I’m doing a lot more thinking about my thesis topic. Trying to choose my angle of approach. For those of you who have access to the online journal libraries through a university, search ‘modern erotic literature’, ‘erotic fiction’ or ‘erotica’ and see just how dead the field is. What you get is an avalanche of writing on pornography – with no distinction between written erotic fiction, photography and video pornography.
Sure, there’s lots about the erotic poetry in Greco-Roman culture. Lots about de Sade and the Victorian ‘pornographers’. Lots about Lawrence, Nin, Miller, Bataille and Pauline Réage. There are historical examinations on the banning of books for obscenity and prosecution of publishers.
It is interesting to me that, during the Victorian period, because all explicit literature was illegal, once writers stepped past the gates of what was deemed to be acceptable for public consumption, they felt personally free to write about all their sexual fantasies. From the sadistic and masochistic, sexual delight in corporal punishment, shaming and humiliation, rape, buggery, bondage and watersports – they practiced no limits. Strange that in a time when this sort of writing was so prohibited, the writers who DID transgress felt free to transgress all the way.
Similarly, once Nin stepped over the pale to describe sex in all its erotic glory, she really didn’t feel any qualms about going on to write about fucking her father. And doing so with the intention to arouse.
I’ve been speaking to erotic fiction writers on the topic of publisher content restrictions. I’ve received interesting responses. They range from the position ‘I’m a writer, and I’ll damn well write what I please’ to ‘I would write about this because it turns me on, but it will never get published so why bother?’ to ‘I would never write about that – it’s disgusting’. Once I’ve finished with my interviews, I’ll write a post summarizing the different positions and offering you some links to the various writers and their work.
My next task is to talk to the publishers and hear their views on why they feel the need to institute these restrictions. Not the ones that have a legal basis, like the issue of underage sex, but the others.
But the more I think about this subject, the more I think about readers. Ultimately this is who we, as writers, and the publishers are addressing.
And a curious question has been forming in my mind. If over 50% of women have fantasies of non-consensual sex, but no major erotica publisher will publish any work containing this. If women who want to read erotica with this content in it must resort to my blog, or Literotica or Alt.Sex Stories… does this affect the way they see their fantasies?
Because, let’s face it. The formalism of publication might very well reinforce and legitimize a readers desire to read and be turned on by certain things. It seems that it’s perfectly okay now to fantasize about being strapped up in leather and told to grovel at your master’s feet. Because there are hundreds of erotica books modeling that understanding of what’s erotic. What SHOULD be erotic.
And in fact, I’ve read and heard many readers say that they were so relieved to read Anne Rice’s Beauty series because until they held that book in their hands they felt so ashamed of their fantasies. The fact that these books existed, were published and bought confirmed to them that they weren’t alone in their fantasies. That those fantasies were okay. Normal. Fine.
So, when a reader is left to toll through the vast jungle of free erotica to find something that matches their kink, how does that affect how they see their particular fantasies?
I don’t have proof of this yet, but I think certain women who have sexual fantasies about the sort of kinks that major erotica publishers refuse to publish – watersports, necrophilia, blood play, non-con – may very well be feeling shot from both sides.
The conservative elements on the right in the literary and social world condemn them as deviant perverts (along with anyone who really wants it up the ass). And a significant contingent of feminists and advocates of political correctness on the left believe that they are mentally ill and poor models of what it means to be a liberated woman.
I think it’s time to talk to readers. I will be creating a little web survey in the next few weeks and I do hope you will participate and encourage others to do so.
Ultimately, I have an agenda. I want to make that clear. I don’t want any woman to be ashamed of the images she drums up when she masturbates. I don’t care what they are. I don’t want any woman to feel wrong or lesser or mentally ill for hunting down erotic material that pushes their specific buttons. I may not write all of it. I may in fact be personally squicked by it. But I’m going to defend their right and assert the dignity in being turned on by whatever fantasy they damn well please.
Immediate thought – just women?
Until I found ASSTR, Storiesonline, Literotica and BDSM Library I, too, didn’t know how to judge my level of ‘kink’. “Mainstream Porn” doesn’t cover it, and the bulk of written erotica is aimed at women on the assumption that women will read but men want to watch.
Well, here’s news: Some men like to read, too. But it gets worse: Where I live at least, if a woman is found reading erotica she’s viewed as daring perhaps, odd, maybe, not much more. If a man is found reading such things though, he’s a pervert, a threat, probably a paedophile – after all, what else might he be thinking, or worse, doing.
