Erotica you like to read different from what you like IRL?

[Thematterisclosed]

I vividly remember the first really well written sex scene I read in a mainstream novel (had been a few dated 70s and 80s airport books lying around before that but the prose was awful). Strangely now that I am older the printed word still attracts me for erotic fantasy, but what I like to read doesn't always match up with what I like in bed. The body has a mind of its own it seems. Anyone else find themselves reading stuff they love on a page but which leaves them cold IRL?

Mine is domination; I liked the strong female S&M characters but when it comes to the real thing I much prefer them to be less dangerous and give more foreplay than roleplay! I've tested this out so its not a thing in my head. I have a theory that when we read we can be anyone, but when it is us in ourselves we're much more locked in the present. Another guilty pleasure on page is inappropriate seductions (so, the babysitter and the dad, the teacher and the student etc). IRL older women are much better in bed and more GGG. Despite knowing the reality doesn't match my fantasy I still enjoy the fiction. Any neuroscientists want to comment?

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Most of what I write is erotic both to think about and to do.

That said, there are a few things I'd write about but not do (and do but not write about). They are mostly matters of degree; tying a woman up is hot; kidnapping her to do it, not so much I'd imagine, even if it works fine in a story.

 

[Thematterisclosed]

I get your point but for example but you can write erotica that has nothing to do with the real world and is just a fantasy. For example one of my stories is a high magic fantasy world where a wizard has dropped dead of a heart attack and left his sex golems behind. Naturally a party of adventurers comes along and has to defeat his still active creations and summoned beings by having sex with them. Erotic and fun to write but it has nothing to do with real life.

What I'm trying to get at here is there are things you can do or which can happen in real life which I have read that turned me on. But when I actually tried them in real life they didn't do it so much. Likewise there are things which don't particularly get me hot under the collar when I read them but I really like in bed.

Case in point sex with women at thirty (my age) is much better than with girls when I was a teenager. When I was 14 an 18-21 year old girl was the height of adult sophistication. 25 was ancient; now I'm thirty the student aged women drive me bonkers to listen to in real life. That doesn't change the fact that I like the idea of younger girl or boy being seduced by an older man or woman when I read about it.

Likewise female dominant S&M is fun to read about but less interesting to do. I wonder why there is a split in what is fun to read about and what is fun to actually do in bed. I always thought that sex was in the mind, but now I'm older I think the body also has a mind of its own.

 

[DirtyAllie]

This is the difference of fantasy in reality. There are things we think are hot, but either won't or can't do in real life. If people didn't read or watch porn that was downright outrageous fantasy, the porn industry would be belly up because what do we read and watch? Mostly things we don't do in reality for whatever reason.

I enjoy reading group stories of older couples seducing and playing with young girls. But in real life, our marriage is closed to the two of us and I have no real desire to be with a woman, its just the taboo of the lesbian encounter for me and the idea of two experienced lovers having their way(in a fun way, not anything rough) with a sweet young inexperienced coed.

In real life I am more submissive than dominant, but here enjoy femdom stories, they act in ways I really seem unable to.

Obviously extreme kinks like non consent and incest and bestiality are not things we like in real life-hopefully anyway So those categories bare out the fantasy vs reality perfectly.

 

[Rox88]

Could not agree more with that post Allie.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Obviously extreme kinks like non consent and incest and bestiality are not things we like in real life-hopefully anyway So those categories bare out the fantasy vs reality perfectly.

You'd be surprised - I have been surprised - how many people get off on RL nonconsent, incest, pain and in one case I know, bestiality.

I don't claim to understand it and for the most part I don't try. I understand dubious-consent and non-consent well enough to write them well. But in actual practice they become *rape*, not "non-consent" and there's nothing hot about actual rape to me. But I guarantee they work for some people; there's a very real population of women who've been raped and want more. Don't even get me started on incest. The world can be a very sick and damaged place.

Talking with a few rape victims over the years has made me seriously question the ethics of writing noncon, and I've started edging away from it. There's a reason I followed Toymaker with Angelwatch.

 

[DirtyAllie]

You'd be surprised - I have been surprised - how many people get off on RL nonconsent, incest, pain and in one case I know, bestiality.

