Embracing Darkness: Ylette Pearson

Tags

dark, embracing darkness, erotic romance, erotica, guest post, sex, ylette pearson

Hey, everyone. I know I’ve been quiet lately, but let’s welcome Ylette Pearson to get us started early on dark-themed, Halloween-inspired posts. Because while before Thanksgiving is too early for Christmas, it’s never too early for Halloween. Besides, it’s almost the Autumnal Equinox, and it’ll start getting darker a lot faster.

Thank you for having me over today, Aurelia. It is always nice to have such a friendly and welcoming place to meet new people.

Darkness is not a concept foreign to anyone—it’s a part of daily life. Daytime sunshine inevitably turns into nighttime darkness. Under the cloak of darkness, people tend to let go of some of their inhibitions. Novelists and screenwriters often embrace the darkness as a plot device to create mystical creatures that come out to play at night. In traditional literature vampires, werewolves and shape shifters only revealed their true nature in the absence of light.

We could say the same about people’s true nature. Why is it that we often feel that the darkness will offer protection against the less acceptable conduct—or that which we perceive as less acceptable by society—when the harsh light of day is not shining upon our actions? This is a particularly valuable realization when writing erotic fiction.

People will more likely indulge in their sexual fantasies when they think nobody can see them, when they embrace the darkness to cloak the fulfillment of their erotic dreams. This is why pure erotica is often referred to as dark erotica. This darkness can refer to the soul of the person or the time of day the person chooses to come out and play. Mostly though, it refers to the perceived illicitness of the actions of the participants.

In Her Bareback Cowboys, Adrian initially chose the dark of night to explore and act upon her unquenchable desire for the two cowboys.

Nowadays, embracing one’s sexual dark side causes less of a scandal than a couple of decades ago. Maybe society learned to communicate better with each other, maybe people started to realize that you only live once and that life is terrifyingly short. Regardless of why embracing the darker side of human nature is more acceptable, the amount of erotica novels sold on a daily basis indicate that society is ready to embrace its own darker nature.

*****

Ylette’s latest releases skim the darker side of human nature. In Brent’s Law (cougar erotic romance), Samantha has to choose between her career and the man that sets her on fire. In Her Bareback Cowboys (erotic romance, cowboys ménage), Adrian pays the price for indulging in the darker sexual fantasies that had destroyed her marriage and almost sunk her career a year before. Both these books can be found at Amazon or All Romance Ebooks.

*****

Ylette Pearson flavors her writing by drawing from her own experiences as Public Prosecutor, Magistrate, Commissioner of the Children’s Court and admitted attorney in South Africa. She loves to travel to remote locations on the African continent with her husband of more than twenty-five years.

She currently resides on a small vegetable and sheep farm in the Highveld of the Mpumalanga Province. When not in the veld, she can be found reading or writing in the shade of a tree with her three Jack Russels at her feet.

Social media links:

Facebook Page: Ylette Pearson

Twitter: @YlettePearson

Website: http://ylettepearson.com/

Nearly Done: Forces of Nature

Tags

editing, erotic romance, erotica, forces of nature, fun, sex, writing

I added two chapters, about 10.5k words, to the original story. Those two chapters didn’t come to me as easily as the first seven, but that’s mostly because all my writing energy for the story was finished. This is why I try to get everything done all at once, because once it’s written, writing any more is hard. I can edit and cut down and polish til kingdom come, but writing more than a few sentences on a project I’d already finished (in theory) is like pulling teeth. Also, I had a bad week while I was writing it, which I’m sure helped slow me down. But it’s written, and I think it’s good. I’m going to edit on Friday and resubmit some time this weekend.

There’s a lot of sex in this one. Winter Howl and particularly Wolf Girl had a good amount of sex, but those two were also very heavy on the plot. Forces of Nature, on the other hand, has a plot as flimsy as gift wrap. It’s more of a character study, really. And while I’m usually all about the plot, I’ve come to recognize the virtue of letting the plotty plot go a little.

For instance, I used to love the Lusty Month of May Lupin fanfic marathon every May back when I was fanficcing on the regular. Every day, you had to write and post at least 500 words of at least teen-rated fanfiction all through the month of May. So every chapter or section had to be a little smutty to a lot smutty. This meant that your plot basically had to be centered around sex. And there were a lot of really good stories that came out of it, sometimes about sex, sometimes about something else, but the plots weren’t always … there? Yet they were hella fun and I sometimes go back and read some of them, because stories about people are sometimes just as good as stories about people doing things.

