Topic "The Relevance of Sex in Literature in 2011" join my guest Kira Morgana

The Relevance of Sex in Literature in 2011

A Parent / Teacher Perspective.

By Kira Morgana

Before I start into this article, I want you to think about a few questions.

· Do you remember the first book you read with sex in it?

· How old were you?

· How did it make you feel physically?

· What sorts of emotions did the sex scenes evoke?

Don’t answer them straight away, just mull them over, let them percolate in your mind and we’ll come back to them later.

As a Teacher, I have to shoulder the burden of teaching Sex Ed. In the UK, most schools amalgamate the subject into PSE (Personal and Social Education) and often it’s skipped over with only a couple of lessons wholly devoted to Sex Ed. In some schools, like many faith schools, sex is only taught as part of the reproductive cycle in Science.

Don’t get me wrong, there are schools that take it seriously and have a separate class for it. These good schools are often oversubscribed…

Therefore, when the teenage pregnancy rate grows, Teachers get a lot of the flack for not teaching the subject properly. Now, you can breathe easily, I’m not going to rant about how teachers are undervalued and underpaid, etc. etc. etc… I just wanted to give you a flavour of how Sex Ed is seen in schools.

Some kids learn about sex from magazines, others watch TV shows or movies that include it as part of the storyline and still others manage to get access to inappropriate sites on the internet. The information that they learn filters down through the grapevine of school and socialising, spawning the usual misinformation and rumours that fills many schoolteacher’s hearts with Lead when they start the Sex Ed lessons.

I’m not just a Teacher though. I am a parent with two young children. The oldest, my son, is ten (almost eleven) and he is obviously starting puberty. He is also trying very hard not to notice girls and is starting to become curious about Sex, which is one of the reason’s I decided to take this particular slant on the title subject.

I know that many parents are squeamish about talking about Sex with their children. I know it fills me with a certain sense of dread when I think about doing it. However, I am a firm believer in the theory that a lot of nonsense and misinformation can be averted through having a good “Birds & Bees” talk with my children when they get to that age. It also builds a good relationship with your children when you do this, so they won’t be worried about asking you questions on difficult subjects.

The problem about not taking this kind of view is that if you don’t talk to your children about Sex, they’ll get more of their information from unsuitable sources.

What am I going on about?

Porn.

Now there is nothing wrong with Porn. It serves a purpose and a need. Nevertheless, it’s about titillation not education and can give the inquisitive teen a distorted view of what Sex is about. Porn says that Sex is about pleasure and that pleasure can be accomplished with a few minutes of licking, sucking, squirming, and penetration of various orifices in various positions.

Now you and I (as adults) know that Sex is more than that. However, remind yourself of your teenage years for a moment. Close your eyes and take yourself back to that point in time before you lost your virginity…

Stop sniggering at the back there and behave yourselves!

If you were anything like me, you didn’t know what Sex was about. In my school, we didn’t have Sex Ed. Classes and anything that was even rumoured to have sex in was a banned substance. So there was a lot of mystery surrounding the subject.

It also meant that when you managed to get your hands on something that did have sex in, you held on to it.

Just to clarify for those who are reading this and may be younger than I… We did not have the INTERNET. We only had VHS and CD’s had only just been invented when I hit Middle School.

For boys, Porn was the best route and I have it on best authority (i.e.: from several old boyfriends) that porn mags were handed from boy to boy until they started to fall apart. The older boys might even be able to buy Porn Videos. Boys were supposed to know about sex and while it might have been frowned upon to watch it or read it openly, they got the “boys will be boys” look and shrug.

Girls however, were supposed to be sweet and innocent. We were not supposed to be interested in Sex at all, until we met the right man and got married. Then it was up to our husbands to teach us…

*Snorts*

Hah! In practise, that view meant we girls often had to look elsewhere for information. Girls magazines at the time were kept sweet and innocent. The raciest it got between the pages of Jackie was agony aunts answering questions about kissing and periods. If you were allowed to buy Just Seventeen, there may have been photo stories about heavy petting… I don’t know if there were, by the way, I was buying Top of the Pops at that point.

Many girls would borrow their mum’s Jilly Cooper, Catherine Cookson or Danielle Steel books and thumb through those, making sure they weren’t caught reading them.