I don't claim to understand it and for the most part I don't try. I understand dubious-consent and non-consent well enough to write them well. But in actual practice they become *rape*, not "non-consent" and there's nothing hot about actual rape to me. But I guarantee they work for some people; there's a very real population of women who've been raped and want more. Don't even get me started on incest. The world can be a very sick and damaged place.

Talking with a few rape victims over the years has made me seriously question the ethics of writing noncon, and I've started edging away from it. There's a reason I followed Toymaker with Angelwatch.

I have spent close to fifteen years working with the victims of rape and domestic violence. First as a career, then when I realized the toll it was taking on me I switched careers, then after a couple of years felt I was running away from helping people and now do it on a volunteer basis.

Me personally....in all that time I have yet to find a woman who was raped who 'wants more of it"

They may have rough sex fantasies-and odds are had them previously-but no one truly wants to be raped as in assaulted . I f they do, they need serious help because they will get themselves hurt and possibly worse.

But you make a good point on once you have faced the reality of rape and seen victims and heard their stories it can cure you of wanting to write it. MY other half can't even conceive of writing non con for titillation (although he has done a couple of rape scenes meant to further plots and set up seriously nasty revenge but never to be "sexy"

Same with incest....If I worked with teens or children that had been molested by family members I would lose my joy of those stories. Reality checks are called that for a reason.

But here and in most erotica the incest is so different from reality, its pure porn absurdity with everyone needing to be over 18-right there an enormous difference between the reality of children being hurt-and its just about always concesnsual and fun with love mixed in.

But the NC stuff takes what is normally a short brutal crime and turns it into page after page of brutal abuse.

Like LC(my other half) I have no tolerance for the denial of those in NC to try and say they do not get off on pain and abuse and also call out the hypocrisy of the site owner to say she does not want rape stories, but has a non consent section and also makes no effort to police it. But I guess I should say in all fairness as someone who has read here for years I can attest that they enforce no rule with any serious effort.

 

[jsmiam]

I mostly read and write about what I like in real life. Although I've always been jealous of Captain Kirk over the green Orion Slave Girl. The short haired one, to be more specific. For whatever reason, the one with the long hair seems to have gotten more attention, but it's the short haired one for me.

That's it, I'm having sex with a short haired green alien in my next story. Two of them! The one with the long hair, she can be the one in the chair next to the bed, masturbating while she watches.

In real life vs. porn and to a lesser degree erotica, my pet peeve is "ass to vagina", whether in porn or in writing. The ass is lots of fun, I love it, but it's a one way street. Vagina first, THEN ass. I can only imagine how horribly infected all those porn starlets must be, with all the back and forth, ass to vagina, vagina to ass, ass to vagina.

 

[sr71plt]

I can only imagine how horribly infected all those porn starlets must be, with all the back and forth, ass to vagina, vagina to ass, ass to vagina.

You haven't been treated to the involved ritual they had to go through beforehand to clean out the ass.

 

[CyranoJ]

Strangely now that I am older the printed word still attracts me for erotic fantasy, but what I like to read doesn't always match up with what I like in bed. The body has a mind of its own it seems. Anyone else find themselves reading stuff they love on a page but which leaves them cold IRL?

This strikes me as being quite normal.

What I prefer IRL is straight-ahead monogamous vanilla sex. Exposure to erotica has given me ideas for positions and tricks to try in bed, some of which worked and some of which don't. But for example take the ubiquitous porn "money shot" which people often seem to want to try in real life: does nothing for me, in fact I've never been asked by a woman "cum on my face" and actually been able to bring myself to do so. Not a turn-on when one is, as you say, locked in the moment. Frankly most of what is fantasized about in even the most "vanilla" porn is not stuff I find myself wanting to try in bed.

Similarly, IRL the "interracial sex" kink -- e.g. knowing my partner is into Big Black Dick fantasies or getting off on "contrasts in skin tone" -- is more just an annoyance than anything else. The emotional aspect of that is often quite dispiriting, let alone knowing the ways those tropes actively feed into the kind of bestializing racial stereotypes that often get young black men IRL targeted and killed by the police.

