Warning: This chapter has rape.  I don’t care if other people would call it dub-con, I’m calling it rape and it’s disgusting.

Ana gets ready to go jogging.  She’s making a bid deal about it, because apparently she never goes running.  I’m a bit torn.  On the one hand, okay, fine.  Most of the population in the US is far more sedentary than they should be, so it’s not stretch to assume Ana would be, too.  On the other hand, it’s really unhealthy, and we keep getting it shoved down our throats that Ana is Beautiful But Doesn’t Know It.  I’m one of those people that thinks health is beautiful, so it pisses me off when I see skinny but unhealthy women held up as the target.  (Also, I get irrationally pissed off whenever Ana and I have something in common.  I’m pretty thin by nature, even when I go through an extended bout of failing to work out, like when I was unemployed.  But I still used to get winded climbing stairs, even without bulk around my middle.  It’s not a good thing.)

Seems she found out from her research that the contract is legally unenforceable, so there’s that at least.  But let’s add this to the list of things Grey should have told her about personally.  Just because she, luckily, found what she needed, it doesn’t absolve him of responsibility.  It just makes him a lucky, lazy bastard.

I pace through the park.

…

I stop beside a large spruce and put my hands on my knees, breathing hard, dragging precious air into my lungs.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.  I don’t know if I should blame bad writing for this one, or boggle at Ana being so out of shape that she can’t pace without getting winded.  I mean, that’s not a very energetic verb.

Well, after all her pacing, she decides she’s not all the way in, but she’s willing to stick around long enough to talk to him on their next date.  Is anyone really surprised?

Yay, more of Ana comparing her looks to other women (Kate this time) and putting herself down.  You know, Ana, maybe instead of feeling bad because you run in sweatpants, you should feel bad because you…didn’t fucking run anywhere.  I mean, if all that’s wrong in this situation is that you just got in from a ‘jog’ and Kate is modeling her new clothes, hell, a shower will fix it.  Stop angsting.

In her room, Ana sends Grey an email.

Okay, I’ve seen enough.

It was nice knowing you.

Ana

Then immediately after wonders if Grey will get the joke.  Probably not.  I don’t get the joke either.  This is just a straight-up rejection email.  What’s supposed to be funny about it?

Ana angsts about how he’s not responding, until finally Grey shows up at her door instead.

…his pants doing that hanging from the hips thing…

You mean, being pants?  Seriously, what are they supposed to hang from?

She’s still thinking that he’ll understand the ‘humor’ in her email.  Am I just dense?  What was the joke?!  Is it supposed to be funny because no woman in her right mind would deny the Illustrious, Yummy Christian Grey? 

“Well, I thought I should come and remind you how nice it was knowing me.”

Excuse me while I go over here and fail around in incoherent rage.  Really?  Grey gets rejected and his answer is to show up at her house and demand more sex?

DOES THIS BASTARD EVEN KNOW WHAT CONSENT MEANS?  Because I’ll give him a hint.  Part of the definition is ‘freely given.’  Not ‘given after being intimidated by a man who refuses to accept rejection and instead shows up at your house to invade your personal, private space and shows no hint of ever backing down, because he’s Christian Grey, damnit, and he’s going to get what he wants.’

I mean, I guess you could argue that he’s not acting in a particularly intimidating manner…oh yeah, except for showing up at her house.  By itself, not a bad thing, but as a response to that email?  Very controlling, very stalkerish, and very indicative of the fact that he has no plans whatsoever to respect her limits and wishes.

How am I going to dig myself out of this? If I tell him it was a joke, I don’t think he’ll be impressed.

“I thought you’d reply by email.” My voice is small, pathetic.

These are the thoughts of someone who is intimidated.  She’s not excited that he’s there.  She’s not turned on because he’s talking about sexing her.  She’s not thinking ‘oh, I thought we would just banter, but this is better!’  No, instead she’s worried about being in trouble and acting scared.  That ‘small, pathetic’ voice?  That’s the person version of rolling over and showing your belly so that the alpha dog doesn’t bite you.  It’s body language that says “I’m scared enough not to fight you, so please don’t hurt me anyway.”

Because this book hates me, they have sex anyway.  She doesn’t even verbally agree first.  She just kind of stands there all slack-jawed until he starts to make out with her.

Stop calling Mrs. Robinson ‘evil.’  No, on second thought, do that, but point out repeatedly that Grey is evil, too. 

that silver grey woven tie that leaves small impressions of its weave on my skin.

Um…what?  How does a fabric pattern leave impressions on skin?  I didn’t mention this in the last sex scene, because I thought she was talking about the actual knots used, or the pattern of how the tie wrapped around her wrists, or something that actually made sense.  But the fabric is leaving weave imprints? 

