One question posed in the comments was from Marumae: “The fact that the rapist doesn’t get a POV piqued my curiosity me and I wonder the reasoning for it. ”

Certain genres have certain narrative conventions. Often, Romance and Erotic Romance present the POV of both the heroine and the hero as a device for charting the individuals psychological journey towards love and commitment.

Gaijin is not a romance. I could never write it as a romance. As much as I enjoy fantasy, and even have a taste for non-con, I simply couldn’t – as a woman – envision any circumstances under which Shindo was forgivable or redeemable after his actions. I know there are authors who can do this and readers who want it. I’m just not one of them. I was interested in the main character’s physical and psychological survival, not in romance.

My main character, Jennifer, is in a place many expats have been, hovering on the outside of a society alien to her own. She has learned as much of the language as she needs to in order to be functional, and she is earning her living (I’ll be blunt here) exploiting the fantasies that a lot of Japanese men have about western women. But as that experience turns ugly, I wanted to give the reader an experience of that feeling of the impenetrability of the ‘other’ culture. Had I represented Shindo’s point of view, I felt that her sense of isolation would not have been as tangible to the reader.

Finally, at the time I wrote Gaijin (about 7 years ago, now), I simply did not want to represent the POV of the rapist. It was a personal, ethical decision at the time. I feared that to give him a voice in the narrative in such a powerful way might serve to legitimize or excuse his behaviour. Most men who rape do not think of themselves as rapists. They make elaborate excuses, and come up with some chilling rationales for feeling they have a right or the prerogative to force sex on someone who doesn’t want it. I was not comfortable giving air or credence to those excuses. Again, I know there are authors who feel comfortable writing a character who rapes and then feels contrition for it, and all is forgiven in the end. I’m just not that writer.

Several years later, I felt I had a better handle on the craft of writing and did, in fact, write a story that contains rape from the rapist’s point of view. Click was the product of that evolution. By then, I felt I could represent those rationales, those excuses, without allowing the narrative to somehow legitimize the actions. It’s really up to the reader to decide whether I managed to succeed in what I set out to do. However, if fictional depictions of rape are distressing to you, please don’t read that story.

Ultimately, writers make the decisions they make within the context the story, the level of their skills and their own personal code of ethics.  Had I set the story at a time in history or a geographical place in the world where the prevailing culture didn’t condemn rape in the same way we do today, I might have felt differently about my decision to not give Shindo a POV of his own.

There have been times in our history when a woman’s consent simply didn’t have any significance in the social order of the era. There are many places today where a woman’s consent is immaterial. But I’m a 20th century Western-born writer, and Japan has one of the lowest rates of rape in the world. In neither my reality, nor in Shindo’s culture, is it seen as acceptable to rape a woman. Within that context, I did not feel compelled to present his point of view.

It isn’t a wholly positive review, as no thorough review should be. But it discusses the themes in the book in a way most reviews of erotica or erotic romance books never bother to do. And, for a writer, that’s a real moment of pride: when someone takes the work you’ve written and gives it some deep thought.

Also worth your attention are the comments. There are some very interesting discussions there, on whether the book resembles the equivalent of a blaxploitation movie, and what is the fundamental purpose in books like Gaijin.

I can fully understand why a lot women don’t want to read erotic fiction that contains non-con. I respect their choice, as I would any reader’s choice to read any subject they choose. Hey, there are things I won’t read. Subject matter I find personally offensive. Although, if I have to be honest, there isn’t much I won’t read if the writing is good.

Still, what I did find a little disturbing was the comment question of why the book should exist at all. As if, if a book isn’t to one’s taste, it simply shouldn’t exist. That mindset scares me. I find it intolerant and fascistic.

All that being said, the review is a very thoughtful one. And worth reading for an example of how serious reviews are structured and how, when well written, they expand the discussion beyond any given book, and onto some serious and intriguing issues.

Steven Gregory: Skulduggery Empty Vessels

Some time ago, Laura Miller of Salon.com wrote a compelling critique of the Twilight series. She had a particularly insightful comment to make of Bella:

Bella is not really the point of the Twilight series; she’s more of a place holder than a character. She is purposely made as featureless and ordinary as possible in order to render her a vacant, flexible skin into which the reader can insert herself.

