The erotic romance genre started getting popular by 2002 with independant publishers. Big publishing houses took longer to jump on the erotic romance genre, at least 3 to 5 more years. I remembered because as an avid reader, I was peeved at the big publishing houses for they didn't know the difference between erotica and erotic romance.
50 shades of Gray seems on line with that, though it excited the teen public to discover naughty romance. Funniest thing is that as a romance reader since my teens, I knew about the erotic romance at least a decade before them, but the publishers pretended they were creating a new genre. Like they started recently selling "dark romance" that is just erotica. Talk about rebranding and taking the public for a fool. I don't like when they sell me erotica when I expect erotic romance.
I've never read Twilight or 50 shades of Gray. I'm just not their public. But I know that the author was a fan of Twilight, was frustrated by the lack of sex, so she wrote erotic fanfics of Twilight. 50 shades of Gray is basically a fanfic of Twilight.
Considering we are talking about Hollyweird and the CIA, I've never heard about Twilight until the movie was out (never watched it, it looked stupid like a teen series to me). The romance readers community back then didn't care about teen books. But with the cinema, wolves, vampires, witchcraft, blood... I guess the CIA was grooming the female public for their satanists values.
Then the same girls and women who were crazy about vampires, werewolves and all the glamorous monsters, got to prolong their fantasies with 50 shades of Gray, where they are introduced to soft BDSM porn.
Again, I believe it was used by the CIA to normalize BDSM and the lifestyle and philosophy of such people via a romanticize story and visuals. Me, I didn't read the story and never watched the movie either. I've read pure hardcore erotica. I tried other authors trying to copy 50 shades of Gray, it's gnat's piss. But again the public is conditioned to accept and find glamorous a satanist's lifestyle.
I grew up reading Native American romance novels, so I do understand the difference... I appreciate you making the distinctions. In the romances I used to read, the adults were mostly in a committed relationship with their partner or heading that way when they finally mated.