How much kink is too much in Lesbian sex?

[redgarters]

I recently posted a story in the Winter Holiday contest that I categorized as Lesbian sex, as the romance and sex happens between two women (All I Want For Christmas C'est Toi). However, I did wonder if the kink elements I wove into the sexual encounter would earn it some adverse comments and down voting. In the end they didn't, but then I did tone the kink down a bit in the final draft.

The kinks involved were biting/pain, spanking, breath/fear play and a general feeling of light/playful dominance and submission. I felt that the kink was an integral part of fleshing out the characters and their connection, a way to give them a bit of magic that made them connect in a deeper, more emotional way than just a quick one night stand.

And now I can't get these characters out of my head. They keep popping up whenever I think about what I want to write next. And I know that if I do, it will be a romance, a longer and slower burn. And then comes my dilemma. I know that the kinks I've already introduced will be a bigger part of the follow up, because it is integral to the characters personalities and needs but most importantly to their connection.

So here is the question then. If I end up writing a sequel, that has a bit of a deeper dive into these kinks and how they help the emotional connection and blossoming romance of the characters, can I still categorize it as Lesbian sex? Or will I have to move it to fetish, or even BDSM?

I've read Tx Tall Tales' excellent Love Your Readers, but I still wonder if I can get away with it as LS.
In my mind it's a lesbian romance story between two women who just happen to be a bit kinky. But will it instead have to be categorized as story of two kinky people who just happen to be sapphic?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Actually, in my experience, romance + light dom/sub vibes (have to be light) is a recipe for success in the Lesbian Sex category. Petplay, light bondage, and spanking are all quite popular there. The focus has to be on the romance rather than the kinks though. So yeah, congratulations. It's hardly surprising though.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Depends on the lesbian I would guess.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

If there's a romance between two women, it should be fine in LS, especially given you say it's fun and playful d/s.

BDSM is getting flooded with stories atm - though good ones can still stand out, and lesbians are welcomed.

I went to see how a couple of my stories had rated, and only now realised that Naked Bisexual Lube Wrestling hadn't been put in LS, but in E&V. Probably more appreciated there - on the whole LS likes two women and a relationship. Ten women and a party isn't quite the target.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Generally speaking, there's probably as many "vanilla" lesbian couples as there are those who enjoy their sex a bit (or a LOT) more adventurous/kinky.

Also, I've learned that here on Lit, the saying "write it and they'll come" has merit. You'll find an appreciative audience. Fuck the naysayers.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Generally speaking, there's probably as many "vanilla" lesbian couples as there are those who enjoy their sex a bit (or a LOT) more adventurous/kinky.

Also, I've learned that here on Lit, the saying "write it and they'll come" has merit. You'll find an appreciative audience. Fuck the naysayers.

Wouldn't that be R/NC?

 

[StillStunned]

Wouldn't that be R/NC?

Quite right. Nay means nay!

 

[redgarters]

... on the whole LS likes two women and a relationship. Ten women and a party isn't quite the target.

Thanks, that is exactly what I'll be going for with this.

 

[TheLobster]

Considering what we know about female sexuality -- that it generally doesn't fall on the homo/hetero axis but instead the dominance/submission one -- I'd say that light d/s would hardly even qualify as a kink.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Considering what we know about female sexuality -- that it generally doesn't fall on the homo/hetero axis but instead the dominance/submission one -- I'd say that light d/s would hardly even qualify as a kink.

I had not known this. Source?

 

[AwkwardMD]

I'm on the edge of my seat to have my sexuality explained to me.

To the OP; no matter what you do, some people will think you've gone to far while others plead with your for a sequel that goes farther. Do what makes you happy.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm on the edge of my seat to have my sexuality explained to me.

Going to have to stay on the edge because the men who can really tell you all about yourself haven't made their way here yet.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Considering what we know about female sexuality -- that it generally doesn't fall on the homo/hetero axis but instead the dominance/submission one -- I'd say that light d/s would hardly even qualify as a kink.

This is a somewhat surprising claim. The way you phrased it especially - "what we know." I don't doubt that there are plenty of interesting ideas about female and male sexuality but this one is new to me, and it sounds hard to believe considering it's such a huge generalization, especially since you phrased it as if it's a fact.
Can you link the research or theory to support that claim? I mean, I am unlikely to believe in it but it might be an interesting tangent for discussion.

