Smart bitch writes about trashy books...

October 1, 2024 9:43 AM

The Death of The F*ck: Neopuritanism and Commercial Fiction by Emily Lynell Edwards.
posted by jacquilynne (7 comments total)

Two things come to mind. One is that people are not nearly as much into vanilla het as they used to be, with the result that if you actually describe a sex scene at any length you'll lose three quarters of the readers who don't share your kink. Even within genres of smut that are not vanilla het fiction you'll risk the same thing. If you like to read gay male fiction you'll need to curate it, because the stuff written by women for women is extremely different than the stuff written by men for men. Within the stuff written for men by men, you need to know if your readers want twinks or bears. Inserting a bear when they want a twink will result in the book being thrown across the room. Readers are even more picky when it comes to elements of non-cons. Many won't read romantic fantasy without it, but it has to be to the exact right degree. It's a fine line between no spice and too many red flags.

And then you have the fact that in much of North America the birth rate is dropping. There are a hell of a lot more people in recent decades who are not into sex. It reminds me of the Victorian era, when sensible couples didn't start their families until she was thirty, and prudery abounded. There were economic reasons behind the drop in the birthrate and the prudery. It was recently reported that the average age of a woman giving birth in Canada is now 31. It's true that not having kids doesn't directly correlate to not having sex, but not having sex does mostly correlate to not having kids. All those childless cat ladies may not want to read about sex, if they are disenchanted with their potential partners, or if they have decided to not do anything that could result in a pregnancy for economic reasons. It's easier and more fun to read things you can identify with, or at least which don't make you as anxious. I am pretty sure many of the readers would be a lot less horrified to discover their new boyfriend was an immortal from the fae world, than to discover that he was a guy who spends time on the men's rights forums and who snickers about knowing how to land a girlfriend by pretending her birthday matters to him. Since the perfect guy is imaginary, he might as well have those pointed ears and high cheekbones. That might sound more plausible to many readers than that he'll remember not to leave his drinking glass on the edge of the sink.

It's not like the books aren't about sex - but maybe they are mainly about courtship and foreplay. For some people that's the interesting part that actually turns them on. The more explicit mucus-membrane hydraulics, seen close up, aren't a turn on for a lot of people. And for a lot of women that kind of a focus makes the work feel like it was created for the male gaze.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:53 AM on October 1 [6 favorites]

I'm skeptical. Sure, there are people on TikTok and Twitter saying there's too much sexuality in the media, but half the reason they're getting so much attention is because they make so many people uncomfortable. I feel like I can't leave the house without seeing someone reading Sarah J. Maas' spicy fantasy books—BookTokkers may be saying we need to go back to Doestoevsky (and someone's always been saying that kind of thing), but I'm not seeing a lot of copies of The Brothers Karamazov on the train.

It's true, as the author points out, that TikTok and social media affect what books people buy and read, but my suspicion is that people are more receptive to messages like "hey, this book is awesome, and here's why," where they can add the book to their Kindle or Libby queue, than "books today are too sexy." I know I personally discover books, movies, music, etc. through social media and professional reviews, and a negative review of the work or certainly the genre doesn't necessarily mean I won't check out the work itself.

And just concretely, it feels like Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake, which is reasonably sexual, was one of the most anticipated literary fiction works lately. Within the past couple of years we had Emma Cline's The Guest and Catherine Lacey's Biography of X, both of which had involved sex and sexuality as fairly central to the plot. I haven't read Sally Rooney or Taffy Brodesser-Akner yet, but are their books devoid of sex? Sara Gran even had The Book of the Most Precious Substance, which involved female ejaculation as a core plot element.

In science fiction, we recently had a FPP about Tamsyn Muir, whose novels aren't exactly raunchy but certainly have explicit lust, including between women. And it feels like there's been a revival of interest lately in SFF writers who've dealt with sexuality explicitly, noticeably Ursula Le Guin, Samuel Delany, and Octavia Butler?
posted by smelendez at 11:07 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]

Look, I’m not a puritan, but screeds like this have always rubbed me the wrong way. A lot of ordinary people’s distaste for sex scenes, as noted, are related to “mucus-membrane hydraulics” that don’t interest them, either because their sexuality is different or it seems to be written for a male gaze.

And honestly, sexuality is a place where disgust can be a valid personal response—not in terms of lawmaking or societal acceptance, of course, but as preference. Why is she saying that a reviewer should “grow up” for noting that a tampon sex scene is “‘graphic’ and ‘gross’”? Because, you know, that’s gonna be a pretty widely held take! It doesn’t make you Republican to believe that, and it’s not going to help anyone to suggest it does. The truly grownup take is to accept that something is gross and review the whole work on its merits anyway.

In the past, I was almost always put off by sex scenes, and the reasons were not actually bad. The scenes I hated were clearly male fantasies, or else they presumed widespread acceptance and enjoyment of sex under conditions which I did not share. I’ve come to understand that this is okay and healthy and does not mean I am a fool or a child. Now I know what I’m reading and I can meet it on its own terms.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:31 AM on October 1 [1 favorite]

Funny this topic should come up. My daughter-in-law is heavily into Sara J. Maas’ books. One day, she asked if I’d like to read a couple. I’m largely a sci-fi reader, but since she likes the Maas books so much, I accepted the offer. It turns out “a couple” meant I now have all of Maas’ books on my desk. And I find I’m actually enjoying them quite a lot.

One thing that kind-of shocked me as I read them was, in fact, the fairly graphic sex throughout the novels. Not pearl-clutching, won’t-someone-think-of-the-children, shocked, mind you. It’s more of a “Wow, I wasn’t expecting this!” shock, and I think this stems from my understanding that the books are more-or-less considered YA novels (or not?) and my apparent ignorance of what YA even encompasses anymore. Then again, considering what one can easily access on the internet, the sex in Maas’ books could seem kinda tame, really.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:33 AM on October 1 [1 favorite]

I've always figured it was because porn went mainstream. When I was young I used to read a lot of SF from the 60s/70s, which had a lot of sex in it, very little of which has aged well because it was nearly all one type of sex that only nerdy, horny geeks like then-me really enjoyed to read about. But putting sex in novels, explicit sex, was transgressive back then even if it seems retrograde today. I personally much prefer the fade-to-black style of writing about sex, because if I want to read about or watch sex, I can just turn on Pornhub or whatever, where 99% of it is awful crap but there's so much of it that something can inevitably be found. I'm reading an SF novel, I don't need (nor want, usually) to have sex scenes in it, because now, fundamentally, sex scenes belong to a different genre.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 11:37 AM on October 1 [1 favorite]

Can't think of a book I've read recently that has an explicit sex scene in it.

It can't come off as not awkward...
posted by Windopaene at 11:46 AM on October 1

There are a hell of a lot more people in recent decades who are not into sex.

I wonder if it isn’t at least partly about people feeling more empowered not to have sex they don’t want.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:17 PM on October 1