The Above, Summarized (originally for Fetlife):
- The relationship depicted is not BDSM, it is abuse.
- Many situations and circumstances involve Christian forcing Ana, violating her consent, ignoring her boundaries, not taking no for an answer, knowingly putting her in dangerous and harmful situations, and using her for his own purposes.
- The books enforce a backwards notion that as long as you are rich and attractive, you can treat people like puppets, and as long as your partner is rich and attractive, it's worth it to let them abuse you.
- These books teach that an interest in BDSM is a symptom of past abuse, both of which must be "cured."
- Dominance in these books equates to, "Because I'm powerful, dangerous, fucked up, and I said so," and submission equates to, "Because I'm nothing and He said so."
- Submissives in these books, via Ana, are painted as weak, meek, gullible, insecure, virginal, mousy little dormats with no knowledge of their own pleasure and no voice of dissent.
- The types of social and safety protocols we all engage in are completely ignored and give the false impression that a BDSM relationship occurs when a Dom walks up to a sub (whether she knows she's one yet or not) and says, "That's mine."
- Concepts like limits (soft and hard), consent, negotiations, trust, and obedience are not present. Christian does whatever he wants, and Ana says no to orders she agrees to.
- The backbone of a "solid" BDSM relationship is depicted here as using each other with the aid of rough sex and toys.
- The writer herself has openly stated that she did no research into BDSM, the community, or the types of relationships within and views it negatively.
By the above writer from the blog, or ta-gra-agam-duit on Fet
And to add one myself:
- Christian discourages Ana from seeing friends and gets angry when she goes out without permission. Though disobeying can be a bad thing in a D/s or M/s relationship, all subs (and Dominants!) should be encouraged to have friends outside the relationship. Isolating someone is a huge warning sign of abuse.
You may find more on this subject
here and on other parts of Fetlife if you search, and in
this thread on SMplace. There is more on the individual topics within the FAQ.
