All across the country, randy theatergoers are flocking to their local suburban movie complexes to see the film adaptation of E.L. James’ internationally bestselling novel 50 Shades of Grey starring dreamboat Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson.
But what few fans of the book (and now movie) may realize is that even though 50 Shades of Grey features a young heterosexual couple, it’s actually a very gay-inspired story.
Scroll down for five ways in which gay culture has influenced what is sure to become the #1 movie at this week’s box office…
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While suburban housewives across America have been getting all hot and bothered reading what many gay men would consider to be mild BDSM sex scenes at best, we’ve been publicly embracing hardcore kinky behavior since before 21-year-old Fifty Shades of Grey protagonist Anastasia Steele was even born.
San Francisco’s annual BDSM street fair has taken sex to the extreme for over 30 years, becoming the world’s largest leather event. For more than three decades, gay leather daddies and their man slaves have flogged, er, flocked to the heart of SOMA, a neighborhood once famous for it’s raunchy leather bars, to party with other like-minded sadomasochists.
George Michael‘s song “Father Figure”
In the book, 27-year-old Christian Grey becomes Anastasia’s father figure by impressing her with his boundless wealth, taking her for a ride on his private helicopter, and, of course, claiming her virginity. But what naive, young Ana doesn’t realize is that many of Grey’s slick moves are borrowed straight from George Michael’s “Father Figure” music video. Of course, how would she know this? “Father Figure” came out in 1988, when Ana was still just a twinkle in her biological daddy’s eye.
The average lifespan of a gay relationship
50 Shades of Grey takes place over the course of a month, with Ana falling in love with Christian by week two and breaking it off with him by week four. Not to perpetuate stereotypes, but this is on par with the average lifespan of many gay relationships.
Gay sex clubs and bath houses
Audiences were shocked — shocked! — to read about Christian Grey’s “playroom” dedicated exclusively to housing all his fetish gear and other sex toys. But what many readers didn’t seem to realize is that gay men pretty much invented the idea of a “playroom” with sex clubs and bathhouses. (That’s right, Christian Grey has a room. We have whole houses.)
Bathhouses became a popular hangout for gay men in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when homosexual acts were still illegal. By the 1950s, they were popping up all across the country, and by the late 1960s and early 1970s, many had become staple institutions within the gay community.
Gay pulp fiction
Before there was the internet, gay men got their rocks off by watching VHS porno tapes or paging through dirty magazines. And before that, they got their kicks from erotic pulp fiction.
Sexy dime-store novels featuring gay characters like All Shades of Gay, Locker Room Lovers, Beefcake Boys and Hollywood Homo helped pave the way for more mainstream erotica like Fifty Shades of Grey.
You’re welcome, E.L. James
DistingueTraces
I’m not sure that blurring the lines between kinky sex and an abusive, misogynist relationship dynamic is actually something the gays did first.
I’m pretty sure that’s been a straight specialty for some time.
Mr. Michael
You’re making a few ridiculous jumps here.
1. Folsom Street Fair did not invent BDSM.
2. George Michael did not invent daddy issues.
3. Gay bath houses spawned the Red Room? please.
4. You forget gay pulp fiction wasn’t the only pulp fiction.
The gay relationship span is just insulting, so quit.
After that, there is no substance to this article, just a gay dude probably sick of hearing about straight people’s porny movie, with some kind of hipster “we were kink before it was cool” thing.
And as the previous commenter notes, this isn’t one you want to try and own anyways. In 20 years it will be a regrettable albatross like “Cruising.”
Theonewhoismany
I was thinking that people should be trying to avoid responsibility for this movie and novel/ pamphlet (?), but instead there is argument over who is guilty of inspiring it.
Taskebab
It’s disturbing that apparently the gays need to be proud of this…it should be more like “look at the nasty perverted sluts y’all are, go sit in a corner and be ashamed”
tdx3fan
I personally am not proud of the Folsom Street Fair. Its sad that people get so warped in the head and their self-esteem gets so out of bounds that they honestly think they need to be whipped like cattle and owned like property to be loved. That is some messed up crap. We should be disgusted by it not celebrating it. Those people need help not admiration.
caris
I’m sorry. I don’t like the paid content to begin with, but when you do it, you should give the advertisers better than this poorly conceived article.
Bubbleandsqueal
“Pauline Reage” (Anne Desclos) and the Marquis de Sade “invented” “Fifty Shades of Grey” and they did it way better. The gays have a lot of things to answer for, but hausfrau S & M porn isn’t one of them.
jason smeds
The difference between 50 Shades of Grey and homosexual male culture is that 50 Shades is about a female who prostitutes herself to a wealthy man so that she can benefit financially from the relationship.