Then came Judy Blume and the Children’s Book world was turned upside down. Finally, girls had somewhere to turn to, to find out about sex. Moreover, it was legal and you didn’t have to hide it from your mum. Well, until there was a mass up roar about it in Parentland and a lot of the County Libraries and School Libraries were forced to withdraw her books from their shelves.

Why? Well this excerpt from a Wikipedia Article on the book explains why -

The book is often cited as controversial because of Blume's use of suggestive language, the detailed depiction of sexual intercourse, and because her character Katherine goes on the pill. Criticism of the novel often comes from sexual abstinence groups, as well as religious groups who consider the use of 'the pill' unsuitable for Blume's teenage audience.

Katherine and Michael discuss their feelings carefully before deciding to have sex; when they finally have it, they talk about it thoroughly and obtain contraception from a family planning clinic.

"Judy Blume, an author of books for young readers, caused a scandal in 1975 with Forever... (1975), which is commonly considered the first YA book to deal with teen love and teen pregnancy. Although Bradbury Press infuriated Blume by advertising the book as Blume's first adult book, Forever... is a Young Adult novel; it soon made its way into the teen audience, and is now being read by some preteens. ”

Judy Blume considers this book to have had one "odd and lasting side-effect of its popularity"; the decline in the popularity of the name Ralph. Throughout the book, Michael consistently refers to his penis as "Ralph", and the subsequent generation who grew up reading Forever seemed unwilling to consider it as a suitable name for their children. Blume responded to several concerned Ralphs with "I apologize to all of them. It's nothing personal."

Taken from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever..._(novel)

Ahem – you can stop imagining being a teenager now and think about the answers to those questions now…

My first exposure to sex in a book was a copy of Skinhead by Richard Allen. I borrowed it from my mum when I was thirteen. The MC was male and it was set in the late sixties / early seventies, so it wasn’t the best of introductions to sex for a girl.

AGGRO - That’s what Joe Hawkins and his mates were looking for, with their shaven heads, big boots and braces. Football matches, pub brawls, open-air pop concerts, hippies and Hell’s Angels all gave them chances to vent their sadistic violence. SKINHEAD is a story straight from today’s headlines - portraying with horrifying vividness all the terror and brutality that has become the trademark of these vicious teenage malcontents

Taken from Dangerous Minds.Net - http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/richard_allens_skinhead_chronicles_oi/

The scenes were crude and in some cases violent and for a while, it put me right off the idea of letting a man touch me like that. It made me feel sick, but strangely tingly in various places that I didn’t know could tingle.

It fascinated me and I took it into school to show my friends. I narrowly missed getting a detention, when a teacher came into the library and spotted us reading it.

Thankfully, it was one of my younger, more broadminded teachers and he told me to put it away. I was that embarrassed at being caught by my teacher that I never read it again.

A couple of years later, a friend gave my mum a large box of books. They were mostly Mills & Boon type romances and as I was fifteen, mum said I could read them. I’d been reading James Michener and Robert Heinlein at school, so I knew what a good book should read like, but the M&B ones made me laugh; the language was so over the top!

One of the books I picked up was Jilly Cooper’s Riders. I think I read that book three or four times. The sex in Riders was a lot more emotional in content and through reading that and various other of the racier romance novels in the box; I got the idea that sex was supposed to be fun. I also realised that the characters having the sex were emotionally involved in various ways. That it wasn’t to do with the wham, bam portrayal I’d seen in the porn my male friends collected.

Yes, I embarrassed my male friends by watching their porn. I think they thought they’d get something out of letting me watch it, but I wasn’t that stupid.

Shall I get to my point now? Why yes, I think I shall…

And this is where Sex in Literature can actually help our children.

Think about the sex scenes you’ve read in books. Think about the first sex scenes that you came across in books when you were a teenager. Think about the world we live in today, the prevalence of sex in TV Shows and movies, in the sexualisation of the magazines that are aimed at teenagers, the music videos put together for their favourite stars and the easy access to porn through the internet.

Think about all that.

Now think. Where would you rather our young people learned about one of the joys of being an adult?

There should be picture books about the differences between boys and girls for the younger children.

There need to be books that explain the emotions that come with puberty in a gentle, yet informative way.

Sensitively written YA books highlighting the joys and the dangers of sex should be on our School Library bookshelves. Not just books about the mechanics of reproduction.

All of these things need to be addressed in our literature.

Why?

