'Women are the Weaker Sex... in Sex' trope

This may be an old complaint in slash fandom, although it's actually been so long since those days, I don't remember the 'issues of the day', so to speak. Anyway, so I'm reading 'A Winter of Ice and Iron' by Rachel Neumeier. It's a great fantasy and m/f romance (unconventionally so) and I love the in-depth characterizations-- it's all good. It's just that it has a slash trope I find Problematic, although I must admit with some chagrin that I'm fine with it in m/m romance. Perhaps it's just so common I have become resigned?

Basically, the male main character is said to generally prefer men because they are... sturdier and he doesn't have to be so careful. He can let go, he can be rough with other men. It's funny, because the thing about Neumeier is that she generally eschews tropes and cliches, and this is definitely a cliche, at least in slash.

Ruby Dixon is one of my favorite sci-fi romance writers, one of the few whose sex scenes and romantic scenes work for me equally well, because they’re so well integrated into the overall characterization. Beyond that, I’d have thought that I’m always thinking like a writer, but I have to say it never occurred to me to literally analyze Ruby’s sex scenes. But it’s actually a really good idea, and I think that if you’re a writer who’s remotely likely to write sex, you should give this essay a read. Below is Jan O’Hara’s own summary.

Building Sexual Tension and the Sexualization Threshold

Reading this quote by Francesca Coppa on the purpose of fanfic and erotica, it's not that I disagree. Not at all. It's just... when I read a fantasy that includes romance and some sexuality, like Grace Draven's work, I remember my stance on how I do prefer romance to be slow-build and sexual, and this fits the bill. I absolutely like the careful, gradual characterization involved in slow-build romance like this, although I like there to be tension or animosity as much as friendship as a foundation. Starting with sex is a difficult proposition (although not impossible to do well by any means, as long as it's not instalove). The issue is that 'eventual sex' isn't enough for me either. The friendship needs to be built up to have satisfying romance, just like Coppa suggests. But the sex too needs build up.

The problem with Draven's books is that they have some sex but they're not sexy. The sexual tension is barely plausible. Sometimes, like with sci-fi/fantasy erotica by R. Lee Smith, the sex isn't sexy but this isn't important due to the amount of characterization and situation-specific tone that goes into each of these scenes. They're not sexy as in titillating, but they don't have to be: they're enlightening, sometimes sweet, sometimes grim, sometimes just weird. With Draven's books, there are pretty paint-by-numbers sex scenes that aren't either sexy or especially personal. This is an issue when it's original writing, rather than fanfic. With fic, you let the original work do a lot of characterization heavy lifting so that in explicit fics, you can spend a lot of time on building sexual tension. And sexual tension is no minor add-on. I think portraying it believably is way more important than the actual sex scenes. Combining it plausibly with friendship is a major feat. It generally takes more than one book in a series, or a pretty long story, at the very least.

In my opinion, sexual tension is a huge part of the draw for erotica of any kind, just like romantic tension is a major factor in the appeal of romance. One reason why I admire good fanfic is that I think using most established friendship as a source is difficult, especially if you're hoping to be in character. It's definitely not easier than an original work that starts with romantic/sexual tension, and it might well be considered harder. The thing is, good sexual tension isn't something that comes late in a relationship (in most cases), though it can be pretty subtle at first. It always exists between two people in a way friendship doesn't, but it doesn't prevent the slow build of self-awareness and an actual relationship. It's just a delicate balance.

In Draven's work, you can see she actually tries to do this: the sexual tension is gestured at, more or less. But it's not actually *there*. One reason it's so tricky is that while you can simply sit down and write a sex scene, sexual tension pervades every interaction between the characters in some small way. And it can be subtle (at least at first) or very overt, as long as it's *palpable*. It's very obvious (at least to me) if the writer doesn't feel the heat, so to speak. And it's very obvious if they do, even if no sexual innuendo or overt arousal occurs. To be clear, a man having a hard-on or a woman blushing and staring at his eyes or mouth is not necessarily 'sexual tension'. Even less so, lots of references to the extreme attractiveness of the other person. Good banter, on the other hand, is frequently all that's needed.

