The Rape Preparation Scene in Fifty Shades Freed

I am not a fan of this trilogy. It's bad fanfiction getting published and now made into a movie when there are other fanfictions that are more deserving of this kind of treatment. Not only some of the stuff I write, but other fics written by equally and more talented writers.

I also feel this trilogy should've been marketed as a rape/dubcon trilogy so people wouldn't think that having their own Christian Grey is a good thing for a healthy relationship.

In this post I am going to look at one scene in the final Fifty Shades book that was just...it deserves more than a simple tweet or two to explain my feelings on it.

I consider rape the only time I'd use trigger to describe it. This having to do with the fact that online it seems people are "trigger happy" in that anything that slightly disturbs them is a trigger. So rape is the only thing I'd call a trigger for me.

What about rape fantasies? Where people get turned on by thoughts of raping someone or being raped by one or more people? While the idea disgusts me, as long as people are keeping those fantasies in a fictional environment I'm fine. Be it through any form of media as well as roleplaying in the bedroom. Where the roleplaying is safe and no actual rape occurs.

Now onto Christian Grey throughout the whole trilogy: He is an abuser.

Many times throughout the books Christian will get mad at Ana and do punishment sex. Ana seems to enjoy this a lot of the time which makes it hard to classify certain scenes as consensual, rape, or dubcon.

After Punishment Sex, Christian will put on a "Poor Christian" act in the hopes that Ana will forgive him and he'll be able to continue his abuse. And she always forgives him because he had a bad childhood and that, of course, makes any actions that he does forgivable.

Then they may or may not have consensual sex. It's almost like Christian gets off on violating Ana and her being too dumb to realize it.

Since that is all out of the way, onto the Rape Preparation Scene!

I don't call this a rape scene merely because both sides of the roleplay are into it. Christian makes a remark that he wants to see Ana fight against him in bed. They go throughout this whole scene without using the word 'rape' or the phrase 'rape fantasy'.

While this could be chalked up to E.L.James' bad writing, it has the added side effect of making it like Christian doesn't want Ana to think of it as rape. While that wouldn't be so bad if Christian was a kind and loving husband (yes, they're married at this point), he has shown himself to be an abuser who likes to control everything about people.

Remember what I said about the Punishment Sex, "Poor Christian", and Ana Forgives Him Cycle?

In this scene Christian is making Ana like doing Rape Roleplays in bed so that when he 'accidentally' goes too far later he can act sorry and Ana will forgive him. Ana will have been raped but then be fooled by Christian saying he thought she was acting.

As I said in the beginning, Rape Fantasies are okay while they stay in the realm of fiction. But by Christian's past actions it appears certain that he will rape Ana in the future.