Where Is The 50Shades Of Femdom?

Or: When are we going to see a femdom best seller?

I get this as a compliment/question, when people find out about the whole femdom writer thing. People assume that I’m positioned to write the next Fifty Shades of Grey. Only for F/m relationships. Unfortunately as awesome as it would be to produce a work of BDSM erotica that’s so popular that you can buy licensed pyjamas and softcore sex toys based on it, that’s not going to happen. Not without a bunch of variables being taken into account at least.

It’s not just that the average writer no more makes the best seller list than the average person who runs makes the Boston Marathon. The success of 50shades is also part of the genre that birthed it and the cultural underpinnings that define pop culture’s approach to sexuality. But first, before I delve in a little deeper, a back story about the book for those living under a rock.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a trilogy about a BDSM relationship between virgin Anastasia Steele, the sub, and a billionaire hunk dom, Christian Grey. It not only crawled from ebook sales into the mainstream, but more to the point, began as a Twilight fan fiction where the two leads of that franchise were stripped of the supernatural and sent to college. When that got popular, the author changed the names to avoid getting sued and monetized it, building a following from the amateur reader/writer online groups. Pay attention, this origin story is just as important as the BDSM parts of the books.

One of the important things that defines 50shades is how classically part of the romance genre it is, including its parentage and all the various things that combined together, even more than just people wanting to read about kink in general, that pushed it to the forefront. Part of its success is that it is extremely formulaic.

Critics of the books get bogged down in two places, how badly written it is, which I think is unfair even if it’s true, and other critics point out how poorly representative it is to healthy relationships, kinky or otherwise. News articles trying to be click bait hammered the End of Feminism angle, trying to argue that all women are femsubs and that’s because having jobs and personal autonomy is not natural for them,  something they’ve been saying every single time people pay attention to women’s fiction. Which, moving onto my next point, includes the genre of romance, a pretty major segment of the publishing industry as a whole.  (By the way, that’s 39.3% of book sales according to some estimations, while other figures give romance 55% of the paperback book market.)

If you’re a dude, and/or don’t read romances, you probably have a mental image about pirates cutting ladies out of their corsets and really bad writing- and you’d be about half right. Romance has its highlights and low points, including everything from literary masterpieces to the throwaways you can get at the grocery store with titles like “The Millionaire Italian’s Lover”. But, because it’s such a big genre it straddles many other genres, so you may have a fantasy story with a romance in it,  or a sci-fi story with a romance, etc… It’s a little more than the story of a romantic relationship, although that’s one of the things all romances have in common. But, as a bit of a background- the genre is unabashedly female audience dominated, including a fair deal of pandering, and romance novels generally have something to them that compliments the “romance”. In the case of  50shades, BDSM is providing the compliment, and provides the tension to drive the story and create conflict.

While everyone who is not asexual and/or aromantic likes the idea of relationships, the genre gets its power from the fact that historically,  women dealt with the limitations that participating in the world can only be facilitated by the presence of a male romantic partner. Looking at the genre at its earliest days, writers like Jane Austen didn’t just want to pair off people because it was sooooo romantic, but were writing about making the sort of life choices that defined what freedoms their female characters would have. In her time period, Austen was mostly making a point about sensible matches with people you can respect. Okay, so what does Pride and Prejudice have to do with BDSM erotica?

Why, everything of course! Keep reading, I have a point here!

Spousal selection has, increasingly become way less of a big deal. While for centuries, you only really got one shot until the person you picked dropped dead, these days a lot of the story tension (does he love me or not!?) creates less plausible reasons to make a big deal about things. But, a story demands conflict! So romances often provide wish fulfillment and carefully set up scenarios, where there can be conflicts and something to achieve more than in real love relationships.  Outside of the pages of a romance, people tend to pick people just like them, as far as values, money and backgrounds, and the relationships work because the conflict is minimal and communication is strong- it looks like Jane Austen was right, but that’s not much of an adventure novel.

So you can chart a general drift of plotting and heroes towards things that will maximize Passion and Tension and Throbbing LUST relative to what your audience is dealing with. Plots have to deliver a scenario where the reader can imagine the lead actually having a challenge that can’t be resolved by calling the cops, going home or sending the person to therapy and not talking to them until they can show they’re committed to their issues. Following along with this trend for un-realism in romance, is a general tendency to M/f, where heroines get abducted, bossed, etc, etc, etc… This has lead to a parade of Sheiks, rich men, pirates, Scottish Lairds, and most recently the explosion of paranormal romance.

Also known as “Fang Fucker”, this genre succeeds not just on being exciting because hey cool, Vampire-Werewolf-Wizard-Fairie!, but also because the audience has only been getting more feminist and smart about the shit they’ll tolerate in real life. Much like, as a culture, we’re getting better at defining rape VS consent, old media, where it was romantic when the hero did something rape-y is now liable to have itself flung across the room.

