cliterature

While Cleis released a full book of the 26 covers (which I reviewed here), it seems taht the actual alphabet themed book series has been cancelled.  So the actual anthologies will get no further than L, at least with this publisher.

Come, Erato. Lovely muse,
stand by me,
as I craft this tale.

For music
is not a sound of the mouth–
nor poetry a scratch of the pen.

Any voice of the heart,
is sheltered by the harp*.

Clear-voiced Erato
lend me your lucidity
so that my words may be
wreaths of roses**,

moist with dew.
Erato, in that I sing of love,
I stand by you.

By  tradition there are nine muses; goddesses of the art (well, originally there were just three: practice, memory and voice–but we are going with the later version). At the time the preeminant arts were music, song/poetry and dance. And Erato is the muse of erotic poetry, and I am sure erotic fiction would now fall within her domain.

Blogging also, I would suggest–so long as it is in her subject area.  Because in ancient times oral poetry was often focussed on the news and gossip of the day.  So as I writter or erotic romance and a blog concerning sexuality I wrote the entreaty above, for myself and anyone else who might want to call on the Muse for a little assistance. 

It was traditional to call upon a muse before beginning a performance and ask for her presence. Because the basic meaning of muse/mousai is mental ability and power–and this is what the muses embody. 

So those of you who create or consume romance and/or erotica, let the Erato remind you: the erotic genres have a tradition that is as long as it is ‘broad’–as old as humanity and extending with equal vigor from the ‘finest’ of art to the most engaging of pure entertainments. 

Next time you see eroticism and romance conflated with gratuity, banality and, think of Erato, a goddess of love and lust.  If you stand by her, she’ll stand by you.

* The harp is Erato’s emblem–she is also associated with the parrot and the crow.

** “[Erato] with both hands plaits wreathes of roses”– Propertius, Elegies 3.3

 (p.s. remember to be nice to grasshoppers.  Because fable, as described by Plato, says that when they die they carry news of lovers to Erato–and let her know that by loving you honor her.  And if a friendly muse helps with writing, I am sure a grasshopper-squishing writer is in for some trouble ;) )

Communities that center around erotica, have really interesting boundaries.  For example, erotic romance has large embraced (so to speak) gay, group and bondage.  However something quite ordinary, like bisexuality, is not much represented—and fetish and role-play remains very rare.  Even in non-romance erotica, where kink is pretty much acceptable in any form that is consenting and not harmful.  I think straight (so to speak)erotica writers and readers are more comfortable with coming across interests they don’t personally share–without feeling the need to condment them as morally disgusting.

But even fetishes move with the time.  A few years back appreciating a women smoking was about as mainstream as liking to see long legs in silk stockings.  As a modern fetish it is not all that common, and not very well known.  A lot of people are surprised to find that their own guilty pleasure is in fact shared with quite a few men.  The focus seems to be the deep inhalation and especially exhalation of smoke, its manipulation and sometime a specific interest in exactly what the woman smokes (e.g. cigars).  (I will not link to any of this adult material from this public website–but if you are an adult, Google is your friend).

Although, it does seem to be men we are talking about here, at least as consumers of smoking fetish material.  Which is odd because, as I in a previous post, in general women run very much towards liking dominant men—and the smoking fetish is closely linked to a submissive streak.  The smoking woman is seen as confident and commanding.  But smoking fetish material showing men is rare and, as far as I can see, almost entirely directed towards gay men.  In fact, in one smoking fetish forum it was asked whether a woman having smoking fetish was even possible. 

This is the point where I should make it clear that I don’t smoke and never have, and I don’t even like to be in the same room as a smoker.  But I have watched with interest as objections to smoking fetish became stronger with time, just as physical punishment fetishes (e.g. spanking) seem to have gained wider acceptance.  This is entirely logical given that a body will recovered quickly and completely from a slap, but the consequences of smoking as more severe and cumulative.  However is the moral condemnation of smoking actually impeding our ability to understand why women do it? (And therefore, if we choose to, from stopping them?)

You see, the incidence of smoking amongst the young seems to be on the rebound, especially amongst girls.  People tend to blame all the aspects of society that make the poor little girl-child a slave to their power.  That is, advertising making smoking sexy and because smoking (like any chronic toxin) helps them lose weight.  I think that it might be interested to look for some other explanations that are based on what girls want—not what they are victim to.  That is that men like to watch sexy,  dominant women smoking—and a significant minority of girls want to be sexy, dominant women (even while almost all want to seen as beautiful, submissive damsels).

