The role of taboo in your erotica.

[SimonDoom]

What is the role of taboo in your erotica? Either what you like to read or what you like to write?

By "taboo" I don't just mean the "Incest/taboo" category. I mean anything where the activity is somehow influenced or affected by a sense of the forbidden societal restraint, anything. It could be a matter of orientation, identity, multiple partners, sex in an unusual location, sex with people you're not "supposed" to have sex with, whatever.

For me, it's a big deal. Happy, healthy sex between two people who have no barrier at all in their sexual relationship is great, but it's not especially erotic, to me. To reach erotic potential, there has to be an edge of some kind. That's why I tend to write stories about people who are partaking of something sexually new--they're doing something they're not entirely comfortable doing. I find that makes it more erotic.

How do you feel about this issue, and how do you approach it in your stories?

 

[KeithD]

More taboos and kinks are building into my erotica writing, because the boundaries keep getting pushed to serve arousal.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think most of my stories revolve around taboo-and as you said the original term meaning something society in general frowns upon.

Loving wives material is taboo because sex outside the marriage is seen as taboo, even consensually, swinging etc seen as wrong-but seeing we live in the day of Ashely Madison...maybe not so much anymore.

Older women/men having sex with people young enough to be their kids is taboo.

Teacher student.

I've written a couple stories where women on hard times turned to porn to get fast money they were sorely in need of, some would consider that a taboo, porn itself and sex for money.

I do a lot of milf stories around the device of their son's best friend, a common and popular trope people don't think much of. But in reality...what mother sleeps with her son's friend knowing the shit he'd go through if found out and what kind of friend does that?

I think there are more taboos in people's stories than they know

 

[SamScribble]

I suspect that I may be my own worst enemy. As long as no one gets hurt, I think that anything that happens between two or three or more people – or one person and their right hand – is pretty much OK with me. And if people are going to get hurt, I’m unlikely to write about it. Taboo is in the minds of others. I’m just ‘here for the beer’.

 

[lovecraft68]

I suspect that I may be my own worst enemy. As long as no one gets hurt, I think that anything that happens between two or three or more people – or one person and their right hand – is pretty much OK with me. And if people are going to get hurt, I’m unlikely to write about it. Taboo is in the minds of others. I’m just ‘here for the beer’.

You're here for the fantasy, not the reality.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Oh yeah, taboo.
- taboos around nudity
- taboo about age difference - like double the age (though I'll admit more of it younger woman/older man)
- friends' relatives (especially friends' parent, but siblings can also be a bit of taboo)
- relationships with an imbalance in power
- cheating and/or several concurrent long(ish) term sexual relationships
- sugarbaby/sugardaddy relations
- prostitution and other sex work

Now I'm not saying that these all should be taboo, or I consider them taboo, but they often titillate the readership because of the taboo.

And even if the people involved in these kind of sexual relations are OK with it, are not feeling they are breaking any taboo, the people around them might not, and that is where drama can come from.

None of the relationships I write about are about happily married monogamous couples. If I did, the couple would probably have penchant for buttfucking in public places like libraries and such. And the story would be about that.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

As a reader, if the characters all seek to do something that goes against the norms of the society in which they live, I may find the story interesting. (To me, ‘interesting’ is more important than ‘erotic,’ although ‘erotic’ can be a worthwhile bonus.) If, however, some characters pursue their passion at the expense of other characters, or in a way that puts other characters at risk, the story is less likely to engage my interest. That’s just me. I want everyone, even fictional constructs, to be happy.

As a writer, my hunch is that the development of sexual openness in some modern societies has people (mainly in the youngest generations?) willing to learn about what might turn them on. While it’s not something I seek to explore in my own life, I think male characters who are bicurious can be envelope-pushers (at least until male bisexuality joins other identifications as No Big Deal, maybe another generation from now). I wrote a series about this last year, and found that it drew far more attention that my stories usually get, and not just from readers who decided to be offended.

 

[Carnevil9]

I agree that sex is sexier when you know you aren't supposed to be doing it.

Unfortunately, our society has become so permissive that there is hardly anything left to feel naughty about. Divorce, homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, all have been normalized. There are really only three concepts left that society truly looks down upon, and two of them are banned at Lit. That only leaves incest as the heavy hitter. And you can see how popular that is here.

