So can any of you talk with me about "impersonality?"

[AG31]

Impersonal means "not influenced by, showing, or involving personal feelings." You seem to be saying that is a good thing, but only for erotic stories?

Yes, only for erotic stories. Erotica lives in a discrete, cordoned off part of my brain. IRL my sex life is extremely vanilla.

Since you started by mentioning BSDM I've got some stuff for you that might be relevant. The various stories about Nora that are told by her in first person are very personal. The whole point of them, I think, is to examine the character of this smart and articulate but socially and sexually insecure young woman and how handles or hides those aspects of herself. There is another one of her tales that is pending right now.

Nora Works As a Domintrix

Freshman Hooker

Nora Turns a Trick

Also look at the four-part series that begins with: College Hooking Memories Ch. 01

All of the details in these stories are based on the reality of New York in the 1970's.

I'll check these out from the point of view of plain literature, what I call "the library part of my brain." They wouldn't satisfy me as erotica, but I like smart, articulate socially insecure people who forge ahead.

 

[AG31]

Gotcha, understood and I fully agree, but... (There always has to be a 'but', right?)

I think the key thing is 'self-determination'. To be forced into anything is generally wrong; to be forced into something sexual is abhorrent, but if one makes a conscious choice to do something, then the critical box on the list can indeed be checked.

Using the case of BDSM as an example (generally-speaking and not referring to any specific examples). IRL BDSM includes - should include - consent. One guideline is 'Safe, Sane and Consensual'. Another is RACK - 'Risk-Aware Consensual Kink'. A third is PRICK - 'Personal Responsibility, Informed, Consensual Kink'. Note what they all have in common. The people involved talk about it first, establish boundaries and safewords and so forth. In that context, both parties slip into what is essentially role-playing, a game. Yes, it can involve total surrender of self, being used as a purely sexual object - but always within the context of a game.

To me, that makes all the difference.

You seem to conflate real world activities with one's fantasy life. Granted, the stories and conversations here cover both, but don't forget that there's always a place here for pure fantasy.

 

[AG31]

Well, you know for sure it's not me! As you know, I'm complete antithesis of that notion - that's utterly non-erotic for me .

I absolutely know that. And you're able to make the highly personal erotic for me. Sometimes.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I was referring to the mass media, not specifically this forum. I apologize for not making that clear. Yes, the attitude does crop up in Lit from time to time- mostly from condemning trolls in the Incest or LW categories. But I agree it is not common or enjoyable.

I recently read the Erica Jong novel that coined the “zipless fuck” phrase. The FMC has her affair, does not enjoy it, and then has to deal with a violent obsessive stalker and settle for her boring but supportive husband. Total opposite of the sort of thing that turns me on. Perhaps this colored my perspective.

You're partially right about Fear of Flying, but you're missing a lot about Erica Jong's life afterwards. If you compare the novel to her real-life 1994 autobiography Fear of Fifty, it seems that two-thirds of the novel, maybe more, are autobiographical. Keep in mind that when published, the novel (1973) is describing events that were very recent for her. The boring husband you describe was very real. All of that detail about him being a Chinese-American psychiatrist, the Army, and Germany are accurate.

What you are missing is that they got divorced later. Then her next husband was also a divorce. Finally, in 1989, she married a guy (her fourth one) who stuck until he passed last year.

The affair you are talking about must be with the Adrian Goodlove character. I'm not sure how much of that is true; I don't remember it in the autobiography. In the novel he abruptly dumps her to go back to his wife. It' such a weird affair that it's hard to say if she enjoyed any of it or not. She definitely is angry at him for skipping out without any warning.

I don't remember a "violent obsessive stalker." Could you point that out for me? I own a copy of the book, so I can look at that passage.

P.S.: The name "Jong" was the real-life last name of the Chinese-American husband. For some reason, she decided to keep it, probably because she became famous while still married to him.

 

[AG31]

See also Milgram's "agentic state" (although note also the recent question marks over some of his research).

This makes me think about another aspect of my erotic sensibility, that is that the MCs always have dignity. They are never disciplined, never adhere to orders (except to move their bodies in a certain way). A man's performing domestic duties for a domme squicks me out. (Never used that word before. Very handy.) So I don't think agentic applies to what I'm trying to describe.

 

[AG31]

I'd think that dogging, glory hole, gangbang, swinging, hotwife, and sex with strangers stories would contain the impersonality you're looking for.