Anyone who has read Fifty Shades of Grey will recognize a doppelganger in the main character of the novel, Anastasia. She is equally blank, equally unaccomplished at anything except biting her own lower lip.

And these are the sort of things that make these heroines apparently absolutely irresistible to the novels’ male protagonists: Bella is clumsy, Anastasia gnaws her own mouth. Because, after all, what else might a real man want?

I have encountered the very same adorable lack of substance in a great deal of erotica and romance recently. Some of the most successful titles sport staggeringly vapid heroines.

I’m finding their overwhelming popularity frightening. These characters are not badly drawn portraits of everything men lust after. They are written by women, for women who, for the most part, are perfectly well educated in terms of feminist theory. How is that that so many women relate deeply to these vessels of emptiness?

It might be argued that the popularity of these ‘empty vessels’ stems from the evolution of other media. Story-telling in game-culture is heavily dependent on creating empty characters in which role-playing gamers can insert themselves in a 2nd person POV narrative experience. Reality TV takes the concept of mediocrity and marketizes it: you don’t have to actually be accomplished at anything to be famous, you just need to get lucky enough to stumble into the glare of the spotlight to get your 5 minutes of fame.

I’ve heard the term ‘cypher’ characters used in this context. But these are not cyphers. Cyphers are mysterious and potentially undecodable. Cyphers are challenging puzzles. Here there is nothing to decode. Here we have a portrait of a female who has no life, no aspirations of her own. She is a vessel waiting for the male character to fill and make significant through the act of filling. Nothing else. These are the Sleeping Beauties of the 21st century.

In the past, literature has been criticized for its poor representation of female characters at the hand of male writers. From Shakespeare to Hemmingway, they’ve been pilloried for their creation of female characters who simply act as plot points for male protagonists. But even Hemmingway never wrote such an insignificant, agency-less woman.

Post-modern theorists would argue that these characters are empty in order to be filled by the minds of the readers. Narrative vessels for the reader’s own creativity. The fictional offered as remix material for the real lived-experience of the consumer. If I believed this were true, I’d feel better.

What I fear is that these empty women are as popular as they are because they reflect how many women feel about themselves. If fashion magazines have succeeded in making most of us feel terrible about our bodies, something else has led us to believe that all our other dreams, goals, ambitions are equally worthless.

And it is easy to see the lazy allure in fantasizing that we might be sought after, adored, lusted after for the simple reason that we have a vagina and a bottom lip to gnaw on. It relieves us of the pressure to strive to be fuller, rounded, complex human beings.

The possible narrative conflicts that can arise in a situation where, for instance, you have a focused, self-directed female character are enormous. Great love affairs, and especially D/s love affairs will, by necessity, engender great frictions with pre-existing career goals, personal aspirations, etc. From a writing perspective, the conflicts arise almost by themselves, believable and compelling.

When you have female characters who have no envisioned life goals, no passions of their own, there is nothing to clash with when they meet with the dominating male character. And so the narrative conflicts have to be manufactured and implausible. Unbelievable misunderstandings of emails, rogue interpretations of reaction, suspect circumstantial hurdles.

And yet, the ridiculously implausible conflicts the authors present us in novels like the Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey series don’t seem to bother the readers.  And it is interesting that as these series evolve, the serious conflicts actually belong to the male characters, not the female heroines. The women in these novels seem to be nothing more than the banal and dumbstruck bystanders in the only realistic conflicts that we’re presented with.

Why are we, as women, writing ourselves into insignificance?

Once on solid ground, we obediently lined up to obtain visas. At first they issued me a visa without blinking. The clerk behind the high wood counter wore an expression that tried for wary, but came off looking sleepy. But at the immigration booth, the two uniformed love birds, who I suspect spent most of their time doing each other between the arrivals and departures, decided that my passport offended them, since there was less than six months left to go to expiry.

