Masturbating our Taboos

By K D Grace

In Café Rouge a few weeks ago, I had a seriously adolescent giggling session with a good friend as, over a nice bottle of Malbec, we scrolled down through Groupon ads offering sex toys. Who knew? It leaves me hopeful that perhaps mine is the last generation to take the unhealthy view of masturbation as a taboo. But I’m enough of a realist to doubt it. Since the topic for this cycle on OGaG is taboo desires, and since May is Masturbation month, I wanted to explore masturbation, not so much as a taboo, but as a way of exploring taboos. 

Erotica has always gone hand in hand with masturbation. It’s often even referred to as one-handed reading, which miffs me a bit when I feel my plots are at least as good as my sex scenes, but what writer doesn’t feel that way? It miffs me even more that there are still restrictions on erotica that don’t apply to any other genre of fiction. If we as writers want to explore a more transgressive facet of erotica, we must find a niche indi publisher or put it up on the Internet or self-publish. The last two are minefields within themselves with Big Brother always watching. 

The good news is that while there are restrictions on erotica as a genre, there are no restrictions on our imaginations as readers or writers. I’d be the first to say there are very few of my sex scenes that I don’t toy with in my head and take to places far beyond what I know I will ever be allowed to publish. I toy with them, tweak them and reshape them into fantasies involving my own taboo turn-ons. And the path to those taboo-turn ons from what does finally end up on the page is not a difficult one to find. I would bet the same is true of most erotica writers. While those fantasies never go anywhere beyond my head, many of them are frequently revisited. What that says to me is that while erotica on the written page or even porn on the screen can only take us so far, our fantasies can pick up the threads and move to anywhere we need to be – a lot of places, in fact, that we would never share out loud with anyone – ever. Those taboo fantasies that we keep to ourselves, we know we can visit in the privacy of our own heads in the safety of sex for one. 

Since there’s no denying that the brain’s participation in the act of sex is essential, perhaps the task of a writer of erotica is more about stimulation of the imagination than the genitals. Certainly that is the case with all other forms of fiction. What makes a good book better than a good film is that the reader is much more a participant. I believe that ultimately erotica is the jumping-off place in our imaginations, to dangerous, even deadly, and certainly transgressive sex. I think in part, that’s why PNR is so popular. Sex with vampires, werewolves and shifters, sex with witches and demons can take readers and writers into the realm of the taboo without publishers batting an eye. They are a jumping off place for imaginative approaches to taboo masturbation in the safety of ones own space. Many of those stories, as well as any good erotica, I would suggest, are liberally sprinkled with signposts pointing to the forbidden places beyond. And while those forbidden places are not explored in mainstream erotica, neither are they fenced off. Those signposts might as well roll out the welcome mat and invite us as readers to take advantage, use our imagination and masturbate our taboos.