281. "Safe Transgression" in "Fifty Shades of Grey."

"Safe transgression."  Is there such a thing?  In a column on "Fifty Shades of Grey" (NYT 2-15) Ross Douthat calls it a dream.  He sees the sado-masochism in that movie as a power exercise in which the woman is anything but safe.  On the other hand when my wife's parents played a game of cards that was forbidden I'd say they were safe.  They were 450 miles from their home town and they had pulled down the shades.  There were no victims.

Somebody with a higher view would no doubt say that the card game was not really a transgression.  It only violated a social code that my wife's parents had abandoned.  All that was left of the violation was the tingle.

So what is a real transgression?  If we say there are such things, how do we distinguish real ones from apparent, and therefore safe, ones?

One way, drawing on our examples above, would be to say that violation of a code you believe in is real (or, to avoid the objective reality problem, "real for you"); any other "violation" is only apparent. 

Fine, but from the higher view that's a poor way to do it.  The victimizer, by adjusting his code locator, gets off free.  The sexual revolution Christian Grey joins becomes, in Douthat's terms, "a permission slip for the strong and privileged to prey upon the weak and easily exploited."

Then there's the moment when the violation you thought was only apparent turns out to be real.  "That was a terrible thing I did to that woman."  The permission slip turns into a summons.

What explains such transitions?  Resurrection, through memory, of an earlier code, parental or religious?  Or just maturity, learning that life is not a garden where you can pick any pleasure you want?

Socrates would say that it's learning more about yourself, what's inside.  That might be your conscience, excavated by inquiry, or it might be your soul, seen in a vision.  If it's the latter you're really down there, uncovering the generator, the "nexus of your values," or, as Socrates would have it, The Real You.  You see that you've got something inside that can be injured and needs care.

You can't go down that far, though, without opening up your vocabulary to some striking changes.  "Soul" enters on grounds of vitality and tradition.  Who ever heard of caring for a nexus?  "Transgression" has to include transgression against yourself, and "victim," who does that refer to?  You, Christian Grey, you too.