This, it seemed, became an opportunity to look at me gravely, and shake their heads in unison. I offered them my virgin UK passport instead, but they wouldn’t accept it. Apparently, they have a preference for passports that are neither too full or too empty: and either of these offers them a fortuitous excuse to impose a ‘fine’.  I am guided into a makeshift office that does duty most of the time, when no money is to be made, as a lunchroom. The old wood and glass cases that once might expect to overflow with wilted and flyblown official documents are host to haphazard piles of brightly coloured plastic crockery, and a few mangled aluminum utensils.

“We have a problem, Madame.”

“Really? What is it?”

“We must, I am sorry, impose a fine,” says the official in the ill-fitting olive uniform. He is making a great effort to look like this is causing him regret, but he fails. His gold incisor glints in the fluorescent overheads, the fraying gold braid on his epaulettes do likewise.

“What kind of a fine?”

“A two hundred dollar fine.”

Then he withdraws, and I am left to ponder my fate.The point of this is to allow the nervous traveler’s mind to be fertile. In the isolation of bureaucratic banality, one is expected to dream up numerous unpleasant scenarios that will, in the end, make handing over the ‘fine’ seem like a blessing.

During my life, I’ve been in a lot of rooms just like this one, at the mercy of a lot of petty officials like this one, and so I let my head roll back and close my eyes and catnap for the requisite period of time. At its most basic level, power is wielded in silence.

I already know I will hand over the $200.  Although I’m fairly sure there’s no flight to Hanoi until the morning, and in truth, they’ve nowhere to send me, I don’t fancy spending the night on the ravaged wooden chairs in the immigration hall. I’ve done it before, out of stubbornness and principle, but I’m too old for that now.

On the other hand, if I hand over the money too eagerly, they will start to suspect there really IS something wrong with my passport. So I snooze with a certain smugness, knowing that it will annoy them just enough to process me a little faster, but not enough to really justify anything else.

I wake to hear the official scratching, pen to paper. He presents me with a humidity-warped exercise book on which he has written paragraphs in tight, cramped Lao. This, he explains, is the true account of my travel document transgression.

“Do you disagree?” he asks.

“Would it make a difference if I did?”

“No, Madame.”

I smile coldly and hand over two ravaged $100 dollar bills. I know it’s childish, but it’s my parting gesture of disdain. I will not, under any circumstances, give him the crisp and clean ones I have in my billfold.

He fingers them with disgust. I smile apologetically. “Can I go now?”

“Of course, Madame. Do you need a taxi to the town?”

I lie and tell him the hotel has sent a car for me. My patience doesn’t stretch to furthering the fortunes of his taxi-driving family members.

I don’t usually write this kind of straight-up erotica. But we’ve been discussing the shortcomings of D/s representations in 50 Shades of Grey, lamenting the fact that the author felt the need to make the protagonist so absurdly innocent, observing the fact that, for all the BDSM trappings, the sex was strangely vanillaish. Dangerous Sweets posted a very short, very raw snippet of another approach to that kind of dichotomy – a vanilla woman who wants to be with a kinky man.  We played around a little with using POV to turn a vanilla sex act kinky, keeping to scenes that had no toys or obvious trappings of BDSM. So, I decided to try my hand at an act that could easily be a vanilla one, and gave it a rare happy ending while still keeping the problematic of the gulf between vanilla and kink as the central conflict.

Traitorous muscles rebelled and she gagged again.  Amanda would have apologized if her mouth hadn’t been so full of his cock.

“Sh-h.” He stroked her hair with infinite patience. “You’re doing fine. Just breathe through your nose.”

Amanda squeezed her eyes shut, dislodging twin tears. She wasn’t crying; it was just the gag reaction that made her tear up.  There seemed no way to stop it.

Shuffling on her knees a little, she made another determined effort as he pushed her head down. This time she remembered to breathe through her nose, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. Another spasm gripped at her stomach and travelled up her esophagus.

Gently, but with measured firmness, he pulled her head away from him and looked down at her.

“I can feel the tension in your neck – your whole body, in fact.  It won’t go away until you trust me not to suffocate you.”

“Jesus, I’m really sorry. I just can’t seem to stop it. If you’d just let me give you head at my own pace… I’m really not that bad at it, you know.”