Also, yay, more unnegotiated bondage.  He actually ties her to the bed this time, instead of just tying her hands together.  Motherfucker, she hasn’t even agreed to the contract you sent her yet, and even if she did, that contract didn’t mention bondage!  And he doesn’t even offer up a ‘by your leave’ before this, just jumps right into doing it.

“If you struggle, I’ll tie your feet too. If you make a noise, Anastasia, I will gag you.”

STOP THREATENING HER WITH STUFF THAT YOU HAVEN’T NEGOTIATED!  This doesn’t even count as part of the play.  He’s straight-up threatening her.  He’s not getting what he wants, so he’s forcing her into it with threats.  Not thing one about any of this is consensual, and he’s just threatened away her chance to protest!  If she tries to stop him now, he’ll just gag her.

See, this is the shit that makes people say that BDSM is degrading to women.  Because they think this is BDSM.  It’s not.

Seriously, I’m so skeeved that I had to go back and reread this scene to see if I’d missed a part where she agreed to right-now sex.  Nope, still missing.  You know what’s also missing?  Any hint that she even wants this sex.

It’s…it’s…uhg.  Oh man.  I’m going to be sick.  After he ties her down and starts touching her, she falls back into talking about how her body reacts pleasurably.  But this scene really illustrates something disgusting.  It’s been there throughout the book in a real subtle way, but here it’s just hanging out with a big neon banner.

Ana is unsure about sex.  Every time it’s initiated, she’s not eager for it.  Oddly enough, she’ll be eager for sex when it’s not right in front of her, but when the actual naked time comes, Grey has all of the initiative.  She never acts like she wants to jump into the act.  And this time, it’s clear as a bell, because there’s not even a hint that she’s turned on until well after activities begin.  However, once the sex starts, she spends pages and pages (and pages) going on about how incredible it makes her body feel.

It’s basically playing into the attitude that if your body reacts to a sexual encounter, that counts for consent.  As long as you enjoy it, it’s not rape.  It also plays into the fiction that women don’t want sex, or at least not in the same ways that men want sex.  It caters to the false notion that if a woman says ‘no,’ or even a more waffling ‘I don’t feel like it right now,’ it’s perfectly okay to press forward anyway, as long as she ‘enjoys’ herself at some point before the end of things.  And if that ‘enjoyment’ is just an autonomous reaction, still counts!

Except for the fact that, no, it doesn’t.  Bodies react without our meaning for them to all the time.  We’re programmed to enjoy sexual encounters.  Our bodies naturally release the happy hormones, because people who enjoy sex have more of it, and people who have more sex have more kids, and people who have more kids pass their genes along.  Natural selection at work.  But consent isn’t hormone-based, and a woman who gets the happy feelings in the middle of an act can, once the high goes away, still be horrified and degraded by a sexual encounter that she didn’t want.

You know what, I was giving Grey the benefit of the doubt before now, if just because Ana’s idiocy and the bad writing make it hard to make this call.  It’s been hard to draw the line between the book’s idiocy and the character’s idiocy.  But no more.  My suspension of disbelief has just fled the building in disgust.  He’s raping her.

He blindfolds her, then leaves her to go get a drink.  Ana worries about what Kate will say, because apparently she’s worried that Kate will think she’s a whore?  Or something?  Even though Kate already knew they were having sex?  Maybe she’s just worried Kate will think she’s inconsiderate for having sex while Kate’s home?  It’s not real clear, and I’m not willing to give this book any grace.

He comes back with wine and makes a joke about her being a lightweight while making her drink it.  Yeah, the book makes it sound sexier than that, but fuck this book.  Purple prose does not change the actions that happen, and it doesn’t make them less fucked up.

They play with the wine and some ice (who puts ice in their white wine?) and there’s more foreplay that’s “so hot” and I gag.

“This is your punishment, so close and yet so far. Is this nice?”

Yeah, you read that right.  He’s punishing her for rejecting him.  I don’t care what happens later in this book, I don’t care what Ana says, I don’t care how the author tries to justify it.  He has clearly demonstrated that any ‘no’ from Ana REGARDING THEIR NEGOTIATION will result in PUNISHMENT.  Consent is no longer possible.  The rest of this book?  It’s all non-consensual.  You cannot convince me otherwise. 

Apparently she comes as soon as he penetrates her, and then does so ‘again and again.’  Yeah…I call bullshit.  The foreplay wasn’t even that hot.

“How nice was that?” he asks through his gritted teeth.

God, just…ew.  He keeps repeating this phrase, with an emphasis on the ‘nice,’ making it eminently clear that he’s doing all this because of her email, and specifically, as punishment for what she said in the email.  There is literally no other interpretation for this.

Afterward, the book tries to convince me that there is cute banter in which they make jokes about the word ‘nice.’   I don’t buy it.

