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“Just let me take care of you,” the hero whispers, choking back a growl as he pushes the heroine down face first on the bed.
“You are what we call a natural sub,” he says, tracing the paddle across her ass. “Are you ready to submit for my pleasure?”
The heroine nods her head shyly, her cheeks apple-bright. “Yes,” she says, “I want to belong only to you.”
When 50 Shades of Grey exploded in 2012, I was editing erotic romance novels five days a week in a cramped pink building in South Austin. 50 Shades made “BDSM” the most marketable term in the romance/erotica industry, and it made my already uncomfortable job a living hell.
I began working for Harpy Publishing1 out of desperation; I had just left New York for Austin and needed steady paycheck while I applied for graduate programs. You have a sense of humor, I reminded myself when I received my first assignment: to calculate the number of explicit words in a novella where a virginal witch experienced her first orgasm at the stroke of midnight.
Yes, I was put off when I found out all books featuring F/F romance were automatically assigned to the lowest (least bought) imprint and specifically tagged so that our readers could avoid them. And yes, it was immediately clear that casual misogyny abounded in these books: supporting female characters only appeared so the heroine could defeat them, and the hero would always choose the “good girl” over “the slut.” But I need a paycheck, I reasoned. I am not their audience.
We are not their audience, my friend Shannon and I would repeat over our third (or fourth) glasses of wine at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday.
It’s easy to convince yourself you are “taking something too seriously” when what’s offending you doesn’t hit close to home. The books that poured into our office post-Christian Grey were another matter entirely. Suddenly, the paranormal shape-shifters searching for their forever mate were doing so with handcuffs in hand.
Reading them was like spending eight hours with a muddy, inexpertly placed boot on my chest. It was hard to breathe; it was hard to go home and ever, ever feel clean.
When I came out at 24, sometimes it was also necessary to come out as kinky, although I didn’t have exactly the right vocabulary for it then. Feminine-appearing and soft-spoken, I am not most people’s idea of a Domme. When I started at Harpy, I was a total novice, still trying to reconcile my desires with how I saw myself in the world. At the beginning of my job, when I was reading only one BDSM-themed manuscript every few weeks — books written by women familiar with kink — I felt as if we were sharing a secret. This, I thought, this might be me.
“Your safeword is RED. You should understand that if you use this safeword we will stop immediately, but we can never see you again.”
It’s a regular workday post-50 Shades. I’ve run to the coffeeshop on my ten-minute break to get coffee and a breakfast taco. We are not allowed to take any breaks while on the clock except during two designated ten-minute periods during the day, at 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. sharp.
The words I’m editing are so familiar I can repeat them along with the two Doms.
“We would never ask you do to anything you couldn’t handle.”
A heroine with tears glistening in her eyes nods her head. I sip my coffee.
“You can trust us completely.”
At this point the guidelines for our “good imprints” have been whittled down until there is only one acceptable BDSM heroine. She cannot have any past history of D/s relationships, have ever engaged in casual play, or, heaven forbid, have ever been a Domme herself. In short, she is never a woman interested in BDSM. Additionally, she is an insecure girl who is willing to accept abuse if someone spit-shines it and calls it love. She is never someone I can see as a consenting submissive.
I take a bite of taco and keep proofreading. The heroine has a stalker. The stalker might have broken into her house. The two Doms go to investigate. She comes with.
“Stay downstairs while we look around,” they say. Taco. The heroine hears a strange noise in her bedroom and goes upstairs to investigate. Something awful like I KNOW GRACIE ANNE YOU BITCH is written on her wall in ketchup or blood.
I correct a few typos. The heroes come back upstairs to find the heroine understandably terrified.
“How could you have disobeyed us? We have no choice but to punish you.”
The heroine, who before now has barely been spanked with someone’s palm, is now being strapped down on a hobby horse. The Doms explain that her behavior has earned her a caning. “It’s for your own good. We don’t want to do this but we have to.” They take turns caning her until she cries snot. I sit there, trying to digest my taco, reading a graphic description of how much snot is running down her face.
Suddenly the MS has become a horror movie. I resolutely feel as if I should quit. I think I need to go throw up, but instead I just pace in the bathroom until I calm down. I have seventy more pages to proofread that day if I’m going to make my copyediting deadline.
So I keep reading. Sometimes I read blatant noncon, where the heroine is not allowed out of her own house, to wear anything but underwear, or to close the door when she goes to the bathroom. In these books, she has sex with the two “noble” Doms, because it is the easiest way to gain a modicum of freedom. If I make a real stink about it, I may be allowed to tag these books “forced seduction.” Usually, Harpy markets these books as consensual love stories.
Seven or eight months in at Harpy, I’m reading a new BDSM novel every two days. On Wednesdays, my girlfriend and I have movie nights where we eat too much popcorn and I try to navigate the minefield that sex has become for me.
“Are you sure you want me to?” I’ll ask again. I’m no longer confident of the line between consent and coercion. I’ve read countless scenes where the heroine says no and the hero keeps putting his hand up her skirt.
“Is this okay?” I ask when I’m tying up her wrists. I know to avoid any words or phrases that the Doms in the books I edit might use. If I call her, say, “little sub,” I’ll lie awake after she has gone to sleep, feeling gross and anxious.
On the other hand, if I bottom, I’ll just feel unworthy because I’m such a bad top — one who cries after (or during) sex, who loses focus and can’t commit to a scene. You, I tell myself, shouldn’t get to relax.
By the time I leave my job — I’ve gotten into graduate school — we explicitly don’t accept books with female Dommes for any of our regular imprints. I imagine making a t-shirt that says DOMME on it in all caps and wearing it to work every single fucking day I have left.
“You have done all I ask — clearly, you are the perfect woman. Will you do me the honor of wearing my collar?”
The path of least resistance is to write off 50 Shades of Grey as harmless fluff, but frankly, after editing over one hundred novels full of distortions and abuse, I don’t think I could respect myself if I did so. The romance novel industry perpetuates the idea of women as pliable and multi-orgasmic. The Doms in the books I read were looking for empty vessels, novice subs who would imprint onto them like ducklings.
Yes, I know the difference between real life and fantasy, but the two bleed into each other. As much as I want to believe otherwise, those depictions of D/s factor into how I behave as a top, how, in my most uncertain moments, I think a “real Dom” should proceed.
And books like 50 Shades set a dangerous precedent for would-be subs: one where hyper-femininity is demanded and safe words are for the weak. I understand why, upon reading these books, some people become adamant that D/s is just an excuse for violence against women. The relationships portrayed in these books are, without a doubt, abusive. I worry about the women who, instructed by 50 Shades, would not be able to recognize the difference between an abuser and a Dom — the women who will inevitably take their curiosity over to Fetlife.
In the world of 50 Shades, I — a queer Domme — am unthinkable. And the subs I know, not instantly recognizable, but real people with a variety of preferences, are equally absent.
1Â This is not the real name of the publisher.