He knit his brows and looked down at her. “You’re an outstanding cocksucker, Amanda.  But this isn’t about a blowjob. I couldn’t give a fuck if I don’t come. It’s about trust. You don’t trust me.”

That did bring real tears to her eyes. “But I do!” she said, wrapping her arms around his thighs and pressing her cheek to his erect cock. “I really do. I love you.”

“Maybe, but you don’t TRUST me.  So your body doesn’t trust me.”

“But… I’d do anything!” she pleaded.  “I’m happy to give you every part of me. Any part of me!”

“I know that, sweet. But you giving is not the same thing as me taking. And I won’t take you without trust.”

“Take it anyway, I don’t mind.” She looked up at him.

“But I do.”

His words seemed so final. So far away.  Like they’d made an enormous gulf between them. And that scared her more. She didn’t want to lose him. She didn’t want to let him walk away just because they were used to different ways of having sex.

Robert wasn’t a stupid man, or a selfish man.  But he was very much a dominant one, and even if he hadn’t told her so, she would have felt it from the beginning. The first time he’d kissed her. The first time they’d made love. The second, the third.  He had held something back and she had sensed it.

He hadn’t threatened to walk out. Hadn’t demanded anything. But she knew he was never going to stop wanting what he wanted. And that something… the thing he wanted, intrigued her. But it scared her too.  He was right, she didn’t trust him. She’d never trusted any man in the way he so clearly needed to be trusted.

Amanda took a breath. “Let’s try again.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. His voice was gentle, but there was a thread of expectation lurking beneath.

“Yup. You tell me if you feel me tensing up. So that I realize it.”

“You know, this really doesn’t matter. Let’s leave it.”

“No!” she said, taking his hand and putting it back on the nape of her neck. “Please, just once more.”

And in truth, his hand felt good there. Warm against her skin. His solid fingers creeping through the strands of her hair.  Robert flexed them, stroked her scalp with the tips of them. “Relax, love. I’m not going to suffocate you.”

This time she made a concerted effort to release the tension in her muscles. She moved her head from side to side and closed her eyes, trying to consciously relax. “Promise me you won’t,” she whispered. “Say it, please.”

“I promise. I’ll know if you can’t breathe.” Then he pulled her head to his groin, easing his cock past her lips. “Let yourself go limp. Don’t give me your mouth. Let me take it.”

That was the moment she felt him take over. Felt his cock slide over the hill of her tongue, felt every vein on its underside as he drew back out. At first she could feel him guide her with his hand, but then it simply held her still as he moved his hips.

She breathed, fighting down the need to do something, to take control of it. Instead she enclosed him between her lips and started to suck.

“No…” he said quietly, stilling his hips. “Don’t suck. Not yet. I don’t want you to service me. I want to take.”

He caressed the back of her head, and began to rock his hips again. Slow and sure. “Just like that. Your mouth is mine. Show me that it is.”

Something in the way he spoke to her then, something entirely different. It melted her. Freed her. Banished her need to perform for him. His mouth. There was something both deeply erotic and dreadful in that.

“You’re doing fine, Amanda. Just fine,” he whispered.

His grip grew firmer. The thrust of his hips just a little more insistent. The head of his cock pushed at the back of her palate and she felt the familiar sensation of an imminent gag cinch her chest.

“My mouth, Amanda. My throat. Let me have it.” His words were breathy, but the tone was sure.

Then he was pushing into it. Not hard, but with a determined claiming of territory. And it was his to have, she felt.  The urge to gag had receded. She breathed each time he pulled out, only to feel strangely possessed as he pressed back in.

“Good, good girl.” His voice was gritty with lust.  “Clever girl.”

The word brought her back to a childhood she’d never had. To praise she had craved and never received. And it scared her, that they made her feel that way. The pleasure those words gave her seemed suddenly terrifying, obscene.  Her throat closed up, her muscles spasmed shut.

As if he could read her mind, he paused. It must have cost him. His cock was painfully rigid, pulsing, as he pulled it from her mouth and canted her head up to meet his eyes.

“What were you thinking? Just then. What was it?”

