Ever since I heard it paraphrased in Mallrats, I’ve enjoyed the seminal essay on Superman’s sexual proclivities, ‘Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex’ by Larry Niven, but it seems to me that there’s a fatal flaw in it. OK, it’s not so much a fatal flaw as it is a minor quibble that I wish to contend. Early on, it is claimed that Superman is likely a virgin, but that is only valid if a) Superman’s sexual climax is unfathomably strong and b) sexual climax is a wholly uncontrollable event.

Sure, sex is powerful, and if Sex and the City taught me anything it’s that sexual climax can have unintended side-effects but even plain men have the ability to rein in their orgasms. Superman can lift massive Manhattan-sized crystal formations off the planet, but also manages to get by during the work hours operating at a minute fraction of his full potential. Is it completely unrealistic that Superman could restrain himself?

The initial point is made that orgasms are involuntary muscular reactions, which is true to an extent but there are controls that can be placed on those things. Kegel exercises and tantric sex are two examples of control over one’s orgasm that men can exercise, there’s no reason to believe that Superman would be unsuccessful in adopting them, and indeed his superdense muscular structure would likely make him more capable or such control.

But even if his orgasms are truly epic, such that they overwhelm his traditional power control techniques, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t ever have sex. It just means he wouldn’t be able to climax in the woman. With his superspeed he could in a split second move a safe distance away, orgasm, and then return with a feigned orgasm for his lover’s sake. Or maybe he blasts his load into a complex series of momentum reducing pipes he leaves set up near his bed that allow his sperm to attain a more human speed, maybe he’d go finish himself off on the moon, or maybe he goes and beats off to Kryptonian porn — I don’t know why Jor-El or Lara Lor-Van hooked him up with porn, maybe parents are more open about their sexuality in Kryptonian culture — at his Fortress of Solitude, but before he does that, he gets some pussy.

I think I’ve made my point.

Wow. I didn’t know I had it in me. I had no idea I felt so strongly about the character development deficiencies in erotic novels.¹

For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking part in the grand experiment that is Infinite Summer. But reading Infinite Jest, even in 75 pages per week chunks, can be draining. So recently, to kill some time avoiding reading Infinite Jest, I decided to read another book: Secretary’s Punishment.

A little back story is needed here. A few months ago I bought a few adult erotica books because I wondered how good the books were. If they weren’t well written I was thinking about writing my own, cashing in on my unremarkable writing capabilities. Now that I’ve read one of them, I thought I’d write up my thoughts.

The book centres on a young woman named Emily Robinson. She’s just moved to a new city, away from her abusive fiance, and just started a new job that she needs to keep or she won’t be able to stay in the new city away from her troubled past. The only problem is that her new job is as an administrative assistant (though he abhors the term and prefers the anachronistic ‘secretary’) to a demanding man named Edward Caudry, who has yet to find a secretary up to snuff.

That’s the basic premise. And while it’s a diaphanous one it’s enough to establish the early structure of the story. In a format both delightfully and disappointingly like the silver screen Secretary, whenever Emily makes a typo in the documents she writes up, Mr Caudry (as he is known exclusively for the first half of the novel) brings her into his office, has her bend down onto his desk, face pressed to the red-ink circled typos, and gives her an increasing number of spanks to her ass.

Obviously, it doesn’t start as that; it begins as an alternative to being summarily fired, which she accepts somewhat credulously due to her financial dire straits. Her arousal over the entire scenario forces her to masturbate in the bathroom of her office, until he begins to exert more and more control over her; he begins demanding that she not wear pantyhose, that she wear ‘approved’ panties (which he examines every morning), that she not orgasm when not in his presence (a simple demand given how readily she seems to orgasm from his spanks).

