50 Shades

Everyone has a right to their own opinion, and there has been something laying on my heart for a while now. Although they are rhetorical, I have some real questions….

My husband and I have been blessed the last 3 days to have our granddaughter come for sleepover. Like many grandparents with their grandchildren, we have read books, played lots of games, snuggled with her, and just listened to her chatter about her life. We loved every second. I found myself wondering, as I did with her Momma, what she will be when she grows up.

Never in my mind did I think, “I hope she grows up to be sexually tortured by a man. I hope she is seduced, dominated, and humiliated by some guy in a suit”, like the young woman in “50 Shades…..”

Yet, apparently many other parents and grandparents appear to approve of that for the little girls in their life: their daughters, nieces, granddaughters, daughters of friends…….

I truly am astonished at this, and I truly don’t know why anyone would want that for our granddaughter, or any other girl. But, in fact, I’m told it’s a “good story line”, and “it’s quite entertaining to read about and watch in movies.”

Really? Entertaining?

The definition of entertaining:
en•ter•tain•ing
ˌen(t)ərˈtāniNG/
adjective
1. providing amusement or enjoyment

So, it’s amusing/enjoyable for a young woman to be tortured? Truly?

I respectfully disagree.

In 1978, while asleep in my home, a man, who turned out to be a serial rapist, broke in through a window. As I spent the night being raped, tortured, and dominated, I did not consider it to be entertainment. As he held a weapon next to my head and pulled the trigger (thank God it wasn't loaded), I was not thinking this is a “good story line”. That night was not entertaining, but in fact, horrifyingly life-changing. Nearing 40 years later, I still remember the sound of his voice and the words he said. Mostly, I remember the sheer terror of it all.

It is a fact: Girls everywhere pay a price when we teach men to be turned on by women in pain!!

I am told “50 Shades” is only a story…….but, true stories of girls being kidnapped and tortured for use as sex slaves is becoming nearly commonplace, as in the 3 young women finally rescued in Cleveland; the over 200-300 young girls kidnapped FROM THEIR SCHOOL in Nigeria to be sold off as wives; the kidnapping and raping of Elizabeth Smart; the kidnapping/rape/torture/mutilation of females of all ages by Islamic terrorists that continues today in the Middle East; and on and on………

I am sickened by these events. Isn't everyone but the creeps who do it?

I just don’t understand how the glamorization of violence and abuse is "entertaining"? How does it make a “good story”?

The ad for “50” says the young woman is: “Humiliated. Battered. Abused. Controlled. Degraded. Entrapped. Isolated. Threatened. Coerced. Manipulated. Tortured.”

How is a guy doing all those things to someone’s daughter/niece/granddaughter okay? Even “okay” enough to pay money to watch it?

Would it still be as “good” a story if every time you looked at the young woman in this film, you saw the face of the sweet, little girl in your life?

Would you want to watch her being tortured and sexually abused?

Would you want people to pay money to watch your “little girl” being victimized?

Truly, would you?