“Those words. The praise. I’m not sure. It felt wonderful and that…”

“Scared you?”

“Yes.”

“Because a grown woman shouldn’t be so gratified by that kind of praise?”

Amanda nodded. That was it. That was it exactly.

“There’s no place here for ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t', Amanda. Whatever you feel: if it’s good, then it’s wholly good.”

She closed her eyes again, letting his words sink down her throat.  There were hesitant valves down there, slamming shut until she coaxed them open and pushed the words past them, deeper still.  Somewhere, just below her solar plexus, they stopped and bloomed in her chest. “Jesus,” she muttered.

Robert gave a little laugh. “Are we done for now?” He stroked her cheek with his hand. “You did great. I felt it. Good girl.”

The cock in front of her was still slick with her saliva. Engorged and purpled. “No,” said Amanda. She felt a smile from a very new place stretch her lips. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep going.”

She tilted her head, and drew his hand back to her neck. “My mouth,” she said, licking the tip of his cock, “is yours. Please take it.”

He did. This time she didn’t gag, or tense, or panic.  She didn’t feel the need to fight him for breath.  She simply melted in the strange new sun of his praise.

And when he stilled, buried in her throat, and croaked: “Suck me. Now.” She did.

Because she was a good girl – a clever girl – and she knew exactly how to do that. His praise, in response, was a warm gush of pleasure that flooded her mouth and streamed down her throat.

Robert slumped to his knees on the floor in front of her.  She grinned.

“Jesus, Amanda.”

He pulled her against him and, with her hair still tangled in his fingers, tugged her into a long, languid kiss.

“So, next time I try to get three fingers inside you, you’re not going to fight me, right?”

“No,” she said, nestling into his arms, tucking her face into the crook of his neck. “It’s your cunt.”

“Yes. Yes it is. Mine.”

Take one: a la vanille

I walked into the bedroom, pink from my evening shower, to find Robert naked and taking up most of the bed.  He sat propped up against a wealth of pillows, reading a paperback. His long legs sprawled over the real estate, burnished skin stark against the white sheets.

“Whatcha reading?” I asked, perching myself on the end of the bed. I poured a generous puddle of almond oil into my hand and began to moisturize my legs.

“This is terrible,” he said, not looking up. “The characters are totally unbelievable. And the plotting. Jesus!”

“What’s it called?”

“I got if off your desk. Fifty shades of… something.” He sniffed the air and looked up. “I smell… almonds. Almonds?”

“Mhm.” I was attending to my shins. Otherwise, they get like parchment. “It’s supposed to be sexy. Everyone’s raving about it.”

“I think the author’s a virgin.” Robert grunted and threw the book aside. It skidded to a noisy stop on the wood floor, just by the wall.  “Can I tempt you to get a little closer?”

I looked up at him, then. His peacefully slumbering cock was slumbering no more.  “My hands are all oily.” Smirking, I held them up, fingers splayed.

Robert’s mouth twitched into a crooked smile. “I know.”

I shuffled up for the bottom of the bed, between his stretched out legs, on my knees, brandishing my glistening hands. “These hands are lethal weapons. I want you to know.”

With one oily finger, I traced a shiny path down the underside of his engorged cock.

“Lethal?”

“Mmm… Lethal,” I purred as I curled my fingers and slid both hands down the entire shaft. Then up again, stroking him slowly, measuring the tease, letting my fingers hitch and slide over the flare of his cockhead.

A low, pleasured groan erupted from the depth of his throat. “You’re really very good at that.”

“Years of experience.”

His brows knit together. “We could fuck, you know.”

And we could have, but there was something about the sweet smell of the oil on the hot skin of his cock, and the hypnotic rhythm of my hands. I didn’t want to stop. “Maybe not,” I whispered and tightened my grip.

That’s when his hips began to rock. There was nothing in the world more erotic than watching the muscles of his stomach ripple as he arches. I noticed his hands, fisted in the sheets and then gazed up into his face.

“I like watching you like this. Is it good?”

“Fuck. Yes. It’s. Good.” The plump words tumbled out like single things.

