Sex in Stories

I was once shocked to be criticized in a writers' group for having a character (a ghost of a fifteen year old girl) talk suggestively about having sex with another girl. I was so surprised. My purpose wasn't to sexually entice anybody. The character was heterosexual, but was trying to describe, without any words for it, how violated something (non-sexual) made her feel. So she said it was like being groped by a woman, and she added a few other details.  My purpose was so at odds with the other writer's understanding, that when she said I was making unnecessary Lesbian suggestions, I had to ask, where? Because in my mind, the character was saying it repulsed her. (I want to make it clear that I have nothing against homosexuality. I just wanted to show that the character was repulsed at having another girl touch her intimately.)

This made me think about a few other issues. I'm a male, heterosexual, and I frequently write female characters. I have to be careful to be accurate enough that women readers don't put my work down in either disgust or disbelief. This might be hard to do, because even within a gender, there's a lot of variance on what's regarded as "normal," or even imaginable. Such as (and to switch genders for a second), a sex act that one hetero guy thinks is normal, and he runs in social circles where it's accepted enough. He could look completely offensive and alien to men outside his social group. I guess anal sex would be an example of this. With the female sex, it's the same way. Except I'm a male with a man's libido trying to figure this out.

The more important issue is: I must ask myself if I write a scene with sex if I'm writing it to indulge in my own pleasure. It's a serious question, especially when underage characters are involved.

The wider issue, though is you have to ask yourself sometimes how you're going to present sex in your stories. Except for characters who are medically asexual (or in sexual latency, such as children)  every person has some way of dealing, or not dealing, with sexuality.  It might not directly be in the story you're telling, but in real human beings, the libido is always there, and it's going to always exert some influence over a person.

I see absolutely no reason to avoid characters' sexuality, though I wouldn't go out of my way to get it in, either, and I especially wouldn't do that to gain readership.

Then again, if put it in, it's then my duty as a writer to make it interesting. Sex scenes are hard to write, and easy mess up. One false word and the whole thing becomes farce. 

Here's where another distinction is important: the difference between porn and any other class of writing. People say that pornography is hard to define. Bullshit. Obscenity is hard to define. Porn is easy. It's a rendered or written work that's meant or used to be a masturbatory aid. Porn is to literature what a dildo is to sculpture. Now, you could write a story with a scene that's pornographic, with the idea that the reader is going to stop after the scene for the orgasm. 

This is also difficult. Fact is, porn and story-telling don't mix well. A pornographic scene in the middle of a novel is a difficult way to advance plot and character. It's equally difficult, if not impossible, to prevent plot and character from interfering with the purpose of the porn, like a vibrator that's also an MP3 player

This is the real reason why pornographers have generally given up on trying to give their work anything but the weakest plots. I remember the days when Marlon Brando received an Oscar nomination for "Last Tango in Paris." That was back when movies tried to mix sex with plot and character. Anybody remember that movie today? It was really a big thing in 1972. It shows how well that movie succeeded.

That formula has mostly been abandoned now. It's too difficult. And if you succeed, it's still too hard to market. Sex has to be dealt within fiction, but unless you're a virtuoso, I'd stay away from anything but the most necessary sex scenes.