Sex sells. There are no two ways about it. It’s why Bond girls adorn the opening credits in, at most, skintight catsuits. It’s why Sophie Dahl caused such a stir posing for YSL (above). It’s (at least in part) why The Sun is Britain’s biggest selling paper. It’s why this blog – at it’s highpoint – got 32 comments per piece, and my other blogs are lucky to get 100 views in total. Per month! I have hugely benefitted from this simple human truth. In fact, when I was starting out as an erotic fiction writer a good friend suggested I take part in HNT to boost my readership – and it worked like a charm.

But my consciousness of this fact has changed. Where at eighteen I was keen to take advantage of eroticism as a selling point, feeling that taking control of my sexuality empowered me, and that I was somehow more evolved than my peers, it is now obscuring my intentions.

Within the fact that sex sells there is also another problem, which I would like to touch upon briefly. When it comes to Bond girls, and Sophie Dahl, and The Sun, and, well, me, there is a painful imbalance. It would seem that our only recognised sex symbol is female. Whilst I can appreciate the beauty of the YSL advert – as a photographer and as a designer – and may have found it intriguing as the naïve 10-year-old I was when it appeared on a billboard near my house, being a (mostly) straight female it is not actually a sex symbol that appeals to me. This is an extremely important point, and as I make the move into publishing my work, I will certainly be fighting for covers that don’t perpetuate this imbalance. But for now I will leave it to others to expose and discuss: Zoe Margolis expounded upon this with her talk Under Cover: Erotica and Sexism at The Lost Lectures (which you can watch in full – and I highly recommend that you do – by clicking the link).

But I digress.

It is widely accepted that mainstream publishers, and film production companies, etc. look down upon erotic art. Every day I read about erotic artists struggling against these attitudes, but rarely do I see a discussion that talks about why this is. Elsewhere in the world this may have much to do with religion and the stronghold it has on so many nations, but in the UK that is far less true. Whilst many people living in the UK are religious, it is not so pervasive that we won’t elect an atheist Prime Minister, or that we swarm to church every Sunday. It’s different here. Perhaps our prejudices are still based in a religious background, spanning thousands of years, but I believe a large part of the reason we reject sexuality from the mainstream now is that there is an idea that an aroused mind is a less cognitive mind. And to a certain extent, I agree.

When we seek to indulge our arousal, we are rarely looking for something that will stimulate us intellectually. In fact, I can speak to this from personal experience: I’ve been known to visit Literotica (which holds possibly the worst sex writing available) because it is easy to find the subject I want there, and when I’m aroused I don’t care as much about the quality of the writing. When we have sex and when we masturbate very few of us – I believe – are using this time to consider the financial crisis, or the state of the music industry. And why should we? Part of what makes sex so wonderful is the fact that it allows us to escape from the humdrum of our daily lives. The fact that this state of arousal is looked down upon by so many is utterly unfair. It is a large and important part of human experience, which ought to be explored with open minds.

But what happens when we do actually want to deal with sex critically? More often than not it is sold as titillation, taking us right back to where we started: setting up reader/viewer expectations to no more than material for sexual arousal, and if arousal makes it hard to think objectively, then that puts erotica amongst the most difficult arts to view critically. This then becomes a whole other issue, seeping into the huge problem we have with the vast amount of poorly written erotica and badly made pornography. People rarely complain about something that makes them come. (Additionally, even when sex is discussed by the media in cases of rape or abduction it is often done with a tone of sick fascination, playing to a similar type of arousal, which really displays the worst in human nature.)

It is an argument I have with myself at this time every year. With less than 30 days until National Novel Writing Month I am story plotting and character building and part of the NaNoWriMo form asks you to choose a genre for your novel. For the past three years I have used NaNoWriMo to write fiction that involves a lot of eroticism and for this reason I have felt compelled to put my novels into the Erotic Fiction category. However, the public perception that erotica is written to arouse makes this genre seem rather exclusive, and when I am writing novel-length fiction, eroticism is not the only thing I want to explore. Given that my plans for this year’s NaNoWriMo appear to be in a similar vein, the debate continues.

