Garner, the sad fact is that most porn/erotica out there is crap. I've imbibed enough to know. That's another reason why I started writing sexy stories- utter disatisfaction, and oftentimes, utter disgust with what is available to me in terms of entertainment as an enthusiast of all things sex-positive, and also as a gay woman. Western culture is still strugging under the weight of puritanical, misogynistic, equating-sex-with-something-dirty type nonsense. I'm the first person to admit that a lot of porn, in addition to committing the great transgression of being anything BUT sexy, is incredibly and messily misogynistic and exploitative. But creative works of sexual expression have a lot of potential to be empowering, and more and more, even if in little baby steps, there are people who are working towards that. Desire can be a very powerful and positive motivating and transformative force. One which has been, historically, vastly underutitlized because pretty much everyone is woefully repressed. And I've seen, via fan fic, some of the best sex-positive work to be found anywhere. Certainly better than most of the erotica anthologies I've picked up. I have also enjoyed many fics that don't include sexual encounters as part of their structure, but the work I like best tends to treat sexuality as fluidly, naturally, and as candidly as any other subject matter in life.
At any rate, thanks, Garner, for that response, it gave me a few things to chew on. I certainly come at this from a very different perspective than you do, and I appreciate the time it takes to sit down and say something coherent about- well, anything really. I also get frustrated when people are quick to reduce work with sexual themes to being "just about sex." In the first place, it bothers me when people say "just about sex" like that's a bad thing, or a lesser thing, and secondly, if you're interested in humanity in general, I'd argue that examining the ways in which people conceive of sex is one of the most fascinating methods of studying people's basic assumptions about who and what we are. And even without the cerebral stuff, though for many of us, sex rarely is without that, it's awfully nice to be able to appreciate something simply for being unabashedly sexy, too.
Edited to add: I was thinking about what you said, G, regarding Willow and Tara specifically, and the possibility of well-known and beloved characters being "safer" in terms of writing/reading smut about them, even for people who usually avoid smutty work. I'm a writer. I'm a person who has been very interested in erotic fiction for years. But I never wrote smut until I became a W/T fan. You're right. They are unique in that they are the first longterm, serious, passionately in love lesbian couple that anyone has ever had the opportunity to see on TV. But even still, their desire for one another had to be relegated for two years to metaphor on a show that has only been too happy to push the envelope with showing sexual situations in prime time. And while ME pulled off the metaphors with more grace and creativity than usual, and while I loved the metaphors for the way Aly and Amber played them- they were still metaphors. We still never saw their first kiss. Never knew for sure when they made love for the first time. That's kind of infuriating in comparison to the way developing relationships between straight characters are portrayed. I fell in love with Willow and Tara, and I wanted to figure out for myself how desire worked between them, in a more physical kind of way- because I was denied seeing that on the show. For me it started not a matter of "safer" so much as just the compulsion to allow them to be sexual with each other somewhere. Anywhere. And yet I still haven't written original smut, or smut set in other fandoms- and not for lack of trying. So maybe there is something to them being "safer." That's something I'll have to give more thought to.
"Spank me, I'm Julia." -Binty McBint
Edited by: Dumbsaint at: 12/2/02 6:17:37 pm