So there’s three aspects to this: is the story credulous? Is the writing arousing? And is the writing any good? Well, the story is, for the most part, believable. Though, the progression from a hostile work environment (the first day) to walking around the office without any panties, giving the boss a regular morning blowjob, taking of her skirt while seated at her desk, and some light-to-medium bondage (all by the end of the second week) is the most hastened aspect of the story. Each new day at the office was a new level to the dominance and submission, which to a degree works, but it is the most unbelievable and at times troubling part of the progression. Spreading it out over the course of even a month would’ve made it seem more realistic.

And, yeah, the writing is arousing. Well, for me anyways. The descriptions are very good, and the author tends not to use the annoying euphemisms — trouser-snake is one that comes to mind — that make most erotic writing tiring². Of course, generally speaking it’s not hard to arouse the male mind, even with simple prose. Mention a vagina, perhaps a clitoris, include reference to an orgasm rising within the woman’s loins and that’s really all it takes: rinse and repeat.

And the writing isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. One thing that I pondered over as I read the book was if the spelling and grammatical mistakes in the book were intentional or not. I could imagine an inventive couple taking the book and using it in their own BDSM role-playing, highlighting the mistakes, and doling out spanks. Then, again the novel might just have had a shitty editer.

The book is mostly dialogue and descriptions of sex, with the rest internal monologue, almost all of which is dispensable. Does that mean I could write an erotic novel? Well, it’s not impossible. The skills required are little, and if this book is any indication of the genre, it’s in dire need of good characterization.

The novel is split in two halves with the first being written from the perspective of Emily and the second from that of Edward. The first half is fairly well written, with Emily at constant conflict with her confusing desire to be punished, to be controlled, to be dominated. It’s not high art, but the internal dialogue allows the reader to see the character slowly shifting from her rather innocent beginnings to her “true personality” as a submissive. It gives the story a little bit of class and respectability.

And most importantly, even though the story is ostensibly that of a boss taking advantage of his position to garner sexual favours from his assistant, the internal monologue keeps the story from feeling degrading or sexist. Which brings me to the second part of the novel, titled Edward.

The second half is much much worse than the first. The first flaw is taking on the persona of the male dominant Edward. For the first half of the novel he is portrayed as a masterful Dom, able to spot that she’s orgasmed in the bathroom, capable of bringing her to mindblowing orgasms with the slightest twitch of his fingers, perfectly gauged in the way he slowly brings her submissive side out. He was exactly the type of character from whose perspective you should never narrate, so already switching voice was a mistake for that reason.

The novel quickly takes us behind his veneer of self-assuredness into his neuroses about how far he should push her, caused by his last relationship in which he didn’t push his Sub far enough fast enough, and all sorts of things that bring him down to earth so to speak. I understand why the novel tried to do this; by humanizing him, it makes the final ending, with Emily and Edward in a stable relationship, a little more appealing. But the final ending could have been just as satisfying if he remained a cipher on the surface. Even the implication of Emily’s understanding of his inner machinations would have made it clear they were on level footing. This more explicit path is harder to swallow.

But that’s not the worst flaw. Much of the second half of the novel is like Hard Sci-Fi for fetishists, discussing the nuances of the relationship between a Dom and a Sub, the levels of power the must be exerted from both partners, how trust can be re-established when a Sub begins to fear their Dom. There are numerous scenes that reiterate these points in a very lecturey way, as if the author wanted to inform the perverts reading the book about BDSM³.

But after all that opinion, there’s a strange, for more than one reason, shift in the story near the end of the novel. The following paragraph appears not long after Edward has managed to coax Emily back into his life:

She was his girlfriend at that moment and Edward had a sudden revelation. The submissiveness was more like a game, he realized. Adriana [Ed: the ex who wanted more domination than Edward could offer] had never been the woman for him because she was a true submissive, one who required a strong, firm master to guide her. Edward was more like an actor who took on a role now and then. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a true Dom when the time came. It simply meant they didn’t have to live the life 24/7.

