cliterature

Much is sometimes made of how the recent upsurge in erotic romance is some new and outrageous development. The sex, the salacious covers, the gay and group sex! As a person who has been reading erotic books all my life I find this perspective a little naive. There has always been erotic fiction with lurid covers and options including gay, group, furry and so much more (erotic romance ebooks have a ways to go before I’ll consider them really decadent). Reaching to my bookshelf I pulled down a few examples.

First up we have The Velvet Trap (1971) with a cover showing two women and the tag line: “She spent one night with another woman–and never wanted a man again!” and the first line is: “Jan Flowers, from early childhood on, had always known the difference between a penis and a pencil.” That’s right, the word ‘penis’ in the very first sentence.

Next on the shelf is When Men Meet (1963). The blurb on the back ends: “In the arms of this voluptuary Cassius found himself helpless … a slave to unlooked for passions.” So that covers FF and MM within the first two books.  Beside that sits The Sign of Eros (1953): “Two Women … one man … a single love”. FFM, check.

Then there is In Bed We Cry (1943): “This gay and clever novel by the glamorous Ilka lays bare the secret intrigues and love affairs that take place in the smart atmosphere of New York’s ‘beauty and fashion’ world … the intense struggle for money and glamour, the casual love affairs, the pleasure-hungry of cocktail parties and night clubs.” Erotic chick lit, check.

Finally–because this is just an illustrative sample, I could go on–there is The Waters of Centaurus (1970) : “The Sea King was handsome, perhaps the most overwhelming male personality that Police Sergeant Sibyl Sue Blue had ever met … but he wasn’t human.”  Furry, or in this case scaly, check.

So before suggesting that the new incarnation of erotic romance, ebooks, the internet or any modern phenomenon is somehow creating a new wave smut hitherto unknown to womankind–look back. Exactly the same themes of alpha men, shape shifters, threesomes, orgies, furries, spanking, bondage, seduction and morethan seduction, slavery, fetish, role playing etc etc etc is there when you look back to the mass produced genre fiction of the day. Pulp novels, penny dreadfuls, medieval poetry, neolithic stone carvings… (no idle claim, I will show all of these, or at least pictures of them, in later posts).

And interestingly in all the cases where the gender of the author or artist can be determined, women have been represented in this activity. Women have not suddenly leaped into creating and consuming erotica, we are part of a long, rich and diverse tradition of treating sex like (shock, horror) it is alluring, amusing and just plain fun.  Like it is something to package for consumption and make money of, unapologetically or–if we must–anonymously.

Women, books and sexuality–not just for the new millennium.

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