But my problem runs deeper: I do not write erotic fiction to arouse and it does not arouse me to write erotic fiction. For me, writing erotica is a way of exploring sexuality through my chosen media – literature. I long ago embraced the fact that my writing arouses people. I am not unhappy with the fact that people enjoy my work as something to get off to. However, nothing pleases me more than a response to my work that is reasoned and intellectual and opens up a discussion. It is through those conversations that I feel we learn the most about sexuality. In fact, I would go so far as to say that often I write pieces that push people’s boundaries in the hope that they will be too much for my readers’ arousal and force them to consider it critically rather than sexually.

In the extreme, the fact that sex sells not only pervades my work as an erotic author, but also me as a human being. Via email, in comments, on twitter, I am bombarded with sexual innuendo and come-ons as though the fact that I write about sex makes me available and eager to take part in others’ sex lives. Of course, I am the only one who can control the way I present myself, and I am the only one who can take action against the way I am perceived – and I won’t deny that I do on occasion provoke those reactions. But even when I don’t do it directly I am still subject to these kinds of responses and so I think it bears mentioning.

There is nothing wrong in creating with the intention to arouse. In fact, with more and more marriages ending due to a lack of sexual fulfillment I feel we now, more than ever, need porn and erotica that opens people up sexually. On the other hand, this trend makes it very difficult to engage critically with the erotic arts and for me, at least, this is a real problem. The one thing that everyone seems to be able to agree on when it comes to Fifty Shades of Grey (and, actually Twilight as well) is that the cover (above, right) is brilliant. It is not at all explicit, but if you know anything about the book – and everyone now does – it is still appropriately erotic. Whilst we cannot dictate what will arouse people and what will not, covers and promotion and advertising do play a huge part in setting up consumer expectations, and so perhaps this is the first step in creating a sub-category of erotic fiction which deals with its subject critically, rather than using it to arouse. Because I cannot be the only one who feels this way.

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Apparently the Pope said that gay marriage is a threat to the “future of humanity itself”, but a quick google search – ‘Pope gay marriage’ – revealed that the words ‘gay marriage’ were being put before the direct quotation: “[threatens] human dignity and the future of humanity itself”. The press, of course, are misleading us. I would guess that the Pope is very carefully not using the phrase ‘gay marriage’ so that no one can really call him on it, but reporting that the Pope has condemned gay marriage as the end of the human race is, in fact, incorrect. However, there is still an issue, which I would like to unravel.

We all know the Pope, by definition, opposes gay marriage; this is not news. But in this particular address he carefully and strategically avoided dealing with the issue of gay marriage directly at all. When considering the importance of the younger generation and their education, he said:

“[P]ride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman. This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself.”

I believe the phrase “the marriage of a man and a woman” is just Pope lingo. This is what he is expected to say, and what he always will say. The word which jumped out at me here is “undermine”. This is a word US Republican politicians use a lot when discussing the effect of gay marriage upon the institution of marriage. It is also a word Savage quotes a lot. I think there may be a crossover here: Republicans use the word ‘undermine’ to forward policies which directly oppose gay marriage, and the word appeared in the Pope’s speech when discussing family and the two have been put together to form headlines such as “Pope: gay marriage threatens humanity’s future”.

I am not a fan of the Pope and while I think he is completely right that we need better education systems I am certain that my idea of good education is a far cry from his. Anyway, my contention, as always, is with the dishonesty of this reporting. Of course I expect it from the press and plenty of other people, some of whom I respect and admire – such as Savage, – but that doesn’t mean that because everyone’s misrepresenting, I’m going to let it slide. Truth and honesty are important.

Conversely, the fact that the Pope’s words can be interpreted or misread in this way is a problem in and of itself. Not to mention the fact that even if the Pope is being misunderstood, plenty of politicians are not. Many are perfectly direct about their opposition of gay marriage and the fact that it, apparently, “undermines the institution of marriage”*. So, returning to the title of this article, and my original point, even though we cannot quite take the Pope’s words as the press presents them, according to Savage, we heterosexuals** have still been attacked.

