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.

The post Erotic Fiction Without Sexual Arousal: Attempting the Impossible appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Having read Fifty Shades of Grey, Remittance Girl concluded that the D/s aspect of writing, perhaps comes through not so much in the acts portrayed, as in the language used to describe them. I came to a similar conclusion when I reviewed the book. Based on this theory, RG set a challenge: write the same piece of erotic fiction twice, the first time as a vanilla scene, and the second time as a D/s scene. Challenge accepted.

Vanilla
They stumbled out of the bar, beer bubbles still tickling their nostrils, giggling into each other’s slung arms as they made their way down the glistening street. The air was brisk, nipping at her exposed shoulders, but she didn’t notice, through her alcohol-warm haze. One hand on her hip, he led her back to his flat and helped her over the threshold, still giggling.

Ten minutes later they were towel dried and a little subdued on the sofa. She let him kiss her brow and her jawline, and he reached into her top to run the tips of his fingers over her hardening nipple.

“I’d like to fuck you” He murmured, kissing her neck, trailing his tongue behind her ear.

She smiled, biting her lip, and nodded carefully.

Pressing together, she grew wet against him and he pulled her up, peeling the clothes off her body and holding her in his firm hands. As his lips traced patterns along her neck and across her shoulders, she was bent over the back of the sofa, hands exploring the convex of her arse. Breathless with need, he parted her thighs and pressed the heated head of his cock against her soaked sex.

• • • • •

Kinked
They stumbled out of the bar, beer bubbles still tickling their nostrils, giggling into each other’s slung arms as they made their way down the glistening street. The air was brisk, nipping at her exposed shoulders, but she didn’t notice, through her alcohol-warm haze. One hand on her hip, he steered her back to his flat and guided her over the threshold, still giggling.

Ten minutes later they were towel dried and a little subdued on the sofa. He kissed her brow and her jawline, and reached into her top to tease her hardening nipple between the tips of his deft fingers.

“I’m going to fuck you,” He said, biting her neck, trailing his pointed tongue behind her ear.

She shivered, catching her lip between her teeth, and nodded understanding.

Pulling her against him, he felt her grow wet and sat her up on her knees, ripping the clothes from her body and holding her in his firm hands. As his nails traced patterns along her neck and across her shoulders, he bent her over the back of the sofa, fingers pressing into the soft flesh of her arse. Growling with need, he parted her thighs and forced the heated head of his cock against her dripping cunt.

The post Vanilla/Kinked appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).