Explicit words....which ones

[lovecraft68]

And you don't consider that "pussy" is baby talking genitals? Interesting.

Seeing that in most porn movies the women are calling it 'pussy' and that's the ADULT entertainment industry I think your personal crusade to force your opinion on everyone else is just that...your opinion.

For someone who gets preachy about others trying to force their methods of writing on other other people, you do it all the time with your saying the same thing repeatedly in the same thread.

 

[sr71plt]

Seeing that in most porn movies the women are calling it 'pussy' and that's the ADULT entertainment industry I think your personal crusade to force your opinion on everyone else is just that...your opinion.

For someone who gets preachy about others trying to force their methods of writing on other other people, you do it all the time with your saying the same thing repeatedly in the same thread.

I do it so you can have one of your psychotic tizzy fits. You must be on a crazy high today having posted that John Lennon should have been assassinated earlier.

You are the site's biggest (and most psychotic) hypocrite. I think I'll go write a rape story to rev your little engines up.

 

[SeanBurns1975]

Biggest turn off was a woman who used no explicit words at all during pillow talk.

"I want to rub your penis until it gets erect."
"You must be very aroused, there is pre-ejaculate in your boxers."

It was so off-putting.

 

[clistenovena]

Things are getting steamy when she tells him, "Kiss me where it smells," so he drives her to New Jersey.

I didn't know whether to laugh or groan, so I did a bit of both.

But in any erotic tale, no...just NO! to the "body parts as seafood" references.

I'm gonna get hollered at. It happens at least once a week and sometimes I even get followed in a car.

That happened to me once. Freaked me out something fierce. All I kept thinking was, "No matter what, do not let them take you to a secondary location." Too many self-defense classes and such. Anyway...

Doesn't mean I think the behavior is acceptable and should be brushed off.

Accepting that type behavior (from male or female) would be a stretch for me, but only from the stand point of accepting it as respectful. Brushing it off, however (the comments and stares), is just what I do when confronted with such actions. "Choose your battles." Know what I mean?

I love talking about where sex and social issues meet. It's just fun.

These discussion points really are the best of meshes, and in here, I get to be all involved in them. Like here, with you and the others. In my face-to-face world, these type discussions rarely go over well. In fact, one started up the other day about whether using sexual references in advertising should be banned. (Yes, they said "banned.") I easily replied, "That'll never happen because sex sells, no matter the wares being peddled." Most of the people in the room gasped and got up and left. Bunch of pussies.

Aaaand we're back to explicit words. Not a total hijack.

I think the word vulgar is actually pretty damn hot, lol.

It certainly can be when used in the properly improper context. If I'm reading or writing a scene in which a guy has a woman pinned up against the wall, they're all panting over one another, hands and mouths everywhere, and she spreads her legs wide while he finger fucks her, I'd prefer to use the word "vulgar" instead of "sexy" or "risqué" in terms of how the guy is thinking of her behavior. I do tend towards the more primal connotation of things, so that's to be considered.

My writing style is still evolving, but I have taken to writing a lot of sex without much (can't say none--especially in the case of the man's veined, throbbing shaft) explicit reference to the genitals. I like to save the explicit references for the right time.

I haven't made it through a whole sex scene that way.

I don't necessarily feel that authors should altogether eliminate explicit words for body parts. Well-used, hard-core terms can take a story beyond the salacious norm. I just think authors should be more mindful of how and when these words are used in a story. In my opinion. Which isn't for everyone, I realize.

Edit. I just checked the story I'm writing now and found this:
Ximena tugged at Juan Francisco’s breeches until buttons flew and the front came free. She pulled her skirts out of the way when he lifted her, and he found her already wet, warm and soft. She tossed her head back and gasped when he thrust up into her.

Juan Francisco forced Ximena against the wall; she clutched at his shoulders and called his name while he took her. He was about to empty himself inside her, but he lifted her enough to slip out, and instead he emptied himself on her muff and on the smooth skin on the inside of her thighs.

Okay, this is a perfect example of word preferences. I was completely in the scene you developed here, was imagining it all quite wonderfully...until the word "muff" happened along. It threw me off. However, others may truly love the use of that word.

