Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Desensitizing Sexuality


I found an article online titled, "UIC student charged with assault said he was re-enacting 'Fifty Shades of Grey'" and could not help but reconnect it to the topic we are discussing now. Women during the early 1900's were reportedly becoming more exposed to sexuality and in part became more desensitized to it. A woman’s sexuality was no longer a taboo and now became something that more women felt like they should be able to express. To me, the highly advertised movie, Fifty Shades of Grey, opened up the whole world to the social taboo of S&M. I wonder if this sort of media is having the same effect as it did in the past. Is Fifty Shades of Grey desensitizing us to S&M and making it more acceptable than it has in the past?

Article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-50-shades-of-grey-uic-sex-charge-20150223-story.html

3 comments:

  1. I also had this very same thought when I heard about the release of Fifty Shades. I guess that means that we are becoming more aware at issues in our society, just as Dr. Lampert explains during our discussions! We are very quick to analyze and criticize crowds of the past for accepting or dismissing film content of their own time...

    I wonder what future generations will think of us *wince*

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  2. I think there is a big difference between S&M in an established relationship where each partner is aware of the others limitations and what happened with the students at UIC. He sexually assaulted a woman and beat her after she repeatedly begged him to stop and told him that he was hurting her. That's rape, plain and simple. To blame it on a movie/book is unacceptable. We see a lot of things on TV everyday but that doesn't make it acceptable to recreate the scenarios in our own lives.

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  3. This radio program (I am a big radio nerd) had a great piece on responses to Fifty Shades and conversation about it in the media. Check it out: http://www.onthemedia.org/story/far-more-fifty/

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