I see Fifty Shades of Grey as a gestalt of American society's relationship to sexuality and the swelling interest in sm (or BDSM, depending on where you lay your head). I can think of several major flaws with the book (aside from the repetitive and banal writing), not the least of which are sexism, heteronormativity, classism, and racism masquerading as race blindness. But the book does a major disservice to what I know as sm.
Despite living in a society obsessed with sex, people (especially women, in my experience) shy away from frank discussions of sex. It is as if this book, with its explicit (well, sort of explicit, if you refer to lady bits as down there in a moment of passion) sex scenes gave women a chance to talk about sex without crossing the madonna/whore divide that is used to police femininity. This is, however, a very specific kind of sex. Monogamous, romantic, procreative (sorry to ruin the end of the book), and safe. Sure, the main male character gets off on spanking and anal sex. But it doesn't risk anything.
Some media outlets are discussing FSoG like it is the epitome of the sexual revolution - now that women can talk about the techniques of sex, it means we have arrived at some liberated sphere. And I think it is good for people to think deeply about desire. But to get worked up over the mechanics pulls sex out of is social location, like it is divorced from larger structures. I've been reading Margot Weiss's Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality and I agree that sexuality is always social. (I love this book, but it is pretty theory heavy.) In popular society, the trappings of sm add a bit of sex to that which is at its heart the definition of vanilla.
In my experience, not every (or even most) sm scenes are transformative or challenging. Most of the time, parties were a group of folks interested in socializing and having a good time. Sex might or might not be part of the equation. People talked about the weather, the local football team, their kids, and how they liked to be hit. It was, at some points uncannily so, normal. But these folks were up for having their boundaries tested. In FSoG, I read the male protagonist's list of "hard limits" (lines that cannot be crossed) and laughed. I had seen all but one of these done by the time I had gone to two parties. The form a particular kink takes matters less than one might think. People are engaged with desire and are willing to explore different avenues. Electricity play is not nearly as terrifying as questioning the very nature of one's romantic attachments. What does it mean to have a play partner that is not a romantic partner? What is the nature of sexual fidelity? How do power imbalances structure what turns us on? When it comes down to it, sm (for me) was about what I was willing to risk in the name of desire. Really good scenes cut through the quotidian and forced players to be truly present.
One could argue that FSoG makes the same argument - the female lead questions everything in her life through mind blowing sex. At the end of the day, an inarguable force reveals to the main character the rightness of heteronormativity. It sweeps away all of her over-educated, liberal upbringing to reveal her overwhelming desire to be married to a rich man and make him happy. There is not a lot of risk there.
In my experience, a lot of women want to feel edgy, walking the line between sexy and respectable. The slope is slippery, with the threat of slut or prude looming large on either side. It's difficult to have an honest discussion of desire. In the end, the difference between FSoG and the sm scene is how desire is constructed. In the book, sexuality reveals something that looks like the ideal 1950s household which is held so dear to those with privilege. In the sm scene, sexuality is viewed as a means of testing hegemonic ideals. In some cases, for some people, these hold up. For the most part, however, people use sm to question at a corporeal level the "naturalness" of the status quo.
Adding a couple of floggers to heteronormativity does not queer it.
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