It’s the reason that Forces of Nature is under 60k words instead of over 90k, which is my usual “serious” novel length. But that also means that it’ll be someone’s nice midnight snack for a week or so rather than a full meal. There’s a place for frothy fun just as much as there’s a place for a nutritious meal. And I think I like it. Maybe I’ll make a March habit out of it, a little bit of spring fever.

I’m still very happy with Forces of Nature, even more so now that I feel it’s properly complete. It’s a lot of sex, y’all, but it’s sex that really wanted to happen between characters I love hanging out with. I need to remind myself to listen to my characters and not my own impatience next time. It’s so much easier to cut than add scenes.

I decided not to add a bonus prequel scene, however. Instead, in a few years I think I’ll put out a free anthology of Sanctuary series and Forces of Nature shorts. There’s some serious magical overlap between these stories. And who knows? By then I may have more characters to add into the mix.

Awesome Winter Howl Review

Tags

e-book, erotica, genre, novel, print, sex, shapeshifters, werewolves, winter howl

In the interest of full disclosure, Joe Hinojosa is a friend of mine that I met through our NaNoWriMo writing group. However, I neither asked nor bribed him into writing a review, mostly because I know how awkward things can be when a friend doesn’t like another friend’s work – especially with an esoteric genre like erotica.

Fortunately, although erotica is not his usual genre of choice and in spite of his reservations, he gave it five stars on Goodreads and a truly lovely review on his blog here.

Here are some highlights:

“Let me be totally honest and say that erotic fiction is not a genre I’m all too familiar with, but be that as it may, I jumped right in, and quickly took a quick cold shower. Who knew erotica meant sex? Okay, I did, but still…wow!”

“At first glace, I thought this book was primary a sex novel, tawdry, cheap, but still highly arousing. What I missed, but soon realized to my satisfaction, is that the story is actually a look into the group dynamics of an insular group. It also illuminates the struggles of a person suffering from an anxiety disorder.”

“It’s fascinating because you can gauge the internal struggle our heroine faces as she tries to live her daily life, and as she takes the first tentative steps into sexually intimate relationship, first with Britt, and then with Grant.”

“It begs the question, why would a woman like Renee, who is quiet and reserved and is not one to take undue risk, go for a man like Grant? Why would she abandon control, giving it over to someone who is obviously dangerous, and quite possibly homicidal? Then there’s the helplessness and betrayal that is felt by the core pack on the sanctuary, especially Britt, who looks to Renee as both a friend and a lover.” (AE: There, right there is the whole crux of the novel.)

“Aurelia does such an amazing job weaving her story that it’s easy to overlook what really is at stake. What are we willing to sacrifice in order to live our lives? What are we willing to lose in the pursuit of interpersonal contact, including and especially that of an intimate nature? Why does it seem that we are willing to risk our safety to be with someone who is an obvious threat when there is someone closer to home, one who is infinitely more wholesome and a better fit?” (AE: More nail heads hit.)

—

The whole thing is really worth a read if you’ve been wondering whether to check out my debut novel, Winter Howl. In spite of the fact that, on a personal level, I’ve moved past where Renee is in WH, that novel is still one of the first ones that really worked for me. And you never forget your first publication.

Flesh and Blood: What is Erotic Horror?

Tags

dark, desire, dracula, erotic horror, erotica, fear, monster, ravishment fantasy, sex, shame, slasher movies, transgressive, writing

I’ve noticed (because I look for it) that some erotic romance publishing companies ask for horror on their sites. And I wonder what they’re really asking for.

Sanitized horror monsters, perhaps? Sexy vampires, sexy werewolves, sexy zombies who ask before they bite? Nothing’s wrong with these things. But it’s not horror.

Because horror on its own, by its nature, pushes envelopes. Throw in hot, plot-moving sex, and you’ve got sex that pushes envelopes, sex that’s sometimes not pretty, sex with people who aren’t nice, and often not a happily ever after, and well… that doesn’t sound much like erotic romance, does it?

I’m sure it can be done, perhaps having hot sex around the genuine horror going on around the erotic pairing, but I can guarantee that there will be an unhealthy overlap of sex and mind-blowing terror, and it all kind of cascades down into: what kind of sex do you fear?

