Category: Sex and Sexuality

Correspondence: On Smut

Regarding smut and its ability to slip in: as you might have guessed, I have no problem with that! I love smut and I think it serves a number of readers’ needs beyond tittilation. Or perhaps I should say, tittilation serves more needs than it gets credit for.

One of the weirdest things I’ve noticed about smut recently is that reading it can actually be comforting and soothing-have you ever felt that way? I think it evokes a deep, primal connection that so many people are starved for. For women especially, who do so much of the emotional work in a family, romance and erotica can help refill emotional reservoirs.

When I Start Paying Attention

If it’s happening between a man and a woman, I’m paying attention. For that matter, if it’s happening between two men or two women and there’s a spark there, I’m also paying attention. Watching “Knick” with the husband, I’m giving half an ear to the proceedings, the gory early medical procedures, the male posturing over status in the hospital. Then Clive Owen has a scene with a young nurse, and my eyes dart to the screen, my ears pricking up. Now this is what I’m interested in. What’s going on between them? He’s paternalistic and a little suggestive, bringing his status to bear in pressuring her to be silent about his opium addiction. But is he actively trying to seduce her? If so, does he feel desire for her, or is this just part of his method of influence? And her—how does she feel here? She’s showing deference, but does she feel attraction? Does she really feel the respect she’s showing, or is she disgusted and afraid? Is she really that good at hiding her feelings, or is she really naive enough to believe his line?

This is the stuff I’ll always care about in a story: a sexually or emotionally charged connection being played out while we watch. This is the kind of interaction that will always draw me in.

Defy Not the Retrograde Sexual Politics

80's cover of Joanna Lindsey's "Defy Not the Heart."
This was the cover art on my edition of “Defy Not the Heart.” I can’t believe my parents let me buy it!

How well I remember my days of reading “bodice-ripper” romance novels. Even though that’s a term that’s been deprecated in most circles, that’s how I remember those books and it’s still how I think of them.

Now here’s a riddle: how come so many feminists grew up on a steady diet of rapey romance novels, yet still come out on the other side with progressive views of sexuality? And even though we’d never write a book like Joanna Lindsey’s “Defy Not the Heart” (even if we could), or even recommend it to someone very impressionable, we look back on them with affection.
I guess it’s like the American trope of the racist grandma everyone’s got hidden away. You don’t agree with her politics, but you love her just the same. But I wonder if that comparison even works? We love our racist grandmas despite their racism, but we love “Defy Not the Heart” because of its retrograde sexual politics (at least in part). Maybe it’s because young people are so interested in erotic stories that we’ll take what we can get and ignore the parts that don’t work for us. That’s the way we’re built to develop, right? Take the good and leave the rest–that’s how well-adjusted kids are supposed to approach everything they’re presented with. That requires such a strong sense of what’s “good” and what isn’t, though. Where does that initial sense come from?

Abelard and Heloise Do Not Meet With Approval

Told Mother and Sister tonight of my Heloise and Abelard obsession. Strangely, neither of them is as taken as I am with Heloise’s bold sexuality. When I hear her refer to herself, a respected abbess, as Abelard’s “concubine or whore,” I’m awed by her complete lack of shame, her bravery in claiming her own love and desire. But Mother is stuck on her insistence that all she’s ever done has been for Abelard, that she’s done everything at his command, that she’d enter the gates of Hell for him. I’m just as interested in her insistence on what Abelard owes her, and her demand that he give it. And to me, the fact that he’s no longer capable of giving it is the tragedy.

Still transcribing H’s first letter. Her writing (and this translation by William Levitan) puts me in a trance.