Perverse Parent Of The Year

OK, I know it was Erotic World Book Day yesterday as well as regular WBD (and do click that link and buy that book...) but some people seem to have got a little bit confused between the two.

Yup, a mother actually sent her 11-year-old to school dressed as Christian Grey, carrying a blindfold and a handful of cable ties. The school, predictably, threw a collective fit, and the mother has been having fun pointing out various logic fails in their attitude
.

(pic from the Daily Mirror article)

And she does have a point: it's not like Christian Grey is the only abusive fictitious ringpiece around. Kids are allowed to go as James Bond (who kills people) and Dr Who (who has committed genocide more than once) and Bellatrix Lestrange (who kills and tortures people)... Christian Grey 'only' stalks and perves over dimwitted young women.

Also, it is quite a funny idea and quite a clever, satirical one as well - it certainly points up the fact that most people still don't read many books (and don't get me started on how many kids' costumes on sale for WBD are for film/TV characters rather than those who have ever come to life between pages). I sort of wish I had thought of it (and it would have been even funnier to do it with a toddler who would have had NO IDEA what was going on). But the truth is, I wouldn't have actually done it to my own child, or any child under the age of about 14. It's not that kids aren't vaguely aware of the character, given the apocalyptic hype over the film - my own offspring has seen the (very tame) TV ad for it, and the posters on the buses, and asked me about it. What I find a bit uncomfortable is that the parent is driving this and basically making a kid the butt of a joke he is too young to fully understand. When he's older: old enough to date or want to date, these pics might come back to bother him in a more complicated way than the standard Embarrassing Fancy Dress Photo that most of us store up against the time our little darlings bring home their first dates. Hopefully this story will be a short-lived sensation, so Mini-Christian doesn't later on have to go through the whole messy, unnerving, exciting, complex business of working out his own sexual identity with an extra layer of pressure from stupid people's expectations that he will be kinky/abusive/irresistible. Or his adolescent rejection of parental values might mean he turns into John Stoltenberg by the time he's 21, though for his and everyone else's sake I do hope not.

But does anyone else wonder what this story would have looked like if some parents had decided to dress their child up as Anastasia Steele instead?

Way to go, feminist freedom fighters!

Any veteran feminist will have spent a good few chunks of time having to explain that feminism doesn't mean hairy-legged lesbian fun-spoiling whiners. Many of us will also have had to explain that criticizing male privilege isn't the same as hating men, and that banning porn and persecuting sex work is not the 'feminist' position, it's just what some feminists think.

And then here come these fucking idiots. I'm certainly not going to disagree that 50 Shades is an appallingly-written crock of shit. I'm not even going to disagree that it sends out the unfortunate message that abusive men are romantic, and that women can 'heal' them by putting up with their horrible behaviour and just... just loving them so much. Puke. But I am going to disagree that the best way to deal with this is to burn copies of the books.

The Internet is hoaching with brilliant, funny, angry, intelligent takedowns of this wanky trilogy, of which Bizzybiz is about the best. Circulate those and encourage your mates to read them by all means. But don't call for book-burnings. It makes you look ignorant, spiteful, controlling, attention-seeking (what does the stupid woman mean, 'no one is speaking out against it'? See above, you fuckwit! Just google 'Feminist criticism 50 Shades') and makes women who might benefit from a bit of feminism percieve feminists as bullies. Because only bullies burn books. You'd think some feminists would have learned  by now that pro-censorship is not a comfortable position as censorship has always been used against women, against progress, against freedom. Because censorship is about defending the interests of the powerful, the stupid and the egotistical, and there is not one single example of book burners anywhere, ever, turning out to be the Good Guys.

Here we go then.

Oh... hello. Anyone out there? That's all right then. If I were to say this is less of a blog and more of a flog, would you all get the wrong idea? Maybe I ought to change the profile pic, even though these days my arse is probably more appealing than my face (as long as I stay off the Ikea Meatballs; oh boy do those things make you fart!). Anyway, until I get another pic, that one will have to do, but don't be fooled into thinking I'm a sub and this is a thinly-disguised appeal for some berk who's read the hype about 50 Shades of Shit to send me a photo of his willy and a command to rock up to his Red Shed Bungalow Bedsit of Pain Ann Summers sale goods for a spot of anal fisting.

Basically I am too idle and incompetent to build a proper website, so I've decided to set this up instead as a way of letting you know what stuff I've got for sale, where I'm selling it, and anything else interesting that comes to mind. I've been running Decadent Media since about the turn of the century, mostly at the London Fetish Fair.  I've always sold books, right from the beginning; and over the years I've added (and subtracted, and sub-contracted) T-shirts, photographs, badges, keyrings, stickers and other odds and ends.

Currently, like quite a lot of people in the adult industry, I've been capitalizing on the hype around That (piss-awful) Book and hope to carry on doing so. 

The Guild Anthology has been doing quite nicely and I've been having a little success with The Master's Voice as well. 

But I haven't achieved the height of audacious cool demonstrated by this British hotelier. There are few things I love better than watching someone pull the public's tails and get themselves masses of free advertising by exercising a bit of wit.