Manly Thor's Day Special: Beware of men defending women by quoting de Sade

Here is an argument that seems perfectly reasonable on the surface:

The sad reality is that you can never reorder the power paradigm within male and female sexual relations. The Marquis de Sade – often quoted in Fifty Shades of Grey – was one of the world’s first writers to recognise that women have a sexual identity that is separate from that of men. He appreciated that far from being simply “vessels” or “objects” of pleasure, they could enjoy both sensual delight and even wild beatings on their own terms. But he also acknowledged that the social and physical disparity of power between men and women means that women will always have to fight (in his opinion, vainly) to maintain personhood and free will. On the contrary, if they are to engage in sexual games that parody enslavement they are likely to find themselves quickly enslaved by the reality of masculine brute force.

You have to admire the chutzpah here. The author, Tim Stanley, is condemning Fifty Shades of Grey as "exploitative sadistic porn"  and quoting the Marquis de Sade as an authority on his side.

Here is the important difference to grasp:

• Fifty Shades of Grey is fiction. It's a fantasy. Women read the book and think about it while having sex. If they want, they can do a  little role playing as well.
• The Marquis de Sade abused and raped women. The women he hired to work for him all ran away and many complained to the police.

Are you beginning to see what Tim Stanley can't see?

Is Fifty Shades of Grey a feminist triumph? Probably not. No more, in any case, than Nancy Friday's books were thirty years ago. But it is a woman's fantasy written by a woman and eagerly purchased by millions of women.

If you can, you might want to try reading some de Sade. I say, "If you can" because the one thing most people don't know about de Sade is what a monstrous bore he was. But, should you tough it out, you might want to notice the different ways he treats men and women. For he doesn't treat them quite the same. Both men and women get to play submissive roles in de Sade but the men tend to get spanked and the women tend to get mutilated. One of his favourite thoughts was sewing a woman up. Literally. Like with needle and thread.

That's not quite "fun" is it. That sounds more like what serial killers do than what couples who role play in bed do.

Let's revisit a couple of key lines from the quote I began with:

The sad reality is that you can never reorder the power paradigm within male and female sexual relations. ... the social and physical disparity of power between men and women means that women will always have to fight ... to maintain personhood and free will. On the contrary, if they are to engage in sexual games that parody enslavement they are likely to find themselves quickly enslaved by the reality of masculine brute force.

Stanley is using de Sade to argue that women shouldn't play these games because they will end up enslaved for real if they do.  He is telling women that they are not allowed to want what they want because doing so will cost them their freedom. Do you buy that?

His next move is to cite the example of a woman who pursued sex with a long string of men she met in bars and then one of these men killed her. Well, yes, don't do that, it's dangerous. But do you think that is quite the same as the woman who reads Fifty Shades of Grey and rehearses the events in her imagination so she more easily can reach orgasm is doing? Let's suppose she gets really wild and asks her husband to tie her up and blindfold her during sex. That still seems light years away from meeting a total stranger in a bar, taking him home and taunting him in the hopes that will make him really aggressive during sex, which is what the woman Stanley quotes as an example did.

Final thought, note this interesting "admission" by Stanley. I use the scare quotes because Stanley doesn't see it as an admission:

Given that Fifty Shades of Grey features a woman willingly submitting to the fantasies of a wealthy, older man you might expect feminists to hate it. Back in the 1980s, many feminists joined the Christian Right in denouncing pornography, arguing that the commercialisation of the female body enforced male hegemony and encouraged rape.

But in the bizarre, post-feminist world of 2012, it is the men who have made the most complaints about Fifty Shades of Grey. 

Funny, don't you think, that it is men complaining?


PS: I'm sure some feminists would like to complain but they need to find a way to blame men in order to do that. Wait 'til the movie comes out, there will be enough men involved in the production that they can then.