Well, because our children and our grandchildren, and their children deserve to learn about growing up in a way that isn’t going to scar their emotional and mental development.

So that they grow up as well rounded adults that enjoy the pleasure that Sex can bring, without the hang ups and the fears caused by the mishandling of those delicate issues.

If children can turn to literature and parents can answer the questions raised by turning to a book, then it has to be better than the children misinforming themselves through other means.

It would also make the Teacher’s working life a lot easier – they can study the books in class, give them out as reading projects without being scared that they are going to be censured for it.

What do you think?

Please join in the discussion with my guest, ask questions and offer your thoughts in the comment section below.

Topic..."The Relevance of Sex in Literature," Join my Guest JD REVENE.

Hello and welcome to author J D Revene...my first Guest Blogger in the month long discussion of "The Relevance of Sex in Literature in 2011"

These posts are open to discussion.

What are your thoughts on the topic? What feedback would you like to give on the article?

The Relevance of Sex to Literature in 2011: JD Revene a personal perspective

Introduction

When Sooz asked me to write a post about sex and literature I jumped at the chance. You see, I don't consider myself a writer of erotica, I just happen to have written one work that has significant—and explicit—sexual content, but when Harper Collins reviewed that work-in-progress, Appetites, in late 2010 their review included the comments:

I feel that ‘Appetites’ is a little confused about what sort of book it wants to be. It’s not straightforward erotica as the sexual scenes are unromanticised and often unflinchingly honest. In other words, they are more sordid than arousing . . .

and:

The main thing you need to do is decide what you want your book to be, not least because it would present a publisher with considerable problems as to how to market it in its current form.

And so the issue is one dear to my heart.

It seems to me that there are two questions tied up in Sooz’s prompt for this post: first, what is the relevance of sex to literature; and second, how, if at all, has this changed in recent times. I shall consider each in turn.

Everybody’s doing it

Funny how sex always attracts attention. Consider how—at least here in Australia—American Pyscho (1991) is sold in cling wrap, whilst Red Dragon (1981) is freely available. Here we have two protagonists who are both psychopathic killers, but it seems that the sexual aspects of the former makes it more threatening than the latter.

After reading my review, academic, author, publisher and literary thinker Dan Holloway (check out his website here) made some interesting posts about transgressive fiction—American Pyscho is an example—which according to Michael Silverblatt, as quoted in Wikipedia :

graphically explores such topics as incest and other aberrant sexual practices, mutilation, the sprouting of sexual organs in various places on the human body, urban violence and violence against women, drug use, and highly dysfunctional family relationships

It and the related genre of blank fiction have been around since the 70s, though its roots can be traced much further back. ^[1]

In fact, sex in literature is nothing new (that's right folks, we didn't invent it). Whilst the bible may have been the first work off Guttenberg’s press I wouldn’t mind betting it was quickly followed by some piece of smut—and, just quietly, even the bible contained the odd bit of nooky. Erotic verses have survived from ancient Greek and Roman times and the genre is represented throughout the history of literature, even Shakespeare wrote a poem or two that could be considered erotic, see for example Venus and Adonis .

There are any number of reasons that writers may include sex scenes in their work. The aim may be to titillate, to shock, to educate, to amuse or to realistically reflect life.

It is that reflection of life that most interests me, as a reader and a writer, though each has its place. I’m a fan of what has been coined Dirty Realism, where the focus is on unexceptional characters and the seamier or more mundane aspects of ordinary life (See Wikipedia for a little more on this). And, let’s face it, sex is a part of our mundane lives. To exclude it from consideration results in a depiction of the world that simply is not true to life.

Of course, the writer's intention and the readers experience may not be aligned. I remember as a child sneaking Mantissa off my parents' book shelf for night-time reading; I'm not sure titillation was John Fowles intention. And there were scenes in Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal that were more riveting—and puzzling—to a young teen reader than any surreptitiously obtained copies of Mayfair magazines.

For me sex is relevant to literature to the extent that a work requires it, no more, no less. One might as well ask: what is the relevance of car chases or ‘deep and meaningfuls’. None of these are mandatory, but none should be forbidden and none should attract particular attention for any reason other the quality of the writing. Like all other action sex in literature should serve to advance plot or develop character. I’d advise all writers who include sex in their work need to exercise caution, if only to avoid the bad sex writing awards. Those interested in writing sex scenes could do a lot worse than getting their hands on a copy of Elizabeth Benedict’s The Joy of Writing Sex, one of the best books on writing I have read.

