In this chapter, not-consent continues to masquerade as consent!

Grey takes her to his…um, playroom.  Everything’s all dark wood and polished leather.  He’s got a ridiculous number of canes, whips, ropes, crops, chains, paddles, and then the author ran out of BDSM words.  (Why do you need more than one cane?  And why are his ropes hanging from the ceiling?  And…I don’t know, I’m not in the scene, but everything about this description sounds more like a porn set than a working playroom.  Everything is on display; it’s not in a functional, logical place.)  He’s also got a St. Andrew’s Cross, but the author doesn’t seem to know that’s what it’s called.  Also it’s the only piece of sex/dungeon furniture in there.  One would think a man as rich and supposedly depraved as Grey could spring for the really fun stuff.  Most people can’t afford to buy furniture that only serves one sexy function, but they can afford a nice paddle and a length of rope.  Where is the rich-man-fantasy-aspect?

In fact, is there any point at all to him being rich?

He’s also got a huge canopy bed in the middle and…oh, no.  Don’t go there book.  There is no bedding… just a mattress covered in red leather and red satin cushions piled at one end.  Why?  Do you know what happens when sweaty naked bodies meet with leather?  Have you never sat on a leather couch in the middle of summer?  What is the point of this?  And don’t tell me it’s to make the sub even more uncomfortable because he’s sadistic.  This can’t be comfortable for him, either.

Ana thinks that the color scheme makes the room look soft and romantic.  I get the uncomfortable feeling that this is the books attempt to show us that she’s okay with all this kink, but it fails utterly.  If she were okay, she should be looking at these chains and whips and getting excited because of what they are, not because she can squint, turn her head to the side, and kind of see it all as something completely different.  This is more like someone’s subconscious desperately trying to protect itself from a bad situation by making it into something it can deal with.

I can observe and absorb but not ar­ticulate my feelings about all this, because I’m in shock.

So the woman is so overwhelmed that she can’t think properly.  And this is the point at which he convinces her to ‘consensually’ have sex?  Do I really need to explain why it’s a bad idea to get ‘consent’ from someone who can’t process information properly?

Fear… yes… that seems to be the over-riding feeling. I recognize it now.

…

He likes to hurt women. The thought depresses me.

THEN GET THE FUCK OUT.  Seriously, she sees all this and is scared.  And yet, this doesn’t stop the sex from happening.  She is going into sex while being afraid of it.  Unless she has some undiscovered kink where she gets off on being scared (yeah, that’s a thing) then this can’t even be twisted into consent.  Except I know it will be, because I know they have sex next chapter, so I’m just going to settle for inarticulate rage for a minute.

“I’m a Dominant.” His eyes are a scorching gray, intense.

“What does that mean?” I whisper.

“It means I want you to willingly surrender yourself to me, in all things.”

I frown at him as I try to assimilate this idea.

“Why would I do that?”

“To please me,” he whispers

Yes, but no.  That’s not the answer you should have given, Grey.  The correct answer to that would be ‘because it would please you.’  See, subs do want to please their Doms, but because the act of giving that pleasure gives them pleasure in return.  It’s a reciprocal thing.  Like that warm, fuzzy feeling you get from donating money to starving children, only a lot sexier.  You’re giving, yes, but the act of giving is enjoyable.  So the answer ‘to please me’ is sort of correct, but when you’re trying to convince someone to consider being a sub for the first time, it’s not the strongest argument in your arsenal. 

Also, ‘in all things’ isn’t an intrinsic part of that definition.  There’s a subsection of Doms that want ‘in all things,’ but it’s not across the board, and I have serious doubts about whether or not the book realizes this.

Ana has the reaction of ‘pleasing him would please me, and I want to do it,’ but that doesn’t change the fact that Grey still used the weaker argument.  It doesn’t even necessarily mean that Ana is a ‘natural submissive,’ because that’s a pretty normal human reaction.  People tend to want other people to like them.

Grey lays out the deal.  He wants to control her life by way of a set of rules.  If she breaks the rules, she gets punished, if she follows them, she gets rewarded.  He tells her that the things in the room are part of the reward/punishment, but doesn’t explain how they are a part of it.  Doesn’t tell her ANY FUCKING THING AT ALL about how the instruments in the room are used, doesn’t even bother to point out that many people find being tied up or used to be a turn-on.  For all she knows, being a good girl means vanilla sex, and being a bad girl means getting whipped.  She has no fucking clue, because he’s still failing to explain any of the important parts.

He’s danger­ous to my health, because I know I’m going to say yes. And part of me doesn’t want to. Part of me wants to run screaming from this room and all it represents. I am so out of my depth here.