If writing, I don't know if I would have just left it as "...on the smooth skin on the inside of her thighs..." or if I would have used another body-part word. "Cunt" doesn't seem at all right for the context. Neither does "pussy." Maybe "mound" would work? I don't know. It's so difficult sometimes, walking that fine line between being true to your inner-author's voice and figuring out how to satisfy the reader.

The story is basically a bodice-ripper embedded inside an I/T story.

Bodice-ripper embedded in most anything works for me. Unique spin you have going.

 

[clistenovena]

Biggest turn off was a woman who used no explicit words at all during pillow talk.

"I want to rub your penis until it gets erect."
"You must be very aroused, there is pre-ejaculate in your boxers."

It was so off-putting.

Was this in a story or a for real, face-to-face moment? I'm hoping for the story since there is such a thing as editing. Because, I mean, there are just some things one can't un-hear.

 

[NotWise]

These discussion points really are the best of meshes, and in here, I get to be all involved in them. Like here, with you and the others. In my face-to-face world, these type discussions rarely go over well. In fact, one started up the other day about whether using sexual references in advertising should be banned. (Yes, they said "banned.") I easily replied, "That'll never happen because sex sells, no matter the wares being peddled." Most of the people in the room gasped and got up and left. Bunch of pussies.

It's great when these discussions work. It seems like one comes along every few weeks.

Advertising is saturated with sex. I suppose they were suggesting banning explicit sexual references, but even if you do that there is still the innuendo and lots of thinly-veiled sexual imagery.

Okay, this is a perfect example of word preferences. I was completely in the scene you developed here, was imagining it all quite wonderfully...until the word "muff" happened along. It threw me off. However, others may truly love the use of that word.

Not bad. That means you got almost all the way through. I intended to refer specifically to her pubic hair. Can you suggest an alternative that isn't "pubes?"

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

Many have speculated but we have yet to get a ruling from the OP, I think. Who perhaps is unwilling to clarify on account of its being apparently rude enough to censor in the first place. I have a feeling we may never know for sure what they had in mind.



I guess "clit" is mildly rude in being a slang shortening of a more clinical term? In the same way that "vag" is sort of mildly rude. I'm assuming both would qualify as the sort of vulgarities that wouldn't cut it in the court of EmpressJosephine.

I was surprised the OP felt the need to censor, I mean it's a damn erotic website!

Is clit rude? We had a kitty once that had a little mustache so we called him Kitler, but for some reason when I said it, it came out as Clitler. So we had a pussy named Clitler.
I like clit, and cunt.

I have an ex that used to say couscous, so now I picture a cunt when someone offers me couscous...

 

[Bramblethorn]

I've seen "clam," "oyster" (involving the specific phrase "eat my smokey oyster," which I guess was memorably bad enough to stick with me, so that's something) and even "snapper" attested from time to time. Seafood references generally are a No for me, I'll admit; it's supposed to be smut, not a subliminal ad campaign for Red Lobster.

*rethinks my "isopod of love" scene*

Are we still in the dark about what ch*t refers to? I'm curious now. Maybe it was meant to be cl*t, but clit isn't exactly rude, right?

Sometimes the mystery is better than any answer could be.

Okay, this is a perfect example of word preferences. I was completely in the scene you developed here, was imagining it all quite wonderfully...until the word "muff" happened along. It threw me off. However, others may truly love the use of that word.

If writing, I don't know if I would have just left it as "...on the smooth skin on the inside of her thighs..." or if I would have used another body-part word. "Cunt" doesn't seem at all right for the context. Neither does "pussy." Maybe "mound" would work? I don't know.

Yeah, mood-breaker for me too.

If it were my story, I might write something like: "amongst her curls and on the smooth skin on the inside of her thighs". "Curls" could be ambiguous there but it's probably clear from context.

 

[NotWise]

Yeah, mood-breaker for me too.

If it were my story, I might write something like: "amongst her curls and on the smooth skin on the inside of her thighs". "Curls" could be ambiguous there but it's probably clear from context.

I never imagined that "muff" was a problem. I've always thought of it as an affectionate term.