So once all the rules and boundaries of BDSM have been delicately laid out for the reader, Edward seems to abandon them as a lifestyle, instead twisting them into a game. That in itself is not surprising; aside from the most extreme scenarios, all BDSM is relegated to a subset of your life. But this shift is not made manifest in Edward’s demeanour in the remaining pages of the book. He has the realization that their Dom-Sub is closer to role-playing than it is to the full-on Dom-Sub lifestyle. Yet, he still has her work nude with her arms bound, he still has her spend her nights naked and giving him sexual acts when demanded of her, enforcing her diet and her wardrobe at all times. If it were truly just a game to him, they’d have a normal life, perhaps with innuendo and flirtation throughout the day, leading to some BDSM role-playing at night. But that’s not the situation the novel ends on.

And finally, there’s the closing paragraph:

“Now, I feel like two halves of the same coin. You challenge me, you love me, you take care of me.” Her eyes twinkling, she added, “What more could a girl want?”

Again, this isn’t visibly sexist. But, “a girl” might want many more things. Many girls might want independence, financial stability, someone to converse with, someone who “challenges” them in a form other than in their pain threshold. In fact the novel starts off with Emily leaving her abusive husband to fend for herself and it ends with her being completely controlled by another domineering man. But this time, we’re told, it’s a good thing. Maybe that’s what she wants. But it’s certainly not what “a girl” wants, it’s what “that girl” wants. A minor quibble, but as an ending to the story it sticks in my craw more than the less general alternative.

All this points to one inevitable conclusion: I need to write an erotic novel while ensuring the characters aren’t diminished or degraded for the sake of the sex and that the story concludes pleasantly and logically. Either that, or I need to write something of value, like one of the dozens of half-completed short-stories I have sitting around⁴. Either/or, really.

So where does that leave us? Well, I’m still a week and a half behind on the Infinite Summer schedule, and now I’m sexually and artistically frustrated. This was a great idea.

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Footnotes

1. For the record, this post, which is a far too serious about itself critique of an erotic novel, is written tongue firmly placed in cheek — though I won’t say which one. [↩]
2. Or at least subject to ridicule on television sitcoms [↩]
3. Or it’s the author’s attempt to legitimize some of the, in my opinion, sexist conclusions to the story [↩]
4. As an aside, I did write a story on Ficly not long ago, though the word limit (1024 characters) left me with a very ambiguous tale, one that even I have trouble grasping wholly [↩]

I recently came across an… interesting blog that is written by a supposed proponent of incest, bestiality, and the killing of so-called “useless” members of society (which he mislabeled euthanasia). For the most part, the posts I read seem to be a devil’s advocate look at the extremes of human rights and freedoms that our society will likely tackle in the next few decades, though sometimes — like, say, when he’s writing that children from first cousins are not particularly at risk for defects, therefore direct sibling incest is equally acceptable, genetically speaking — I’m not so sure.

Here’s a post, with some editing and spelling liberties taken on my part, asking for some arguments on moral relativism, which are especially targeted at an atheist reader.

Today I will play the role of an atheist who subscribes to humanism and the relative nature of morality. Shall we begin?

THESE ARE MY TWO CORE BELIEFS:

1. I believe that certain nonproductive members of society – i.e. the terminally and painfully sick, unemployed and alcohol-addicted street vagrants, serial criminals, and those too old to contribute anything meaningful - should be euthanized for the greater of good of society and mankind.

Resources that they consume can find much better use in advancing civilization and the happiness of other (and more) people. The good and survival of the human species takes precedence over selfish and petty individual needs.

2. I believe that bestiality as a sexual choice should be given the same legal rights and social respect as heterosexual and homosexual human-human relationships.

I am a practicing zoophile who regularly engages in group sex with my fully-mature rottweilers (both male and female) who willingly and often actively reciprocate the intimate eroticity.

We all enjoy it immensely, so what’s wrong with it? For some reason, most people – even the supposedly enlightened individuals at PFLAG – think my sexual choice is disgusting, morally repugnant and unnatural. To me it’s incomprehensible and inexplicable why.

