The question seems to pop up everywhere—how do we determine if something is porn or erotica? One of the more common answers it to divide the categories by gender. Porn is usually made for and purchased by men, it tends to be visual, or if it’s written material, solely focused on the sexual act. Erotica is for ladies, it’s rarely pictorial and focuses on feelings and story, although these days steamy sex is part of the package as well.
There’s some truth to these divisions, generally speaking, but I tend to resist this view, if only because I find certain visual representations of sexuality very sexy. And I don’t always want my sex dressed up in a peignoir of emotion. The bare stuff can be just what I need—exactly the sort of raw, explicit depictions that are supposedly aimed at men.
I was recently reading Ian Kerner’s books, She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman and He Comes Next: The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Pleasuring a Man (erotica writers need to fill the well with information and inspiration, too!) and happened upon an approach to the porn vs. erotica issue that makes more sense to me. Kerner compares porn to junk food (a “fast-food fantasy fix”), readily available, mass produced, targeted at the lowest common denominator, ultimately unfulfilling. He didn’t mention erotica, but I would say that erotica by my definition (and it could be a photograph or video as well as an artfully written story) is rooted in an individual’s vision. It is unique imaginative work that requires care and attention on the part of both creator and audience. Not that erotica collections all fall into this category or that you can't find a story or photo that arouses both body and mind in a mainstream "men's" magazine, but by my definition, erotica does tend to challenge and question, while porn soothes, even while the details (woman with horse, etc) may shock at first.
Although I picked up Kerner’s books as story research for tips on technique, I found myself far more interested in what he has to say about sexuality in our culture. Particularly interesting was his discussion of love maps—“the sexual template expressed in every individual’s erotic fantasies and practices” and how they are formed. “Ironically,” he writes, “we often don’t know our own love maps, which is why the expression of fantasy, especial via internal triggers that spring from our imagination is all the more crucial: It’s our only real way of knowing and sharing our sexual fingerprint.” (p. 82) Kerner is troubled by the way porn overrides this internal search. For example, a young man masturbates to Playboy and finds himself attracted to busty, cute blondes in a kind of Pavlovian connection. Even more detrimental, he becomes dependent on “external triggers that can both obscure and override the organic development of the love map.”
Of course, I can’t speak for my audience’s experiences of my stories, but I do know that I have learned a lot about my “love map” since I began writing stories with a sexual theme. (This is one reason why I recommend EVERYONE write erotica, even if you don’t intend to publish it!) I would argue that a person looking to truly understand more about female sexuality and about what women really want, will find more satisfying answers in Best Women’s Erotica than mass-market porn.
My reaction to a lot of porn may not just be a feminist resistance to what I perceive is a false depiction of female sexuality. It may be a resistance to an imposed set of standards and truths about such a deeply personal issue—this would be true for men or women. This brings us to Hugh Hefner, who has always fascinated me in his role as national tastemaker, as a man who imposed his own sexual preferences on a generation—or maybe more—of American males. Clearly he tapped into something that was there, and I believe there is a powerful collective imagination at work in our sexuality, but to what extent has Hefner distorted the individual’s true desires with his Playmates and the Playboy Philosophy and made men into passive receptacles for his vision?
I think it’s a lot more interesting to create my own fantasies. Like chocolate chip cookies, rice mousse pudding and sweet yellow cake with fudge frosting, homemade treats are far better than the things you buy. And wouldn’t you rather discover your own sexual fingerprint than study Hugh Hefner’s month after month?
I might be fooling myself, though, in my perhaps adolescent insistence of making my own taste. So, I refuse to swoon over Brad Pitt and Leonardo di Caprio on principle and prefer to focus on the ordinary, but no less powerful magic of people I actually know or more typically, people I make up in my head. I’m as much a slave to our culture as anyone, no doubt. But I do like the idea of exploring my inner landscape rather than using the prefab symbols and scenarios the media provides.
I would recommend Kerner’s books, less for the step-by-step cunnilingus program, although I could see how that may be helpful for beginners (I’d probably refer to it before a fantasy date with a hot lady myself). However, my personal preferences don’t completely coincide with Mrs. Kerner’s, although the book made my husband and me pay more attention to what we do, which is always valuable. Still, it’s Kerner’s intelligent questioning of the “givens” in our society’s view of sexuality—the opening of the mind rather than the legs--that makes these books worth reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment