The Curious Kinky Person's Guide to the Fifty Shades trilogy

EL James’ Fifty Shades erotic romance trilogy, about the sadomasochistic relationship between a naïve college student and a brooding billionaire, broke sales records around the world and will become a feature film. Knowing that this book would be many people’s introduction to the world of consensual sadomasochism, or BDSM, Peter Tupper, a journalist and historian who has been studying the history of BDSM since 2005, began a series of blog postings, critiquing the book’s depiction of bondage and discipline chapter by chapter.

Instead of the romantic-comedy-with-bondage-and-spanking he expected, the author found a twisted psychodrama of lust, greed and fear, written by someone who has only the faintest idea of how consensual BDSM should work. Instead of a critique, it became a diagnosis of how a deeply abusive relationship between a childish, terrified woman and a mentally unstable billionaire with his private security guards could be read as a love story. Solving that riddle involves a journey through 18th century romances, the link between vampires and capitalism, The Godfather II, and the tangled boundaries between romance and abuse.

This ebook contains revised and expanded material previously published on historyofbdsm.com.