How can they want to be both?  Well, women are complicated, adolescent girl-women are even more so as they “try on” different identities.  Boys routinely “try on” being tough, by speeding in cars, committing petty crimes, getting drunk, getting in fights and hanging out in gangs trying to out-macho each other.  Increasingly some girls do this too, but for the most part being female, and being a classic (masculine-style) delinquent, do not do together—especially when it comes to violence and crime.  Women (either innately, or due to conditioning, or both) typically don’t do public disorder.

So girls are left with a fairly short list of ways to rebel that are more-or-less legal and don’t necessarily harm anyone but themselves.  And so long as that remains true there will still be young girls who get off on smoking and not-so-young men who get off on watching them because they have the equally problematic and socially unacceptable issue of lusting after strong, socially-transgressive women, a.k.a. “bad girls”.  (And smoking fetish material is often a fascinating form of pornography in that much of it is un-macho-like in being “safe:–neither explicit, nor relating to activities capable of transmitting disease.)  

Perhap it is not the big bad tobacco companies who make smoking transgressive, the social condemnation does—and if this is the case the more smoking is condemned the more a significant minority of young women will want to do it to experiment with a “bad girl” identity.  The thing is, smoking will be transgressive so long as it continues to lop about 15 years off your life span.  That fact, in combination with human psychology, is going to be a public health problem for some time to come.  However, overly shrill objections to things like product placement, smoking fetish material and so forth are going to make that worse, not better.  So if the ultimate goal is to do as little harm as possible, the answer may be to live, and let smoke (between consenting adults and in the privacy of their own home).  If it becomes less of a dangerous deal, it might also become less of a turn-on in both a erotic and the general sense of the word.

There are plenty of people who think they don’t have taboos because they don’t have the traditional Judeo-Christian taboos of sex and fidelity.  But you can hit squick pretty quickly if you step outside their own personal mainstream (for example, try asking them how much they earn–the salary taboo is pretty all pervasive here in the US).  But let’s start with sex+age.  The days have gone where the heroine was always a teen virgin, but it is damned hard to find one where one of the romantic characters is over fifty.

 But this may be beginning to change.   How can you tell there is a significant amount of people interested in something in this modern world?  Well, perhaps when it is being commercialised.  Well, of course the internet allows people to make profits of smaller niche markets through subscription sites and print-on-demand books–but they still depend on shifting a reasonable amount if product.

 The Wiser Lioness of the title is a new subscription site that provides,and I quote: Hot, Sexy Stories By, For and About Women 50 and Over!  The Senior Woman’s Source for Erotic Short Fiction That’s Elegant, Explicit & Deliciously Indiscreet!”

And there is also the book that will be the subject of my first review for this blog: Gray Pleasures, a Love Story of Ageless Passion. A erotic romance story with a seventy year old heroine and a cover that suggests she isn’t letting it slow her down any.  There will be more reviews as the blog goes on and I do accept review copies so long as it relates to the blog. So if any of you out there have some other sexy products that are 50+-oriented, or any kind of interesting product, do drop me a line.

Commentators seems to be constantly surprised and dismayed by the interest straight people have in gay and lesbian erotica.  It seems we are all meant to inhabit a tidy world where each person only lusts after one gender and the other gender is about as exciting as a coat-stand (notwithstanding that there are no doubt a few coat-stand fetishists out there)

 For example, Ashlye Tellis writes: “One of the most infuriating things about straight men is their professed interest in lesbian porn. Straight men are so assured of their place in the world, they think the frame of the lesbian porn scene is merely waiting for their entry … All these women need is a d**k, is what they argue. “

Straw man argument aside, there is a leap here from the bemusing fact that men watch women together to a very gendered all-encompassing interpretation as to why they do it.  How is it gendered?  Well, women show an equal and opposite interest in gay male erotica (e.g. slash, MM, yaoi), albeit more often in written rather than visual forms.

Does this mean they are so assured of their place in the world that they think gay men are just waiting for them and their magic c**t?  To be honest this interpretation is probably right on for a small minority who prefer voyeurism scenarios leading to MFM.  But actually the MM fandom is very diverse.  There are many explanations and most of them are probably correct for some people, but none apply universally.

And whatever the motivation might be, what is acheived by denying the legitmacy of the response (”professed interest”) or somehow denying its logic, legitimacy or moral standing.

This kind of regulation of desire didn’t play when it was done to women (e.g. Freud’s theory at clitoral arousal was ‘infantile’ and vaginal stimulation alone should suffice, not to mention all those charming theories about hysteria, frigidity and nymphomania).  Women have fought very hard to be free to have their own desires, as diverse and perverse as they please so long as nobody gets hurt.  It seems only fair that what is good for the goose should also be permitted for the gander: the freedom to choose erotica we like, without fear of slander.