The Moral Implications of Reading and Writing Sex

What Will My Parents Think?

Many writers struggle with the moral implications of writing sex. What is appropriate? What is okay? Over the years, writing students, especially female writing students, have voiced concerns over what their “parents will think.” There is no doubt that the gender expectations of women, mothers, daughters… extend into the artistic hinderances writers put upon themselves. When my students ask this question—adults, writers—I ask them if their parents are writers. Then I ask who the students’ favorite writers are, and what those writers “would think.”

As we develop into adults, we find that our biological parents fulfill certain developmental and emotional needs but cease to fulfill other needs. It is not only an important but necessary and healthy life milestone to let your parents off the hook of knowing it all. Simply put, if your parents do not read the same narratives that you read, why would you expect to find adult, aesthetic mentorship from your parents? 

Forming Accomplices

Difficult narratives that excel will often turn their readers into accomplices. Take Nabokov’s Lolita, for example. We are disgusted with ourselves with reading and watching the sexualized and pedophiliac narrative. Yet, like a train wreck, we can’t pull our eyes away. Nabokov makes us accomplices in a pedophile’s narrative. We are disgusted that we are reading it, and yet, early in the narrative, Nabokov connects us to a very young Humbert Humbert, when he loses his first love at fourteen. She has died. His psyche is forever stunted and we mourn with this young H.H. By the time we witness his crimes as a man, we are already connected to his inner, tragic child, giving us an early view of the “real and human and vulnerable.” will allow the writer many sexual liberties later in the narrative, regardless of how the reader might relate sexuality to a sense of personal morality or ethics.  

Moral Implications of Writing Sex Exercise

Choose a scene you’ve already written. You’re going to write two more drafts of this scene and we’re going to have some fun.

Step One: Sexual Minimalist

First, rewrite this same scene, but this time, without genitalia. For instance, if the characters are in bed, having sex, minimize the language and the intimacy so that the scene progresses exactly as originally written but without any mention of sex parts. No mention of genitalia. No euphemisms for genitalia. Remove the genitalia from the interaction. Instead, focus purely on the “sexual politics” of the scene. Allow the dark humor and awkwardness to evolve. Keep in mind that every adult reading your sex scene already knows what a penis, vagina, breast and nipple is. Unless your character has three nipples or a distended vagina like a female hyena, you’ll not likely offer interesting genitalia within the scene. With this understanding, ask yourself why the sex scene is essential to the overall narrative. Certainly, sex is essential to human nature. It drives us. It continues our bloodlines. It creates great tension, conflict and joy. But, and this is the narrative test, after so many years of sexual narratives and scenes, what is essential about your sex scene for your character(s)? Please understand, I’m not suggesting that the sex scene be removed. I’m merely pushing you to excavate the sex scene for its full strategic and narrative potential.

Step Two: Porn-Stash

Now, rewrite the scene as if you are writing for a low-budget Seventies pornographic film. No apologies, no holds barred. Go for it. Give it all the genitalia. Have fun. Laugh. Enjoy. This draft will not be read, so give yourself permission to go full on porn-stash. (If the humor aligns, you might find that this will be a hilarious addition to the narrative, after all, but most likely, this will merely be a writing exercise. If you enjoy this exercise, you could write several more drafts: Hell-Raiser, Vanilla, Master-Slave….) 

*This draft is to help you to excise the puritanical hindrances imposed upon your craft when you are alone at your desk, drafting and exploring. Conventional hindrances can be problematic for the writer’s creativity. If the character or characters share the writer’s conventional experiences then it’s not a problem, but if all the characters in all your narratives share the same conventions, histories, cultures, etc., your true calling is memoirist. Sexual conventions, sexual histories, sexual cultures are as much a part of your characters’ narratives as their family trees.

After you’ve written both “extremes,” set them aside for a few days or weeks. Then re-read them. This read is your true judge, not your parents, priest, spouse, partner, boyfriend or girlfriend. You.  

Now go read a few sex scenes from your favorite writers and let this marinate into your own scenes. Take your time. Don’t rush.  

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Rae BryantRae Bryant is the author of the short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals. Her fiction, prose-poetry and essays have appeared in print and online at The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, Diagram, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney’s, New World Writing, Gargoyle Magazine, and Redivider, among other publications and have been nominated for the Pen/Hemingway, Pen Emerging Writers, &NOW Award and Pushcart Prize. She has won awards in fiction from Whidbey Writers and The Johns Hopkins University. She earned a Masters in Writing from Hopkins where she continues to teach creative writing and is editor in chief of The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. She has also taught in the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa. She is represented by Jennifer Carlson of Dunow, Carlson and Lerner.

One on One Creative Writing Workshop

If you would like to share your narrative, post it to the discussion board below and share it with your course peers. If you end up expanding this narrative into a fuller work and would like written, individualized feedback on it, we invite you to join us for a One on One Creative Writing Workshop.

Sexual Connections and Character Secrets

Sexual Connections and Character Secrets

Writing sex for smart readers is an art form. Why would a smart reader be interested in a sexy kitten character who withholds her human vulnerabilities and sexual connections, conflicts and secrets? The smart reader wouldn’t. However, if the narrative gave the reader something up front, some vulnerability, some real and human evidence of sexual conflict, then took the reader into the sexy kitten role, the reader would anchor the internal sexual conflicts. This character arc would then give the reader a secret connection to the character. And readers adore secrets. Readers love to know something about a character that no other characters know.