We still don’t get any indication of what the joke was supposed to be.  It feels uncomfortably like this was originally an intentional rejection, and someone pointed out to the author that it was creepy as fuck, so she just added in ‘lol, it was a joke!’ to try and patch it up.

Also, she didn’t tell Grey it was a ‘joke’ until near the end of the sex, so the whole mess excuses nothing.

“Only certain things are funny, Anastasia. I thought you were saying no, no discussion at all.”

IF YOU THOUGHT SHE WAS SAYING ‘NO’ THEN WHY DID YOU SHOW UP AND FORCE SEX ON HER?

Yeah.  Rape.  He’s now an admitted rapist.

“You still talk to her [Mrs. Robinson] regularly?” I can’t keep the shock out of my voice.

“Yes.” He’s serious now.

Oh… and part of me is suddenly insanely jealous – I’m disturbed by the depth of my feeling.

Yes, your ‘boyfriend’ was raped as a child.  I’m not sure if it’s because you’re a victim or because you’re a horrible person that you jump to ‘jealousy’ instead of ‘deep, deep disturbance.’  I really hate it when books are so poorly written that I side against the rape victims.  Both of them.  It makes me feel dirty.

They banter some more, and it’s still not cute.  IT WILL NEVER BE CUTE, BOOK.

I open the door for him and stare down at my hands. This is the first time I have ever had sex in my home, and as sex goes, I think it was pretty damn fine. But now I feel like a receptacle – an empty vessel to be filled at his whim. My subconscious shakes her head. You wanted to run to the Heathman for sex – you had it express-delivered. She crosses her arms and taps her foot with a what-are-you-complaining-about-look on her face.

Everything about that paragraph makes me want to vomit.  There is only one way to read this: she feels degraded after her rape, ‘like an empty receptacle,’ and in an effort to preserve herself, her subconscious is twisting it into something else.

I know that if I do this thing with him, I will get hurt. He’s not capable, interested, or willing to offer me any more… and I want more.

It’s like this book doesn’t want her to be in this romance.  Er, ‘romance.’  Honest to god, I can’t figure out why she’s still chasing after this bastard.  At every single turn she repeats the fact that she does not want this kind of a relationship. 

Guess what?  PEOPLE WHO DON’T WANT BDSM SHOULDN’T DO BDSM.  It really should be simple logic, here.  Just like it’s okay to have a kink, it’s also okay not to have a kink.  Kinky people shouldn’t be forced into being normal, and normal people shouldn’t be forced into being kinky. 

He leaves, and then Ana has to talk to Kate.  She admits that she sent Grey an email saying she didn’t want to see him anymore, and that made Grey show up at the apartment.  Kate calls her ‘genius’ for that, and says that Grey must ‘really like her.’

Great.  Yeah.  Sure.  Let’s just hammer in that idea that it’s good for girls to play “hard to get” and it’s okay for men to force them, as long as they enjoy the sex at some point.  I don’t think that nail is deep enough in my skull, so go ahead and bang on it a few more times.

I want to shoot everyone in this book.

They talk some more about Grey and sex and…oddly, when Ana explains the relationship, she ends up making it sound as bad as it really is.  Yet no one ends up saying ‘wow, that’s awful.’  They just roll along with it. Because as we’ve covered before, they are all bad people.

Apparently Ana’s mom’s new husband is hurt, but her dad will be at the graduation ceremony.  Not sure why that’s in there.

Later, more emails.  Ana sends Grey a list of her problems in the contract.  (And “I don’t want to fucking do this because I’m not turned on by it” doesn’t make the list.)

She wants the term down from three months to one month and to not go in every weekend.  About half her ‘problems’ are just saying that a certain clause doesn’t matter and so doesn’t have to be in there.  I’m not sure why that counts as a ‘problem.’  If the contract says you can’t masturbate, and you already don’t masturbate and don’t want to start, isn’t that the opposite of a problem?

She also objects to getting an STI test, because she’s an idiot.  Yeah, we all know she’s clean, but why the hell would Grey trust her?

She says that the list of healthy foods she can eat is a dealbreaker.  The list goes or she does.  This is the only dealbreaker she’s got, and she’s not previously shown any inclination to caring about her food.  She’s not a junk food junkie, and we’ve barely even seen her eat.  This is in here simply because it’s something that Grey feels extra strong about (which we know, because fuck subtlety) and apparently they need something to fight about.  You know, something other than their actual problems, since the book is going to ignore those.

All the rest of her list is just asking for clarification (like with punishment) or saying outright no to some of the more intense stuff (like fisting, but really, did we want to see this author attempt a fisting scene?).

Email banter, then Ana goes to bed. 

Just, seriously, fuck this book.