 

[TheLobster]

I'm surprised, and perhaps I should be disappointed, that none of y'all seem to be familiar with Aella's research. Perhaps you'd like to dismiss as lacking the imprimatur of peer review, but given that investigating sexual matters in anything resembling actual isn't an endeavor that gains you prestige in scientific circles, this is probably as close to the best available evidence as we can get right now.

This is a paid substack, so you can shell out your own $9/mc if you're interested. The relevant article is titled Good At Sex: Women's Sexual Subtypes (pt2).

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I'm surprised, and perhaps I should be disappointed, that none of y'all seem to be familiar with Aella's research. Perhaps you'd like to dismiss as lacking the imprimatur of peer review, but given that investigating sexual matters in anything resembling actual isn't an endeavor that gains you prestige in scientific circles, this is probably as close to the best available evidence as we can get right now.

This is a paid substack, so you can shell out your own $9/mc if you're interested. The relevant article is titled Good At Sex: Women's Sexual Subtypes (pt2).

Who is this Aella?

 

[onehitwanda]

Quite right. Nay means nay!

Taboo is calling...

 

[djrip]

On the whole LS likes two women and a relationship. Ten women and a party isn't quite the target.

I think this must be where I went wrong lol.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I mean, come on, @TheLobster. This person whose blog you linked here has zero qualifications as far as I can see. This is taken from her blog.


The "research" is apparently her asking 450 women - not even a scientifically taken sample of women of all profiles but just random 450 women. Maybe she is onto something, I can't really judge there, but this "research" she is basing her conclusions on sounds like a joke.
It's content, not science.

 

[XerXesXu]

I'm surprised, and perhaps I should be disappointed, that none of y'all seem to be familiar with Aella's research. Perhaps you'd like to dismiss as lacking the imprimatur of peer review, but given that investigating sexual matters in anything resembling actual isn't an endeavor that gains you prestige in scientific circles, this is probably as close to the best available evidence as we can get right now.

This is a paid substack, so you can shell out your own $9/mc if you're interested. The relevant article is titled Good At Sex: Women's Sexual Subtypes (pt2).

The 'Slutcloud Effect' caught my attention. An evocative description, I'll have to work it into a story.

 

[Bramblethorn]

IME, affectionate light kink is generally fine in LS. Two of my stories in that category have significant amounts of kink content ("Counting to Eleven", "Anjali's Red Scarf"); I think I got a small number of polite comments from people saying the kink wasn't their thing, but most readers seem to have been fine with it.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I'm surprised, and perhaps I should be disappointed, that none of y'all seem to be familiar with Aella's research. Perhaps you'd like to dismiss as lacking the imprimatur of peer review, but given that investigating sexual matters in anything resembling actual isn't an endeavor that gains you prestige in scientific circles, this is probably as close to the best available evidence as we can get right now.

This is a paid substack, so you can shell out your own $9/mc if you're interested. The relevant article is titled Good At Sex: Women's Sexual Subtypes (pt2).

It's a blog that's done a few quick surveys on Twitter (no mention of any attempts whatsoever to clean the data, confirm anyone is who they say they are, discuss any outliers, etc). It's basically sexual fantasies as written by someone interested in but with only a superficial understanding of stats.

And yes, peer review is crucial to being science. There's a fair few 'researchers' out there on the convention/lecture circuit who like to complain about how they're unable to get taken seriously because they study such taboo stuff. It's always entertaining when actual kink/sex/sexuality researchers are in attendance and mention they don't have that problem, and start asking pointed questions.

J. Michael Bailey coming to a bisexual conference to argue that bisexuality doesn't exist was particularly special. Since then, the Archives of Sexual Behaviour has retracted some of his papers.

ASB is the journal of the International Academy of Sex Research, with a respectable 5-year impact factor of 3.7, and its contents are as follows:
"Contributions consist of both quantitative and qualitative empirical research, theoretical reviews and essays, clinical case reports, and letters to the editor.

Topical areas include, but are not limited to: abuse, coercion, and consent; alternative sexualities; cross-cultural studies; lifespan development; endocrinology; evolution; family diversity; gender development; gender diversity; mating psychology; media and technology; neuroscience; non-human animal behavior; paraphilias; psychobiology; risk-taking; sex education and health; sex/gender differences and similarities; sex therapy; sexual and romantic relationships; sexual dysfunctions; sexual orientation; sexual psychophysiology; sexual/gender discrimination and stigma; sexually transmitted infections; and transactional and commercial sex."