Today’s femsub doesn’t traipse blindly into a relationship with a guy who is bossy because that’s how men are. Instead, she can label herself, and discuss with her potential partners about the kind of relationship she wants. A real dom is generally pretty safe, and nothing like Christian Grey. The Vampire, or whatever, provides a new possibility for a hero who can provide tension without being easily solved by being maced and having a restraining order put on him- this sort of power imbalance and rules change is a cheap trick to force drama for the story.

Twilight, in particular, being worth considering as the mother of 50shades, is criticized for how darn creepy the leads’ version of love is, with stalking, violence, etc, etc… But at it’s core is a story about becoming a nice housewife written by a nice housewife, and it’s telling that none of the human men do the Sooooo violent I must protect you from my wild ripping lust shtick. Because suspension of disbelief no longer allows that.

50shades male lead is similarly a bundle of fail as far as being a good real partner or real dom. He’s an abusive ass who can wield his vast wealth to get whatever he wants, and behaves in a  reactionary fashion that makes many people experienced with kink to grind their teeth. In this case, being a dom with money is being a stand in for the same sort of passion-and-pathos that was previously being propped up by being an immortal undead schoolboy, or a member of the 18th century upper class. And, he’s also true to the traditions of romance novels that he becomes a doorway through which the heroine can get everything she wants and desires on a silver platter- not just a marriage, but toys and social power. It’s self indulgently silly, but so is marshmallow fluff, and fluffy-whip has its place in culinary consumption too.

Femdom 50shades has a number of challenges to break into the romance field. First of all, it has to have a lead that the readers can insert themselves into. This does not mean a one-to-one representation of a real woman. Generally, in romance the lead  is made hyper naive, virginal, etc… This is very relevant for examination, when the average reader, these days is competent enough to look after herself and probably left her maidenhead on the condom wrapped penis of another teenager many, many awkward fumbling years ago. The idea is to be likeable, non-threatening and primed to be absolutely blown away by the male she’s meant to be with.

So our dominant heroine has to be a little bit of a ninny, ideally awkward and shy, but mysteriously loved by all and sundry except designated villains and antagonists. And she may already be dom-ish in the bedroom! In actuality, if you read as many romances as I do, she’s already tying her lead to the headboard from time to time. Sex in romance novels, despite the virgin thing, generally tolerates a bit of light spank-and-tickle or even can wander into dark places, especially during the rape-y 80’s. They just tend to dis-empower their female lead so she can have heavy conflict, rather like how action heroes tend to not be well adjusted men with lots of friends outside work and a reputation for being a reliable co-worker (in anything other than merciless killing and being a maverick), and a vastly unrealistic number of kids in stories are orphans or have neglectful parents.

And this is one of the barriers to your femdom romance bestseller. Disempowered heroines are hard to push into the dom model, since doms generally have competence as one of the things people wank over about them. Additionally, our cultures, on average, doesn’t do women in charge well. From underpaying, to the glass ceiling, to treating pink collar work as lesser, through to acting like aggressive women are crazy psychopaths, setting the female lead up as Christina Grey pursuing Antony Steele is going to require a lot more sign waving, letters to congress and women in upper management.

In the mean time, if you want a femdom heroine in a romance novel, you need to create a problem that needs to be resolved by the dude becoming her forever-partner and you need to create a series of conflicts that allow her to come out on top and get everything she wants, be it ipads and ending up at the helm of a major publishing company, ala 50shades, or marrying Lord Somesuch, or becoming a detective, or whatever. It’s not hard to get a male lead tied up; at the moment, there’s actually some tropes that do this- for example you can make your sub a master thief she has to chase down, or a spy, or a magical servant, or whatever. The problem is that it is not very envelope pushing in its own right.

And of course you need popular momentum. Self publishing helped 50shades leap, from successful fan fiction, to successful ebook and thence from the book covers you can still find cluttering up the walk in table of your local mass market bookstore chain (as well as enough copycat knockoffs to sink a ship).  These are backed by an army of amateur authors trying out writing their own stories, which are generally close to what is being published. Femdom stories don’t have that same engine behind them- there are the stories, but there’s simply not enough of them to break through yet, or possibly ever.

If you want to break through in romance, your challenge will not be making your heroine a dom, because there are already women who do this, albeit in the minority. Your challenge is getting thousands of people to like the idea enough to write for free and then create the Christian Grey of subs, a male lead who can justify the highs and lows of these stories enough to make even people who aren’t doing this in real life masturbate. And that… is simply a challenge that only trial and error could solve, and really beyond my ability as a lone pornographer.