Now please tell me why my stance is MORALLY WRONG from a atheistic, humanist point of view.

Quotes from the Bible or other holy scriptures will not be accepted. Arguments that some god or another forbids it will similarly be ignored. As a atheist, I WILL NOT ACCEPT ANY RELIGION OR PHILOSOPHY BASED ARGUMENTS.

I welcome and eagerly await comments which attempt to persuade me that somehow, my beliefs and practices are fundamentally wrong from a relativistic, humanist, liberal and pluralistic point of view.

Convince me.

Usually, when I read stuff like this on the Internet I just sigh and move along, but this time I couldn’t resist responding. What follows is a comment I posted on that blog in its entirety. Normally, I also don’t repost comments I write on other blogs on this site, but this one is fairly well written and much longer than I originally anticipated. Plus I haven’t posted in a while so I needed to put something up.

First of all, you say that you reject any philosophy based reasoning which is possibly the stupidest thing anyone has ever said. Philosophy strives to create logically valid reasoning. If the premises of that logic are true, then the reasoning is also true so to say you reject philosophy (but accept “atheistic” arguments which wouldn’t exist without philosophy) is really dumb.

As for your first point, there’s a difference between euthanasia and what you propose. Euthanasia is about ending the suffering of people who wish death. You’re talking about killing people against their will because they are no longer useful to society. That’s an egregious attack on the freedoms of people. Not only that but you then need to define usefulness to society. What if someone is intelligent, went through university and even went through medical school and graduated at the top of their class. But once that was all done they decided to make crappy clay sculptures that everyone agrees are not only a terrible waste of their talents but also just in general terrible. He is no longer useful to society and was even a burden on society by going through an unused education process so your proposal would be to kill him, but hopefully you can see that that is no more than cold blooded murder.

Secondly, regarding bestiality. I have a very specific opinion about sex: you don’t do it without consent. Until animals can be proven to be sentient and are capable of communicating with humans their thoughts and opinions, you cannot have sex with one without it being rape. If you want to stick your ass up in the air and wait for a dog to figure out that you want it to fuck you, well that’s fine by me, but you can’t do anything to the dog or any animal because you can’t reliably convince me that it’s consensual.

One final note. Your basic argument seems to be that without God all morality is completely relative. That may be true, but it’s a problem philosophers have discussed for millennia without making any real headway, so you shouldn’t assume your stance to be true. For one thing, morality may be a genetic trait, or a part of the structure of our brain. If those, or something similar, are true then there very well may be an absolute moral code built into us, or at least some moral absolutes from which we can extrapolate the rest. Regardless, a godless world is not necessarily a morally relative world. Furthermore, a morally relative world is not necessarily a world where you can do anything. Morality is a societal construct because morality defines the behaviour between members of a society. Which means the members of society need to agree on the basic terms. Agreeing on the basic terms of a morality, relative or not, will lead to certain limitations. Always.

(Before anyone starts accusing me of teaching Parrots to say “fuck me good” and then going wild, I should say that I personally would never fuck an animal other than a human; I’m just that kind of guy. But I also don’t think that I have the right to tell people who have those bizarre desires, along with animals intelligent enough to have and communicate those desires, that they shouldn’t do that funky business.)

So there’s my thoughts on those particularly grimy and unpalatable. I hope that I’ve both made some sense and also not completely grossed the fuck out everybody reading this.

P.S.: After having looked at a few other posts on the blog, it seems pretty clear that this guy is either bipolar and has two distinctly opposite personalities or he’s a racist neocon who likes to argue that atheism leads to rampant dog fucking and murdering by playing the part of a crazy atheist who thrives on dog fucking and murdering. C’est la vie, but maybe my arguments manage to convince him that supporting someone’s right to do fucked up shit is not the same as wanting to do fucked up shit.