Here’s a chunk of a fascinating article from Litro about written erotica, and how it has become gendered – and is therefore no longer perceived as having the power to shock and corrupt in the way that visual images of sexuality do:
“…The idea of young people’s unfettered access to online porn is here presented as eclipsing numerous (unwanted?) pregnancies and even the transmission of STDs in terms of its impact upon the health of the nation. If we take cultural unease and attempts at censorship as a barometer of a text’s status as pornographic, then it would seem that the image has largely superseded the word.
This idea is to some extent reflected by the mainstream media response to theFifty Shades phenomenon; its explicit depictions of Ana Steele and Christian Grey engaging in BDSM-inflected sex are not described as porn per se, but as “mommy porn”. The introduction of this prefix mitigates and qualifies, suggesting that these written texts are not dangerous or inflammatory, but banal, acceptable, domestic. Even within a contemporary culture that loves to vaunt the supposedly radical possibilities of sexual transgression, the books fail to meet some standard of appropriately pornographic naughtiness. Of course, the “mommy porn” label may simply be meant to characterize the books’ readership – the Collins English Dictionary defines it as “a genre of erotic fiction designed to appeal to women” – but the terms also conflates ideas about gender and form. It may be that linguistic pornography is perceived as being less culturally problematic (that is to say, less pornographic) than its image-driven counterpart because it is more typically associated with an adult female audience. After all, as Jane Juffer points out in her book At Home With Pornography, “erotic fiction” has historically been particularly accessible to (and associated with) women.
Written forms of the sexually explicit are seen as being for women, whose sexuality is not perceived as posing the same kind of social problems as that of the corruptible child or the potentially violent male, and whose enjoyment is assumed to be predicated upon the pleasures of a conventional, Mills & Boon-style romance narrative. As the “mommy porn” label suggests, a woman’s desire – especially a mother’s – is not seen as predatory or transgressive, but as cosy and possibly slightly laughable. Even James’s focus on the supposedly taboo pleasures of BDSM fails to inject any sense of danger into proceedings…”
Please do read the whole article here. It’s ace.