In Requiem for a Dream, Marian is a reprehensible portrayal of a very real and broken young woman. Her choices are horrid. And yet, we feel for her because we’ve connected to her perspective early in the narrative, even if her boyfriend and all the other male characters in her life have ignored it. She feels she has no value. She is an addict. She’s bereft of any real parental guidance. She feels she lacks choices.

By the time Marian is being sexed by a double-dildo on a table, in front of a room full of men, the sexual discourse of the scene is not really about the sex. The smart reader wants to know what is inside her head, not inside her bum. The smart reader already knows what is inside her bum. The smart reader wants to know how Marian feels about it. Not how it feels, but rather, how Marian feels about how it feels. Get it?

What has led Marian to this low, misogynistic state in which she has put herself. And the key is: put herself. This is when sex in literary fiction is strongly ironic, dichotic and startling. It forces the reader to think and consider. It poses difficult questions. It is both tantalizing (J.C. being sexed is enough to get anyone hot, no matter how abhorrent the scene) and morally/intellectually rigorous.

Writing Sexual Connections and Character Secrets Exercise

Choose a character you’ve already written and who has a sexualized scene within your narrative. Now, in a separate document, write this character’s first sexual experience. What about this sexual encounter will your character keep to self? This sexual secret is now a recurring internal conflict that will be with the character throughout the entire narrative, not only in the sex scenes, but also subconsciously at every point of the narrative. 

Go back and rewrite/revise your narrative so to include your character’s sexual secret(s). 

Given the importance of sexual identity and sexual awareness, would it not make sense to give each character in your narrative the same sexual origin and secret focus study?

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The Male Gaze

When writing sex, a common trap for both male and female writers when writing sex is writing the female character from the perspective of the male gaze without being aware of the perspective. For example in the novel and film, Requiem for a Dream, Marian is the ultimate expression of male gaze.

Repeatedly, the men in her life use her sexuality and beauty as a means to an end: money, gratification, drugs, mob satisfaction… She comes to see herself in this position. She is mindful of it. She attempts to explain to her boyfriend that she is uncomfortable with asking for money. She is not sure what she’ll have to do to get it. At dinner, she fantasizes about lashing back—i.e., stabbing her smug dinner partner in the hand. Yet, she does not stab her dinner partner in the hand. She joins him in bed so to receive a monetary “loan.” Her one condition is that he shut off the lights.

Marian is a product of the male gaze, and yet, it works in this narrative because she is aware of it and the sexual narrative is specifically focused on this discussion of male gaze in her characterization. Likewise, her boyfriend might have been portrayed as an unapologetic pimp, but he is not. He is an addict who promises they will get their lives together. Just this one last time. Both Marian and her boyfriend are vulnerable, uneasy and scared about their states of being and choices, and yet, they still make choices that put them in vulnerable and misogynistic positions. They want to be better, and they have a general idea of what this might be, but their addictions to drugs and each other are perpetuating their spiraling arcs.

In this example, we see how the male gaze can be an intriguing and an essential literary focus. However, imagine that Marion had no conflicts about using her body for money and her boyfriend had none as well. In this case, the writer should ask where the internal conflicts are? Without internal conflicts regarding one’s own sexuality, why write the sexuality? To get readers off? This, a literary work, does not make. Writing sex in a literary work must be about more than merely the sex.

Writing the Male Gaze Exercise

A primary focus is point of view. From whose point of view will the scene unfold. Whether you are writing a sexualized mundane moment—i.e., a woman or man simply crossing the street and being watched in an objectified way—or writing a graphic sex scene—i.e., a character being attacked or sexually exploited—the perspective and point of view will set the tone. Choose such a scene from a work you’ve already written and complete the following:

  • Write the “other” character’s perspective. If you first wrote from the objectified character’s point of view, write a new scene from the objectifier’s point of view and vice versa;
  • Now, rewrite the original point of view. What details might you now add because you’ve explored the other’s point of view?
  • Which point of view is most resonant and creates the most tension? How many other scenes in your work might benefit from this exercise?

Remember: the “gaze” and sexual objectification are very much real and have a place in our artistic works. It is how we represent them that will either explore the social issue critically or perpetuate the issue.

In early drafts, our personal perspectives and experiences will take precedence, and for this reason, it is necessary to explore the “other’s” perspective. For many, it will be a loathsome task to explore the objectifier’s perspective. To soothe this process a bit, think of yourself as an FBI profiler. To address and catch the perpetrator, the profiler must engage intimately with the perspectives of the perpetrator. Even the most heinous of individuals have both a background and weakness. On the same note, if you find that you are often writing from the objectifier’s point of view without excavating the critical nature of the objectification, I strongly encourage you to look at this from a craft and personal standpoint. Further development in this area will not only improve your gender awareness and sex scenes within your narratives, it will open new perspectives et al.

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Contributing Faculty

Rae BryantRae Bryant is the author of the short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals. Her fiction, prose-poetry and essays have appeared in print and online at The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, Diagram, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney’s, New World Writing, Gargoyle Magazine, and Redivider, among other publications and have been nominated for the Pen/Hemingway, Pen Emerging Writers, &NOW Award and Pushcart Prize. She has won awards in fiction from Whidbey Writers and The Johns Hopkins University. She earned a Masters in Writing from Hopkins where she continues to teach creative writing and is editor in chief of The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. She has also taught in the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa. She is represented by Jennifer Carlson of Dunow, Carlson and Lerner.

One on One Creative Writing Workshop

If you would like to share your narrative, post it to the discussion board below and share it with your course peers. If you end up expanding this narrative into a fuller work and would like written, individualized feedback on it, we invite you to join us for a One on One Creative Writing Workshop.