here you are, Napdamnyou
"I like pornography. In this, I am scarcely alone. Millions, if not billions, of humans are looking at pornography now ? right now, literally now. It?s probably why the people at the Virgin broadband call centre haven?t called you back yet, and why your bus was late this morning. It?s an industry worth £8.5 billion ? bigger than Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and eBay combined. And, let?s face it, you can get porn off all of them, too ? so the final nookie stats are all over the shop.
We live in a world of pornography ? and, as a concept, that?s no bad thing. Humans are clearly hard-wired to enjoy watching other humans having sex, and pornography is the polite and considerate invention we came up with that allows this to happen, when we realised the only alternative ? standing on our neighbours? lawns with a pair of binoculars, around dusk, shouting, ?Get ON with it ? Coast?s on in ten minutes? ? might, eventually, lead to social discord. Ironically, pornography stops us being socially unacceptable deviants and perverts.
As a fan of pornography, then, I was delighted to hear the world has recently invented a new kind: ?mummy porn?. No, it?s not that. Indeed, it?s the opposite ? it?s actually ?porn that mums like?. Yeah. They?re the ones with their money in their hands now, baby. The objectified just turned into the consumer ? so in your face, possibly literally, The Man.
The success of novelist E.L. James?s Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy ? No 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, ten million copies shifted ? has opened up a new market for ?female-friendly? porn. Suddenly, the books? themes ? women enjoying bondage, sadism and submission ? are being discussed in Newsweek and on Newsnight. Jeremy Paxman looked very unhappy during that episode ? like a man longing for Gavin Esler to run into the studio shouting ?NEWSFLASH! THE EURO?S JUST EXPLODED!?, so he could return to a subject less contentious and mysterious than whether women like nipple clamps or not.
However. All is not rosy in the mummy porn garden. In the media and literary world, the success of Fifty Shades of Grey has been met with great disdain. The common cavil is that it?s so appallingly, clunkingly written ? it started as a fan blog of Twilight-inspired porn, and it shows ? that it kind of? lets women down. That having a book that?s so groundbreaking, yet so naff, has ruined female pornography ? before it had properly started.
Personally, I disagree. I read Fifty Shades of Grey yesterday, and, yes, it is most assuredly not The Great Gatsby of filth. E.L. James?s first description of hero Christian Grey is that he?s ?long-fingered?, which makes him sound as if he?s either a) continually violated, or b) ET. Additionally, the sentence ?I was coming apart like the spin cycle on a washing machine? is taking the concept of ?mummy porn? a bit too far. James might as well have written ??like the spin cycle of a mixed wash, with one of those dye-retaining sheets in ? just in case?. For reading mums, a sudden mention of a washing machine is an alarmingly unsexual moment. It?s apt to lead to housework panic and guilty feelings about ironing.
But reading it, I could see why those ten million copies got shifted. James knows her ?mummy? audience well ? every description of sex is prefaced with a detailed description of how nice and clean all the sheets are, and no one in Fifty Shades of Grey ever has to stop halfway through a bunk-up because they?ve just rolled onto a Peppa Pig doll that?s started shouting, ?Everyone loves jumping in muddy puddles! SNORT!?
Anyway, it doesn?t matter how badly written the porn in Fifty Shades of Grey is. The key thing is that women are writing pornography ? and it?s selling like hot cakes. For while I am a fan of pornography, it?s obvious that the porn industry is horribly sexist. There?s scarcely anything out there based on the desires of women. In a world where ten million books have been sold, however ? and there?s a Fifty Shades of Grey film forthcoming ? you can bet your spanked arse the porn industry is going to be falling over itself to start making female-friendly pornography. Stuff where the women involved aren?t sad, orange things being thrown around by lunks ? but people who actually talk and articulate desire. Who have fun.
The ?terrible writing? in Shades of Grey will bank-roll publishers for 50 beautifully written books of female pornography, and has already ? God bless it ? done more for honest discussions of female sexuality than the exquisite, but little-read, writing of Anaïs Nin. Revolutions don?t have to spring up fully formed ? inspiring and majestic from the get-go. Sometimes, the revolution starts with a terrible description of someone?s fingers, and a mistimed simile about a washing machine.
So. In essence. Fifty Shades of Grey: I wouldn?t w* to it ? but I am in favour of it politically. "