Feb. 12, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
15:53
2908 What Fifty Shades of Grey Readers Have In Common
What do readers of Fifty Shades of Grey have in common? A recent study showed strong correlations between health risks in women's lives - including violence victimization - and consumption of Fifty Shades of Grey material. Stefan Molyneux speaks with Dr. Amy Bonomi about the study's findings and what can be learned from the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey.Dr. Amy Bonomi is Professor and Chair of the Human Development and Family Studies Department at Michigan State University. Dr. Bonomi’s research focuses on the long-term health effects of domestic violence, dating violence, and child abuse, and the intimacy dynamics/processes that keep violent relationships intact.Fiction or Not? Fifty Shades is Associated with Health Risks in Adolescent and Young Adult Females http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/jwh.2014.4782
Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux for Free Domain Radio.
So, coming up this weekend, as you probably know, is what some people think is the most romantic movie to come out in a while, and what some people think is the least romantic movie.
And of course, as a show about philosophy and as a show about empiricism, we are drawn like masks to the flame of significant expertise.
So we have Dr.
Bonomi, who is a professor and chair of the Human Development and Families Study Department at Michigan State University.
Her research focuses on the long-term health effects of domestic violence, dating violence and child abuse, and the intimacy dynamics and processes that keep violent relationships intact.
So, Dr.
Benomi, thank you so much for taking the time today.
Thank you for having me.
So, I guess, taking the bull by the horns, you have done a study, or you've participated in a study, that tries to tease out the relationship between dysfunction in relationships and a preference or a reading or a liking for the novel and upcoming movie Fifty Shades of Grey.
I wonder if you can tell us what drew you to this and what sort of reception you've been had and what kind of methodologies you employed.
Sure.
So we were actually struck by what we saw as a pretty much glaring glamorization of violence against women in these books.
So we wanted to systematically set out to examine the abuse patterns in those books.
So that's essentially what we did, was use the U.S. Centers for Disease Control definitions of domestic violence, really understand better what was happening in that relationship.
And there are significant indicators of I always get the feeling it's creepy if you don't have your own helicopter named after you.
But if you do have your own helicopter, it becomes sexy.
Because if this guy was not shockingly handsome and staggeringly rich and so on, it's hard to see how this would be anything other than something you would pepper spray and call the cops about.
Because he follows her around, he tracks her, he shows up at her work, he buys a company that she gets involved in, he...
Threatens to hit her if she talks to her mother.
He's ferociously jealous of other men that she talks to.
And there is a scene, you know, not to be much of a spoiler, but there is a scene which I think credibly he overcomes her resistance and has sex with her against her will while threatening to tie her up and bind her.
This stuff is appalling.
I'm going to get all kinds of old-fashioned and Victorian.
It's appalling, appalling stuff.
And it seems to be very much empowerment glamorized in a lot of venues.
Right.
Well, so no, you're absolutely right.
This is a glamorization of violence against women.
And so our analysis showed that Kristen shows all of the tendencies of domestic abusers.
He intimidates Anastasia.
He stalks her.
He isolates her from family and friends, which is the number one Name of the game in abusive relationships, and he minimizes the abuse that he inflicts upon her.
And over time, she experiences the reactions that are typical of abused women.
So she's constantly feeling threatened.
She's engaging in stressful managing to keep peace in the relationship, and she loses her identity.
And she appeases and she avoids behaviors that might upset him.
And, you know, normally this isolation that occurs in abusive relationships is kind of implicit.
But here you have a very explicit document, a contract, which is, of course, illegal or at least not legally enforceable, where she can't actually talk to anyone about this.
I mean, talk about placing a wall around an individual.
That seems almost impenetrable.
Well, that's exactly right.
And the other problematic piece of this relationship is that Kristen is essentially using all of these abusive tactics outside of the BDSM contract to simply manipulate and pressure her into agreeing to the things that are stated in the contract.
So outside of that contract, he's stalking her, he's intimidating her, he's using alcohol to impair her consent and sexual interactions, and all of those things serve to control her in the relationship.
And it is, you know, I guess I've been interviewing experts and talking about my opposition and moral opposition to family violence, lo, these many years.
It does seem a tad disheartening that a hundred million copies of these are flying off the digital shelves.
And this has, I think, become the fastest selling fiction book of all time.
And I think that the vast majority of consumers are women.
And before we get into the methodology of the study, which I found absolutely fascinating, And challenged my math, not hugely enabled, artsy math brain, but...