Then nothing but the sound of his ragged breathing and the wet, slick sound of skin against skin, growing in volume as I stroked him faster. The sucking, kissing, licking sounds buried themselves in my cunt.

His body stiffened, his back bowed and his eyes flew to the ceiling.

“Jesus Christ,” he gasped.

Warm spurts of semen spattered my arms and my thighs, then dribbled, honey-like over my slowing hands.

I lowered my head, parted my lips, and trapped the last weak eruption in my mouth.

Take Two: au chocolate

I walked into the bedroom, pink from my evening shower, to find Robert naked and taking up most of the bed.  He sat propped up against a wealth of pillows, reading a paperback. His long legs sprawled over the real estate, burnished skin stark against the white sheets.

“Whatcha reading?” I asked, perching myself on the end of the bed. I poured a generous puddle of almond oil into my hand and began to moisturize my legs.

“This is terrible,” he said, not looking up. “The characters are totally unbelievable. And the plotting. Jesus! This woman wouldn’t know BDSM if it fucked her from behind with a ball gag on.”

“What’s it called?”

“I got if off your desk. Fifty shades of… something.” He sniffed the air and looked up. “I smell… almonds. Almonds?”

“Mhm.” I was attending to my shins. Otherwise, they get like parchment. “It’s supposed to be sexy. Everyone’s raving about it.”

“I think the author’s a virgin.” Robert grunted and threw the book aside. It skidded to a noisy stop on the wood floor, just by the wall.  “Come over here, pet.”

I looked up at him, then. His peacefully slumbering cock was slumbering no more.  “My hands are all oily.” Smirking, I held them up, fingers splayed.

Robert’s mouth twitched into a crooked smile. “Exactly.”

I shuffled up for the bottom of the bed, between his stretched out legs, on my knees, offering up my glistening hands. “Would I be wrong in thinking that I know what you’d like me to do with these?”

With one oily finger, I traced a shiny path down the underside of his engorged cock.

“You wouldn’t be wrong.”

I purred as I curled my fingers and slid both hands down the entire shaft. Then up again, stroking him slowly, measuring the pace, letting my fingers hitch and slide over the flare of his cockhead.

A low, pleasured groan erupted from the depth of his throat. “You’ve gotten very good at this.”

“I’ve had an excellent teacher.”

His eyebrow arched. “I could take you, you know.”

And he could have, but there was something about the sweet smell of the oil on the hot skin of his cock, and the hypnotic rhythm of my hands. I didn’t really want to stop. “I’m yours for the taking,” I whispered and tightened my grip.

That’s when his hips began to rock. There was nothing in the world more erotic than giving this man pleasure. Watching the muscles of his stomach ripple as he arched. His hand curled firmly around mine, controlling the rate of his pleasure.

” You’re such a good girl.”

“I do my very best, Sir.”

Then nothing but the sound of his ragged breathing and the wet, slick sound of skin against skin, growing in volume as he guided my pace. The sucking, kissing, licking sounds buried themselves in my cunt.  The grip of his hand around mine, and the arousal in his eyes almost tipped me over.

His body stiffened, his back bowed and, with almost lightening speed, he fisted his free hand in my hair and pulled me down.

“Swallow every drop, slut,” he demanded.

My lips closed around the flared, burning head just in time to capture the first thick jet of come. I sucked greedily, gratefully, as he held the back of my head and thrust upward, bruising my lips. He forced his way into my throat and erupted a second time, feeding me his lust.

Then the grip gentled. He stroked my hair, brushing it away from my face to watch my lap up the last of his semen.

“Good pet. Beautiful pet,” he whispered.

I had to agree with her and then I went on to wonder why.  It’s not that all the sex in the story was, physically, strictly vanilla. The restraint of her not being allowed to touch him is always there. And some of the scenes do have the physical trappings of BDSM, so why did it read so vanilla?

I came to the conclusion that writing BDSM sex is far less about the external scene than it is about how the person whose POV is represented in the narrative is interpreting it. The M/C in Fifty Shades of Grey has a very vanilla state of mind (and I would extrapolate and venture that E.L. James is probably not much of an avid practicioner of BDSM herself). And so, appropriately, she reads/interprets/experiences all the sex as vanilla, even when, externally, it doesn’t appear to be.