OTOH there are all sorts of non-vanilla things that I can read about and find erotic, from incest to non-con to "interracial" kink to mind control to gangbangs to tentacle sex, that would be beyond unsexy and in some cases just flatly wrong and criminal in real life. This is because the fantasy versions of them are liberated from real-life constraints, annoyances and horrors and can be appreciated more or less as cartoonish "heightenings" of real life. People trying to carry these fantasies over into the real-life bedroom -- even into things like consensual incest or rape roleplay -- are... well, it's not my place to judge, but the idea alarms and squicks me in many cases, in no small part because I'm fully aware of just how badly that sort of thing can go wrong. So I'm a big believer in staying aware of and vigilant about the lines between fantasy and reality as regards any type of porn or "erotica."

 

[legerdemer]

This strikes me as being quite normal.

What I prefer IRL is straight-ahead monogamous vanilla sex. Exposure to erotica has given me ideas for positions and tricks to try in bed, some of which worked and some of which don't. But for example take the ubiquitous porn "money shot" which people often seem to want to try in real life: does nothing for me, in fact I've never been asked by a woman "cum on my face" and actually been able to bring myself to do so. Not a turn-on when one is, as you say, locked in the moment. Frankly most of what is fantasized about in even the most "vanilla" porn is not stuff I find myself wanting to try in bed.

Similarly, IRL the "interracial sex" kink -- e.g. knowing my partner is into Big Black Dick fantasies or getting off on "contrasts in skin tone" -- is more just an annoyance than anything else. The emotional aspect of that is often quite dispiriting, let alone knowing the ways those tropes actively feed into the kind of bestializing racial stereotypes that often get young black men IRL targeted and killed by the police.

OTOH there are all sorts of non-vanilla things that I can read about and find erotic, from incest to non-con to "interracial" kink to mind control to gangbangs to tentacle sex, that would be beyond unsexy and in some cases just flatly wrong and criminal in real life. This is because the fantasy versions of them are liberated from real-life constraints, annoyances and horrors and can be appreciated more or less as cartoonish "heightenings" of real life. People trying to carry these fantasies over into the real-life bedroom -- even into things like consensual incest or rape roleplay -- are... well, it's not my place to judge, but the idea alarms and squicks me in many cases, in no small part because I'm fully aware of just how badly that sort of thing can go wrong. So I'm a big believer in staying aware of and vigilant about the lines between fantasy and reality as regards any type of porn or "erotica."

THIS!

 

[soflabbwlvr]

Anyone else find themselves reading stuff they love on a page but which leaves them cold IRL?

Absolutely. I initially came to Lit. to read stories that did appeal to my particular kinks. I eventually started writing stories that were in a similar vein and based on my real life experiences. After a while I grew bored of reading and writing those stories so I branched out.

I primarily read and write Noncon/reluctance stories now--not with physical, forcible rape,but rather stories where someone is forced to choose between two alternatives, and one of them involves sex. In real life I prefer sexual situations where my partner and I join as equals, and both of us give everything to each other. I don't even think I could get an erection if I were in some of the situations I read/write.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I have spent close to fifteen years working with the victims of rape... Me personally....in all that time I have yet to find a woman who was raped who 'wants more of it"

They may have rough sex fantasies-and odds are had them previously-but no one truly wants to be raped as in assaulted . I f they do, they need serious help because they will get themselves hurt and possibly worse.

I can only tell you what I've been told. In fairness, the people who confided in me didn't seem to have reported their rapes. They wouldn't have been in your sample set.

I agree about it being an attitude that bespeaks a need for serious help. But it absolutely exists and I find it creepy as hell.

 

[CyranoJ]

I agree about it being an attitude that bespeaks a need for serious help. But it absolutely exists and I find it creepy as hell.

There are people who are survivors who have "realistic" fantasies. I've encountered some of those, and while I can't relate to it and don't have the expertise to explain what exactly is going on there -- it probably varies from case to case -- all of them, no matter how dark and brutal the fantasy material, still drew a very explicit line between fantasy and actually "wanting" to be raped. I almost have to wonder if someone wasn't pulling your chain.

 

[tanyachrs]

I'm completely vanilla IRL with no real desire to be otherwise, but I can get off on the worst kinds of porn.