And as you might expect, the kind of sex we often fear is the kind of sex that isn’t allowed in romantic circles, at least not explicitly.

Horror already has a leg up on a lot of other non-romance genres, because it’s de rigeur to have a good amount of sex in it. Of course, in horror, that sex is usually exploitative and male-gaze driven, like the ubiquitous tit shot, and often tied in with death. The dead female body, in particular, desecrated and artfully mutilated, is a staple in horror. Rarely is the male body mutilated in such a sexual way.

The horror-fied male is often in a position of dominance, which can be decidedly sexual – Pyramid Head from the Silent Hill games and movie comes to mind. And the Priest, aka Pinhead, from the Hellraiser movies. But it’s quite interesting that you rarely see a femme fatale as the horror villain. Most sexually dominating women are eliminated. And most females, period, except for the Lone Survivor.

In a way, while the villains are often dominating males, the horror that the villains wreak is often presented in a feminized way, hence the sexualized dead girls. I wonder if it’s the connection of the gouts of blood with the menstrual cycle (see: the Johnny Depp death scene in Nightmare on Elm Street) or the male-perceived strangeness and scariness of women (see: Silent Hill movie).

There’s a lot of good sexual things about the horror genre and a lot of bad. The punishment of sex is right at the top of the bad list. These days, and even in the era of the 80s slasher, sex itself wasn’t punished, but sex on screen was. If you had sex where the audience could see you (which is totally at the discretion of the director rather than the characters, which I thought was completely unfair), then you probably had to die. Sometimes while having sex, like the infamous Kevin Bacon and what’s-her-name in the first Friday the 13th film.

However, our Female Survivors (one of the good things about horror) while they often didn’t have sex on screen, their sexual history was implied, which I always found interesting. And in the case of the second Friday the 13th film, the female protagonist and her lover had sex … we just didn’t see it.

With all the bad, one thing that horror is really good at is providing a venue for transgressive sex, particularly shades of BDSM and ravishment fantasy. Of course, things aren’t perfect, since these things are usually presented as 1) the purview of the evil (Like when Buffy sneers at Spike that he likes pain. “Hello, vampire. We’re supposed to be treading on the dark side. What’s your excuse?”) and 2) ultimately punished.

But even if it’s punished, there’s no denying that the audience gets their thrill from it – that’s why it’s constantly there. Sure, a bunch of teenagers and young adults get slaughtered, but man, the cat-and-mouse between the Lone Survivor and the villain is often quite hot, let’s face it. It’s an intriguing tension, the intrinsic moral conservatism of the message and the moral liberalism of the images and the audience. Sex that’s denigrated and yet reveled in.

All of that to say that it’s not really a huge leap to go from horror to erotic horror, since horror is already very eroticized – just not always in the healthiest way. The fact that a lot of the negative stuff is such an overwhelming trend practically begs for subversion.

But erotic horror doesn’t always translate into easy erotic romance, even when there’s romance involved. Take, for example, Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (spoilers ahead). Total-E-Bound put out a Clandestine Classic version of Dracula that you can find HERE. It’s not mine, so I don’t feel self-promotional linking to it.

I also haven’t read it, so I don’t know the kind of sex that turns up, although I know that the most erotic scene in the original, Dracula forcing Mina to drink his blood, was quite non-consensual, yet I knew from a very young age that this was an incredibly hot scene. At least it was non-con in terms of how Mina described it, and that’s why a lot of retellings pull the “unreliable narrator” bit (even though Mina had been perfectly reliable before) and depict her willingly taking Dracula’s blood.

Including Coppola’s version. But it’s worth noting that this intensely and explicitly erotic movie includes a vampire bride orgy, an old man leching on a much younger woman (although who wouldn’t let Anthony Hopkins have his way with you, I tell you?), a bestiality scene where Dracula-as-wolf drinks and kills Lucy while she moans and climaxes in ecstasy and clings to it, a bestial scene in which Dracula-as-strange-wolfish-bearish-beast has sex with a sleepwalking Lucy, the inevitable bloodplay and dubcon/noncon of vampirism … and so on.

The movie doesn’t scrounge on the blood and death, and yet the movie is deeply romantic. Coppola manages to balance Dracula as the villain and the tragic hero, a murderous monster and a charming gentleman … which is actually in keeping with the spirit if not the word of the source material. Of course, most of the props probably have to go to Gary Oldman, who is a boss. The villain can be endearing and engaging, and then turn around and rip your arms off; he can love and be loathsome, and it’s okay.

That, my friends, is erotic horror, even erotic romance horror. And yet it crosses so many lines that most erotic romance writers are not allowed to cross.

When writing erotic sci-fi, sci-fi elements enhance the erotica and the erotica enhances the science-fiction aspects – an alien perhaps, with non-humanoid anatomy and/or custom. When writing supernatural erotica, the supernatural elements enhance the erotica and vice versa – using magic to alter the experience of sex, the danger of a more powerful being with a weaker one, etc.

But in erotic horror, sex and fear are so intermingled as to be inseparable. The erotic elements are tinged by the horrific, and the horror makes you hot. Like in Dracula, a story that practically seethes with sexuality underneath Victorian sensibility and fear of hedonistic excess – and the key to unlocking that sexuality is a foreign monster.

Erotic romance must be sex-positive and, in some ways, safe – there can be some strain to that, but it cannot be broken. In erotic horror, the list of unacceptable scenarios becomes an anti-guideline. Oh, those are the kinds of sex you fear? Then by the nature of horror, that’s the sex that must be written.

Freddy Krueger’s gleeful obscenity. The cenobites’ exquisite torment. The sexual blasphemy of the unrepentant demon. The terrible bone-cracking of the naked werewolf. Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s ambiguous appetites (will he eat you out or just eat you?). The vicious, ravaging vampire.

These are the monsters of horror. Sex and death irrevocably combined in  simultaneous sex-positive and sex-negative ways. Punishment without safewords that still titillates in a terribly beautiful way.

This is erotic horror.

—

I have written a few erotic horror pieces. At least one of them has made it out of my trunk, namely my first published story ever, “In Circles” in Fist of the Spider Woman. Fortunately, Amber Dawn outright asked for horror, the kind of horror that accompanies queerness made supernatural. So I gave her that unrepentant horror, a mutilating, murderous femme fatale Bloody Mary and a deeply conflicted protagonist who found her sexuality through Bloody Mary’s horror. Not pretty. Not pretty at all. And yet the protagonist – and I – found it extremely liberating.

I have another long short story that I wrote for a company that went under, and I’ve tried to unload it a few more times with no success yet. I wrote it in a very dark personal place, and I think the undeniable and awful eroticism of the story portrays a very real despair that many queer people, and people in general, feel in their lives. Not a stitch of romance and non-con to boot, so it’s kind of stuck in limbo.

I’m intrigued by the possibility of writing a genuine erotic horror novel one of these days. I was raised morally conservative. I’ve got a good handle on sex and fear and shame. I think navigating the complicated feelings and fears about sex, unwanted desires, unconventional appetites, is a worthy endeavor. It’s just not a safe one.

And I’m increasingly of the opinion that fiction should be the one place where we can engage in these fantasies without shame because it’s the fiction that’s safe, not the fantasy.

This is the one place that we can do these things with no repercussions, no victims, no one getting hurt. And the truth is, most fantasies were never made for reality. I’d be willing to venture about 99 percent of fantasies, you wouldn’t ever dream of them actually being a reality, unconscionable as they are, and the idea of it would horrify you – no sexiness about it. You’ll find people in the ravishment fantasy arena are sincerely horrified by actual rape and very vocal against it.

But in the realm of fantasy … well, there, anything can happen, because no one gets hurt, and you’re the one completely in control and calling the shots. You are villain and victim, hero and martyr, all at the same time. That’s just not real life, but fantasy was never supposed to be real.

There’s a place for erotic romance, don’t get me wrong about that. I write it plenty, and I like it. I’m not knocking the erotic romance genre at all.

I just think there’s a place for erotic horror as well, not-so-nice erotica, the kind of erotica that horrifies you and the kind of horror that makes arousal ooze down your spine. The darker side of the human psyche that can stretch its limbs in a safe space. Depending on the idea passing through my head, I sometimes feel like I’m being kept in a cage, rattling the bars to get out and ravage something.

I don’t think this kind of erotica is low or bad or dangerous. I think that if treated with respect and written well, it reveals darker truths of human nature. In the right hands, perhaps it expands our understanding of ourselves.

Maybe that is what’s truly frightening.

