By performing sexual acts through scripts of subjugation, discipline, and punishment, participants recognize and revel in sex as a practice replete with inequality, ambiguity, and shame, blurring the lines society purports to maintain between pleasure and pain, fulfillment and frustration.

More than sex with some handcuffs thrown in, BDSM takes part in a broader project 4 that seeks to expose and investigate the ways in which sexual desire and experience reflect and construct systems of power. 2 From his “Red Room of Pain,” filled with “ropes, chains, and glinting shackles,” 3 the hero shows the heroine how to be a “Submissive,” experiencing sexual pleasure by yielding to acts of domination and control within the bounds of a negotiated contract.

The hero, a self-described “Dominant,” introduces the virginal heroine not only to sex but to the practice of BDSM, a compound acronym that connotes sexual interactions involving bondage/discipline, domination/submission, and sadism/masochism. In the narrative that has spawned over a hundred million copies, 1 a naïve female coed sparks the interest of a handsome magnate who takes the heroine (and ideally the reader) on a journey of sexual awakening. To the shock of critics, Fifty Shades of Grey has become a cultural phenomenon, sweeping from fan-fiction websites to bestseller lists and garnering a multimillion-dollar movie deal.

Fifty shades of grey contract agreement