Explicit novels = tawdry 'new feminism'?

Wow.

That journalist is somewhat humourless.

Interesting article, SP - but it seems as if she's singled out a particularly narrow sub-genre and decided that's all womens' fiction is these days. And that is so wrong.

I think her conclusions are faulty because her premise is faulty - there's so much more out there than the few items she's used as examples.

So no, I do not agree with her at all.

The whole piece has that typical air of self-righteous moral indignation that Daily Mail columns always seem to have.

firedrake said:

The whole piece has that typical air of self-righteous moral indignation that Daily Mail columns always seem to have.

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Or the threads here?


;-)

'You have no sense of humour' is a charge that's been laid at the feet of a lot of women talking about how women are viewed in society.

To be honest, I agree with a lot of what she says. I don't think casual sex has ever done women (as a whole) any favours. The guys love it, but they don't respect it - not one little bit. A lot of the mid-teen girls I see around London are treated appallingly by their male peers and they take it as if it was okay. As a society, we're getting something badly wrong.

We just never seem to be able to hit a sane middle ground with sex. It seems to be either Victorian sensibilities with table legs wearing their own lacy trousers in case anyone gets excited, or its the 'Hah, you must be fridged if you don't want sex, sex, sex' message. Me, I like the middle ground. Sex is great, when it's something more than just mutual masturbation.

Seems odd to blame it all on erotica/soft porn, though. There's an awful lot of magazines, newspapers, adverts, 'celebs' and TV shows pushing the 'sleep around for fun and profit' message.

There's definitely a "sexual conquest" sub-genre that has come to the fore.

I don't think there's a one to one correlation between that and women betraying feminism as she seems to imply. Western literature has been dominated by men and their penises for centuries. In some ways, there's a making up for time element at work here too. She claims that men don't have a comparable genre. Oh yes they do, it's called lad magazines, Playboy, and all that.

It's also simplistic to bill feminism as merely the right to have sex and enjoy it as much as men (equal pay for equal work please!).

I doubt that the women who read these books are really going out and replicating what they read. There's a voyeuristic element at work, which has always existed in literature (and not just for sex).

From my perspective, the sooner we become less uptight about sex the better. And a woman being in control and confident in her own sexuality is never a bad thing.

Love your avatar, SP - I always prefer the pics of you! (the penguin was creepy!)

scarletpeaches said:

But to blame the decline in societal morals on women's fiction which contains sex (badly written or otherwise) seems like passing the buck to me.

Women writing about sex! Oh noes!

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Yeah, I agree with you there, as I said, I think societies 'sleep around' promotion is really widespread and it's probably just an (over)reaction from the previous repression. I wouldn't be at all surprised if in a decade or two we end up nigh puritan again as an overreaction to todays excesses in hedonism.

I can only speak from personal experience, but I've yet to meet, or talk to, or overhear guys that respect women who are very free with their sexual favours. It's damned hypocritical, given how 'rah rah rah' they are about men who put it about, but the old underlying attitude that women who sleep with lots of men aren't worth real respect seems to be alive and well as far as I can tell.

scarletpeaches said:

It's quite easy to tell if a man likes women or not.

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This is what separates the men from the boys.

scarletpeaches said:

The reason I'm not posting this link in the erotica forum is I wanted to get the views of a wider range of readers.

Link here.

(Don't worry, it's safe. There are no sexually explicit examples cited).

Seems as though the general thrust (fnarr) of this article is erotica = sleaze. In other words, jacked-up, crapped-up chicklit, and nothing more.

Oh, and women who have/enjoy/want sex are binge-drinking slappers. Reading erotica turns you into a crazed, undiscerning monster.

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I think I know what "slapper" means, but might you give me a synonym?

And I think that the author has zeroed in on a very narrow niche, as someone (sorry! I've forgotten who!) observed, and yes, Scarlet, her main objection seems to be not so much that the women are being overtly, sexual, but that they appear to be enjoying it, and not finding it denigrating.

"Slapper" = "tramp", "ho", "slut".

I didn't know what "slapper" meant, either. Now I do.

I haven't read the link yet but suspect it is part of the feminisn/"new" feminism schism. Personally I think the mainstream of old feminsim is humorless, and the mainstream of new feminism does have a rather trashy aesthetic. But my attitude could be sumed up as 'a plague in both their houses'.

Feminism needs some new leading lights that are more focussed on substantive progress and grassroots support than they are on infighting and pissing matches and having a great magazine.

Yep. The article is another example of the old fem backlash against new fem. More to do with culture war than anything substantive. Whenever there is a paradigm shift the old/now conservative school tend to play the 'think about the children' card and complain about 'kids these days acting like tramps'. yawn. Which isn't to say that they aren't.

MetalDog said:

I can only speak from personal experience, but I've yet to meet, or talk to, or overhear guys that respect women who are very free with their sexual favours. It's damned hypocritical, given how 'rah rah rah' they are about men who put it about, but the old underlying attitude that women who sleep with lots of men aren't worth real respect seems to be alive and well as far as I can tell.

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Yup. Every guy is just a drooling cretin whose entire being is just a means of moving his penis around in search of any warm crevice. Of course, it's impossible that a man could actually engage in a healthy and respectful sharing of intimacy with a woman without whipping out his Swiss Army knife and carving another notch on his belt as soon as he jumps out the window of her house in the morning.

And what I find to be damned hypocritical is the idea that a shared intimacy between a man and a woman is viewed as the women giving out sexual favors. Unless, of course, it is believed that sex is best used as a reward or a punishment.

scarletpeaches said:

I can't say I've ever described my male MC's buttocks as 'muscular' (perhaps thethinker42, having read the WIP as I wrote it, could confirm this) but would hardly say commenting on your male MC's body equates to objectifying them.

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Confirmed.

And for what it's worth, the men in my erotic romances have character, and they have it in spades. They just also happen to have a lot of sex with the female characters. I enjoy well-written erotica, and I don't see how it's "lower" than any other kind of writing. If a violence-laden military thriller can be considered a quality story, then so can a sex-filled romance or a steamy erotica story.

NeuroFizz said:

And what I find to be damned hypocritical is the idea that a shared intimacy between a man and a woman is viewed as the women giving out sexual favors. Unless, of course, it is believed that sex is best used as a reward or a punishment.

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THANK YOU.

I have always viewed sex as something *I* wanted, so I sought men who wanted the same thing. Mutual interest, you could say. I wasn't "giving" him anything that he wasn't also "giving" me. Any argument that he was "using" me could just as easily be flipped that I was "using" him...but the thing is, the guy and I were always in agreement, so what did it matter?

For that matter, most men I know don't have a problem with women who have engaged in casual sex or any degree of promiscuity. In fact, at a recent gathering, one of the guys was talking about his recent one night stand, then in the same breath criticized another guy who was marrying a girl that had been into flings/casual sex before. I said, "So you, who engages in one night stands, sees something wrong with a woman who's done the same?" And I basically kept asking him variations of the same question until he finally realized he was talking out his backside and conceded that he was being a hypocrite.

And for that matter, I know at least one man who has no problem with women who've engaged in casual sex, one night stands, booty calls, and sex on first dates...because he married me.

@NeuroFizz
Heh, you read quite a lot into that, eh?

I'm just relating what I've heard from many, many men chattering amongst themselves. Of course there must be exceptions, but the majority seem to be a bit old school in their attitudes - you can shoot the messenger, but it doesn't make the message *untrue*.

There will of course be exceptions - and bless their little cotton socks.

edit - incidentally, sexual favours works both ways. Laying down with someone is showing them favour, male or female.