You Must Be Adventurous

Tags

adventurous, autobiographical, erotica, literary criticism, sex, writer, writing

It is the curious tendency of many readers to assume that writers of certain genres are writing autobiographically. You see that sometimes in literary fiction, and it’s a certain kind of literary criticism to find the author in their works of fiction. There’s some merit to that, since I think authors do put at least a little of themselves into everything they write, some more than others.

Yet I think it’s only writers of steamy romance and erotica who are assumed to have an equally steamy and adventurous sex life. You see it in people who admire the life they think the erotica writer has, and you see it in the disapproval of those who assume erotica writers live a life of sinful decadence that will ultimately lead to their downfall by death, disease, or dilapidation. It’s a curious tendency indeed.

As a writer of supernatural and horror, I have yet to have someone come up to me and ask me how many people I’ve murdered and which part of the brain to flex when trying to use psychokinesis. I don’t need personal experience to imagine what the act of violent murder feels like – I have my imagination and common sense as well as other people’s accounts. I have no desire to murder anyone just to have the real-life experience to make sure my stories are 100 percent authentic. Some people may find my creepy based on the tales I tell, but I’m pretty sure I’ll never have crime scene investigators digging up my backyard or, heaven forbid, a basement (if I ever have one, and since basements are creepy and not available in this area of the country, I will never have one) looking for bodies.

Similarly, while I’d like to believe that I’d have an open mind in my sex life, I can count my sexual encounters on precisely no fingers. I depend exclusively on other people’s accounts, a very adventurous imagination, a working knowledge of anatomy, and – if I may be honest – some self-experimentation (what I like to call celibacy with benefits). Just because I write about sexually manipulative supernatural creatures doesn’t mean I’ve ever bedded one, and just because I’m a big supporter of alternative sexualities and alternative lifestyles such as polyamory doesn’t mean I’ve ever been in a threesome or a triad, although I know several people in that subculture.

I am a member of that strange society of erotica writers who is still technically a virgin, but that doesn’t make me innocent or ignorant, and it doesn’t mean I can’t write hot sex – any more than not being a murderer doesn’t mean I can’t write a very uncomfortable amputation scene. But being an erotica writer also doesn’t mean I’ve sexed my way to hell and heaven and back again, although it doesn’t preclude that I may go there eventually. Just in my own time, my own way, and possibly never. And most of the time, that’s okay. (And other times I could bite through my own arm, but those times don’t last too many days.)

I think what it comes down to is my pet project: emphasizing the difference between fantasy and reality, and making sure other people realize that there’s a chasm between the two. Sometimes authors build bridges, but there’s no reason to assume we all do. I write what I like to read, I write what I enjoy, and I enjoy writing erotica very much. And I seem to do fairly well at it, so good for me, I’m going to continue. Full stop.

Truth or Consequences

Tags

bareback, birth control, consequences, disease, erotica, pregnancy, punishment, sex, STDs

People in the erotica industry differ on their opinions about the consequences for sex. Actually, that’s not entirely true. It’s not the consequences they’re concerned about; it’s the punishment for it. It’s the food poisoning from the apple of the tree of good and evil. I’m talking about riding bareback and suffering the punishment: STDs and pregnancy.

Some writers feel the need to address it, to be responsible and to teach responsibility. Writers don’t have the same level of responsibility as porn stars to teach safe sex, since there’s an actual chance of physical consequences from sex in those cases, whereas you can’t get gonorrhea from reading a book (unless you’re doing it wrong). However, with the lack of really good sex education out there and the constant haranguing of anyone attempting to do so, some writers feel like they have a responsibility to show safer sex, but to also show consequences (punishment), because it’s real.

Let’s get this out of the way: Unless it’s relevant to the plot, I’m not going to address prophylactics and birth control. In real life, I have a pregnancy phobia (of me being pregnant, not of pregnancy in general) and a general fear of STDs. Nothing turns me off faster when I’m writing than being in the middle of a fantasy sex scene and suddenly worrying about my female character’s pregnancy, or worrying about that one night stand’s STD status.

In my opinion, I deal with enough sexual fear in real life to let it bleed into my fantasy world. There are lots of ways in which sex can be dangerous and exciting, such as sex with a stranger, sex with BDSM elements, sex on a cliff, etc. But STDs and pregnancy scares aren’t exciting. They’re just scary to me. In the erotica world, I don’t have to justify the lack of birth control or prophylactics, nor do I have to justify my characters riding bareback. In mainstream, I do, but I shouldn’t have to here.