In theory, yes. But my choices are limited by a requirement that the MC be male. I didn't think that was relevant to the discussion because my touchstone is The Story of O. But I look at your list here and try to figure out why so often those stories don't meet my wants... It's clear that mere "impersonality" isn't enough. But this thread is helping me clear my head.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Yes, only for erotic stories. Erotica lives in a discrete, cordoned off part of my brain. IRL my sex life is extremely vanilla.

I'll check these out from the point of view of plain literature, what I call "the library part of my brain." They wouldn't satisfy me as erotica, but I like smart, articulate socially insecure people who forge ahead.

My life has been pretty vanilla too. Most of what I write about I made up. The settings, however, are usually places I do know.

So I'm trying to argue is that erotica is not a discrete, cordoned-off genre. I see it as part of a spectrum of all fiction, and it's impossible define a clear dividing line between "erotica" and "mainstream" works.

The Nora stories might satisfy you as erotica, because they are very explicit if that is what you are looking for. None of them are in the Non-erotic category. (Well, the last one in that series is because it's about her break-up with her first boyfriend, and I didn't know where else to put it.) I wouldn't say that they are "plain" literature, whatever that is. The point is that her sexual activities, her views on sex, and the nature of her personality are all part of the "total" person, as another character describes it.

 

[AchtungNight]

You're partially right about Fear of Flying, but you're missing a lot about Erica Jong's life afterwards. If you compare the novel to her real-life 1994 autobiography Fear of Fifty, it seems that two-thirds of the novel, maybe more, are autobiographical. Keep in mind that when published, the novel (1973) is describing events that were very recent for her. The boring husband you describe was very real. All of that detail about him being a Chinese-American psychiatrist, the Army, and Germany are accurate.

What you are missing is that they got divorced later. Then her next husband was also a divorce. Finally, in 1989, she married a guy (her fourth one) who stuck until he passed last year.

The affair you are talking about must be with the Adrian Goodlove character. I'm not sure how much of that is true; I don't remember it in the autobiography. In the novel he abruptly dumps her to go back to his wife. It' such a weird affair that it's hard to say if she enjoyed any of it or not. She definitely is angry at him for skipping out without any warning.

I don't remember a "violent obsessive stalker." Could you point that out for me? I own a copy of the book, so I can look at that passage.

P.S.: The name "Jong" was the real-life last name of the Chinese-American husband. For some reason, she decided to keep it, probably because she became famous while still married to him.

By obsessive stalker, I was referring to the man who assaults her on the train. You apparently forgot about that guy.

I haven't read Fear of Fifty. Maybe I should.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

You seem to conflate real world activities with one's fantasy life. Granted, the stories and conversations here cover both, but don't forget that there's always a place here for pure fantasy.

No, not at all. I actually don’t think you and I disagree very much.

I’ve long argued that Lit is a fantasy world and that that allows a lot of things to be explored which would be horrible IRL. IRL incest is almost always a sexual assault, yet here it’s the wildly-popular consensual sis-bro tumble. Not to my taste, but I won’t judge.

Another example - many commentators have condemned the entire concept of writing Non-Consensual fiction because it’s bad IRL. Well, so it is, yet the kinseys report that something like two-thirds of women either have or have had a sexual fantasy of being sexually dominated. I think v few would IRL want to be raped, yet it is a popular fantasy and one at which I’m not going to point fingers.

All of which leads back to my post being a reply to AuctunNight’s post (#19) decrying the ‘sublimation of self’, etc. My point was that sometimes sex can be a game - indeed, the most adult game in existence. Fantasy can bring a new dimension to that, for games are where fantasies shake hands with real life. If, for the purposes of a game, one voluntarily plays the role of a stud or a slave, that’s cool, IMHO.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

AG31. Forgive me, but I am a little confused as to what it is you are really seeking.

You mentioned The Story of O, the theme of which involved a group of wealthy men (primarily men, at least) viewing women as convenient sex toys, to be used without conscience for personal satisfaction. It was explicitly said that force could be used to compel compliance. If that’s what you are looking for, there may be a problem here, for the keystone of this site’s non-con policy is that the ‘victim’ has to get some pleasure out of it. I don’t recall O doing that. Some pride, maybe, but pleasure?

Is it in that sense your MC needs to be male?

Sorry, not trying to argue, just get it straight in my mind.