I think it’s something of an interesting  writing exercise to think about this. Take, for instance, the most vanilla position on earth – the missionary position:

From a vanilla perspective, the missionary position allows for the partners to be face to face. It’s a very intimate, loving position with lots of gazing into the eyes of the other going on. It’s easy to kiss. Both partners are within easy reach of the other, to caress and be caressed.

From a power play perspective, it’s definitely a one person-on-top position. The top has all the freedom of movement. They control the thrust. The top’s weight can be interpreted as a form of physical bondage. And all it would take is the top having a firm hold on the bottom’s wrists to make it instantly kinky… if that lack of movement was of some internal significance to the bottom.

( It was just very rightly pointed out to me on twitter, by I.G. Frederick, that it is also perfectly possible to have a very D/s missionary fuck where the Dominant is on the bottom, too)

It’s really all about what kind of language you are using to describe how it feels. And it’s going to feel entirely different to either vanilla lover vs someone in a dominant or submissive role.

So, here’s my challenge: Have a go at writing the exact same sex act, using nothing but the tone of language and the POV of the narrator to present it as either kinky or vanilla.

If you take up my challenge but post to your own blog, please leave a comment to link to your efforts. I’d really love to see how different writers experiment with this.

For those few of you who haven’t read it, the book charts the course of a 22 year-old ingenue’s relationship with an older, kinky billionaire. I’m not good at writing summaries, but this was easy because … well, that’s all there is. It has all the hallmarks of a mild BDSM romance without the mandatory HEA ending.

I really hate writing a totally negative review, so I’m going to first tell you what is good about the book: it’s not very long; it has a secondary school reading level, and nothing blows up. And, to be fair, I think this is a reasonably fair portrayal of the problems faced when a kinky person sincerely attempts and fails to date someone vanilla. Finally, I have to say that the sex, while not brilliantly written, is not too bad. For a mainstream novel, that’s refreshing.

Okay – check positive aspects.

I wasn’t surprised at all to read that 50 Shades started out as Twilight Fan Fic ¹. What disturbs me most about the phenomenal popularity of this novel is that, like Twilight, it revels in the sheer mediocrity of Anastasia, the main female character, and presents us with a male romantic interest, Christian Grey, who is obsessively drawn to that mediocrity. Implicit in its popularity is the disturbing truth that so many women must feel equally mediocre in order to identify with her so strongly.

Anastasia is a 22-year old virgin who has never orgasmed, never masturbated – never gotten to 2nd base, in fact. She’s graduating with a degree in English literature but doesn’t own a computer. One would think that, alone, would make for an interesting, under-socialized, sexually inhibited and disturbing sort of girl. But she isn’t represented that way. She’s represented as entirely normal.

22 year-old virgins are pretty damn rare in the industrialized world. 22 year-old virgins who have never masturbated are downright odd and require some explaining. 22 year-old non-masturbating virgins who instantly turn into uninhibited fans of rough-fucking and grade-A cock suckers are simply a pornographic mythology. We need an explanation for Anastasia’s very strange sexual development and we don’t get one. (And hands up how many of you took to deep-throating like a duck to water).

In that sense, the critics’ description of Fifty Shades of Grey as ‘mommy porn’ are fair; it is ‘pornography’ in as much as it offers us a heroine who is an unreal and fetishized symbol of sexual innocence.

Admittedly, Anastasia has two inner personas who annoyingly jockey for attention in italics. There’s her ‘goddess’ who is an insatiable and feisty libertine and the Cynic, who keeps calling her a whore. Sadly, either of her italicized sub-personas would have made a more interesting and loveable character.