When homosexuality occurs amongst men, it’s usually for free
wpewen
I can assure everyone the Folsom Fair is a statewide and national disgrace to the San Francisco Gay Community. If you queried most Californians, even in Fresno, they’d say something like “behind closed doors.” But no, it must be done outside. I lived in Castro in the 80’s, native Californian who first was in SF in 78. No, there are still big problems with the San Francisco Gay Community which people simply refuse to see. The “hands off” quality of street sexualizing (like in the parade) will go on, but it’s being shut down elsewhere. I’m old enough to remember the hippies in the Haight 67 (my brother was one) and THAT scene was shut down fast.
tdx3fan
@jason smeds: Oh Jason, dear Jason… Do not think for a moment there is not little kept boys “prostituting” themselves or rent boys truly having sex for money. To do so would be naive. You never miss a chance to play the misogynist do you?
demented
This is kind of ridiculous. The “daddy” thing is not from gay culture, but from the creepy “father-daughter romance” thing that permeates the Twilight books, where only a much older dominating man and a younger, childlike woman can get together and be happy. It’s not because of anything gay (not intentionally), but from Stephenie Meyer coming from a misogynistic subculture where women are second-class citizens subservient to men.
And the super-short time it takes to get together? Yeah, that’s the lame soulmate trope. You find it in lots of bad fanfic. Like “50 Shades” originally was.
And the idea that porn books and S&M dungeons are all derived ONLY from gay culture? Um, no. There was erotic pulp with/for heteros too, and the Red Room doesn’t resemble a bath-house at all. Unless we’re using the very loose definition of “place with four walls where sex happens.”
This is such clickbait.
Desert Boy
I love hot, sweaty, sexuality. But, the trailers for ’50 Shades of Grey’ don’t make me want to run to the movie theater and plop down $10 to see it.
Truth told, when I read 50 was “peen-less”, I went flacid.
Kangol
@Mr. Michael:
Tell the truth.
Marquis de Sade’s outrageous, almost unreadable perverse novels, including *120 Days of Sodom*, *Justine*, *Juliette* and so on were written in the 1780s through the early 1800s. The “S,” for sadism, in BDSM is named after him.
Hetero Leopold von Sacher-Masoch published the novel *Venus in Furs* in 1870. The “M,” for masochism, in BDSM, is named after him.
There have been traditions of bondage in a number of cultures, including Japan, where it dates back to the mid-19th century, and discipline, in sex and everything else, goes back millennia. Ancient Greek flagellation, Roman descriptions of sexual whippings, role playing in the Kama Sutra, etc. all point to BDSM’s origins.
LGBT people before and especially after the Gay Liberation moment did incorporate elements of BDSM cultures and practices into the mix, and it has taken straights in the “mainstream” a long time to admit to what many of them have been up to for a long time.
There’s also been a long history of bad writing, though E. L. James could probably learn some craft lessons from gay pulp.
mwalsh
@DistingueTraces: Having come out in the hayday of gay culture in NYC and San Francisco during the late 70’s & 80’s I can definitely say that while some people were couples, a wide range of experimental sex was the status quo. HIV and simple homophobia& the desire not to transgress straight prudery were the impulse that stopped regular lives of promiscuity: ‘sport fucking”; I came to understand that it was just possible to fall in love every day with a different person as an authentic expression of a gay person. Now I think that people most opposed to this natural freedom were either to shy or too unattractive to get laid often.The book “Sex at Dawn” makes a good case for man not being monogamous by nature. Women are needy in that way more so. I got into occasional S/M because it proved healthier than abusive relationships. While there were straight people into S/M then gays definitely set the pace, and will return to that standard once the marriage fad has passed.
jantheman4903
@wpewen: i just know that whenever homophobes in the midwest..like nebraska, they show footage from these fairs n scream deviant n then go out and hate us. so we get punished for stuff we never did. love the action. take it indoors.
Maude
I remember the “Song Of The Loon” books that took the gay world by storm.
About ‘mountain men’ and Indians having great sex in the great outdoors.
Somebody make a movie. Please!
Captain Obvious
@tdx3fan: Especially Queerty’s “it” boy Colton Haynes. He’s pretty much slept his way through every gay in Hollywood to get a career started and continuing any time it starts to fall off.
wpewen
@mwalsh: You’re generalizing big time. I also came out in LA in the 70’s, saw the scene briefly in SF in the early 80’s There is no way on earth you can make those statements with any social science validity whatsoever. Yeah, guys gay and straight are hardwired for sex with a handshake GENERALLY, and so on. You’ve spent lots of time in a world which is quite different than Hayward.
argleflarglebargle
We had nothing whatsoever to do with this book… Twilight and a misunderstanding of BDSM is responsible for this book, let’s not blame Gay people for 50 Shades, no one deserves that