Of all the places in the world, I shouldn’t have to fear sex here. Erotica is where sex, even dangerous sex, is safe. It may throw some people off not to include those concerns, but I just can’t do it. It’s not that I’m unaware of reality; I’m hyperaware of it, which probably accounts for a good deal of my celibacy.

It’s just that when I’m in the fantasy, I’m not looking for that kind of reality. I’ll delve into the deepest of sexual horrors, but I won’t touch those unless I absolutely have to, as a plot point. (And not as one of those conflict-resolution-through-baby plots. Just saying.) There’s enough punishment for sex in real life; erotica should be able to transcend that.

Sex is Like Singing

Tags

erotica, music, musicals, sex

I’ve been into musicals since I was a little girl, nurtured by the Disney movies. One of the first CDs I ever listened to was Phantom of the Opera, and the overture hooked me with the first loud, dramatic, gothic notes. It’s so iconic. The next CD was Jekyll & Hyde (OBC), and then I was officially hooked to gothic and horror musicals, in spite of their scarcity and often their melodrama.

Erotic literature is like a musical. Musicals require an incredible suspension of disbelief, given that people don’t randomly break out into song in the middle of the day (usually) in front of other people. And if you do sing, people can hear you. You can’t have a soliloquy song in a crowd. And generally, people aren’t good at bursting out into seamless rhymes and harmonious melodies. In addition, musicals can be viewed by some critics as less serious and more frivolous than plays (as though there’s something wrong with that), or even that musicals aren’t real theater (Peter Brooks). But when you listen or see a musical, you accept music as a tool for the story (and you don’t cry out in the middle of the performance, “People don’t really sing like that!) to do one of several things.

First, music drives the plot forward, often with a multi-voice song like “One Day More” from Les Miserables or “Facade” from Jekyll & Hyde that denotes action or a Greek chorus kind of explanation. Second, music reflects character growth, such as “For Good” from Wicked or “I Know Things Now” from Into the Woods. Third, music reflects unspoken or hidden emotions, such as “On My Own” from Les Miserables.

Sex plays a similar role in erotica as songs do in musicals. Sex in erotic literature exposes emotions and drives character growth, exposes character issues, and moves the plot along. Ideally, while sex plays a huge role in the story, it’s not the sole purpose of it, although there are genres in which that is acceptable, nay, expected. Sex is important, but it isn’t the goal, anymore than the songs in musicals are working towards a climactic song. The climax may be represented by a song, but the climax isn’t music; the climax is in the story.

Also, like a single song, a sex scene is its own little story, with rising action (*cough*), a climax (*cough*), and a swift denouement (*cough*). And an erotic story is more effective with many sex scenes of varying intensities and different importance to the plot rather than one Major Sex Scene that many romances in other genres seem to depend on. It’s like a musical with only one song – something of a disappointment, especially when you consider that the Major Sex Scene or the Sex Off Screen implies that that’s as good as it gets; that’s the climax of their lives together, and ain’t that a huge disappointment? It’s like focusing your life around the Hallelujah chorus without realizing that the rest of Handel’s Messiah is pretty awesome, too.

Similar to musicals, too, is the suspension of disbelief. Just as people don’t really burst into song and sound like Broadway stars doing it, people don’t have great sex all the time. People don’t orgasm all the time, or their orgasms aren’t that great. People certainly don’t have spontaneous orgasms as often as they do in erotica and romance. Sex in real life is messier and has many more risks, like pregnancy and disease. Erotica has as much barebacking as video porn, except it’s much safer. But people don’t read erotica for the nitty-gritty downers of reality; they open an erotic novel expecting a certain amount of fantastic (meaning fantasy-based) sex, and sex that is fantastic (meaning awesome) to boot. Most erotica readers don’t close their book in disgust and say, “That’s not how real sex is.” Their suspension may drop if the sex is so unrealistic as to be impossible anatomically speaking, but a certain idealism is accepted without question. Just you’re there for the music when you listen or see a musical, you’re there for the great sex in an erotic story – and hopefully a decent plot that makes everything make sense.

So there. I got to geek out about two subjects that I enjoy.