Good banter is hard. One of the reasons fanfic of noncanon couples succeeds for me even though I'm a canon-whore is that a lot of times, the source material includes well-written, bantery dialogue. You can probably ship every other character with each other in Marvel or on Buffy at least partly for this reason. This was definitely true in S1-2 of BBC Sherlock, at least for me: it's not that they were such close friends and fic could use that. It's that they *weren't*. There was tons of tension involved in that relationship, both bantering and not. Combined with their obvious (if conflicted) attachment, this created all that's necessary to make a romantic relationship plausible. Once their relationship truly settled into comfortable, close friendship, IMO some mild romantic potential remains but the sexual tension would be gone.

It's perhaps hard to explain properly what a friendship that doesn't lend itself to sexual romance is truly like, which is why I mention Grace Draven. I knew it when I saw it, particularly so because this is m/f friendship (in a romance genre work) and my brain should have a low threshold for accepting sexualization in this context. And yet, her couples seem platonic to me.

I'm not sure this perception is common. A lot of people in fandom seem to have a very, very low sexualization threshold (especially for their preferred couples). Outside fandom, lots of readers seem content with using the heteronormative attraction presumption more broadly and easily than me, judging by the comments on Draven's book, at least. I did find one Amazon commenter who said they found the sexual tension to be implausible, though they said this was due to some of the description or nature of the characters and their situation rather than the writing itself. I'm a lot more open to a whole lot of different situations and contexts leading to attraction. But the writing has to sell it for me. Grace Draven is a good writer, who is very good at characterization overall (which is what makes her a good example of this specific flaw). She is just not very good at selling sexual tension. It may or may not be related to her average skills at snappy dialogue. There are definitely other ways to build sexual tension, but not a lot that coexist with slow build romances based on friendship first.

Anyway, ordinary friendship is definitely not enough for me if the relationship is going to be romantic. That's probably partly why I'm not a huge fan of Hallmark movies. They tend to have a relatively slow build, but the tension is low; sexual tension is extra extra low. Of course, the portrayal of sexual tension and attraction in general is different in film. It's partly about dialogue, but it's also just the actors and their chemistry and even personal charisma. A truly charismatic, sparkling actor-- especially a pair-- can overcome or strongly enhance the platonic tension or lack thereof in the script and create something unnameable and perhaps ineffable but undeniably romantic.

The Romance ‘Missing Scene’

I really don’t want to complain, not least because it won’t do any good, and also because I’ve actually addressed this before. Nevertheless, I wanted to explore why I feel so cheated and irritated when romance novels (fanfic or not) that focus entirely on the couple getting together don’t include the sex and merely refer to it happening.

Part of it must be that I’m spoiled by now, or maybe a simple desire for more titillation, but the world (and the Internet) is full of things to titillate you. Nor am I necessarily titillated by many (or even the majority) of sex scenes, which are often not that well-written even in otherwise well-written books. When a writer is painting by numbers and not imaginative or interested in the scene, it certainly shows, so you may (and people have) argued we should all be glad to be spared from more awkward and unfortunate attempts at sex scenes. And I’ll admit I’m most acutely or personally disappointed if I really like the writing otherwise, and would look forward to seeing the characters in an intense, intimate moment because I trust the author. However, I’m always vaguely irritated by the kind of sex scene fade-out that clearly was important to the relationship and was not just another lay.

On the one hand, I certainly understand that writer's perspective. On the other hand, I have two objections: one, this implies that sex scenes are a unique and different sort of scene, one that you don’t really have to improve at, unlike action scenes (which many people also aren’t naturally good at, but work to improve). Two, this further implies that sex scenes aren’t necessary. Even when they’re important to the characters, they’re not important to the readers. They’re treated almost like the sort of fade-out you may get when a character goes to the bathroom, where either one ignores it altogether or it’s barely mentioned. After all, one pee is much like another. On the other hand, no one ever had an emotional breakthrough that way, precisely, although I think stories underestimate how many emotional breakthroughs do happen on the toilet as well as in the shower (though that’s neither here nor there). Anyway, my point is that sex is not like peeing, or even like eating good food. To say (or imply) ‘they had a great night of sex’ is not equivalent to saying ‘they had a great dinner out at the Mexican restaurant’, not in a story about a relationship rather than a casual hook-up.