Or for many more academic journals covering sexuality, just look up the Wiki article on The Ethical Slut and the wide range of articles citing it. The Ethical Slut is more scientific than that blog, ditto other books mentioned on the page like Love without Limits, simply because it doesn't prevent their experiences are universal - case studies are limited, but still data. Whereas articles claiming to have data and conclusions that aren't supported by their actual content, aren't science at all. They just pretend to be science and dress up in its clothes, but are in fact pure bollocks.

About the only thing most of the research has in common is that newspapers will scour it looking for an exciting headline and an article they can misrepresent to shock, appal, and/or arouse their readers.

(Registered Interest: a fair few of my friends are researchers into sexuality, polyamory, kink, etc. I had to stop being a case study because using the same participants as other researchers would skew the results badly - another issue I don't see Aella addressing in her blog)

 

[RetroFan]

It's hard to say based on my own experience in the category. For example, I wrote an April Fool's story a few years back based on an urban myth where a babysitter (sweet and innocent in nature) sits down on the toilet not knowing the seat has been recently varnished, and winds up stuck to it with her skirt around her waist and her panties around her ankles. The family's eldest daughter - a tempestuous lesbian - has to help the stranded sitter, this involving getting toilet paper and wiping the girl's bottom for her, assisting her with changing her period pad (it really isn't the poor babysitter's day) and escorting the distraught younger woman to hospital when the ambulance arrives. Given the content I initially posted it to Fetish, but the site administrators moved it to Lesbian when it was published. And while it did attract some negative comments about the events in the story, there were more positive comments some stating how much they liked the fetish-type material, and the scores were high.

Contrast this with a Christmas story I published some years back about a religious farming family from South Australia where the two daughters are like their parents - devout and hard-working Christians - but the three sons who now live in Adelaide have girlfriends that fall far below their parents' expectations. One girl Cathy is a vegan who never shuts up especially about private things she should keep to herself; another Bethany is a spoiled brat; and the third girl Kayla is an uncouth bogan (redneck, chav if you are from America or the UK), very overweight and dating the skinny son who has a fat fetish. The story features toilet humour, involving scenes with the three girls using the toilet and references to them having their periods in past visits to the farm. It also has other types of slapstick-type humour, like Cathy's dog chasing the chickens and it later knocking over and attempting to mount and hump the Christmas tree. The readers didn't go for this story at all and it was a poorly rated flop, despite a lesbian three-way between redhead Cathy, blonde Bethany and brunette Kayla. There are however some earlier erotic scenes where the three girls have sex with their respective boyfriends, and I've heard that some Lesbian Sex readers are adverse to heterosexual scenes in these stories. Maybe this was more a factor in the poor ratings?

 

[Bramblethorn]

There are however some earlier erotic scenes where the three girls have sex with their respective boyfriends, and I've heard that some Lesbian Sex readers are adverse to heterosexual scenes in these stories. Maybe this was more a factor in the poor ratings?

Very likely. I think the LS readership is slightly more tolerant of hetero sex scenes than the general Literotica readership is of gay male scenes in non-GM categories, but not by a whole lot. The ones I've seen that included hetero scenes without getting negative comments for it were stories that made it very clear that the female-female angle was the main focus of the story.

 

[redgarters]

J. Michael Bailey coming to a bisexual conference to argue that bisexuality doesn't exist was particularly special. Since then, the Archives of Sexual Behaviour has retracted some of his papers.

Now I'm sad that I missed this particular piece of entertaiment. His theory that in men genital arousal equals orientation is a great example of shit research.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The only addiction you can have from LSD is behavioral, which turns to psychological. In other words, you're a total dumbass to get addicted to it. She's a total attention bitch is my take from what you posted. I wouldn't trust her opinion on a toaster.

I mean, come on, @TheLobster. This person whose blog you linked here has zero qualifications as far as I can see. This is taken from her blog.

View attachment 2453710
The "research" is apparently her asking 450 women - not even a scientifically taken sample of women of all profiles but just random 450 women. Maybe she is onto something, I can't really judge there, but this "research" she is basing her conclusions on sounds like a joke.
It's content, not science.