most of it uploaded by amateurs (Youporn is one example). There is so much porn out there right now that actors in the adult film industry speak of being paid less and less for their scenes. It still is an industry that generates millions each year, and is influencing mainstream entertainment more and more (see True Blood for examples). The male focused porn industry has been around for a long time, it doesn’t make any apologies for itself. The same can’t be said for porn focused on women – there may be practitioners of it, but there isn’t an industry, and there is still a strong sense of guilt amongst those forty million as to why they buy and enjoy that book.

A less idealistic world….

So we get to realise that, like our male brothers, we are grubby, small and petty. We aren’t the fairer, gentle sex, but instead can find things as darkly fascinating as men. It isn’t a soothing notion, but knowing it for a fact reveals reality to us, and so we’re able to come to a mature understanding of ourselves. Hopefully it is an understanding that is without shame or incorrectly placed idealism.  Hopefully.

I’m in the process of putting together a novella of about 20,000 words. The first draft is done, and now I need to stop.

Yes, you read correctly. I need to stop writing and sit back and do nothing. This is because while I may know what I am doing, I don’t know, really, what I am writing. This text is full of allusions, metaphors and sideway meanings that I have not discovered yet. There is, I’m beginning to realise, a hidden structure underneath this story, something that is mimicking a fairy tale from long ago. It’s hiding there, like an underground cellar, and I need to uncover it. But which one? Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty? Not sure. Don’t know.

But if I push it, the whole house of cards will collapse and I’ll be left with nothing. This structure can’t conform to my own conscious decisions, it has to be allowed to come to fruition by itself (at least initially – editing is still a conscious decision, obviously). It can’t be made ‘Perfect’ in any arbitrary way, it has to have its own logic. Like the random but correct surface of a walnut, it must be what it is if it is to have any authenticity.

I am rambling. Firstly because I have thirty seconds to type this blog out. Secondly because this is not an area of intelligence controlled by my pre-frontal cortex. Instead it is decided by my spine, like dancing, and if I over think it, none of it will make sense.

Very impressed by Sinead O’Hart’s daily blogging, I am determined to give it five minutes each day and see what happens.

As my last blog was so short I decided to give the topic another go. One thing I did that had a huge impact was read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. This book changed my life.

It is awful! That is nothing in of itself, there are thousands of bad books published each year. But at that time my colleagues at the office believed it. The place was in South Dublin and the boss’s wife, a bad tempered tennis club member and social climber, would come in each day and rant about the true nature of reality/society/Christianity that the book revealed.

“Eaux, but it is so trueau!” she’d start in her south Dublin accent. “To think, we all had the wrong idea for yeaurs!” There would be no point in explaining to her that we all have bloodlines going back years, that the past does not contain anything more sacred than the present, and that if you were really interested in the true nature of Christianity you should go out and help someone rather than purse your lips at the yaught club.

So I set myself to writing The Stone, deliberately making history as bloody, ignorant and uncaring as the present. So a cul de sac of literary endeavour led me to discover a new demand for literary honesty within me, and set me on the path where I am now.

This blog entry is written while the little man is waking up behind me, so sorry all, I have moments and nothing more.

The smallest change that had the biggest impact was on the 8th October 1999. I turned left, instead of right, and it lead me on the path I am on now.

And if you think you’re getting more details, unfortunately you’re not!