Hello, Stranger

Tags

anatomy, clitoris, link, sex, sexuality, women

A dew-dipped flower. Yes, I'm being intentionally florid. #seewhatididthere

The Internal Clitoris

I am fascinated, as you might expect, by genitalia (once I get past the fact that genitalia generally has the appearance of raw meat … probably because it is) and the science of sexual pleasure. Like many other women, I’m frustrated with the lack of understanding or even interest about women’s sexual organs, and frustrated with the fact that we’ve only just learned within the last fifteen years that the clitoris isn’t just what we refer to colloquially as the clitoris or clit. I don’t see that stopping, but that little button is no more than the head of our clitoral organ – it’s our glans. A quite enjoyable little head, just as I’m sure the head of a cock enjoys pleasure all by itself.

The clitoris is an organ devoted solely to sexual pleasure. Its stimulation aids the ease of PIV sexual intercourse, but you can still have intercourse without one’s biological lubrication stimulated. Even the male’s prostate has a purpose beyond pleasure by excreting a clearish alkaline substance to help clean out the urethra of the penis from the acidity of urine (its excretions make up part of precome). When faced with this wonderful concept – an organ with no other purpose than pleasure – one would think that scientists would be endlessly fascinated and study it at length. Instead, medical scientists seem completely uninterested or even dismissive of the female pleasure organ. One might blame the fact that it’s more hidden than the organs that give males pleasure, but you and I both know that’s complete bullshit – we know how all these other hidden organs work.

I don’t think that scientists dismiss the clitoral organ intentionally – instead, giving them the benefit of the doubt, they assume that there is no interest because it’s of little interest to the act of procreation, because it’s of little use to the males, because female pleasure is not as important. Because of the study of the clitoris, and learning of all the nerve endings in the clitoral organ, one doctor who cares about restoring some sensitivity to the clitoris after genital mutilation finds himself alone in the midst of thousands of doctors unconcerned with the issue, never mind genital mutilation is a real issue amongst women born in areas that hate the very idea of female pleasure. We understand the penis as an organ of pleasure (if not exclusively so), but dog forbid we truly understand the ins and outs of female pleasure and correct the horrid misinformation in textbooks and medical literature, from people who should know better.

I’ve known for a while that the clitoris was not just the glans we lovingly call the clit, but so many women don’t. And so many women don’t even know where their clit is, or that their vagina isn’t their vulva, or how to masturbate, or how to ask their partner for what they want. Sure, a woman can’t see herself as well as a man can see himself, since her stuff is between her legs rather than in front, but it’s still a sad commentary on our society that we shy away from female pleasure and spend pages and pages in books talking about pregnancy. Those same books usually have fewer pages on men’s genitalia, but generally those pages are concerned with urination and sexual intercourse, which one might argue is necessary in procreation and is thus medically, scientifically, objectively valid to include. The contributions of the female pleasure organ in the process of sexual intercourse are obviously not important.

I want women to know their bodies, to understand themselves as well as they can. I don’t want this misinformation to continue, and I applaud scientists who take on this “useless” study.

Something to Fucking Think About

Tags

obscene, profanity, sex, society

I’ve heard the argument before that many profane appellations are demeaning toward women and non-average sexualities. Now, after about eighteen years of never using obscenities, I’ve found I rather enjoy them – perhaps more so than if I had used them during that stage of adolescence in which they are used for the sake of being used or to piss off teachers and parents. But it’s recently occurred to me that many profane appellations aren’t completely skewed toward insulting women and homosexual men. Instead, these words and the fact they are discouraged and/or forbidden are far more deprecatory against sex and sexuality in general. (For the record, when I use the words ‘profane’ and ‘obscene,’ these are the descriptors that society at large gives to the words in question.)

Think about it. Cunt, pussy, and boob are all insulting words referring to women’s primary sex characteristics. But then you can turn around and see that there are plenty of insults using male genitalia. “Oh, balls (or bollocks).” “I really cocked that up.” “Don’t be a dick.” “You’re really being a limp dick, you know that?” And for men, you have the double whammy of having your genitals maligned and your masculinity, should you be insulted instead with reference to feminine obscenities. “Don’t be a pussy.” And women, you’ve been insulted because anything involving a woman is automatically insulting towards men, but women don’t get painted with masculine obscenities nearly that often.

But more than that, think of some of the non-genital related obscenities: bastard, son of a bitch, bitch, whore, slut. The women get it mostly on this one, since calling a woman a bitch, whore, or slut insults her but not her presumed partners, but calling a man a bastard or a son of a bitch insults both him and his mother.

