When Stigma Stops Writing

I recently wrote a post for Delilah Night about the challenges presented by the book I'm currently taking submissions for, the charity anthology Coming Together: Postively Sexy.

What I didn’t realize was that this book is demanding a different kind of editing skill: convincing and encouraging nervous writers to try their hands at stories that feel risky to them. I have had many conversations with writers who say they don’t know anything about STIs and can’t write about them, only to tell me in the next breath that they’ve had or currently have an STI. I’ve had conversations with writers who say they can’t picture how a story could include mention of an STI and still be sexy. I’ve had conversations with writers who say they are far too worried about the possibility of getting something wrong. I’ve talked to writers who say they mostly submit stories they’ve already written, and they’ve never written a story that includes a character with an STI.

To me, this all speaks to the stigma around STIs, the very stigma that I’m hoping this book can question. I want to make a book that opens up a little space inside a dominant culture that often seems intent on shaming people, a book that offers up a vision that an STI doesn’t have to be the end of a person’s sex life, that it doesn’t have to be a big deal at all. I’m hoping to get some stories from writers who already know that because they’ve lived that experience, and I’m also hoping to get some stories from writers who are learning it through the writing they’re doing now.

You can read the rest of the post here, at Delilah's blog.

You can read the full call for submissions, with all the details, here.

Also, check out Delilah's post about the anthology she's editing, Coming Together: Under the Mistletoe.

And, writers, let's do some good by being bad. :) (An old tagline for the charity erotica publisher, Coming Together).

(Also, the deadline for Positively Sexy has been extended to Oct 1st!)

Dirty Little Read-Through: The Unapologetic Confession of "Here's My Problem, Dr. Kinsey" by Mia Hopkins

The Dirty Little Read-through goes on—the third story in Dirty Little Numbers comes to us from Mia Hopkins.

"Jim muttered something about eternal damnation, but he did it anyway." — Mia Hopkins

What I like most about this fictional confession is that it's not a confession in the sense of regret. Throughout, the narrator sounds like she knows what she wants and she's not ashamed of anything. Glancing up to the title after reading the story, I get an image of her smirking as she says those words. Maybe the memory of hot sex that she describes in this story has created some problems for her, but I don't think she'd trade it.

I like the idea of a knowing woman who's not out to apologize confessing a dirty secret to Dr. Kinsey who, by the accounts I've read, wasn't out to judge. That's a delightful reversal of the idea of confession.

I go to confession once a year on Good Friday, and I only confess the things I'm truly sorry for. That means I don't often talk about sex, and I also don't stay in the confessional very long. That's not to say that I'm perfect, but I've spent too much of my life apologizing for who I am and everything I do, feel, and think. These days, I try to keep my apologizing to a minimum, and to only do it when it's really necessary.

But church isn't the only place I feel expected to confess. When I got divorced several years ago, I encountered a lot of people who wanted me to analyze for them how my marriage had gone wrong, or why I wasn't willing to work on things any more. It's one thing to learn from mistakes, and another to enact a shame performance, and too many times conversations veered to that latter side of the line.

Erotica has a long tradition of another kind of confession—a sly, sometimes funny revelation of forbidden acts. Books of erotic confessions are sold not to warn people off but to titillate them, and I think this is a needed corrective for the other kind of confession, the one that's all about shame. Hopkins' story is a classic entry in this venerable tradition. The narrator does outrageous things with an ear of corn, cops to a problem that it sounds sort of nice to have, and doesn't say she's sorry for any of it. More power to her!

If you'd like to read the story instead of my philosophizing about it, check out the fantastic Go Deeper Press—Dirty Little Numbers and other sex-positive erotic books are on sale there.

Sex Is Not Just Fun

Geoff Nicholson in Sex Collectors, writing about The Sexual Life of Catherine M.:

What I like best about the book is that at no point does it ever suggest that sex is fun. Sex is far, far more serious and important than that.

As an erotica writer, I can attest to how much work it can be to make sex fun, especially when I'm going for just fun. Some of the best-paying erotica publishers talk about wanting work that tells a story and has something at stake for the main character, while at the same time emphasizing pleasure.

This is indeed a tricky proposition. Leaving aside the issue of poor writing, which just makes sex feel fake, sex can often become heavy, sad, angry, regretful, uncertain, or poignant. I'm interested in sex in all its forms, so I like writing about it of all types. I like reading a fun sex story, but I also like reading a dark exploration.

Nicholson's assertion becomes particularly interesting to me when I think about what sex is like for me personally. I know how much art it takes to make sex sound fun when I write about it. How often is it fun in practice?

I would say that the times that are really fun are special, but there's also usually a lot of other emotion swirling around on the side. I remember once getting on top of my partner and riding him for a long time in a wild, sweaty way, using my full strength and stamina. It was incredibly fun. I came a lot, and I think he was really into the idea of my being so unstoppably turned on by him. It's a fun memory, but when I think back to it, I also think about the role of shame. I was really worried he would think I was weird, because of the faces or noises I was making, or because of what I was doing. He didn't, and so along with the idea of fun, the memory feels liberating and poignant to me.

I think this is the sort of thing Nicholson is talking about. Feeling liberated from deep personal shame is serious and important, not just fun. Erotica often has this subtext, and I love it for that. Holding out the promise of pleasurable fun is also really important, because to make it work and feel real, you have to be able to write characters who are truly capable of enjoyment, which often means characters who have moved beyond deep personal shame.

(Incidentally, I had already planned to read The Sexual Life of Catherine M. after I finish Sex Collectors. I will likely post a few things about it, too).

Who's Reading All This Erotica, Anyway?

People so frequently seem uncomfortable with the idea that someone is reading erotica, and I've seen lots of disingenuous attempts to identify who is doing all these reading. Most recently, this has come up in relation to Fifty Shades of Grey, with all kinds of weird speculation about "mommy porn." But it's an old conversation, it's often about shifting shame onto some group that the speaker doesn't belong to, and it usually sounds pretty silly. Here's a great example from Geoff Nicholson's book Sex Collectors.

[Gershon] Legman tells us in The Horn Book that collectors of erotica are either the "inexperienced young" in search of information and education or the "old and impotent...searching in books or pictures for the reviving of their drooping sexuality." "Few collectors exist between these limits," he says, and he reckons the young are in the majority. This seems so transparently untrue and such a downright weird thing to say that you have to wonder what his agenda is. When he starts talking about "these children, with their hopeless pornographic pamphlets, grotesquely illustrated as often as not with smeary photographs of old time pimps and whores in pointy shoes and torn stockings," his scholarly credibility seems to be sprinting rapidly toward the exit.

The quoted language sounds patently absurd, and you have to wonder where these assertions are coming from. I suspect a lot of the "mommy porn" speculation is going to sound just as absurd in a few years.

People read erotica. Which people? Plenty of people.

(And for those following along at home, I've indeed quoted several times recently from Sex Collectors. It's a really interesting book, and I'm likely to do it some more. It's on the Kindle if you want to check it out for yourself.)