What do you think the attraction is for this kind of story?
I mean, generally, you can get erotica and romantic literature and so on without this terrorizing and fear.
And sometimes, of course, you know, in the vampire fiction, there is this terrorizing and fear.
But the vampire is generally like not a good guy.
Whereas this guy is portrayed as someone that I think in the long run, she gets Yeah, so I think you're exactly right.
I mean, in order to understand why people are flocking to read this book, I think we would need to go directly and do a systematic interview study with women It's primarily women who are reading the book, and ask them, you know, what is the draw for this?
I will make the point that when we surveyed about 700 women at Ohio State University, of those who read the book, only 36% said they liked it.
So about a third of women are saying they liked the book.
That leaves two-thirds who are not.
So, you know, part of it may be sort of All the hype that the media is presenting around this book, you know, people want to check it out and see what it's about, less so that they're actually enjoying it.
And, you know, I mean, it's sort of become a cliche to talk about the writing quality in the book.
I'm a writer myself, and I find that it is...
Like battling your way up a very heavy stream to get to quality, you know, when the heroine continually exclaims, holy crap, you know, as an emphasis.
It is kind of rough.
But you did, I think, if I remember rightly in the study, limit the study to women who had said they'd finished the book because you couldn't tell who'd read the first couple of pages or gotten 80% of the way through.
I assume to get to the end there, you may not like the story, but I guess the reader certainly would find the book fairly compelling.
Well, maybe not necessarily.
I'm sure you've started books before that you didn't necessarily find compelling, but you wanted to finish at the end just to finish the story.
So I suspect in some of these cases, they finish it just to finish it.
But again, what we found is really only 36% who read the books said they liked it.
So I think that's a compelling piece of data that we should pay attention to.
All right.
So let's jump deep into the study itself.
If you could talk about the methodology and the findings.
Sure.
So after we analyzed Fifty Shades of Grey, we did a second study where we randomly sampled women between the ages of 18 and 24 from the registered records of a large Midwestern university in the United States.
And we asked them if they'd be willing to complete an online survey.
And we essentially asked them about a range of health risk behaviors, such as whether they'd ever experienced violence in their relationships, whether they engaged in binge drinking, disordered eating, What types of sexual partners they had.
And then we asked about their Fifty Shades readership.
I'm sorry, just to be clear, the violence was also including verbal violence.
Because I think I want to tease that out.
Because a lot, of course, of what Christian Gray does, in the first half of the book at least, is verbal violence.
Yes.
We asked about a range of abuse, including psychological violence, name-calling, put-downs, controlling behavior, stalking-type behaviors, as well as physical violence and sexual violence.
Okay.
And what were the correlations that you were able to tease out from those who had read the book versus those who had not?
So we found that women who read the book were much more likely than women who didn't read the book to have a partner who was verbally abusive, to have a partner who showed stalking tendencies, so following them when they didn't want them to, unwanted calls, text messages, etc.
Having patterns of disordered eating, that would be using diet aids or fasting for more than 24 hours to lose weight.
They were also more likely than non-readers to engage in binge drinking, as well as to have five or more intercourse partners in their lifetime.
And these were significant differences between readers and non-readers.
And what was the definition of binge drinking used in the study?
Great question.
So it was five or more drinks on six or more days in the past month, which interestingly, some of our participants said, that's not heavy drinking.
But according to national definitions, that's how binge drinking is defined here.
So, what sort of, you said, very strong correlations between reading the book and engaging in risky behavior.
So, how strong are we talking?
So, for example, for those women who read the book, they were 25% more likely than women who didn't read the book to have a verbally abusive partner.
34% more likely to have a partner who showed stocking tendencies.
They were nearly 80% more likely to have signs of disordered eating.
65% more likely to engage in binge drinking and then 63% more likely to have five or more intercourse partners in their lifetime.
Right, right.
Now, you, of course, wanted to focus on younger women.
I think you said 18 to 24.
Was there a specific reason for that?
Yes.
Women between the ages of 18 and 24 are in a critical developmental period across the lifespan in the sense that they're In the process of exploring love, new relationships, their sexuality, different types of sexual expression.
So it's really a critical period to understand how women are interacting with popular culture and correlations that they may be having on behaviors in their lives.
Now, in the methodology for the study, you didn't actually ask about prior history of adverse childhood experiences or child abuse, which, you know, if the sort of bitter fruit is a predilection for sadistic erotic fiction and a variety of dysfunctional relationship habits that sort of all have the roots in child abuse, that would explain more.
