Shades of Grey - a Springboard

I've been thinking about pornography and my opinions about it for several months now. I think it started with a discussion on the Jeremy Vine show, heard whilst we were driving around the country on an extended holiday in our motorhome. The discussion, from what I can remember, had been started in response to the growing success of the Shades of Grey trilogy.

I found the discussion quite uncomfortable to listen to and, initially, I had no interest in reading the books. Eventually though, when twitter had been awash with the topic for some time, curiosity got the better of me and I bought the collection for my kindle.

This isn't a discussion of the rights and wrongs of the Grey Trilogy, but as these books were, for me, a springboard into the wider subject of pornography, I have a few things to say.

Personally I found the books to be of poor literary quality, but I did enjoy whizzing through them to see how the lives of the protagonists played out, and yes, the sex was titillating enough to remind me that I wasn't dead from the waist down! (Several months in a motorhome with 4 children is not conducive to a sex life, let alone a good one!)

I have read several articles about how badly the S&M content was portrayed, but having no experience of this I can't comment. I have also read articles that suggest that the books offer a romanticised, and therefore dangerous, portrayal of abusive relationships. I struggled with this in all honesty, probably because, having not been in such  relationships I, again, have no personal experience to work from. As such I found these articles irritating; surely the books were just a bit of harmless fun? And if they were useful in spicing up long term relationships, surely that was a force for good? Dubbing them "Mummy Porn" though? I inwardly railed against that - I felt it was demeaning and somehow indicative of the fallacy that *hot sex* is the preserve of the young and childless.

Had it not been for various conversations with friends about porn generally, I might have left the subject there.

Ok, let's be honest, with the way my brain works that was pretty unlikely.

I tend to find that, once my brain has honed in on a subject, I come across material that supports, expands or refutes it in a seemingly synchronous manner. Of course it is just because I have opened a mental file and so I am subconsciously drawn to related articles and books. None the less it can still be quite surprising when this happens.

In recent months I have read articles and books that: purport to offer ideas to improve one's sex life from both male and female perspectives; discuss the spiritual and psychological aspects of sex; consider the history of modern pornography and the damage it does to our collective psyche; and of course the many articles that have been written lately about the abuse of children by "celebrities". This article being the catalyst   that prompted me to connect some of the dots in my head.

I think I am starting to see a connection between all of these things, and I need to write about them in order to make it all make sense to me. In the coming blog posts this is what I will attempt to do. Respectful input will be most welcome, but spam or clearly abusive comments will be deleted.