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By now, we're all familiar with the premise of Fifty Shades of Grey: Boy meet girl. Boy seduces girl. Boy introduces girl to all kinds of kinky stuff she never imagined trying—or liking, for that matter. (Tale as old as time, right?)

And we know that the book has inspired a number of readers to follow suit by exploring the BDSM world and even helped launch products catered to helping them.

However, a new study examining the steamy tome claims that the content of the book doesn't merely encourage sexual adventurousness, but actually may promote "dangerous abuse patterns."

Okaaayyy...

According to Amy Bonomi, who's the incoming chair and professor of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Michigan State University, the book idealizes violence against women, specifically, stalking, intimidation, threats, isolation and humiliation—which she says all fit with the definition of "intimate partner abuse" as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Indeed one could argue that Christian Grey is lovingly infatuated with Ana… or is a creepy stalker who reads her email and has her followed on the reg.

However, Bonomi doesn't want to completely vilify the book, only the behavior in it.

"We do not want to ban the book. What we do want is for people to understand abuse patterns," she said. "Just knowing the patterns exist and calling it out is important. I can't tell you the number of students I've had in my classrooms who've told me they had no idea what they were experiencing was abuse. Simply being aware is the first step in potentially improving things in your situation."

While we think that any awareness or education we can give to girls about abuse is vital and important, Bonomi doesn't address the fact that some people—many people!—get off on the very behaviors she, and the government, define as abuse. So, really, the issue of whether or not these behaviors are bad come down to consent: If two people are cool with the sub-dom way of sexing it up, who's to say that they shouldn't get down with their bad selves how they want to?

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Photo: Getty Images