How Star Trek Slash Explains the 50 Shades of Grey Phenomenon

Around the late 1960's, a literature and artistic phenomenon began, never before seen.

It was on the outskirts of underground culture and amateur fiction but it was definitely growing in presence.

Fans of the 1960's TV series Star Trek were writing stories and drawing pictures depicting romantic relationships between the characters. Fan-fiction based on television series had truly begun.

These writers and artists were making up short, or sometimes complex fiction spanning chapters which portrayed Star Trek characters in romantic encounters. Some were also drawing erotic art showing two characters in the series naked or embracing and in a sexual act.

What was so surprising about this phenomenon was that it was portraying same-sex (mostly male) characters together in the stories. The most common was a deeply erotic, sensual and intimate relationship between Spock and Kirk.

As cultural and women studies theorists explored this phenomenon, they discovered something even more surprising.

This kind of fiction and art, which portrayed homosexual relationships between fictional TV characters - was largely created and written by heterosexual women.

It is still very popular today and it's called 'slash' (as in Kirk/Spock). These days it pairs up two characters from many other TV series.

Researches who were out there interviewing and studying the genre believed that heterosexual women in the late 1960's and 1970's were pairing male characters together as a way of channelling their desire for the men in their lives to demonstrate greater intimacy and depth towards them.

A desire for a more complex and equal relationship. An equality that was perceived could only be truly achieved between two men, given the gendered nature of relationships at the time (and it can be argued, still today).

These women wrote about the quality of relationships they dreamed about not in a literal sense, but in a metaphorical one.

Certainly when you read some of this fiction, the tenderness, sensuality and intelligence that goes into these characters and interactions makes this interpretation understandable.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that E. L. James (her real name being Erika Leonard) started out writing her enormously popular stories as a fan-fiction piece based on the Twilight series.


All three of James' books in the 50 Shades of Grey series track a relationship between a sexually naive girl in her early twenties and a millionaire man who has only ever experienced sex in a dominant/submissive form. He also enjoys inflicting pain on women.


As such, there are a lot of questions being asked about why her series of books has taken the world, especially female readers, by storm.

What on earth does it say about women in the 21st Century and how far we have come, that we fantasise about being dominated by a sado-masochistic male millionaire?

I believe that by using the example of slash and what the genre demonstrates, the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon can be explained by the world around us and what we see happening now.

I don't believe women read these books because they want to ultimately be hurt for sexual gratification, dominated and then saved by a man.

I think these fantasies resonate with female readers at this time because it's a fun and harmless way of fantasising a solution to the predicament we find ourselves in.

Women are still largely paid lower salaries than men. We are fewer than men in the upper echelons of society and business where decision makers get to rule the world. Just take a look at Foreign Policy's 100 top most important twitter feeds to monitor. Despite women being almost half the population - there's only about 15 on that list.

We are seeing the ability to buy a house on our own pretty much dissapear - we can't afford it on the low salaries we are paid. The tax system is all about property and couples. Trying to combine career and kids is almost impossible with a quiet understanding that when the kids come, the career rise usually stops. We are working harder with less time to develop a healthy personal life and little remuneration that reflects the increasing invasion on our personal lives.

We are barraged by images of perfect bodies and feminine hygiene products that make us feel bad about ourselves and uncomfortable with our bodies. The right to contraception and the choice of termination is constantly under attack, especially in some countries. Hell, even our vagina's are dirty words that dare not be spoken in a place of government. In almost every public corner women are still under assault in the 21st Century.

And in our private lives? Figures show that women still do a majority of the housework, starting another shift when they come home from their jobs. We are still in this day and age, victims of gendered relationships and expectations, not to mention the rates of domestic violence.

So why not get lost in a world where a millionaire will solve all your financial problems and sexually excite you in a way that isn't on a Femfresh poster? A millionaire who is generous, attractive, has cleaning staff and the money to buy a nice house in a good neighbourhood.

What is titillating for mainstream readers about the sex in this book is the unusualness and somewhat voyeuristic nature of a world that is largely unknown to those of us who don't walk into the dominatrix scene.

Hell yeah, give me that fantasy any day over rich men who run the world and run it into the ground.

50 Shades of Grey isn't about women yearning to be abused, dominated and therefore shunning feminism.

It's a recognition of an inherent unfairness and inequality in women's lives today and a desire to simply escape from it into a story that channels their most basic desire for financial security, sexual satisfaction and excitement.

Given the choice, women want to make it on their own. But many of us don't have that choice right now -unless we give up a personal life. We never really did have that choice and what was on offer is dissapearing faster than ever.

In the same way that slash allows women to fantasise about a more equal relationship with men, 50 Shades of Grey allows women to fantasise about a world where we have financial security, stable relationships and power within those relationships - as well as being titillated through the representation of unusual sex.

That the novel does this through depicting a relationship with a man is not unsurprising. It is not only the norm of the romance genre but encapsulates the fantasy that many people have. We want to reach success but we don't want to be alone when we get there. Perhaps we even want it handed to us through wealth by any means, either inheritance, or through a partner.

I do wonder if the 50 Shades of Grey series would have been so popular if we were in a more prosperous economic age and if overtly sexual scenes had already made it out of the erotica section of the book store and into mainstream romance novels. The e-book certainly has much to do with this element, allowing women to buy and read books anonymously.

I don't agree with the common assessment that the women reading and enjoying these novels 'must all be stupid' and have turned the feminism clock back 50 years.

With a million print copies sold in 11 weeks, and about the equivalent in digital copies, it's not a fair assessment to say all those readers are lacking in the basic number of brain cells.

It's too simplistic and fails to see that what is popular is not so because of a literal take on the content. It requires context and an appreciation of the cultural realities.

Slash is still hugely popular, both as art and fiction. It's a way for women to explore the boundaries and cross over them in a safe space.

If we can't get it from the expectations in traditional relationships and our underpaid jobs, then we will always turn to fantasy to explore what might be missing from our lives.