If part of you wants to say no, THEN SAY FUCKING NO.  This is not the sort of arrangement you get into without being 100% on board.  Well, I take that back.  Under the right circumstances, for the purposes of experimentation, a single scene that you’re waffling on would be okay.  But Grey is talking about a 24/7 kind of arrangement.  That’s not the sort of thing you should be going into halfheartedly just because the Dom happens to be really, really hot.

Grey takes her down the hall and shows her a bedroom that will be ‘her room’ on the days she is contractually obligated to stay with him.

Okay, I have to stop and bang my head on the desk some more.  They haven’t had any kind of sex at all yet, much less kinky sex, and they’ve only been on one date so far.  Who the fuck goes for a long-term set-up like this right out the gate?  Where is the period of adjustment or getting to know each other?  Neither one of them has the ammount of trust built up yet to engage in something this involved.  Plus, Grey doesn’t know if Ana would even like kinky sex.  If he were a good Dom, he would ask her for a few limited sessions first (at least a few) so that they could both find out how she reacts.  And besides that, they have no idea if they would find the other annoying or not.  Maybe he’s an incurable morning person, or she makes funny noises a lot, or any one of the millions of very valid annoyances that good people have.  (Also, these are not good people.)

In short, they have no reason to be doing this and every reason not to be doing this.

“But we won’t have any sort of relationship?” I ask.

“No.”

YES YOU FUCKING WILL.  Having a long-term set-up like this is incredibly intimate and involved.  It is a relationship.  It’s not what most would call a normal relationship, but it is an intimate relationship.  It’s a hell of a lot more of a relationship than a second date would be.

Both of them continue to fail to realize that they are discussing an intimate relationship, while I sit in the background and break things.

Ana continues to refuse food, but takes another glass of wine.

“No. I haven’t signed anything yet, so I think I’ll hang on to my free will for a bit longer, if that’s okay with you.”

Subs hang onto their free will.  Always.  Just because you consent to following rules that you know about and agree to beforehand, that does not mean you give up your free will.  This book is equating sexual submission with a lack of free will.  THAT’S THE OPPOSITE OF CONSENTUAL. 

Book, Author, Ana, I’m not sure if you realize this, so I’ll spell it out.  Consent has to be constant.  It’s not an item that you hand over at a single point and then that’s the end of the issue.  It’s more like a river between two people, constantly flowing.  You consent, and then you continue to consent, all the way through to the end of the scene.  If someone looses free will (ie, the ability to consent) then something has gone very wrong.  (I guess some people would call sub-space a point at which you lose free will, but that’s a bit of a grey area, and hopefully doesn’t apply to things like whether or not you’ll eat dinner.)

I think I feel a little faint. I take another sip of wine. Alcohol – this will make me brave.

I hate this book with every fiber of my being.

Grey then takes her into the study and shows her his ‘rules’ that she has to live by, which will form only part of their contract.  The rules include things like when she can sleep, what foods she can eat, how much she has to exercise, what clothes she is allowed to wear, etc.  It also includes a clause about not doing anything that might result in personal injury, and I’m so, so sad that Ana actually needs that clause.

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with a set-up like this.  Plenty of people engage in lifestyle arrangements.  They just don’t do it THE FIRST TIME THEY EVER HAVE SEX, KINKY SEX, OR BEFORE THEY EVEN KNOW THEIR PARTNER.

I’ve already ranted about how stupid this is, so I’m moving on before I break stuff.

Ana ‘negotiates’ and gets one less day of exercise.  That’s not very equal.  There’s no sense of both parties bringing something to the table and them coming to an agreement.  There’s just Grey saying ‘do this’ and Ana fighting for a little less of ‘this.’  And she has to actually argue about it.  This is very much a scenario in which one person has all the power and will only grudgingly concede anything to the other person.

Then he gives her a list of his own hard limits, which promptly freaks her out more. 

“Is there anything you’d like to add?” he asks kindly.

Kindly, my ass.  If she did have something to add, she wouldn’t know it, because she has no idea what there is to add.  She has been dumped in with minimal explanation and no time to adjust.  How the hell would she know if she has anything to add?

Ana realizes this same problem and says she doesn’t know what she should say.  Grey then asks if there’s anything she’s done during sex that she doesn’t like.  Grey, honey, if you think fire play and defecation has been part of her normal sex life, then you are further out of touch with reality than anyone previously believed.  A person with a vanilla sex life is going to be of very little help in this situation, because their experiences and practices are going to be vastly different than yours.  How can she know what her hard limits are if she’s never even thought about them?  Granted, some things are going to be obvious, but how is she supposed to say things like “paddles are okay, but I really can’t stand whips” if she’s never been under either one?

Anyway, Ana admits she’s never had sex before, Grey gets mad, and the chapter ends on a cliffhanger.  Next chapter: virgin-shaming!  It’s like the new and improved slut-shaming!