Part of it is probably that good writers are still human, and they have hang-ups about sex and/or writing sex. It’s not like I don’t understand that. There’s certainly no rule that one has to write about it in any detail. Still, to dismiss it is to leave holes in the romantic dynamic of the characters. Of course, these holes may be filled more or less easily by the readers. As a reader, I’m usually more than happy to fill in the blanks, and I think that’s part of the joy of reading: using one’s brain, one’s own imagination. At the same time, like I said, I feel cheated. I feel like a romance novel and/or any story that’s focused on a romantic relationship has the goal of a close focus on all the major aspects of the central dynamic. That sort of close attention to the emotional interplay is the main draw for me as a reader. And you can’t talk about romantic emotional interplay without talking in some detail about sexual interplay, at least in a sexual relationship. 

The sexual dynamic shifts and is shifted by the emotional dynamic. They aren’t separate, and the mess of feelings are ultimately too internal and too central to be guessed at and implied, in my opinion. The end result is that there’s an artificial limit being set to the readers’ level of insight into all the details of the characters’ dynamic. It’s a sort of privacy barrier that’s intolerable when you become so deeply intimately acquainted and bonded with the characters’ inner lives.

In a romance novel, I expect and require absolute intimacy with the characters in a way I wouldn’t in a mystery, say. You really can’t construct some ‘privacy’ with the POV character of  romance in a satisfying manner, at least for me. Sometimes the interest becomes prurient, and so the argument is muddled. But there are ways to write about  sex in less than explicit detail that nevertheless portrays the important dynamics. I’m just talking about the fade to black in the beginning or in the middle. The way that’s presented invariably makes me feel like it’s a bout of satisfying exercise, and yet it’s simultaneously presented as important. Sometimes there’s a fade out and the sex isn’t that important; you get the sense that it was nice, but nothing really changed emotionally. Nothing happened except an outlet for some sexual tension. And that may or may not be realistic, but in the context of a romance, it’s just very hard to believe. 

I think I wouldn’t be that happy if I got the sex scene but it was pure porn, badly written or not. In fact, what bothers me is the implication that this is the only thing that the missing scene would entail. That wouldn’t make me any more satisfied with the book as a whole. What I generally want is the emotional context, the interplay. Not everyone writes sex scenes with that kind of weight or intensity, and to be honest, a lot of times it is overly drawn out to be romanticized and titillating wish-fulfillment. Sometimes it’s mind-numbingly predictable or vapid. Bad writing comes in many forms, and in many ways you could argue this is certainly more problematic than a missing scene. Like I said, the missing scene issue only really bugs me when I’m already enjoying the love story otherwise. When I’m really enjoying a certain couple, I can’t help but need to know all the juicy details. In the end, it’s hard to see a good reason why that’s a bad idea and easy to see why it would only work to support and improve the story, even if I understand that anything from the writer’s disinterest to lack of experience or aptitude may be responsible.

LGBT Romance Gender Roles and the female gaze

Since I'm on a paranormal romance kick (Nalini Singh is only the tip of the iceberg), it's become clear to me just why I prefer LGBT romance in many ways. Why my current fixation is temporary, and I'll come back to slash, BL manga, and/or gay romance in the end. Basically, male characters are important to me, and I've gotten spoiled in the way they're so much more real in a gay romance or slash fanfic, even with all the romanticizing that goes on. One example is the internal dialogue you typically get in a male POV attraction to a woman as opposed to another man. You'd think there would be a variety, and there is, but there's also a lot of consistency in theme, and certainly common elements. In paranormal or contemporary romance, the heterosexual man mainly shows his sexual attraction to the woman two ways: he wants to touch her to please her and make her happy, or he wants to touch her to claim or 'own' her body, exert his dominance. These motivations would also exist in a gay male character in LGBT romance fiction, but there's a strong current of attraction meaning he himself wants to be touched. For his own sake. For its own sake.

