I haven’t posted anything essayish here in a while, and I’ve been pondering on the fact that recently, sexual acronyms have started to really bother me. I have used them as much as anyone else: BDSM, MILF, D/s… and a new one I just learned today: CFNM (Clothed female, naked male). Recently I’ve started to find them offensive and I pondered on why I’m feeling that way.
In truth, I think it started when someone called me a MILF. When I found out what ‘MILF’ meant, I was enraged. ‘I’m not a mother,’ I protested. The person responded that it wasn’t necessary to be a mother, only that one had to be of that uncertain age. ‘Oh, so just lump me in with mothers, as if all women over the age of 30 were all the same!’
Indeed. The problem with acronyms is that they are a tool of classification and they are, by their nature, reductionist. Once someone or something is shunted under the label of an acronym, it becomes so easy to simplify, strip it of its complexity, denigrate it to an item in a collection of similar objects.
I’m a great fan of Michel Foucault, the French historian and philosopher. In his ‘History of Sexuality’ he charts the rise, after the Enlightenment and the growth of rationalism, of our propensity for catching, killing, pinning stuff on cardboard and filing it away, classified, in a collection with others of its ilk. Medicine has become especially good at that, and psychiatry in particular, reducing the physical and mental state of complex beings into categories which can be determined to be either normal or abnormal and then ‘processed’ accordingly.
Obviously I’m not a complete enemy of rationalism, or the scientific method. I also acknowledge that ‘chunking’ information is vital to surviving on a day to day basis.
But the reduction of highly complex and richly variegated erotic interactions to a simple clutch of capital letters, this bothers me. It dehumanizes both the people involved and the acts themselves. And although a lot of poorly written erotica might not actually use the acronyms, it has the same reductionistic function of taking, for instance, the complex power threads at play in a situation where a man stands utterly naked before a clothed woman, and glossing over the myriad semiotic implications inherent in that text.
Clothed vs naked, armed vs unarmed, pride vs shame, modesty vs licentiousness. And that is just the visual. Naked bodies can’t hide their reactions, can’t suppress their scent, can’t block their pheromones. To be naked is to be easily judged. Then there is the reversal of traditional power roles inherent in this situation: man as meat, as consumption commodity, as product for selection, and, by implication, for the using. All those intricate, erotic, suggestive details reduced down to CFNM!
Notice I have no problem at all with the concept of being reduced to fuck meat when it’s voluntary? I just hate it when society decides to devalue and superficialize our proclivities as a generality.
*grin*
This reminds me of one of the early, and I think ongoing dilemmas in disciplines like palentology – between lumping and splitting taxonomic classes. Too much specificity, and you end up with an unwieldy mass unhelpful for identifying anything. Too little and you loose important differentiating details.
There has to be some kind of medium. We, as humans, need to classify things to some degree so we can know whether we want to pay further attention to them. We do it unconsciously all the time, not with acronyms, necessarily, but with nonverbal mental categories.
Acronymized erotica codes may be crass in many ways, but if you take the time to describe the nuance of the CFNM genre you are trying to focus on, you’ve rewritten a whole metastory before the story. Where do you go from there?
*snicker* I don’t go anywhere. Not really my kink, actually, but you go for it!
Heh. For me, CFNM is really only a waypoint to NFNM, which I would tend to lump in with FM. That because that particular genre division (which I’d really never heard of before, and find pretty neutral as far as excitement goes) makes sense to me in only one of a few contexts. Given that I approach story-coded erotica with the mindset that codes *must* be lumping huge categories together, I don’t see them as detrimental. I mean, MMF has entire libraries of subdivision, and may or may not be incredibly different than MFM. But you know right away it’s not a lesbian, or simple couple story. That’s what acronyms are good for – in front of a story, anyway. It’s just a first step. All the nuance and meta have to come later.
Rgrl, thank you for this essay. You speak my mind. Especially difficult for me is people’s self-categorization, when it becomes a fence around oneself or a gauntlet thrown down at others. I do understand the need to claim a category rather than have one imposed by others, and to identify with others to build a community. Again, thank you for sharing your questions and insights, and for giving us such brilliant writing.
Amusingly, I have the same rant, but less about the sex acronyms as about story codes. I’ve seen too many “Oh, that’s a MF no-sex story–can’t possibly be interesting” comments in my day. Since when can we reduce art to a bunch of warning codes? Not that there aren’t authors who do just that…
As for the complexity of life vs. categorization… I’m in firm agreement and I’ve noticed something else. It’s sometimes related to an individuals comfort with uncertainty. Those who need their world black and white are usually much heavier into classifications than those with a fine appreciation for the nuances of grey. Be it art, sex, politics or whatever…
Besides, if we’re going to be reductionist in erotica, let’s reduce the right things. Starting with clothes perhaps? 😉
I tend to agree and it’s why I avoid sites like literotica and ASSTR. It’s not that there isn’t some very good writing on both, it’s that it has already been reduced to categories. I would rather be surprised. Turned on by something I hadn’t ever imagined would turn me on. How can one ever stumble across the unexpected if one is stuck in the wrong aisle at the supermarket?
I’m not sure that I see a problem with broad categorization. It is helpful, when one is looking for something, to be pointed in approximately the right direction. In a supermarket, this saves a lot of time.
However, difficulties can arise when the viewer of the categories (not the categorizer) fails to remember one or two important things. First, it’s just a category and does not delineate all the flavours and nuances that may be found within it; but the viewer need not be blinkered and forget that those nuances are there to be found. Second, one is not compelled to frequent only certain categories or supermarket aisles; if the viewer fails to sample randomly elsewhere, that is their fault.