Honestly, I think it’s more acceptable for a man to be caught smashing glasses and fighting outside a pub than it is for him to be found watching porn, or reading erotica. That’s sad.
That is indeed sad. And no – not just women. However, central to my argument is that erotica publishers estimate that at least 75% of their customers are women – and that these publishers are all about celebrating women’s sexuality and erotic imagination. So this is how I can hold them to account.
So… no. Not just women, Steve. I do believe that everyone’s erotic imagination should be a free-fire zone. But it is a lot harder to approach this academically if I don’t hone it down. I have no data on the number of men who fantasize about watersports, or rape, or necrophilia. I have this one compelling study that says – THIS MANY WOMEN fantasize about this. And that’s the stick I can use to beat publishers with.
Also, I’ve got to leave some fight left for you, right? *grin*
Good answer! *sharp-toothed grin*
It is a troublesome area for the academy – hey, they are only just starting to look at emotion and affect seriously… but things are slowly shifting. Queer studies suffer from this reluctance too. But I think the models lie in emotional geography – I remember seeing Sara Ahmed speak about the pressure to be happy and she dissected the whole happiness industry brilliantly and made the point that this is an extension of the forces that repress women – it’s simply ‘not nice’ to be angry or unhappy… I think it is the same patriarchal forces that make women’s sexual fantasies ‘not nice’, unless of course, they are about ravishing knights in shining armour within the safety of chiclit.
If everything is normalized, what of the thrill of tabu? I sound glib but I’m serious. Perhaps publishers might look to, of all places, Wall Street and co-opt category models based on risk tolerance so people can feel as ab/normal as suits them?
One of the other problems of the free sites is that often the layout or quality reinforces the idea that the stories therein are shameful or dirty or “bad.” I few years ago I pointed a real life acquaintance to them to read my stories and his girlfriend and she was disgusted–not with my stories, but with the site. That’s one major reason I set up my own site. The delivery vehicle no longer overwhelms the stories. I think classy publication separates these.
Along the lines of the Sleeping Beauty books, I assume you’re folding in the Nancy Friday ones. While dated, she certainly found that women were relieved to know that they were not alone in their fantasies.
And yes, women and men are getting shot from both sides. I’ll even add to what Steve said–we’ve somehow made it more okay for men to have juvenile simple fantasies a la Hustler than sophisticated ones a la erotic novels. Why is that? It’s not your thesis, but I’ve often wondered why we insist on reducing male sexuality to puberty extended.
Oh RG, I have nothing artful to add at the moment but your intersectional views here turn me on. These posts about your thesis are fantastic.
Girl, you are truly a perv on a monumental level. *grin* (yeah, me too)
God, how sad. I never realized the dearth of non-con before. I thought I wasn’t that good of a searcher.
As a side note, if anyone has any good recommendations…
Sizzler Editions (Renaissance E-Books) do not have non-con restrictions. Republica Press and Freaky Fountain press also accept non-con although they are very picky about how well written it should be. Many of the publishers who do publish non-con content are acutely aware of the need, under obscenity laws, to be able to argue for the piece’s ‘artistic merit’.
Thanks.
Speaking as a reader–and perhaps a writer, I’m trying my hand at a couple of stories right now–I’m really interested to see this come up.
For me, as a straight woman who’s all about the M/M non-con, it was actually not the Beauty books, or Nancy Friday, although I had a good time with both, that was amazingly liberating, it was the arrival of Yaoi in the US, and I barely even read Yaoi. But I was told pretty firmly when I was a nervous college kid that women did NOT have sexual fantasies about gay men, unless they were about turning them straight or something. And then, suddenly, it was this industry, and women were writing M/M smut for other women, and even though I still couldn’t find exactly what I wanted most of the time, I felt saner.
This is exactly why I adore Anaïs Nin. Reading Delta of Venus made me feel so much more at peace with so many of the things that turn me on, and furthermore, after trolling through the vast quantity of terrible writing on sites like literotica, her book(s) also showed me that even the nastiest, most taboo subjects can be written with beauty and skill.
And I think it needs to be said and showcased by writers and publishers that not only is there arousal merit in this kind of work, there can also be literary merit. Because getting off to something that is well written is a hundred times more exciting than getting off to something that isn’t.
(Although I think the latter might be a growing kink for me, just because so much of the writing that deals with topics that turn me on are so badly written; bad writing kink?)