 

[SimonDoom]

There's another way in which seeking "impersonality" is not at all a sublimation of self, but the opposite. I think in a way, at least in people's fantasies, isolating sexual activity from everything else, from relationships and emotional considerations, can seem empowering and erotic. It can give one the feeling "I have total control over this sexual kink that I have, and I can indulge in it, without considerations of other people, their feelings, and their claims on me. I want to experience the sheer pleasure of this kink, without having to think about anything else." For some, that can be an empowering feeling.

In my day-to-day life I'm a normal rules-following person, but I enjoy erotica in part as an expression of thumbing one's nose at the rules, as a way of indulging in something that's not necessarily good or responsible. And I believe that's an extremely common impulse, even if people don't want to admit it to themselves, or in this forum.

Impersonality is an aspect of fetishism, i.e., the erotic enjoyment of a foot, quite apart from the human being to which it is attached. Enjoying a human body that is roped up. Enjoying big breasts or big penises. These are all perfectly normal feelings, if by normal one means something that lots of people feel or do.

 

[SimonDoom]

AG31. Forgive me, but I am a little confused as to what it is you are really seeking.

You mentioned The Story of O, the theme of which involved a group of wealthy men (primarily men, at least) viewing women as convenient sex toys, to be used without conscience for personal satisfaction. It was explicitly said that force could be used to compel compliance. If that’s what you are looking for, there may be a problem here, for the keystone of this site’s non-con policy is that the ‘victim’ has to get some pleasure out of it. I don’t recall O doing that. Some pride, maybe, but pleasure?

Is it in that sense your MC needs to be male?

Sorry, not trying to argue, just get it straight in my mind.

You don't think she got pleasure out of it? That's a different reading from mine. I think she did get pleasure out of it, but the book is written in a style (French, in a way) that is not intended to appease a 21st Century American audience and reassure the reader "yes, she really did enjoy it and she really did consent." It's more subtle than that. But I read O as BDSM, not non-consent.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Indeed, Simon, a very different style. The men ‘plunged into her belly’ and so forth. And there is much subtlety. And, yes, O came to value herself as a part of the Roissy system, but (style and subtlety again), O screams or cries only under the whip. There is no sexual joy in her that I recall. I’m not sure that Literotica would publish it. Mind you, the site wouldn’t publish Romeo and Juliet, either.

 

[AchtungNight]

I get impersonality as fantasy, but when one just changes their whole life for it as often happens too much in erotica... okay, maybe it's just happened too much in the stories I've read recently. Or maybe I'm thinking too much into things.

 

[gunhilltrain]

By obsessive stalker, I was referring to the man who assaults her on the train. You apparently forgot about that guy.

I haven't read Fear of Fifty. Maybe I should.

Yes, you should read it. Her next novel after Fear of Flying was an autobiographical sequel. She's already famous in that. My take on it (I read it years ago) is that it is not as good as her first one.

Okay, I remember that guy. He's not a stalker. He's an attendant in a French railroad sleeping car. When she's lying on her bed, he makes some aggressive moves to have sex with her, and she rejects him.

From what I see here, he's not truly violent. He puts his hand between her legs and then tries to hold her down. But when she yells at him, he immediately backs off. "He smiled crookedly and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, 'no harm in trying.' " Then she leaves the compartment to find another one, and he makes no attempt to stop or follow her.

The whole episode takes less than ten minutes I think. He's not an obsessive stalker because he never saw her before, and he doesn't seem to see her again for the rest of the trip.

 

[SimonDoom]

I get impersonality as fantasy, but when one just changes their whole life for it as often happens too much in erotica... okay, maybe it's just happened too much in the stories I've read recently. Or maybe I'm thinking too much into things.

I was just listening to a podcast by a woman in her mid-50s who is divorced, has no desire to get married again, and wants to fuck lots of men. She enjoys identifying as a "whore" and a "slut" and calls herself by those names. She prefers to fuck young men because there is no risk of attachment and she finds that their sex drive matches her own more than that of older men. She says she enjoys thinking of herself as a "vessel" for others' sexual pleasure. Judging from what I heard in the podcast, she is a highly intelligent, professionally and financially successful woman. She fucks because she wants to, not because she has to.

When I think of "impersonality," that's kind of what I'm thinking about. For this woman, sex is a fun activity and being sexual is part of her identity, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with relationships and feelings. She's happy to lie on a bed and have a parade of men with whom she has no relationship have intercourse with her. She requires no personal connection with them for it to be fun and fulfilling.

It doesn't seem to harm her in any way. She's fully aware of societal expectations and knowingly takes the risk of tweaking them. It makes her feel good.

