Abstract
The consumption of erotic literature by women has been largely unexamined by sociologists. This article analyzes 36 Latina and 47 White women readers’ evaluations of Fifty Shades of Grey and offers important insights on how women interact with the themes of romance and eroticism as they reflect on the text. We identify three types of reactions to the text: categorization of the relationship as abusive, an appreciation for the power of the woman protagonist to change her lover for the “better,” and a focus on the gendered inequities in the romantic relationship, yet simultaneously feeling aroused by the sexual content. In theorizing the third reaction, we introduce the concept of erotic ambivalence to explain how even as some women seek to escape into the world of the erotic, they must often balance this desire within the gendered inequities featured in storylines. Our findings suggest that women are critical of sexist tropes in fiction, and these critiques might vary ethnoracially.
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Notes
For research on the denigration of women’s romance cultures, see Lois and Gregson (2015).
For more on the prevalence on violence and aggression in pornography, see Bridges et al. (2010).
Panethnicity is a category that results from a process of racialization that subsumes a group of ethnic individuals into an umbrella panethnic category. For example, while “Mexican” is an ethnic identity, “Latino” is panethnic and connotes racialization.
This word describes male dominance, patriarchy. Gonzalez-Lopez and Gutmann (2005) challenged the unidimensional implications of this term, arguing that men and women both play a role in reproducing gender inequalities and that sexism and patriarchy are not unique to Latino cultures.
Gonzalez-Lopez (2003) described that “respect for family values” is a reason for maintaining virginity because a daughter’s virginity is often seen as honor and respect for the family.
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Reyes, D.V., Speer, A.C. & Denes, A. White Women and Latina Readers’ Ambivalence Toward Fifty Shades of Grey. Sexuality & Culture 25, 852–870 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09797-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09797-3