It seems almost too simple, but I've read a whole lot of contemporary and paranormal romance at this point, and I can't recall the last time there was anything that genuinely focused on male desire that wasn't implicitly filtered through the woman's needs and desires, even just a wanking session, for example. Simply focusing on the male perspective certainly happens, though it's not as common as it could be. That's when you already have a book with the male love interest's POV. But yeah, depiction of internal desire to the point of masturbation, say, isn't such a high bar. What's different in LGBT romance novels is the content and framing of any fantasy or reference to male desire. In a queer male character, you'd often get fantasies about being touched, being desired or perceived as an object of lust, even if it's a top or alpha character of the same sort as the typical het romance hero. He's allowed these fantasies and desires in LGBT fiction. His body is an object of exploration as much as his partner's. In heterosexual romance, the man relentlessly sees the woman as the object, while the woman's object of desire is him. However, the text's treatment of desire is inevitably different.

The 'progressive' or modern aspect is that the woman also lusts after and objectifies the man's body, normally. The thing is that no matter how much the text also objectifies the male body in relation to the woman (which seems like progress), the female gaze ultimately becomes as limiting and oppressive as the male version. What I'm ultimately arguing about is the same thing that the male gaze used to do to female desire in male-written romance.

In a paranormal or contemporary romance, almost every time, there's a sense that the woman is doing the man a favor by giving him oral sex in the books I've read, for example. This is even when the female character is super excited and enthusiastic. My point is that there's a textual awareness that she didn't have to, and it's a bonus. Meanwhile, the man's desire to happily offer her oral satisfaction is presented contextually as a sign of what a man should be. This is explicitly presented as being what makes him sexy: this fixation on pleasing her, this knowledge how to treat her body right. Conversely, in a gay relationship, it's simply that both people are great at sucking each other off and are dying to both give and receive. The pleasure is simply shown to be mutual and there's no sense of one having to be grateful or needing a reward. And further, it's okay for either man to just want to be serviced, whereas in a heterosexual narrative, that's only okay for the woman. If a man gets serviced and is happy with it without always needing to reciprocate, usually it's a sign there's something wrong with the character or the relationship (or both). Needless to say, it's perfectly fine and healthy for the woman to just be happy being sexually serviced, and indeed this is often described as what makes a good man happiest.

It's weird to fixate on how I feel like gay romances have more enjoyable dynamics for me because of the men's increased selfishness, but it's really true. To me, it's ultimately about a male character being more genuine and having a believable interiority rather than selfishness, of course. I don't actually think of it as selfishness, and it's certainly not generally portrayed that way in a gay romance. It's just the natural course of desire. It's simply that in a heterosexual romance, the natural attitude would be portrayed as selfishness, or understood as the attitude of an immature man or a womanizer who hasn't been broken in yet. The same man who's being passionate (or at least hormonal) in a gay romance would suddenly be a bad lover-- or worse, not manly or alpha enough-- in a straight one.

In the end, I suppose it comes down to gender roles and dynamics. Not surprising. Taken in non-sexual contexts, plenty of heterosexual romances seem organic and believable as well as desirable to me, as plenty of writers consciously resist gender roles, at least for women. Certainly the female authors I often read. This seems to become complicated once female bodies are sexualized. Once you introduce a sexual component... suddenly the treatment of women feels like a trap. I feel like I'm supposed to feel good that this super cool man is only dying to please and possess the woman he loves, but I just... I feel so tired of the way vulnerability is only ever emotional. The man is plenty vulnerable to the woman he's in love with in a romance, generally, but his body is in control 95% of the time. Because that's how he proves his devotion. By holding back and controlling his strength and putting her sexual needs first even if it near kills him. And ultimately, I just think it's suffocating and it gets boring to me in the end. I do think that sort of alpha behavior is also relatively common in LGBT romance, but it's not as loaded when there's no sense of expectation implicitly based on gender.

Sometimes there's less of the alpha crap than others, particularly with a well-written male POV, of course. There's certainly plenty of pining and loving descriptions of endless hard-ons out there, to say the least. But a queer man may fantasize about a lover's helping hand or willing mouth, may actually dwell purely in his body without holding back or thinking of the other person. A queer man, in other words, may actually act like a normal man. A straight man must act like a woman's fantasy of a man to be romantically/sexually attractive. This is true even though a lot of women write LGBT romance, to the point of it possibly being mostly women, for the simple reason that women generally predominate within romance writing.

