The 'Fifty Shades of Grey' author had a Twitter chat. It went off the rails BIG TIME.

#AskELJames is the hashtag. They might have seen this coming.

 Angie Aker
06.29.15

Here's the thing: No matter how you feel about BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism, masochism), most domestic abuse survivors and fetishists agree that what author E.L. James put out into the world with "Fifty Shades of Grey" is not an accurate description of it. Ever since the books have become popular, both camps have been outspoken about the fact that it more closely resembles domestic abuse than fair role-playing.

Here's how people made that point using today's prime Twitter-tunity.

There were concerned friends asking for other friends:

There were people who took their time to craft just the right thing:

There were people seeking guidance after her "model" didn't work so well for them:

There were people searching for a sign of deeper meaning:

There were earnest, straightforward types with damn good questions:

There was pop culture cross-pollination:

There were call-outs about the times fiction turned into horrific reality:

There were the folks feeling empathy for E.L. James' PR people:

Finally, there was the question that drove home the point of the backlash and the brilliant irony of it all:

All of this points to readers who, like Christian Grey, have very singular tastes — you know, for responsible literature that doesn't romanticize abuse when it gets kinky. Let's hope the publishers and authors are listening.

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Man pulls off elaborate scheme involving body double to get his overweight cat on an airplane

Facebook / Mikhail Galin

Putting your pet in cargo during a flight isn't always safe. In 2016, the Department of Transportation reported a total of 26 pet deaths and 22 injuries on flights. Because conditions in cargo can be uncomfortable for animals, the Humane Society recommends taking your pet aboard when you fly, or just leaving it at home.

It's not surprising that one Russian man didn't want to put his overweight cat in cargo during an eight-hour flight from Moscow to Vladivostok. What is surprising is the great lengths he took to fly with his four-legged friend.

Russian airline Aeroflot allows pets to fly inside the plane's cabin, as long as the cat weighs under 17.6 pounds and stays in its carrier during the flight. When Mikhail Galin went to check in, he was told he couldn't fly with his four-year old cat, Viktor. Viktor weighed in at 22 pounds and would have to be relegated to cargo.

But Viktor was sick from their earlier flight from Riga, Latvia to Moscow. And besides, Viktor had been allowed to fly inside the cabin during that flight. The airline staff didn't even bother to make Viktor sit on the scales. Galin was unable to persuade staff to bring his fur baby on board.

"To all attempts to explain that the cat won't survive there on an 8-hour flight with the baggage and would haunt her in her nightmares for the rest of her life, she (the Aeroflot staff member) replied that there are rules," Galin wrote in a Facebook post translated from Russian.

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There's a scientific (and adorable) reason why babies hiccup, according to a new study

Photo by Kelvin Octa from Pexels

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A new study published in Clinical Neurophysiology found that hiccups play an important role in a baby's development. Researchers from the University College London found 217 babies for their study, but only looked at 13 newborns with persistent hiccups. Ten of those babies hiccupped when they were awake, and three hiccupped during their "wriggly" sleep. We have no idea how the scientists got any work done with all that cuteness lying around.

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Watch Kristen Bell magically rip through 17 Disney songs in 5 minutes with Jimmy Fallon

via The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon / YouTube

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Women shared how they make sexist men explain their nasty jokes, and it's so satisfying

Twitter—Heather Thompson Day/Naomi Savolainen/Chess Pearson

Ask almost any woman about a time a man said or did something sexually inappropriate to them, and she'll have a story or four to tell. According to a survey NPR published last year, 81% of women report having experienced sexual harassment, with verbal harassment being the most common. (By contrast, 43% of men report being sexually harassed. Naturally harassment toward anyone of any sex or gender is not okay, but women have been putting up with this ish unchecked for centuries.)

One form of verbal sexual harassment is the all too common sexist or sexual "joke." Ha ha ha, I'm going to say something explicit or demeaning about you and then we can all laugh about how hilarious it is. And I'll probably get away with it because you'll be too embarrassed to say anything, and if you do you'll be accused of being overly sensitive. Ha! Won't that be a hoot?

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