I find two things about this very appealing. First, I find the whole idea of supersexual women erotically appealing. There are probably a lot of reasons for that. I enjoy writing and reading stories about such women. Second, I like the idea of a person feeling fully free to create their own sexuality and not to be bound by others' perceptions of what "must be." It's liberating and fun.

 

[AchtungNight]

I was just listening to a podcast by a woman in her mid-50s who is divorced, has no desire to get married again, and wants to fuck lots of men. She enjoys identifying as a "whore" and a "slut" and calls herself by those names. She prefers to fuck young men because there is no risk of attachment and she finds that their sex drive matches her own more than that of older men. She says she enjoys thinking of herself as a "vessel" for others' sexual pleasure. Judging from what I heard in the podcast, she is a highly intelligent, professionally and financially successful woman. She fucks because she wants to, not because she has to.

When I think of "impersonality," that's kind of what I'm thinking about. For this woman, sex is a fun activity and being sexual is part of her identity, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with relationships and feelings. She's happy to lie on a bed and have a parade of men with whom she has no relationship have intercourse with her. She requires no personal connection with them for it to be fun and fulfilling.

It doesn't seem to harm her in any way. She's fully aware of societal expectations and knowingly takes the risk of tweaking them. It makes her feel good.

I find two things about this very appealing. First, I find the whole idea of supersexual women erotically appealing. There are probably a lot of reasons for that. I enjoy writing and reading stories about such women. Second, I like the idea of a person feeling fully free to create their own sexuality and not to be bound by others' perceptions of what "must be." It's liberating and fun.

If this woman lives anywhere near Austin, TX, I wouldn't mind having her phone number.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I was just listening to a podcast by a woman in her mid-50s who is divorced, has no desire to get married again, and wants to fuck lots of men. She enjoys identifying as a "whore" and a "slut" and calls herself by those names. She prefers to fuck young men because there is no risk of attachment and she finds that their sex drive matches her own more than that of older men. She says she enjoys thinking of herself as a "vessel" for others' sexual pleasure. Judging from what I heard in the podcast, she is a highly intelligent, professionally and financially successful woman. She fucks because she wants to, not because she has to.

When I think of "impersonality," that's kind of what I'm thinking about. For this woman, sex is a fun activity and being sexual is part of her identity, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with relationships and feelings. She's happy to lie on a bed and have a parade of men with whom she has no relationship have intercourse with her. She requires no personal connection with them for it to be fun and fulfilling.

It doesn't seem to harm her in any way. She's fully aware of societal expectations and knowingly takes the risk of tweaking them. It makes her feel good.

I find two things about this very appealing. First, I find the whole idea of supersexual women erotically appealing. There are probably a lot of reasons for that. I enjoy writing and reading stories about such women. Second, I like the idea of a person feeling fully free to create their own sexuality and not to be bound by others' perceptions of what "must be." It's liberating and fun.

I've got a story coming you might like. Working title is 'Ride It Like You Stole It.' Two sisters(one is trans) go into business together as prostitutes because they just like sex.

 

[AG31]

As is often the case, you folks on AH have been helpful to me in my quest to understand myself.

It pretty quickly became clear to me that simply asking about "impersonality" wasn't narrow enough. @Rob_Royale, and @MillieDynamite brought me up short when they listed types of stories that are almost by definition impersonal. (see quotes below). Well, yeah, I said to myself. But those usually don't end up being to my taste. Why not? Well, to my surprise, it's because I, personally, require a certain character trait for my MCs. This is in contradiction to my frequently stated claim for "simple erotica" to be artistically respected.... erotica without attention to plot or character. This requires a whole new thread. Here it is.

I'd think that dogging, glory hole, gangbang, swinging, hotwife, and sex with strangers stories would contain the impersonality you're looking for.

So any stories using whores, that is, sex for cash, should be impersonal. BDSM of the past, pre-me, was less about relationships and more about gratification.

 

[AG31]

No, not at all. I actually don’t think you and I disagree very much.

I’ve long argued that Lit is a fantasy world and that that allows a lot of things to be explored which would be horrible IRL. IRL incest is almost always a sexual assault, yet here it’s the wildly-popular consensual sis-bro tumble. Not to my taste, but I won’t judge.

Another example - many commentators have condemned the entire concept of writing Non-Consensual fiction because it’s bad IRL. Well, so it is, yet the kinseys report that something like two-thirds of women either have or have had a sexual fantasy of being sexually dominated. I think v few would IRL want to be raped, yet it is a popular fantasy and one at which I’m not going to point fingers.

