Who Doesn't Love Masturbating To The Sound Of Frogs Croaking?

Sometimes when I’m chopping vegetables in the kitchen, my housemate comes up behind me and tries to choke me with a tea towel.

I rarely flinch.

“You probably enjoyed that,” he says in a mock sneer before throwing the cloth in my face. “Didn’t you?”

It’s a joke between us. He knows that I think BDSM is hot. That despite the fact I’m a loudmouthed, opinionated, strong-willed, independent, feminist woman, I like to play the submissive in the bedroom.

"There I was feeling sexually liberated for the first time in my life but according to a bunch of normophiles, I was just oppressed and an emotional screwup."

The first time the opportunity to explore this came along, what I experienced was an awakening. I felt like I finally understood some secret mystery about myself, and not only did I know myself better, I liked what I saw.

It was exciting. I wanted to burst through a door shouting – Guys! Guess what?! I’m a sub! – except I felt like I had to be careful about who I told, like there was a real risk that people’s perception of me would change, because there was something about it that was dark... distasteful... deviant.

There were quite a few heads shaking, faces screwed up, and a couple of people even looked frightened. They claimed it to be oppressive, anti-feminist, and - most annoying - that it was a natural progression for a woman who, as an emotional teenager (like a lot of teenagers, but that didn’t seem to matter) I used to cut myself. Naturally, as an adult, I was just looking for other ways to physically manifest emotional pain.

There I was feeling sexually liberated for the first time in my life but according to a bunch of normophiles, I was just oppressed and an emotional screw-up.

I’ve spent the past few weeks monitoring the reaction to Fifty Shades Of Grey – a trashy piece of fiction turned into a film where a virgin named Anastasia Steele falls in love with a billionaire named Christian Grey who is a dominant and wants her to be his submissive.

Feminists, anti-domestic violence activists, the host of the Today show, some writer’s husband in The Guardian, and a few kinksters; everyone’s had a go at this really shitty piece of entertainment. A book and a film that makes writers like myself look at our collection of rejection letters and sigh.

The film is so shit, it’s almost brilliant. I sat in the cinema laughing out loud more often than I do during a Parks And Recreation marathon, surrounded by a good mix of men and women who were all laughing as much as I was. Did the filmmaker purposely set out to launch an assault on every existing romantic cliché? To create wooden characters of such crap quality, Ron Swanson wouldn’t even be able to make a pencil out of them? Actors deliver lines so empty, so cheesy, and so cringe worthy, I can’t be sure it wasn’t satire.

But this is a film that has launched a thousand protests. “Domestic violence dressed up as erotica”, Today’s Lisa Wilkinson called it. “An apology for domestic violence”, the husband in The Guardian wrote. “Mr Grey is a rapist”, said a banner at the protests outside the film’s London premiere.

All I saw was a stockstandard, innocent-poor-girl-is-saved-by-broody-sad-rich-guy-who-is-then-saved-by-poor-girl narrative. Not unlike Pride And Prejudice, only where Pride And Prejudice has literary spunk, FSOG can’t even get it up.

I’m not going to deconstruct all that stuff about Christian Grey being a stalker, about how selling Anastasia’s old bomb of a car and buying her a new one without her consent is creepy. Women have been told for centuries that being stalked and saved is romance. I’d need another 1000 words to rail against that.

My problem lies in Christian Grey’s portrayal as psychologically screwed up. His mother was a crack whore, he became a middle-aged dominant woman’s submissive when he was 15, which is abuse and statutory rape, and for some reason he can’t stand being touched. Of course he’s into deviant sex; he’s a psychologically unhealthy person. He likes torture in the bedroom because he’s tortured deep down in his soul.

Towards the end, Anastasia looks at him like a cocker spaniel that’s been left out in a storm, tears streaming down her face as she whimpers – “Why do you want to hurt me?”

"The film is so shit, it’s almost brilliant."

His response, I shit you not – “Because I’m fifty shades of fucked up.”

The audience roared with laughter. But it got me thinking about all the people I’ve spoken to who are perfectly normal and happy people, and who also enjoy pain, degradation, humiliation and control during sexual relations. And the only tortured thing about them is that they think those desires mean they’re fucked up.

And of course there are some things that, when acted upon, are fucked up.

But if someone wants to marry the Eiffel Tower, or masturbate to the sound of frogs croaking, or is turned on by a thick early morning fog, why should that be considered more perverse than a tits or an arse man?

The dominant perception of what constitutes normal – I’m not submitting to that.