And then, think of the four-letter word that censors consider the worst of them all: fuck. How telling is it that in our society, the word for rough and/or animalistic and/or casual sex act is considered the worst obscenity? It suggests that sex, especially sex that is rough, animalistic, or casual is automatically so bad, that just the word to describe it is forbidden. There are other sex words that are considered obscene as well, like bugger and screw and blow – anal sex, a milder word for fucking, and oral. In the case of bugger and blow, that’s probably a hit against homosexuals, but I would also suggest that we look more broadly: it’s a hit against anyone bottoming or submissive – the one being penetrated or the one on his or her knees – which describes most often women and “womanish” homosexual men performing for the so-described “man” in the relationship.

Now, is any of this going to stop me from enjoying all these words? Hell, no. I actually rather enjoy the feel of “bitch,” “fuck,” and “bastard” in my mouth when I’m by myself, or I’ve hurt myself, or when I’m writing. It’s very satisfying to have words that are harsher and more emphatic just by using them. However, I think it’s important to know the cultural context of the words used and why people react the way they do to profanity, or why they get offended, or why they get hurt.

People’s language tells you a lot about the culture in which they reside, and knowing what language is forbidden tells you what that culture is afraid of. The overuse of the words takes away some of the power of the forbidden, but it also loses some of the emphasis when the power matters or when it can be turned on its head. So you know what? I’m going to link you to George Carlin’s Seven Words. Have a bitching day.

Action vs. Identity vs. Orientation

Tags

erotica, orientation, queer, sex, sexuality

We’ve heard the scandals. A well-connected and politically ambitious person – usually a man with heavily conservative leanings – is caught soliciting or having sex with someone of the same sex. He declares constantly that he’s heterosexual, that he was only briefly swayed to have sex with men. Perhaps because of something he lacked from his father figure, perhaps because of the devil’s temptation and human beings’ natural sinful ways, perhaps he was just dipping his toes into a new and exciting illicit lifestyle.

Well, all those stodgy Republicans are closeted homosexuals. Right?

I recently wrote a post saying that I differentiate between stories that are f/f and stories that are lesbian (same goes with the male counterparts). Being a writer, I understand both the necessity and the limitations of labeling, which is why it’s so important that, if you must label, you label correctly. And that’s why, in cases where the identity isn’t as much an issue for the characters as the action, I default to describing the action.

Take, for instance, “In Circles.” If I wanted to be really technical, the MC is bisexual – she’s interested in men, but she is seduced by Bloody Mary. But she identifies herself as straight, never thought of women in a sexual way before. Her encounter with Bloody Mary was atypical, a one-off thing. But while her orientation may be bisexual, she doesn’t know that, and her identity is heterosexual. But the action in the story is primarily female-with-female. That’s why, when I describe that story, it’s definitely queer (for more reasons than orientation) but I wouldn’t call it lesbian erotica. Instead, it’s f/f.

In FRIGID BITCH, however, the MC never outright describes her identity as bisexual. In fact, I don’t think there’s a single piece of queer language in the novel. However, there’s no denying that her identity, orientation, and action is emphatically bisexual. Her identity isn’t as important to her in her little sanctuary where she doesn’t encounter the outside world much, but if she were asked, she would say she was bisexual. Hence, why I might call FRIGID BITCH a bisexual erotic novel. I could also call it a queer erotic novel, or an erotic novel with primary f/f and m/f, with additional m/f/f and an orgy.

We might call a girl kissing a girl in a bar for the delight of men bicurious, but it’s more likely that she’s doing it for the man’s benefit. Her action is f/f, but her identity is likely straight. (For the record, I have no problem with people who want to do this. I don’t like it when people feel obligated to do so if they aren’t interested, nor do I like it when men feel that lesbians and/or straight girls are obligated to please them sexually by doing so.)

Whether you’re reading or writing erotica, particularly ones with queer overtones, it’s important to know the difference between the sexual action going on between characters, the conscious identity of the character, and the subconscious orientation of the character.

At the same time, this is incredibly important in real life. Most of the time, the only thing that society and individuals can see is the action, so they impart orientation and identity to the action they see. Maybe now you’ll know orientation and identity are not so simple as what you see, and maybe you won’t jump to conclusions about either during the next sex scandal. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean that identity and orientation aren’t as important and sometimes more important than the action.