All of which leads back to my post being a reply to AuctunNight’s post (#19) decrying the ‘sublimation of self’, etc. My point was that sometimes sex can be a game - indeed, the most adult game in existence. Fantasy can bring a new dimension to that, for games are where fantasies shake hands with real life. If, for the purposes of a game, one voluntarily plays the role of a stud or a slave, that’s cool, IMHO.

Thanks for getting back to me and clarifying!

 

[AG31]

AG31. Forgive me, but I am a little confused as to what it is you are really seeking.

You mentioned The Story of O, the theme of which involved a group of wealthy men (primarily men, at least) viewing women as convenient sex toys, to be used without conscience for personal satisfaction. It was explicitly said that force could be used to compel compliance. If that’s what you are looking for, there may be a problem here, for the keystone of this site’s non-con policy is that the ‘victim’ has to get some pleasure out of it. I don’t recall O doing that. Some pride, maybe, but pleasure?

Is it in that sense your MC needs to be male?

Sorry, not trying to argue, just get it straight in my mind.

I love a clear back-and-forth. Arguing is fine.
Now to your point... The fact that my MC needs to be male was sort of an aside, just context for my interest in GM stories. In my stories the male MC takes exactly the place of O. The done-to person by the impersonal do-ers.

"for the keystone of this site’s non-con policy is that the ‘victim’ has to get some pleasure out of it. I don’t recall O doing that."
Well, maybe "pleasure" is a little prosaic. But I, the reader who totally identifies with O, get a lot of something that I want to go back for. Satisfaction? Yeah... the pleasure of surrender.

 

[AG31]

You don't think she got pleasure out of it? That's a different reading from mine. I think she did get pleasure out of it, but the book is written in a style (French, in a way) that is not intended to appease a 21st Century American audience and reassure the reader "yes, she really did enjoy it and she really did consent." It's more subtle than that. But I read O as BDSM, not non-consent.

Thanks for this. The first review I ever got for Twelve Maxbridge Street accused it of being "old fashioned," like "classic French erotica." I've taken that label as a badge of honor.

 

[KeithD]

To the extent that I understand the OP question, I have given some thought to this in how it seems to apply to my GM protagonists. My thought is that, yes, most of them take the impersonal approach--to the extent that they hold something of themselves back in sexual encounters--especially in casual or purchased sex--unless/until they are overwhelmed--that they purposely endeavor to maintain a certain separation between their innermost self and what they are doing and the other partner(s). Most of them, in casual sex and while accepting casual sex, need to have something of themselves that their sex partners can't touch, maybe in terms of maintaining a shred of dignity in the face of a residual acknowledgement/belief that it isn't acceptable to give themselves so freely even if they feel the gratification need to do it. I don't let the protagonist become overwhelmed very often, but when I do, I write it in terms of total surrender, being invaded and taken in his very core. I don't know if this is responsive, but it was the thinking that occurred to me in reading this thread and as it concerns writing GM protagonists.

 

[AG31]

To the extent that I understand the OP question, I have given some thought to this in how it seems to apply to my GM protagonists. My thought is that, yes, most of them take the impersonal approach--to the extent that they hold something of themselves back in sexual encounters--especially in casual or purchased sex--unless/until they are overwhelmed--that they purposely endeavor to maintain a certain separation between their innermost self and what they are doing and the other partner(s). Most of them, in casual sex and while accepting casual sex, need to have something of themselves that their sex partners can't touch, maybe in terms of maintaining a shred of dignity in the face of a residual acknowledgement/belief that it isn't acceptable to give themselves so freely even if they feel the gratification need to do it. I don't let the protagonist become overwhelmed very often, but when I do, I write it in terms of total surrender, being invaded and taken in his very core. I don't know if this is responsive, but it was the thinking that occurred to me in reading this thread and as it concerns writing GM protagonists.

This is very responsive, both in the withholding aspect and in the total surrender aspect. In the course of this thread I hit upon "self containment" as a quality I value. But the total surrender is the goal.

 

[KeithD]

This is very responsive, both in the withholding aspect and in the total surrender aspect. In the course of this thread I hit upon "self containment" as a quality I value. But the total surrender is the goal.

But often in my stories, where it is either purchased sex or "can't help it" casual sex, total surrender--invaded and conquered at the core--is anything but the goal. The total surrender in those circumstances, sans the willingness to make a total commitment, becomes the tragedy of the story. Using your term, it's a failure to maintain self-containment. The protagonist has lost what he wanted to keep to himself.