I haven't read it yet, either, so this is a general comment. On the whole, I think you are right -- there are plenty of things that I enjoy for a couple of hours that I would reject categorically in real life.
Ilona Andrews did a fun thing with this in one of the Kate Daniels books. The man Raphael is very interested in her friend Andrea, so Kate tells him that she loves a certain series of books -- hard to find -- and sends him off looking for the two missing volumes of the series. Being an intelligent man in the throes of first infatuation, he reads one of the books -- and asks Kate if Andrea really wants someone to act like a "masterful" pirate. Kate asks him if he has a little dress-up fantasy he enjoys. He admits that French maid costumes do something for him. Kate suggests that Andrea likes the idea of a costumed pirate, but if he tried to act that way with her, she'd knock him through a wall (literally, since they are both were-hyenas.)
The reason I'm personally appalled is that this, not as a brief fantasy, but as a trope of convincing women that anything a man does to or for her "in the name of love" should be all right with her, is a horribly damaging societal meme I have personally seem nearly destroy women, young and mature. A version of it nearly destroyed me, and I am still recovering from it. That I could have cut my wrists to try and make the situation better was not a healthy stage to be reduced to -- and I was raised to be a people pleaser.
So I guess I've found that someone can take the fantasy of a man wanting to do anything he can to prove to a woman that he loves her and push it too far for me. I also don't care for kink, so that's me studying a foreign language out of curiosity, not leaning what should have been my language.
I have friends who enjoy bondage play, so I know that there are people that this works for them in their life. But I try not to extrapolate from my small sampling of friends, because every woman I know well enough to have *discussed* the hobby has been sexually assaulted sometime in their life. So I am not certain how that dovetails with the bondage fetish. I don't know that everyone who likes this fetish has abuse issues - that just happens to be the sampling I know about. That has to color why this book appalls me.
no subject
Ilona Andrews did a fun thing with this in one of the Kate Daniels books. The man Raphael is very interested in her friend Andrea, so Kate tells him that she loves a certain series of books -- hard to find -- and sends him off looking for the two missing volumes of the series. Being an intelligent man in the throes of first infatuation, he reads one of the books -- and asks Kate if Andrea really wants someone to act like a "masterful" pirate. Kate asks him if he has a little dress-up fantasy he enjoys. He admits that French maid costumes do something for him. Kate suggests that Andrea likes the idea of a costumed pirate, but if he tried to act that way with her, she'd knock him through a wall (literally, since they are both were-hyenas.)
The reason I'm personally appalled is that this, not as a brief fantasy, but as a trope of convincing women that anything a man does to or for her "in the name of love" should be all right with her, is a horribly damaging societal meme I have personally seem nearly destroy women, young and mature. A version of it nearly destroyed me, and I am still recovering from it. That I could have cut my wrists to try and make the situation better was not a healthy stage to be reduced to -- and I was raised to be a people pleaser.
So I guess I've found that someone can take the fantasy of a man wanting to do anything he can to prove to a woman that he loves her and push it too far for me. I also don't care for kink, so that's me studying a foreign language out of curiosity, not leaning what should have been my language.
I have friends who enjoy bondage play, so I know that there are people that this works for them in their life. But I try not to extrapolate from my small sampling of friends, because every woman I know well enough to have *discussed* the hobby has been sexually assaulted sometime in their life. So I am not certain how that dovetails with the bondage fetish. I don't know that everyone who likes this fetish has abuse issues - that just happens to be the sampling I know about. That has to color why this book appalls me.