Warning: Reading Books Could Victimize You?

Fifty Shades of Grey is a "naughty", daring, book that tackles a subject many people are uncomfortable with yet intrigued by — BDSM and the psychology that can go with it. Fifty Shades and its sequels are books many people wouldn't want to be seen with in public, or at least they wouldn't want to snuggle up on their parents' couch while reading them. Yet, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide and with a movie adaptation set to be released next year, it's also hard to call Fifty Shades of Grey anything but mainstream. 

Does reading this book have any impact on your real life and behaviors? Amy Bonomi from Michigan State University and her colleagues wanted to find out. They investigated the "association between health risks and reading popular fiction depicting violence against women" in a study entitled "Fiction of Not?", something they say led to an "empirical representation of the health risks in women consuming the problematic messages in Fifty Shades".

Does Reading Racy Books Lead To Abuse?

Researchers analyzed 665 female college students in the paper, published in the Journal of Women's Health. The study subjects were all aged between 18 and 24, ages at which women are most likely to explore greater sexual intimacy in relationships, the researchers say. 

The research team compared the behaviors of women who read these books to the behaviors of women who didn't. They looked at partner violence (having experienced physical, sexual and psychological abuse including cyber bullying), binge drinking (having more than five drinks a night on at least six days during the last month), sex habits (having had five or more sexual partners and/or at least one anal sex partner), and whether the women used dietary aids or fasted for more than 24 hours in their lifetimes. 

What did the study team find? Let's take a look:

• Women who read one or two but not all three of the Fifty Shades novels were found to be more likely to have had a partner who yelled, swore or shouted at them in their lifetime. 
• These women were also more likely to have received unwanted calls or text messages from their partner at some point.
• Finally, these women had a higher incidence of having used dietary aids or fasting. 
• Women who read all the novels were more likely to report binge drinking, use of diet aids, and having had five or more sexual partners in their lifetime. 

The Normalization Of Violence Against Women

You can probably guess where the researchers are going with their conclusion. "[The study team] demonstrated that problematic abuse exists in nearly every interaction between Christian and Anastasia," the paper's introduction says about the main characters in Fifty Shades of Grey.  

They continue: "Namely, Christian employs strategies typical of abusers, including stalking (he deliberately follows Anastasia and uses a phone and computer to track her whereabouts), intimidation (he threatens her with punishment and violence, including pressuring her into activities she is uncomfortable with), social isolation (he isolates Anastasia from friends and family), and sexual violence (he uses alcohol to impair Anastasia's consent and intimidates/pressures her into uncomfortable sexual activities)."

Readers of the Fifty Shades books  may first have experienced some kind of violence only to decide to read the novels later, but it's also possible that the "book influenced the onset of these behaviors by creating an underlying context for the behaviors".

Right. Violence against women is indeed normalized and represents a problem all over the globe. Almost any woman will be able to agree with that. It's also obvious that experiencing partner violence and stalking is evidence of, well, having experienced an abusive relationship. But, hang on a second — where do fasting, using dietary aids, having more than five sexual partners, and anal sex come in? 

See Also: One In Ten Youngsters Admits To Sexual Violence, Half Blames Victim

Yes, some abusive men pressure women into losing weight and many force their partners to engage in sex when they don't want it or to have types of sex they don't want. Many women also use dietary aids because they want to, and fast for a multitude of reasons including those that are completely unrelated to their body image, and many women have different types of sex with different partners because they want to.

Violence against women is a problem, but assuming women who do certain things only do it because they're forced to is also a problem — one that denigrates women. Perhaps the Fifty Shades books are so popular because women enjoy reading them and they're perfectly capable of whether they want the subject matter to be fact or fiction?