I've referred to her "fine, dark curls" before--Ximena is mestizo and mostly native, so she doesn't have a Caucasian's body hair. Maybe I should just use that reference again.

 

[Athalia]

Wow. From the last four pages of this, I've come to the conclusion that this is an ultimately unanswerable question. Which term you use for the female pudenda depends on locality, on class, on gender, on preconceptions of what other people use. A term that would be innocently used in one context would be either wildly inappropriate or risible in another.

I would use the word "cunt" without a thought while speaking with other women of my own social class as a judgmentally neutral term for my vulva I would have a great deal of trouble if a man called it a cunt, and even more if he called me a cunt. "Pussy" is maybe a little safer, albeit awkward ... even more so when Trump used it in a famous conversation.

Again, "breasts" seems clinical, "boobs" seems too cutesy. When referring informally to my pair, I might use "tits" in conversations with other women, but any other word carries too many sexual overtones, particularly in conversations with males.

If there's a sort of concordance about what word is appropriate in which context, I haven't heard of it. Same for the male organ. But I'd sure like to see one.

 

[sr71plt]

Wow. From the last four pages of this, I've come to the conclusion that this is an ultimately unanswerable question.

That's the bottom line of a good many recurring topics on the forum. The readership is huge and most preferences cover the waterfront of possibilities.

 

[StrangeTamer]

I have an ex that used to say couscous, so now I picture a cunt when someone offers me couscous...

Lol, this made me laugh.

This is a very interesting conversation. I'm guilty of probably overusing the word pussy, and I've tried to use other words but to me nothing else seems to fit right. I mean does this sound right, "I gently pulled her silky pantys down to see her drooling bearded clam staring at me, hungry for a meal of hard man sausage." Seriously though I do need to work on mixing my words up and start using cunt and twat a little more so my stories don't sound repetitive. I think I'll put this on my list of stories to write, a story with the worst possible sexual descriptions. It would be interesting to see what the reception of a story like that would be, although someone has probably already done it.

 

[NotWise]

If there's a sort of concordance about what word is appropriate in which context, I haven't heard of it. Same for the male organ. But I'd sure like to see one.

I've done an amount of Googling over this question for years. There is no consensus, even if you limit yourself to the US.

I launched a thread along these lines when I first joined Lit a couple years ago. What I learned was that women authors on Lit are probably not representative of women in general when it comes to the use of explicit descriptions.

The impression I got from my Google "research" was that women don't usually think of their genitalia in very specific terms; it's all just "down there." If you describe "down there" in more specific terms then a lot of women (not necessarily at Lit) get nervous.

I don't need to worry about the opinions of women in general, only about the opinions of women who read erotica. Their opinions might be quite different from the general opinion.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If there's a sort of concordance about what word is appropriate in which context, I haven't heard of it. Same for the male organ. But I'd sure like to see one.

Dr. Freud, you have a new patient! Now there's a slip if ever I've seen one!

 

[HandsInTheDark]

You shouldn't engage the king of misogyny and a Roosh V supporter in these types of conversations.

The quote is from someone I have on ignore; unfortunately his crap still appears in other people's quotes. I thought the mod had had a chat with him and convinced him to stop talking, aka lying, about me. I will bring this up with the mod again. To tediously repeat the same old debunk, I am not a supporter of Roosh V and never have been. I did once call someone on quoting him incorrectly, but I've called people on misquoting Hitler as well, and that doesn't mean I support Hitler.

I don't feel I have a lot of defending to do - people who've been here a while know the individual in question as a liar and - said without prejudice, this is merely a guess - I at least think he should be under professional consideration for anti-psychotic meds. I don't say it lightly. He's said other completely false things about me, including accusing me of convincing my sister (I don't have a sister) to pretend to be my girlfriend online. My girlfriend offered to disabuse him of this notion and he declined to talk to her. (I don't blame him: she was livid.) Before I was around, he used others as a punching bag. He doesn't seem able to stop from fixating on a target and repeatedly lashing out. Even after he's been told to stop.

