Blogging from A - Z Challenge: April 5 Erotica

Author unknown.

For me, and possibly for others, Erotica is not yet properly distinguished from porn, which is very interesting given erotica is considered to be very positive and a great contribution to all art forms, and almost the exact opposite is considered of pornography, wish is not only "anti-art" in its commodification, soulless repetition and lack of imagination, but is seen to steal the dignity of its protagonists, and by extension all humans, particularly women.

The formal definitions of erotica and pornography go along the lines of a high art approach. It is assumed that erotica has high art pretensions while pornography does not, and therefore indulges in our most base desires, that are often an appeal to the worst in a human creature.

And yet the debate goes on a bit more than just that. Feminists have had a lot to say about erotica, particularly because of the way pornography aggressively uses violence against women, and insists on depicting a female enjoying what is being done to her. But often, the distinction between the two, ends up being subjective. Ellen Willis said it best when she said

 "In practice, attempts to sort out good erotica from bad porn inevitably comes down to 'What turns me on is erotica; what turns you on is pornographic."

I've grappled with this myself, and I'm not completely satisfied with my own answers, although I am encouraged by the changes in my perspective over time. I am one of those women who "likes" pornography, and uses to self-pleasure sometimes, even without my husband present. However, I sense the inauthenticity behind that, as if I am using both my mind and my body against itself - sort of like eating poorly rather than taking the time and effort to prepare myself healthy food.

I love to write about sex, be it erotica or pornography, but I confess, my "pornography" is rarely that - more its a "re-imaging" of it from a female perspective. While I might use the language of pornography, I never reduce the subject to the level of object.

I guess its a journey, one I am thrilled to see so many women and more and more men taking. This "problem" is there for us to solve as a community, and it is probably the best time in history for us to be solving it collectively.

Blogging from A - Z Challenge: April 4 D

D is for Delta of Venus

The following story is related by Anais Nin herself in the Preface to Delta of Venus. It is one of my favorite writer’s stories. I have poorly paraphrased it here, but I have copied exactly as she did, the letter she wrote to the collector below the story.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

The Collector:

When Anais Nin was in Paris, the heady days when Henry Miller was her lover, none of them were published and all they did was drink their money away and talk about literature.

 Henry made a little money from writing erotica.

Apparently, he didn't like this job, felt it reduced and demeaned his work, but he had forged a relationship with a man he only knew as “The Collector” who paid handsomely for the words. Needing money, Henry wrote, the only specifications he had were to keep the description to a minimum and stay as close to the facts of sexual congress as possible.

Anais Nin, naturally became fascinated with this collector, and offered to write for him herself. It was agreed that she would be paid the same amount for her erotica (rather astonishing when you think about the way women and men still get paid today) and so she embraced this and sent The Collector one hundred pages.

She was paid one hundred dollars for her trouble, with only one instruction: Less poetry, be specific.

She took to writing again, more when her irresponsible writer friends needed money and the result was always the same; handsome payment with the instruction, Less poetry, more specific.

Fascinated by The Collector, soon all the friends started to write, but being literary types, all of them felt hampered by the fact that they were not allowed to write anything other than the specifics of intercourse. Anais Nin joked that the dryness of the collectors work, by necessity fed the beauty of the other writing they engaged in, the work around the work, because they felt so bereft having to write about sex in such a meaningless, cold and calculated way. All of them, male and female felt the same, stripped of their humanity when writing for him, filled with the vibrancy of love and life when they wrote for themselves.

Then one day, frustrated to the point of rage, Anais Nin wrote the collector the following letter:

“Dear Collector: 

We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities.

You do not know what you are missing by your microscopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood.

If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.

How much do you lose by this periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of distinct and never-repeated wonders? No two hairs alike, but you will not let us waste words on a description of hair; no two odors, but if we expand on this you cry Cut the Poetry. No two skins with the same texture, and never the same light, temperature, shadows, never the same gesture; for a lover, when he is aroused by true love, can run the gamut of centuries of love lore. What a range, what changes of age, what variations of maturity and innocence, perversity and art...

We have sat around for hours and wondered how you look. If you have closed your senses upon silk, light color, odor, character, temperament, you must be by now completely shriveled up. There are so many minor senses, all running like tributaries into the mainstream of sex, nourishing it. Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.”

I thought that was worth repeating.  

Blogging from A - Z: Challenge April 3 C

C is for The “C” Word

When I saw The Vagina Monologues, it included a very funny monologue from a Koori (Aboriginal Australian) woman who said that the “C” word is a term of endearment in their culture. It is rarely used as an insult. She gave these sorts of examples:

“How ya goin’ ya C*? Have a good day?”

“You won the raffle at the club? Ya lucky C*”

As we were all laughing, she even included this, suggesting her people will coo over a baby and say: 

“Ohhh, look at the little C*”

All of this was tongue in cheek of course, and yet it also wasn't. She was trying to make a point that runs in conjunction with the idea that words need to be reclaimed and empowered to mean something fine, rather than derogatory. The perfect modern example of this is “Queer” - rarely is that word able to be used as derogatory any longer.

We do need to reclaim the ‘C’ word. It is not acceptable that the worst thing you can call a person is a slang word for vagina. The worst thing you can call someone, should be a misogynist, homophobic, racist a slanderer or liar. There are many words that have been reclaimed, and some that were the norm that are no longer acceptable to use. 