Anyway, to be fair, I did read about a woman giving her lover a handjob and he came while she didn't... although this was just the once, and he may be excused because he literally hadn't had sex for a thousand years at that point. Would he fantasize about that scenario, though? In a gay romance, he would. Of course he would. He'd have wanked himself raw and we would know it. Sometimes, again, het romance would go that far-- the straight guy aches and pines and it's sexual-- but he wouldn't be masturbating over his own satisfaction. He's too much of a fantasy for that. And ultimately, that's not enough for me by far, not after I've experienced actual believable male characters. The way male leads in heterosexual romance explicitly perform masculinity for the female gaze is just tiring to me.

the smut meta-narrative issue

Every time I come across a certain icy sex-god Sherlock characterization in fanfic (where naturally he’s a top because he’s always in control), I remember the argument that says correlating sexual behavior with characterization is invalid. I have found this is a bit odd, especially while reading an author’s note to the effect that John was a natural bottom because he’s stoic, which made him well-suited for sexual submissiveness (in real life, was the implication). I thought this was ironic, because this type of thinking gets strongly argued against in metas that probably share that assessment of John. The fact is, this wasn’t a meta argument, though it was *also* articulated directly by the author in this case (which makes this fic a valuable artifact for study to me, haha). This fic would exist regardless of any arguments *while* it also represents them: that’s the kicker. The connection between characterization and sexual preferences being false generally depends on ‘real life’ based arguments. However, I’m more interested in talking about sex-writing as *writing*, where I find that the logic changes.

Basically, in writing, everything is related to everything else. Why? Because it has been purposely created by a human being, in order to produce a certain effect on the readers or gather certain results from the characters. And anytime I read a smutty fanfic (especially given it uses recognizable fanon characterizations or tropes, like smooth icy Sherlock),  I can generally tell what the writer’s goal or desired effect is. This is natural and good: that’s how writing works. However, that effect generally has multiple levels, even in a PWP, since the readers are invested in the characters and sexual politics in general are a sensitive area, as far as one’s values or philosophy would go.

It may be hard to explain, but the difference between my responses to the sexual dynamics in fanfic is often due to the perceived underlying philosophy (or meta-narrative) in the work than anything else. I think that a lot of the frustration in discussions around this topic is because this *is* subtext, which means some fans won’t see it, or will simply read their own headcanons into the text(s). I’d even say that this is the path to greatest satisfaction: as a reader of such a great variety of fanon characterizations, one either learns to project one’s own headcanons and/or smooth the bumps with suspended disbelief, or one spends a lot of time deconstructing the author’s intentions as one reads. 

Needless to say, I’m the type who deconstructs the author’s intentions and estimates their overall characterization, even if it’s a PWP. It’s so rare that a penis is ‘just a penis’ once one is sensitized to fanon tropes and shorthand, as well as subtext. It’s always an implicit essay on gender dynamics, sexual needs, power issues, etc., whether or not one’s looking for these things, just because of the way writing works, especially less polished and experienced or ‘subtle’ prose meant just for kink value. Not being polished means more opportunities for raw data about the writer’s viewpoint, in this context, so the subtext becomes really obvious once you know where to look. The tags and author’s notes will often help, in my experience, stating the author’s sexual politics and characterization ideas, if generally less bluntly than the fic I initially referenced. My point is that generally speaking, fanfic has a more explicit ‘meta-narrative’ element than other types of erotica or writing. 

Overall, it’s hard not to get the feel for subtext, when it comes to reading, even porn. Or perhaps especially porn, which is the place the writers’ Id-driven fantasies are most often given free reign. I mean, well, I’m not a Freudian by nature, but if there’s one thing Freud would have used most gleefully, it’s probably his patients’ written porn fantasies. The more one sees canon characterization being bent in a consistent angle in justification of a given sexual dynamic, acquiring a flavor, the more that flavor seems reflective of *intent*. That characterization ‘angle’ exists perhaps most purely in fics with large degrees of explicit content, since there’s no plot to distract the reader.