Nyx, this is a forum. You can take whatever conclusion you like from my bio, because I wrote it, and if the day comes I don't agree with what it says I'll change it. But blindly and openly taking the word of others about people here is a fool's errand. LC doesn't know a single thing about me and he never will; he's the primary reason I advise people not to give personal information put on this website. By his own admission he's full of hate and I at least don't know what he'd do on a whim if he had access to someone's PII.

For the record, someone else here claims to be the most popular author on Lit; there's widespread consensus he runs scripts to elevate his own viewed count so he can keep claiming that. There's someone here believed to post under an assumed name and gender while swearing blind it's an actual identity. There's yet another person here who posts as one of his characters, though that seems to be for comic effect rather than anything sketchy. Bottom line, this place has at least as many people who feel compelled to lie their asses off as any other part of the internet, and possibly a few more. It's not a place to be naive.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I've done an amount of Googling over this question for years. There is no consensus, even if you limit yourself to the US.

I launched a thread along these lines when I first joined Lit a couple years ago. What I learned was that women authors on Lit are probably not representative of women in general when it comes to the use of explicit descriptions.

The impression I got from my Google "research" was that women don't usually think of their genitalia in very specific terms; it's all just "down there." If you describe "down there" in more specific terms then a lot of women (not necessarily at Lit) get nervous.

I don't need to worry about the opinions of women in general, only about the opinions of women who read erotica. Their opinions might be quite different from the general opinion.

This. It's hard to generalize about people who read erotica because plenty of people don't, and the ones here that do aren't likely to be open to questionnaires. If there's data available for market research, Literotica is sitting on it and can't give it to others, out of privacy concerns. You can really only go by your ratings, and I've given my opinion on how reliable those are.

If it helps, I wouldn't trust too much in the opinions of professional marketers of erotic lit either. We're probably not flying much more blind than people making money on this.

 

[CyranoJ]

*rethinks my "isopod of love" scene*

Well... let's not be hasty...

 

[clistenovena]

It's great when these discussions work. It seems like one comes along every few weeks.

Yay! for that.

Advertising is saturated with sex.

Saturated, marinated, and soaked.

I suppose they were suggesting banning explicit sexual references...

Nope. They pretty much meant all sexual references. That group...

Can you suggest an alternative that isn't "pubes?"

Other than my other suggestions? I'll think on it. Because who wouldn't want to do that??

 

[Bramblethorn]

I never imagined that "muff" was a problem. I've always thought of it as an affectionate term.

Maybe it's a regional difference. To me "muff" comes across very teenage-boy-ish - "Muff Diving Championship 2015" t-shirts, that sort of thing.

FWIW, I think this is the last time I referred to pubic hair in a story:

...the fountain splashed her so that droplets of water clung to her and glittered in the morning sun, rolled down between her breasts and over her belly to the fuzz below, and thence back into the pool.

Which our protagonist retells as:

The coin lay in a fountain
Clear water splashed around
It ran between two mountains
From there it trickled down

It flowed o'er plain and forest
Till at last it reached the sea
If my fingers could trace where that rivulet ran
I'd carry that coin off with me.

 

[LeandraNyx]

Deleted

 

[NotWise]

I have used 'delta' before--sometimes with modifiers--to refer to a woman's pubic hair, but that seems a little esoteric to me.

 

[sr71plt]

There's always "mons," "mons pubis," or "mons Venus." I've also seen simply "V." And I haven't seen mentioned here "snatch," which would suit an earthy-language story, I'd think.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Maybe it's a regional difference. To me "muff" comes across very teenage-boy-ish - "Muff Diving Championship 2015" t-shirts, that sort of thing.

Muff just strikes me as comedy, I've never heard it used by anyone altho I've read it here and there. I've used "fluff" a few times, but usually I just skirt around it. What I have done is used "sex" as an alternative to cunt or pussy. But that's also the characters I'm writing. They tend to be conservative chinese or asian girls, and they skirt around the words in their own heads.

 

[LeandraNyx]

Deleted

 

[Bramblethorn]

There's always "mons," "mons pubis," or "mons Venus." I've also seen simply "V." And I haven't seen mentioned here "snatch," which would suit an earthy-language story, I'd think.

oh, and there's "map of Tasmania".