Anal Sex and Double Penetration

In November I blogged about the popularity of menage a trios’. No, not about the act itself, but about the popularity of the act in books and whether I should attempt it myself. No, not the act, but whether I should write a story including or around such an act.

Shortly thereafter, I decided to try it and have started three such books, one of which is based upon a former blog I did about sexual women tourists in the Caribbean called The Big Bamboo. And so that story will be appropriately titled, Separate Vacations – The Big Bamboo. Some of you have seen the cover.

Today, in search of understanding, I want to write about the act itself, or at least a potential portion of the act—anal sex. I have never written about anal sex. Nor have I ever tried it or even thought about trying it. And until recently I haven’t even read about it, therefore, when it comes to anal sex I’m a novitiate. The ménage stories I’ve started are mfm and frankly I wasn’t contemplating using anal sex, however in the few multiple partner excerpts I’ve read recently, anal sex was prevalent in at least half. My personal feelings are that it is demeaning to woman and the one woman, a one-time prostitute, who ever ventured an opinion on anal sex revealed in an interview, she hated it.

Which leads me to the point of this blog. I really need some guidance here. Do you, the erotic romance readers, read ménage stories and if so, do you expect it to include anal sex? What about double penetration? Would you be disappointed in a ménage story that had all the goodies, but avoided anal sex altogether?

My gut tells me I shouldn’t be writing anal sex. Then again…

What do you think?

On another matter, my latest book, Forbidden Passion, a short fantasy-like story about a feisty couple came last week.

Here is the blurb

Mitheas, the king’s grandson falls in love with the lavender colored Falan princess, the vivacious Adalina. Unfortunately, for them, they are inhabitants of the loveless planet Gala, a planet that has not only outlawed love, it has also banished marriage, even SEX!

The unlikely couple are lovers—lovers on a planet where the act of sexual intercourse has been against the law for four hundred cycles (six hundred earth years). Knowingly breaking the law they arrange surreptitious liaisons wherever they can, whenever the can. Will these two be able to change their future, and the future of the ones that come after them?

Should you be so inclined here’s a link to the Forbidden Passion Page: Forbidden Passion

I write a lot of BDSM, also known as D/s, Dominance and submission. I’m wary of referring to it as D/s (though I do for convenience’s sake), because that can imply superiority and inferiority between the participants, which I don’t think has to be part of it, an important issue I’ll get to in a minute. More on this later though. First the problems of a BDSM writer:

BDSM is the stuff with the chains and the whips, of course, and I’m loathe to tell people this is what I write because I get a lot of raised eyebrows and people slowly backing away from me and giving me unsavory looks. I understand this, because most BDSM is pretty unsavory stuff. Most of what I’ve seen is more or less overtly misogynistic, and involves obvious hostility towards women, which sometimes gets quite nasty: humiliation, degradation, rape, and outright sadistic torture. It’s not all written by and read by men either. There’s a sizable female market for this kind of thing.

In any case, it’s natural to associate D/s with degradation of women, with female inferiority, and most of the BDSM writing I’ve seen is embarrassingly crude and macho. It reads like it was written by some pretty severely damaged male egos. Women are treated as less than sex objects. They’re just organs with people attached, there to be whipped, abused, tortured. The Marquis de Sade set the tone and is himself the worst—just nauseatingly cruel and an awful writer to boot—but the genre hasn’t improved a hell of a lot since his day. It’s still mainly misogynistic and women are considered an inferior species. A lot of women who read this kind of BDSM–and as I said, there are female fans–are troubled with feelings of guilt at seeing their gender treated so shabbily, and the whole genre is notoriously sexist.

I don’t deal with misogyny, though, and I don’t deal with inferiority. I happen to be fond of women—too fond, probably. For me, D/s isn’t about male superiority and female inferiority. It isn’t about degradation and humiliation. It’s rather an expression of inexpressible passion: the man is forced to abduct the woman out of desire. It’s his desire that makes him bind her and ravish her and take the whip to her, and it’s her innocence and her own answering desires that make her succumb and yield to him. BDSM to me is a little microcosm of the whole mating dance between male and female, exaggerated and caricatured to be sure, but with all the elements still there—man as the aggressor and pursuer; women as the prize and the pursued—and they conduct this dance, whips and all, without the demeaning and degradation of “mainstream” BDSM. Their passion keeps them human rather than making them inhuman.

I was led into BDSM by the hunt for extremes in my writing. I wanted to know what was a more extreme form of the kiss, a more concentrated version of the caress. What was a more intense overall sexual experience my characters could have, one in which their passions and emotions would overwhelm them? My search led me naturally to the controlled violence and simmering emotions of BDSM, where desire is so strong it breaks down social taboos and leads one person to actually take another captive and make her yield herself  to him by force. BDSM as I write it is what lies beyond the limits of human desire.

So in that sense, I’m dealing with the ultimate in romantic fantasy. My version of BDSM is a take on the old fairy tale of being spirited away by the handsome Prince on the snow-white charger, but in my version the Prince rides a black horse and has a dungeon waiting where he’s going to do unspeakable thing. Dark, unspeakable, terribly delicious things.

Recently I suffered from a fairly severe bout of writer’s block.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve yet to find any kind of solution to the problem.  I know everyone has a different philosophy on it.  Some people just ride it out, avoid writing altogether until the muse returns.  Some people have a deadline and have to hammer out something regardless of whether or not they feel the mood.  I was kinda wondering if anyone out there has a trick that they use when they run into a block.  I asked a friend of mine how he deals with writer’s block and he said that he listens to music, watches a movie, or masturbates… So what do you do?

I found this great article on cures for writer’s block.  You never know.  Maybe something will work for you.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/567/01/

That got your attention didn’t it?  What I mean of course, is it necessary to be female in order to write a lesbian sex story?  I have written some lesbian sex stories that have been well received, but invariably I am taken to task by someone who resents my being male and writing them. How could I possibly know how a woman feels, much less about another woman?  I have also been chided for having my female characters ‘act like men’ in love and action scenes. Exactly what does that mean?

Discounting the overtones of sexisim in the above statements, I find that, in the main, Lesbian sex stories are equally  erotic whether written by a man or a woman.  Conversely, some of the worst I have read were authored by both men and women so it balances out.  I have been told men ‘lack the sensitivity’ to write about female lovers or women in general for that matter.  Again, I dismiss that allegation out of hand.

Emotions are equally shared by men and women, women simply feel more comfortable in expressing them. There are no such restrictions in writing and men can ‘get in touch with their feminine side’ and tell an excellent story. An amusing result of a story that clicks with the readers are the flirting comments (and propositions) that follow from both men and women once the story is posted.

Also, I have not heard similar allegations levied against women who write gay male stories. Is there a double standard at work here?  I don’t think predjudices on both sides foster understanding either of alternative lifestyles or gender equality. I carefully consider all criticisims of my work worth noting where writing is concerned. But I take exception to being told I’m writing out of my gender.  

What do you think?