But was there a reason why that wasn't included in the study?
It's a great question.
So our study was not set up to actually show causality.
So whether Fifty Shades caused these behaviors or whether women had certain behaviors which then caused them to read Fifty Shades or be drawn to it.
But I think your question is very important.
I think future studies could be designed to evaluate whether women who have had child abuse histories are drawn to particular types of reading, film, that kind of thing.
It's definitely something worth exploring.
Okay, now I'd like to, I guess, drag you slightly out of the professional arena because I've heard some murmurings from men around the web who feel kind of frustrated because, of course, a lot of men are like, here, be sensitive, be emotionally available, be open, be gentle, be respectful, and so on.
And then it seems like we've got these Tennessee Williams moth characters dashing off to the flame of this nut job with billions of dollars.
And it seems kind of confusing, I think, for men.
It's like, well, what, what, what?
The old Freudian question, right?
And what are your thoughts on what men should take out of this massive, crazy upswell of enthusiasm?
Again, 30% and change of it.
What should men take from this?
Mm-hmm.
Well, the good news for men is what we determine in our study is really those women who are reading the books, only 36% of them are liking them.
So they may be reading the books, but they're not necessarily drawn to liking what's happening in the books.
Okay, so, and it may be just because a guy watches Star Wars doesn't mean that he wants to run around Mars with a lightsaber.
Alright, just two last questions.
Number one, if you are a woman or a man who finds yourself in this kind of abusive and controlling relationships, are there some major signs to look out for and what should people do?
So yes, there are warning signs to look out for, and many of those are depicted in Fifty Shades of Grey.
So intimidation, using verbal intimidation, using gestures such as punching a wall or smashing things, name-calling, put-downs, for example, calling somebody fat, calling somebody ugly, stalking-type behavior, so harassing somebody, showing up when they don't want you to show up, harassing them with text messages and phone calls.
Minimizing the abuse.
So often what we see in abusive relationships is blaming the victim or the abuse itself.
You know, I get angry sometimes.
Why did you make me do that?
Very common strategies.
Also social isolation.
If you have a partner who is demanding that you not go out with family and friends, that's a warning sign as well.
Right.
I also thought it was very interesting about the control of food and the demand for exercise.
So there's a demand for physical perfection that I think also translated into the women who had been using diet aids or who had food issues within the study that you ran.
That's exactly right.
So one of the names of the games for abusers is they have a lot of rules for their victims, including what they eat, what they wear, what they have to do, what time they need to be home.
And the purpose of those rules is to be able to justify abuse when the victim steps outside of the bounds of the rules.
Yeah, rules that really literally are designed to be broken and that they're really excuses for punishment because they tend to escalate and coalesce to the point where you're like a fly in a spider web.
I mean, anything you do to wriggle is going to cause problems.
And I think that's the kind of paralysis that abusers tend to lock people into.
That's exactly right.
So that's why Anastasia in the book, she's constantly feeling perceived threat, such as something dangerous is going to happen.
She's constantly engaging and managing to keep peace in the relationship, so agreeing to things that she doesn't want to do so she doesn't upset Kristen, not telling him that she's going out with friends, for example, so as not to anger him.
Exactly.
All right.
And I guess my last question is, are you going to see the movie?
I have a preview.
I'm going to see it with the media tonight at 6.30.
Well, how exciting.
I look forward to reading what it is that you have to say about it.
Is there a place on the web where your writing tends to coalesce?
So we will be featuring some of this.
We're actually doing a study this weekend, this coming weekend.
We're bringing 40 women to the theaters, and we're going to watch the film together, and then we're going to do discussion groups afterwards, and we'll be publishing that as well.
Well, fantastic.
I really look forward to your review, and thanks.
I know wading into popular culture and taking away people's, quote, fun can seem like a bit of a sort of Victorian finger wagging exercise.
But there is a lot of information about danger in relationships in this book.
If you peel away the sort of glamorization and the wealth and the eroticism and so on, there is a lot, I think, of really important.
I don't know whether the writer put it in consciously or not, but there is a lot of great information about warning signs to watch out.
When people seem overly fascinated by you, when they suddenly have just met you, but they can't live without you and so on, those can be very treacherous waters to sail into.
And I really appreciate the work that you're doing, bringing to light the darker side of this work.
Thank you.
Yes, I think the books are glaring glamorization of violence against women, and I think they are perpetuating problematic norms about relationships in society.