That is to say, it’s not that *real-life* sexual dynamics have anything to do with one’s character. However, in fanfic, because it is an artificial construct where any sexual dynamic is constructed from the ground up (especially blatant in PWPs), as I said, the logic is different. I will add this is particularly relevant to less well-written stories, where there’s not a lot of complexity to the characterization, so there’s a sense the writer’s engaging with whatever fanon stereotypes they personally like the best. It’s not easy to prove that one can differentiate between smutty fanfic and personal fantasy that simply uses fictional characters, and I’m not saying one there’s a hard line between the two, but a difference does become ever-clearer with time. I don’t think it’s very stark unless the fic is by an inexperienced writer, but I think those fics are instructive in the sense of how characterization generally functions with any smutfic that borrows heavily from fanon. More polished fics with the same general fanon simply obscure the goals being worked for through the characterization, but a critical reader (that is, a reader who’s not working with the story) will still notice that ‘push’ from the angle being worked to justify the sexual dynamics.

I don’t mean to make value judgments, but to say that I *notice* value judgments and preferences being served through fiction, including fanfiction about sexual fantasies. For example, the ideas about the role of the submissive partner (a stand-in for the female role, in many ways) are probably the clearest. One can, theoretically, write the submissive partner in many ways— both John and Sherlock are rich characters that support a variety of satisfyingly diverse interpretations. So I think it means something when there’s a projection of the smooth, cruel top (who’s always in control) and an emotionally vulnerable, sensitive (if stoic and/or practical-minded) bottom who’s almost always more closely rendered. The bottom tends to be insecure and long-suffering, needing reassurance but wanting a rough hand— and this dynamic exists in multiple fandoms, regardless of the character. There is actually a similarity between how top Sherlock and top John are portrayed in the less sophisticated PWP fics, in my experience. The difference is really that there’s an inherent conflict to work through in portraying Sherlock as ‘the bottom’ in the context of romantic tropes (since he’s obviously self-confident and competent while also being socially unpopular), which offers a different, somewhat more nuanced dynamic even at the base level. In general, inner conflict drives character development. Thus, this version of Sherlock allows dynamic meta-narratives to develop more easily. If John is the one who’s insecure but needs a ‘rough hand’, there’s not a lot of room to show Sherlock’s vulnerability (or anything but his smoothly dominant persona), especially in a PWP, so the character flattens in general.

I tried to describe the fanon trends I see neutrally, but the fact that there are these meta-narratives means that people will often react strongly to one dynamic or the other, and not just in terms of ‘porn preference’. The closest I can come to explaining it is that top!Sherlock (much more than top!John) is frequently part of the fanon where the dominant partner is controlling both inside and outside the bedroom, while offering little or no emotional feedback or vulnerability. This is a masculine stereotype that some women (including myself) tend to find harmful or problematic, more obviously shown by the response to 50 Shades of Grey. Sherlock doesn’t *always* act like that sort of abusive top, but the character type is frequently not far off as a trope, or the meta-narrative being evoked. Christian Grey is not unique. With John, it’s a lot harder to make him controlling the same way, since Sherlock clearly has the upper hand during cases: he’s the ‘commander’. This means that the majority of fics with this dynamic, even PWPs, inevitably play with this duality in at least some fashion. With top!Sherlock, there’s *room* for nuance, but no *necessity* for it, so oftentimes nuance is not there and all one sees is absolute dominance and submission as the meta-narrative. This is particularly visible, as I said, to readers who’re already resisting the fic and reading it critically.

Basically, fanfic smutfics are frequently engaging with cultural meta-narratives of control that are very tied in with gender politics. When the partner playing the ‘male role’ in sex also behaves in a stereotypically dominant or unemotional manner outside of the bedroom, that’s evoking a long-standing narrative of masculinity in fanon, but also in our culture in general. It’s this narrative of masculinity that people see and react to in porn. And I do think that most people who think critically about fiction will agree that gender politics (and the attendant narratives of power) play a big role in sexuality. Slashers like to think slash escapes the gender wars, but anytime there is a top and a bottom, essentially the ‘man’ and the ‘woman’ become part of the meta-narrative level.