Wherever my adult work is displayed I make sure that it is marked as adult and that the sexually explicit content is noted. When I was pursuing the pot of gold at the end of Authonomy's rainbow that is an ED review I guided readers uncomfortable with sexual content to chapters of the work that were PG (well G anyway). Of course, there is always a danger that warning of adult only content will serve to attract younger readers rather than discourage them.

I believe strongly that there should be no prescriptive dictums as to what is or is not relevant to literature or any other field of the arts and that, as writers, we should all resist any attempt to tell us what we can and can't include in our writing. However, I also believe that rights imply responsibilities: I will defend any writer's right of free expression, but I also hold that we each have a responsibility to do our best not to cause harm, which must affect how we exercise our rights.

The times they are a changing (or are they)

So what of the second question, what’s the state of play in 2011? Realism and the impetous for more honest consideration of sex in literature is certainly not new, this is a movement dating back at least as far as the nineteenth century. And we’re long past the obscenity scandals of works such as Tropic of Capricorn or Lady Chatterley’s Gardener. So what has changed in the early twenty-first century?

One often hears that Gen Y have shorter concentration spans and higher thresholds to being shocked and we are told that society has become more permissive, but is this true?

If I compare 1985s Less Than Zero with 2010s Imperial Bedrooms, it seems to me that the former is more reflective of fragmented attention and self-conscious angst than the latter. Of course that may simply reflect Brett Easton Ellis’s own maturation, but I see little to suggest that readers today are any less capable of following an intricate narrative than those of yesteryear.

It may be true that what once shocked now seems tame—anyone read Madame Bovary recently?—but the fact remains that there are those who continue to object vociferously to any mention of the act.

At the recent Sydney Writers’ Festival there was some considerable controversy regarding pornography. And it seems to me that many don't differentiate between pornography and erotica or even passing mention of sex: it's all tarred with the same brush. There have been similar signs of rising conservatism in other fields of the arts, for example photography where a 2008 Sydney display of the work of Bill Henson generated much media attention, if not hysteria. I fear that rather than living in more permissive times, the baby-boomers’ Iiberalism is being challenged by a new conservatism.

It is interesting that this is an area where elements of the feminist left are united with the Christian right. Men who write about sex risk being accused not only of moral interpitude, but also of objectifying women.

And yet, off course, explicit literature is not only produced by men. From The Delta of Venus to The Bride Stripped Bare women too are writing about sex. I spoke earlier of transgressive and blank fiction, genres dominated by men, but it strikes me that Nikki Gemmel's sex scenes ares more explicit than those of Ellis, Palahniuk or Houellebecq, and more real. And the same applies in popular fiction: boys, I’ve got to tell you the sex scenes in chick-lit are way hotter than anything I’ve seen in the crime and thriller genres—try pretty much anything by Marian Keyes, you’ll be surprised. Interestingly, lad lit (I'm thinking Nick Hornby or Tony Parsons) seems to have much less sexual content.

There is, I think, a tendency for us all to believe that we live in times of particular significance—that we are in some way different from all who have gone before us. I’m not convinced. Throughout the history of publishing there have been works that have challenged the conventions of the time and there have always counter movements decrying the erosion of morals standards: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Have you finished yet

It seems to me that writing about sex—now or at any other time—is dangerous, but then the same could be said of politics or religion (and I’ve probably sinned in both those areas in this post). However, if the job of literature is expose the truth, then that’s always a dangerous exercise.

With regard to my own work-in-progress, I’ve taken Harper Collins advice on board, to a degree; there’s less sex and I’ve worked on character development (though a certain distance is deliberate, after all it worked for Camus) but there remain explicit scenes—though I hope that they are honest and serve to advance the story.

It is my intention as a writer to be confronting and I make no apology for that.

[1] For those interested in finding out more about transgressive fiction and other anti-establishment literary movements I recommend the paper Postmodern Nihilism: Theory and Literature

JD Revene is an Anglo-Australian writer. His style is minimalist. You can find the first five chapters of Appetites, his work-in progress, here. He also has two short stories in the collection Words to Music (which also features contributions from Sooz and Dan) available in paperback and for Kindle.

www.jdrevene.weebly.com