This is called progress. It implies beauty and delicacy of speech, choosing our words, rather than others doing it for us. It doesn't mean avoiding something distasteful, it means becoming active in its re-framing.

That night I spent at The VaginaMonologues changed the word “Cunt” for me forever. Remember, in some cultures, it is a term of endearment, and that came after the slur. We can reclaim that word, and every other that has been used to rob a person of their dignity.  

Blogging from A - Z Challenge: April 2 B

Print available to purchase From Nana Love Bondage. Click the link.

B is for Bondage

I confess, I have shared in a small amount of Bondage play. It’s tricky to work it into a marriage, especially with kids; its takes a lot of setting up and the commitment level is high. To make it really work there is research into both roles required and a level of intellectual and emotional freedom that is difficult to replicate when you have kids you are accountable for. I’m not saying its impossible, just that its a lot more work and fairly low on the priority list. 

However, the small amount of play I did indulge in was thrilling. It is a very creative form of intimacy that has varied outcomes to determine success. 
What I mean by that is, orgasm is not always the primary goal of bondage, and therefore it can be very erotic, with little pressure to feel anything. Often the external constraints are symbols to assist with “letting go” on the inside, as if the subject has a chance to feel safe, and therefore doesn't need to carry any barriers within. This was my experience, and It ended up teaching me a great deal about myself. 

For one of my favorite experiences, sensory deprivation was included, so I was unable to move, see or hear anything, left in the dark alone with the most terrifying monster of all - me. Pushed to the very edges of distress, it was when I chose to let go of my discomforts and accept that my situation was out of my hands, that I experienced the strongest results. I experienced indescribable feelings of warmth, safety, security and visions of journey’s I took that are as vivid to me now as they were then. 

It was an experience that I recommend, although I was in the hands of a person who knew very well what they were doing. Perhaps if you and your partner are feeling like a new sort of sexual adventure this year, you can consider having a bondage expert tie you together. One can only guess at the astonishing experiences that might come out of that idea. 

George Bataille

B is for Bataille

I only intended to do one post per letter of the alphabet, but it’s difficult to go past ‘B’ without adding a Georges Bataille quote, one of the original men of intellectual eros. I love the two quotes below, one from the start of the chapter and the other from the end of the same chapter. I like the idea that eroticism is silence, and I like the idea that it is close to sanctity in terms of intensity. 

Some very nice food for thought here. 

Appropriately, these two quotes are from Eroticism, part two, Chapter six:

“Erotic experience will commit us to silence. 

This is not true of an experience possibly very close to it, the experience of sanctity. The emotions felt in that experience can be expressed in a speech or form the subject of a sermon. Yet erotic experience is possibly close to sanctity.

I do not mean that eroticism and sanctity are of the same nature, and anyway that subject falls outside my scope. All I mean is that both experiences have an extreme intensity. When I speak of sanctity I am referring to the life that the presence of a sacred reality within us informs, a reality that may completely overwhelm us. Just now I shall be content to look at the emotion of sanctity on the one hand and at the emotion of eroticism on the other, in so far as each has extreme intensity. My meaning is that with these two emotions, one brings us closer to other men and the other cuts us off from them and leaves us in solitude.”

“Eroticism is silence, I have said; it is solitude. But not for people whose very presence in the world is a pure denial of silence, a chattering, a neglect of potential solitude.”

Blogging from A - Z Challenge: April 1 A

Thanks to the Apple blog for this hot image. Click on Ange to go to the site. 

A is for Apple!

The apple may appear to be a strange place to start with an A-Z of erotica for the month of April, but I chose it because I’m looking for something a little different from the norm, and also because it has become a symbol of Eros thanks to the assumptions about Eve’s seduction technique used on Adam. 

The traditional Christian story goes, the Serpent seduced Eve into taking the forbidden fruit, and then after partaking, Eve offered it to Adam, and he took if from her. This led to expulsion from the garden of Eden and sin entering the world, after all God had refused them permission to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

This image is taken from Jokes Feed blog. Click on the naughty apple to check out their site. 

The Apple bears the burden of representation for whatever fruit this was, but it’s only the beginning of the legend that has grown out of the biblical record. Because of the Church’s suspicion of female sexuality - and women in general - it has always been assumed Eve enticed the pious Adam with her worldly ways, moving away from her good role as wife, toward the shadow figure, of the whore. The serpent convinced her to stray, she consumed the fruit, and turned into something poor Adam could never resist. 

Apples have the added advantage of being red (unless they’re green, but when you see a sexy pair or red lips eating an apple it’s usually a red one) as well as shaped like the round behind of a female. The first bite is reminiscent of the ultimate straying from goodness. They shine, one of the few fruits that do, and they taste sweet and delicious. They have the added advantage of being good for you, but this is a small factor that usually gives way to the fruits darker mythologies. 

Image taken from Dave Copeland's blog. Click image to visit. 

Apples are what the student gives the teacher when they fall into that Freudian attraction we have for authority figures and they were what the ancient Greeks threw to women they intended to take as their lovers. 

In medieval England, the autumn celebration of the fermented apple included orgies supposedly to invite a bountiful harvest. 

When we fall for someone, they become the apple of our eye. 

That simple dark red fruit carries the weight of much of our erotic desire in history and story. 

For me, it was the perfect place to start an A-Z of erotica. 

Taken from the fantastic living in London blog. Click image to visit.