Tired of the hate!

I care and I hate this crap because works of fiction can have huge consequences in the real world, both good and bad.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" is fictional but it highlighted real issues in a way that made millions of people think about bigotry and civil rights in a new light. That had a large real world effect.

"Jaws" is fiction but is spawned unnecessary shark hunts all over the world that nearly decimated several shark species. As a result, the book's author, Peter Benchley, wished he'd never written it or allowed a movie to be made from it.

"Lolita" inspired the disturbing social trend of referring to sexually attractive and precocious teenage girls as "Lolitas" even though the book is the story of a pedophile rapist's obsession with his victim. Apparently some people who read the book weren't smart enough to realize that Humbert is not only an unreliable narrator but a delusional one so his contention that Lolita seduced him is intentionally deranged. Nabakov himself was horrified by how many people completely missed the entire point of his book, including many publishers who insisted on selling the book with sensationalist and sexually provocative book covers.

"Fatal Attraction" showed the potential consequences of a married man having an affair with someone they barely know. As such, adultery rates among men temporarily plummeted after the movie's release.

The FSOG books and movies have become popular so, they will sadly influence culture on many levels. That makes them very real. Disturbingly real given how damaging romanticizing stalking, manipulation, abuse, rape, and non-consensual sexualized violence are. There have already been beatings and rapes where the men say they were inspired by the books thinking that their popularity meant that "women really want this". "This" being forced sex and sexualized violence. Since the female character in the books frequently protests and is ignored by Grey but pretends that it's fine because she had orgasms, the books also trivialize rape and invalidate the trauma of women whose bodies happened to orgasm during assault. This is even more disturbing when you consider how many younger women, even teenage girls, read these books along with Twilight, and now think that being stalked, controlled, and violated is romantic and "hot".

The books have only been around a few years but they've already had a devastating impact on the lives of many women, especially young women. Psychological and sociological studies from researchers at Michigan State University showed that in just three years, young women and girls who'd read at least one of the books were at higher risk of intimate partner abuse, rape, stalking, alcohol poisoning, and eating disorders compared to women of the same age, ethnic backgrounds, and socioeconomic status who'd never read any of the books. Women and girls who'd read all three books were at the highest risk. This indicates significant correlation and the possibility that the books encouraged those women and girls to ignore serious red flag behavior from dangerous men.


We are already fighting an uphill battle with raging sexists in charge at the highest level. The last thing we need is stalking, abuse, and sexualized violence made not only socially acceptable but desirable.