In the other corner of the ring, we have Mr. Christian Grey: the 27 year-old BDSM-loving, control freak billionaire. Despite the fact that he extolls his own virtues as a canny reader of people, the plot revolves almost completely around how pathetic he is at reading her. He is terminally impressed with her beauty, mental acuity, her snarky mouth and her wide-eyed innocence (charming qualities which are not in evidence in the actual text – maybe he’s in love with a character in another book and doesn’t know it yet).  He lavishes inappropriate gifts upon her that she supposedly doesn’t want but can’t stop mentioning. We’re told he’s a rule-bound control freak who, inexplicably, breaks all his own rules with a frequency that quickly gets boring. We’re given to understand that he has a long history of practicing BDSM but shows a jaw-dropping propensity for misjudgement. All in all, very much like Twilight’s Edward, it’s simply a mystery as to why he is so besotted with the heroine.

I’m not one of those erotica writers who insists that BDSM always be represented as a happy and healthy lifestyle choice. I’ve met too many people who were drawn to BDSM to fulfill needs that have their origins in a traumatic childhood.  So, it did not bother me that Christian puts his kinky propensities down to early childhood abuse. However, it does bother me tremendously that a character, who has supposedly been practicing BDSM for as long as Mr. Grey, can’t tell the difference between a Dominant and a Sadist.

Dominants enjoy controlling the sexual experience of their subs and will give them pleasure or pain – mental or physical – with a view to having an enhanced intimate experience. They don’t get off on inflicting pain when they are absolutely aware that it is a wholly unpleasant experience for the submissive. Yes, some dominants do mete out punishment that is not physically pleasurable, but they do it knowing that the sub is getting mental pleasure from the power-relationship.

Sadists are a very different matter.  They do get off sexually and mentally on inflicting physical and mental pain and their ability to be aroused by witnessing or inflicting it it is not associated with the masochist’s consent or fulfillment. Now, if you’re a sadist reading this and are about to accuse me of defamation, please read that first sentence carefully again. I’m not saying that principled and disciplined sadists don’t set limits of consent for themselves and their partners. Many do. But they do so because it allows them to practice their sadism in a safe and ethical manner.  They may be sadistic within consensual bounds and enjoy it. But, if they allowed themselves to inflict non-consensual pain or humiliation, it would still arouse them – even if they felt guilty about it.

This is a major problem I have with the success of E.L. James’ novel.  It really does spread misinformation about the subtle but important differences between dominants and sadists. There is no question in the readers’ mind that Anastasia is not going to get off, either mentally or physically, on the final belt whipping. And it would take a massively incompetent dominant to think she would. Mr. Grey is a sadist and, for all his pretense at consent, a very inexperienced and unprincipled one. Now, don’t get me wrong. A novel about an inexperienced and unprincipled sadist might be very intriguing. But this is not that novel.

It would be fair to say that, in most aspects, this reads like a very mediocre erotic romance. The characters are either uncannily perceptive or staggeringly stupid depending on what the plot requires.  It uses the same tired and annoying plot devices of improbable misunderstandings to artificially heighten the tension. It is a litany of contrived conflicts that beggar the suspension of disbelief of any intelligent reader.

So, I’m going to say something that is probably going to piss a lot of you off: if you thought this novel was entirely brilliant and smokingly erotic, I do have to question your ability to be a discerning reader. The writing is flaccid, the characterization is appalling, and the plotting is downright pathetic.

I can’t begin to explain why, with so many brilliantly written erotic novels about BDSM out there, Random House chose to pick up this one.  You have a right expect much more of your kinky erotic novel that this.

You really do.

We’re better than this, I promise.

Nikos Kessanlis, The Crowd, 1965

I’m sorry the blog has been quiet for a while. I have some projects on the boil I can’t tell you about yet, but will announce soon.

In the meantime, my monthly post at the ERWA blog is up. This one is on The Voices of Others: Genders, Sexualities and Beyond

During the whole censorship / PayPal debate, over and over again, I read people equate and confuse real examples of illegal sexual behavior with fiction.

Hyperbolic comments like “Well, I’m glad that stuff is banned. Do you really want someone fucking your 12 year old sister?”

Huh? *BLINK*

I have no idea what is going on here, but it’s rampant. Blinding lapses in simple logic. Obvious inabilities to mentally separate fiction from reality.  It was really quite chilling.

Were we always this stupid and I just didn’t notice it, or have people been slowly getting dumber? And what’s caused it?