There is another problem though. This occurs when a category is applied by someone, to a specific item or person, in such a way that they are attempting to define something unique and nuanced in a limiting and possibly pejorative fashion. That, in turn, swiftly leads a person being so defined to justified indignation, as was the case when you were referred to as a MILF.
So it’s not the categories that create difficulties, but their narrow interpretation by viewers or their inappropriate application as definitions of specifics.
I would answer that it is the flaw of a society almost totally oriented towards consumerism that means we ‘consume’ the arts in the same way we select food in a supermarket. And it is the artist as much as the consumer who is to blame for this. If your most pressing priority is to ‘sell’ your work, then you deserve to be ‘consumed’ with the same pragmatic ambivalence as a packet of instant noodles.
Very thoughtful essay, RG, and I agree wholeheartedly. Off topic(of sorts) I would never identify you as MILF! That’s just…well, WRONG!
For me when I see acronyms is slaps of a lack of dimension. If you’re willing to boil your work down to a group of letters, what else is there to it?
Perhaps there are days when I want to read something of a certain flavor, but, like you, I prefer to be surprised. Some of my favorite reading sessions are when I sit down and just work through a writer’s online library(like yours) in the order they’re presented. From m/m to m/f/m to wherever.
oh…and an aside – even supermarkets recognize that their shoppers won’t buy something new if they don’t realize what is down the aisle. Hence endcaps and special displays that bring things out into the main traffic flow.
I was thinking about “the acronym problem” in terms of categorization of ourselves, our sexuality, but I see most commenters are thinking in terms of categorization of erotica. That categorization serves a purpose as long as erotica writers are content to be entertainers or, I suppose, sex workers. But if erotica is to transcend genre–and I’ve certainly seen it with individual works and artists–you need to simply write, draw, photograph, film, record true to yourself. In the bookstore, you won’t find Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley under “dog stories” or Flannery O’Connor’s work under “Catholicism”; they’re under “literature.” That’s where good erotica should be, too.
Dear RG,
It takes a certain ‘vacation mentality’ that allows a person the relaxed state of mind to explore beyond their comfort zone. We get boxed into erotic consummerism (mental wanking with a known entity).
Additionally there’s the aspect of ‘don’t offend me’. It is devestating reason because a great deal of growth is lost. Which is why I read here. Many hold back due to religious guidelines & societal taboos. It’s Pharasitical at best to draw those lines when you’re reading erotica! just sayin’
And while I am listed in one younger guy’s phone under ‘MILF’ (and am a mother of many – Admittedly I mention this as a totally irrelevant & sadly bragging component) my WIP (work in progress) of a D/s M/f relationship is definitely (post) yuppy, pre ARP, but all ttwd will be DOA if I don’t get up the holidazed decorations like a gls (good little sub)! But I appreciate that you compelled me to delay… hey where’s my Adderall? Thanks always for your insights. KayLynn
I’m not persuaded that there’s a real parallel between erotica-acronyms and labels that too easily ‘simplify, strip complexity, denigrate items in a collection of similar objects.’
Sounds like you’re rationalizing your outrage.
To that extent, you ‘did’ persuade me that you were/are very upset at being labeled a MILF. I remember when young women started saying “Sir” to me. Have men started referring to you as Mam? Mam, by the way, is an acronym. I feel your pain…
Two humourous points …
1) You’re a MILF? (I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.) That label implies much more than the “ILF,” of course: children, personal style, exercise regimen, personality, social attitudes etc. etc.
2) CFNM? I knew that one already, but, as a male, I much prefer CMNF … and that’s why stripper bars are so successful.
Seriously now … I work in an industry overrun with government clients who coin acronyms on an almost daily basis. Some apply to policies, some refer to devices, some to funding sources, and some to people. Forgive me if I have little reaction.
To me, it seems that acronyms do in shorthand what we have always done in other ways: categorize or stereotype people. Since this is nothing new, forgive me again if I have little reaction.
Text messaging, twitter, facebook, and God knows what other technologies are using shorthand to murder the Queen’s English. I will forever stand in defense of spelling, grammar, syntax, punctuation, elegant alliteration, and a good vocabulary!
PS: Your source is absolutely INCORRECT. You cannot be a MILF without children. I mean, the “M” stands for “Mother,” right?
Women of a certain age who are still physically attractive should be referred to as “babes.” Trust me on this; my women friends really enjoy that label.
Thanks — never thought for some reason I’d stumble upon Michel Foucault when searching Google for erotica…
Best regards — I plan to visit often, if that’s not any problem!
Kurt
Rg,
I had intentions to comment on this when you wrote it last month but alas, never did. Good intentions aside, I thought of you and this essay as I read a book this past weekend; SO filled with metaphors, over used similes and …God, acronyms everywhere. I actually stopped in the first chapter to flip midway to the back of the book to see if the breakneck pace these three literary devices were used continued through the entire book. Thankfully no.
But the use of acronyms was annoying. Never have I had to read a book at my laptop so I could google the acronyms for their meaning. Joking aside, I agree with you. Our society has an acronym for every facet of our life. I will dare to say that the over use of shoving people, places and events into a convenient letter abbreviation as a way to describe their meaning is truly the effect of our consumer driven society. The result is a slovenly negligent attitude of the written word. We are getting to be just… plain… lazy. If we keep it up why write at all? (I could go into consumerism but this is a comment section …lol)
moils
Oh, I SO agree with you!
My lizard brain translates MILF as “sexy mature woman”.
Oh, look RG, they were right about your sexy writer brain after all. 😉