Savage reads the claim that “gay marriage threatens humanity” to mean that those particular Republicans(/the Pope) believe(s) everyone would be gay if gay marriage were legal. Otherwise why would they be worried? Well, I think this claim is skating on slightly thin ice; there are several other explanations that could be taken into account. Equally, Catholic politicians could be playing the Biblical morality card.

(By the by, I do very much enjoy the notion that people who are opposed to gay marriage because it will make the whole world gay are effectively admitting their own homosexual tendencies. But most of the time I don’t believe it. Too bad really. It’d be sweet justice if Santorum had to deal with santorum once in a while.)

For the sake of argument, and just in case Savage – who is usually very insightful and very well informed – is right, let’s pretend that’s exactly what happened: the Pope claimed that if gay marriage were legal we’d all be homosexual, and rampantly so.

Well, I can think of worse insults, but still, there are plenty of heterosexual people who simply don’t wish to be misrepresented. (Let’s not make this another article about the misuse of the word ‘gay’ as an insult.)

So, let’s defend ourselves and, while we’re at it, homosexuality as well. Legalising gay marriage is not going to make straight people gay. It just isn’t.

Being female and kinky and openly supportive of all combinations of people and sexual orientations, I get asked, a lot, if I’m bisexual. (I’m not.) In fact, I have been encouraged by boyfriends and lovers to embrace the tiny bit of flexibility I occasionally have and find a girl to get friendly with. If their encouragement and pleasure didn’t push me into the arms of women, legalising gay marriage definitely isn’t going to.

My second argument is a little strange, but just stick with me for a moment: I have friends who have a quality about them that means they often have to go out of their way to prove that they are heterosexual. I remember asking one friend, who has a lot of stereotypically gay traits and has to fend off a lot of male attention, if he was really straight and he simply raised his hands and went “Honey, look at me: if I were gay, I’d be gay.”. (Yes, I am aware that he was quoting something, but I forget what. Sex and the City? Anyway, my friend may have been quoting, but he meant it in earnest.) While people like him may be rare, they are also a good example of the fact that gay marriage isn’t going to suddenly push them out of the closet. No one (over the age of 16) would behave with such – for lack of a better word – flamboyance and claim to be heterosexual if they weren’t. He seems more gay than most homosexual people, but he isn’t. (Believe me.)

But let’s go a step further. Again, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that the whole world turns gay. What’s wrong with that? The argument is that a gay world is doomed to extinction, because if you’re gay you can’t procreate. What? Yes you can. We’re not facing a world bereft of two genders. If a woman can have a baby on her own, then the world can continue to have children irrespective of it’s sexual orientation. We are not facing a problem of extinction.

In fact, we are facing a problem of over-population. The world’s resources are being used up. The ozone layer is fucked because there are too many people consuming too much and generating too many poisonous emissions. Wouldn’t a few more (homosexual,) childless-by-choice couples be a saving grace? Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the population of this planet could happily and peacefully begin to decline, just a little?

This entire argument, from almost every perspective, is utterly ridiculous. And it doesn’t take much more than two brain cells to rub together to think of a hundred ways to dispel these arguments. And yet we are still having them. THAT is a problem. The general stupidity and decisive ignorance of the world is why we are doomed and why we will never have the freedom we all claim to want.

Finally, and most importantly, it might not be a new issue, but here is a direct, full quotation that honestly did make me feel sick:

“More generally, and with particular reference to the West, I am convinced that legislative measures which not only permit but at times even promote abortion for reasons of convenience or for questionable medical motives compromise the education of young people and, as a result, the future of humanity.”

If anyone’s looking for a reason to hate the Pope, this is it. Both the issues of abortion and gay marriage are close to my heart, but I don’t believe that twisting words helps anyone, and the gay marriage fight might not be best fought here. The abortion issue, however, is wide open.

• • • • •

*I know I have read direct quotations from people such as Rick Santorum saying exactly this, but I can’t find any. I hate to publish an article without evidence. Can anyone point me in the direction of a reliable source?

**I have, in the past, described myself as heteroflexible; whilst I know – from personal experience – that female sexuality is fluid, the term itself proved to be misrepresenting me. For the sake of simplicity and in order to stay true to 98% of myself, I am identifying as heterosexual.

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