Dehumanization, Pain, Abuse as Sexual Fun
By N Oji Mzilikazi
24 February 2015
The values, beliefs, and practices of a society shape its social environment. And in the process exert peer pressure — in pursuit of conformity, especially when dictated by religious ideology and Big Business.
Take Saint Valentine’s Day: Hijacked by corporate interests, the long-established February 14th romantic “holiday” that celebrates love and affection is a Big Business directed consumer celebratory affair that demands — has gifts expected, irrespective as to whether romance is alive or dead or a person is not romantically involved with anyone.
So ingrained is consumerism for Valentine’s Day, not to mention the visual appeal of its merchandise as well as the bargains that single persons (especially girls/women) are wont to treat themselves with Valentine’s Day gifts.
According to the U.S. National Retail Federation’s (NRF) Valentine’s Day Consumer Spending Survey conducted in January 2015 by Prosper Insights and Analytics, spending on candy, flowers, clothing, jewellery, etcetera is expected to hit a high of $18.9 billion this year.
NRF is the world’s largest retail trade association, representing discount and department stores, home goods and specialty stores, Main Street merchants, grocers, wholesalers, chain restaurants and Internet retailers from the United States and more than 45 countries.
Since the exploitation of romanticism via Valentine’s Day targets females, Universal slated their film adaptation of British author EL James’ international block buster Fifty Shades of Grey for the 2015 Valentine’s Day/President Day long weekend.
Fifty Shades of Grey chronicles the sadomasochistic relationship between a young female student and a rich and older businessman.
Fifty Shades of Grey romanticises, better yet sanitises BDSM — bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism, that along with fetishes and kinky sex are often parlayed as or interpreted as eroticism and sexual fun/spicing up of one’s sex/love life.
Its message to both males and females is that a masochistic sexual relationship, humiliation, pain and abuse are erotic for women.
BDSM or S&M (sadism and masochism) has nothing in common with love, appreciation or romance — that define Valentine’s Day.
Regardless as to how consenting the parties are, BDSM is a perversion of loving.
The word sadism is derived from Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, the 18th-century French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher and writer, famous for his libertine sexuality. For him, cruelty was a form of sexuality, a sexual accessory as well as a substitute for sexual satisfaction.
The Australian novelist and philosopher, Count Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch believed that pleasure could be derived from suffering abuse and cruelty at the hands of a loved one, thus the term masochism.
Practitioners of sadomasochism seek pleasure in dehumanization and pain. Since pain is the means to an end, tools of torture (toys) are par for the course and are used on specific and not so specific sensitive and emotional areas of the body.
Even though many into kink readily say BDSM is good for you, and do advise people to try it; experience/find intrinsic enjoyment in the acts themselves, BDSM is centered on a dominant/submissive relationship; the relinquishing or exerting total control to or over the other, and the sexual submissive enduring sexual violence, humiliation, pain, abuse and the peccadilloes of the dominant.
When sexual submissiveness and/or abuse and humiliation of one’s sexual partner or oneself is positioned as a path to sexual gratification or is a source of same, where does that leave women in abusive relationships, vulnerable women, and males and females who were abused as children and are desperately in need of healing and love?
The sadomasochists they encounter as well as wannabes and those influenced by pornification and the hedonistic and exploitative sexual matrix would most certainly exploit their pain, make them relieve the pain, perpetuate their pain, as well as add to their pain.
Love and romance have never been friends with or allied to any sort of emotional, mental and physical abuse or sadomasochist behavior or sub dom relationship. So the release of Fifty Shades of Grey for Valentine’s Day is quite telling.
Humans are sexual creatures with built in horniness, sexual curiosity, and given to exploring their genitals, having “dirty thoughts” and flights of sexual fantasy that includes mind-blowing and knee-weakening sex. Add to the mix society’s heavy subjection to cultural pornification; the inescapable inundation of the sexual and its normalization, and one can begin to understand why
Fifty Shades of Grey impacted the way it has.
In four months, EL James’s Fifty Shades trilogy outsold JK Rowling’s seven-book Harry Potter series to become Amazon.co.uk’s bestselling author of all time.
Such was the anticipation for the silver screen adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey; fans of the books propelled the film to being the top title of all time in terms of advance ticket sales for Valentine’s Day, as well as for the Presidents Day weekend. And predictions put Fifty Shades of Grey on course for a global debut of $235 million or more.
Don’t buy into the rationale that Fifty Shades of Grey is just a fantasy or a harmless book/film whose purpose is to entertain and something nobody takes cues from. Books as well as films have the power to connect, thus influence.
Sales of riding crop spiked in wake of the release of the Fifty Shades of Grey books. And on the heels of Fifty Shades of Grey release on film, sex shops reported record sales in BDSM toys and fetish wear.
While Fifty Shades of Grey is touted as The Joy of Sex for the current generation of twentysomethings and Generation Y/Millennials, Fifty is all about expanding the sexualisation of culture, selling sexual dysfunction and “sex” merchandise that profits Big Business.
Given the commodification of female sexuality, the continued objectification of females, and the male culture that dehumanizes, violate women as well as embrace sexually and financially exploiting females, Fifty Shades of Grey have women self-assisting in their dehumanisation.
With dehumanization, humiliation, pain and abuse pedaled as sexual fun, Fifty Shades Of Grey is without doubt reserved for whites.
While there are always exceptions to the rule, and persons are always ready to jump into a dance without first washing their feet, BDSM as a sexual fantasy or sexual excursion hold no attraction to the suffering, people who live in poverty, people that have experienced the ravages of war, and people that are not far removed from or who continue to experience racial hatred, marginalization, dehumanization, discrimination, abuse by the police and justice system like Blacks are.
Discrimination, criminalization of race, police abuse, being stopped, searched, verbally abused, pepper-sprayed, tasered, beaten, handcuffed, arrested, shot and killed by police officers when unarmed and/or not involved in criminality are too much of the daily and lived experience of African descent for Blacks to embrace BDSM; submit themselves to being handcuffed, blindfolded, be on all fours and dragged by a chain around the neck, spanked, flogged and tortured in the name of sexual fun.
Since the power of conquest and colonialism excluded whites from the trauma of centuries of slavery, dehumanization, depersonalization, enforced submission, racism, discrimination, being a criminalised community and victimised by indiscriminate police terrorism and police brutality as was and is the experienced of Blacks, morally and culturally bankrupt whites could afford to pick up chains, whips and tools of torture and self-flagellation, call them toys, and engage in acts of dehumanization as sexual fun/sub dom role play as a gas.
The power of marketing, consumerism and the peer pressure of social norms, pop culture, and endorsement and advocacy by celebrities would have people believe Fifty Shades of Grey/ BDSM is great, good, and harmless fun. It is not.
For all the power and strength that resides within the human brain, the brain is easily damaged, easily rewired, and in no time at all seed deep-rooted patterns of behaviour that are then extremely difficult to reverse.
I am no prude, but I say, think twice about indulging in BDSM, and then think again. BDSM will change you. BDSM is going to rewire your brains and rewire your emotions, and it wouldn’t be for betterment or more loving manner.