The Difference
AJ Robinson

In the last several days, I’ve heard many people make many excuses for Donald Trump’s latest outrage. It’s been everything from “locker room talk” to saying Bill Clinton did far worse or even saying that Trump has always been a champion for women in public. One of the dumbest lines I heard is saying that women can’t complain about Trump on the one hand and love the book, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” on the other.

I feel compelled to point out the difference between the two.

Back in the early 1980s, Robert Blake made a movie called “S.O.B.,” that was quite the scathing satire on the movie industry. Many people feel he made the film as a way of getting back at Hollywood for its abuse of him over the years. It is most noteworthy for the fact that his wife, Julie Andrews, did a topless scene.

Yes, Maria from, “The Sound of Music,” and Mary Poppins from the same titled film flashed her “poppins.” Many of the characters in the story were very over the top, but that just made it funnier. In particular, Robert Vaughn played a studio executive who spars, both verbally and physically, with Robert Mulligan, the director of the movie within the movie.

At one point, Vaughn is in bed with his girlfriend. They are let’s just say, “They’re getting busy” and the phone rings. Robert jumps out of bed to answer it and we see that he is in a cute little baby doll nightie!

Vaughn played the role to the hilt and it was hilarious.

Yes, hilariously funny, given Vaughn first came to attention as an international spy on “The Man from U. N. C. L. E.,” in the 1960s.

As the scene progressed, I noticed something else. Vaughn was all business. He marched about the room, talked on the phone, wheeled and dealed; he and was a complete and total businessperson. It was funny, but it was also kind of interesting to see that a man could be that dynamic, could be that varied and deep of a character.

That got me thinking about other films. In “As Good as it Gets,” Jack Nicholson is a gifted writer who has severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I’d say he’s so OCD that he called it CDO, as he would alphabetize the term! Once again, here’s a varied and complex character.

Yet, women don’t seem to get the same treatment. In “Disclosure,” Demi Moore portrays a powerful aggressive woman and that’s all. She’s that way in the office and she’s that way in the bedroom. In “Secretary,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character is completely and submissive, fully, in every aspect of her life. Both women are very one-dimensional characters.

Now, I’m not a woman, but I have a wife, I have a daughter and I have a mother. I can say quite categorically that they are multi-dimensional people. As far as I know, none of them cared for “Fifty Shades,” either the book or film, but if they or any other woman wanted to read it, that’s their right.

There's a huge difference between forcing yourself on someone and choosing to read a book or see a movie.

There’s a big difference between someone like Trump “forcing his attentions,” as the old saying goes, on a woman, and a mature, adult woman making the choice to embrace a little, that is, “walk on the wild side.” It has absolutely nothing to do with what the activity suggested or involved. I’ve heard of people having foot fetishes, food fetishes and so on. If a couple wishes to engage in a mutually pleasurable activity, whether it’s role playing, spanking, age play, S&M, bondage or anything else that they both agree on, who am I or anyone else to criticize them?

More important, who am I or anyone else to say that those same people something said by a person vying to be President of the United States, boasted about?