I gave myself an assignment to write a story that had both incest and non-incest taboo. I ended up with a story of a woman who was sleeping with a priest. Of course she was also sleeping with her son, and the priest was also sleeping with his daughter.

 

[lovecraft68]

I agree that sex is sexier when you know you aren't supposed to be doing it.

Unfortunately, our society has become so permissive that there is hardly anything left to feel naughty about. Divorce, homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, all have been normalized. There are really only three concepts left that society truly looks down upon, and two of them are banned at Lit. That only leaves incest as the heavy hitter. And you can see how popular that is here.

I gave myself an assignment to write a story that had both incest and non-incest taboo. I ended up with a story of a woman who was sleeping with a priest. Of course she was also sleeping with her son, and the priest was also sleeping with his daughter.

My latest was a friend's hot mom...but with the mom in question being the church youth leader and pastor's wife....then he discovers that she's a hot wife and the husband a stag and whenever they're out of town for revivals they prowl the nightlife looking for another guy the minister can share his wife with, but seeing the friend discovers the secret he gets to be the next contestant.

Its in the sale market so the plus side is I don't have to deal with the squealing incels here attacking me over adultery, but on the other side its mixed kinks so not sure how it will do. So far one review which was positive and no more or less sales than the rest in the hot mom series

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Things don't have to be big taboos.

Situation: couple sits at a table, he hands her a butt plug, right where everyone can see. She gets up to go to the toilet butt plug in hand, nowhere to hide it. When she comes back she doesn't have it in her hand anymore, and the whole restaurant knows exactly what is going on.

 

[SimonDoom]

I suspect that I may be my own worst enemy. As long as no one gets hurt, I think that anything that happens between two or three or more people – or one person and their right hand – is pretty much OK with me. And if people are going to get hurt, I’m unlikely to write about it. Taboo is in the minds of others. I’m just ‘here for the beer’.

I'm the same way. If it's between consenting adults, it's fine with me.

But in my story worlds I feel like it works better if I inject them with a sense of the forbidden, or, at least, the new or unexplored. If it's too easy, it's less erotic. To me.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm the same way. If it's between consenting adults, it's fine with me.

But in my story worlds I feel like it works better if I inject them with a sense of the forbidden, or, at least, the new or unexplored. If it's too easy, it's less erotic. To me.

Conflict, which is to me the difference between stroke and erotica.
In my incest work myself, and through me, my characters are very self aware. I've had the mom or whoever come out and think "what's wrong with me" or go so far as to have the son.brother refer to himself as a sick bastard for checking out or getting off to his mom or sis.

I think that adds some, yeah this is wrong, and we know it, but...going for it anyway which IMO makes it a bit more plausible

 

[Bubo_bubo]

I think that adds some, yeah this is wrong, and we know it, but...going for it anyway which IMO makes it a bit more plausible

"If this is wrong, I don't want to be right," is how one of my characters says it.

 

[Voboy]

I think every one of my stories probably features some sort of taboo element. I don't find more romantic, straightforward plots all that alluring, and since I write what I'd like to read, the slightly scandalous is what always tends to make it into my work.

 

[Duleigh]

Right now, nothing. But my work is cyclical it used to be all about kink then it moved to taboo. Currently most of my stories are of broken people coming together for healing.

 

[ElectricBlue]

What is the role of taboo in your erotica? Either what you like to read or what you like to write?

How do you feel about this issue, and how do you approach it in your stories?

It's not a big motivator for me. My stories are more oriented towards random encounters that become more meaningful over time, as the protagonists get to know each other better. Life's little moments, ships passing in the night, lost opportunities, that kind of thing. My life, written as erotic nostalgia or longing for relationships I never had.

Anal used to be a taboo back when my sexuality was being put together, and I had one eager woman with a kink for it, so that's left its mark. Now, of course, you sit on the bus with the statistics in your head, and try to figure out who hasn't at least tried anal sex. That can be a bit odd, but passes the time on the morning commute.

But so far as "taboos" go, the "forbidden" as such is not a huge erotic driver for me, possibly because I grew up in a fairly open minded, atheist, left wing academic household, a middle son in between two sisters, and went to a co-ed school. So there wasn't too much "unspoken" as my sexuality was being packaged together.

I'm more likely to wander off into kinks such as women with body hair, or women who smoke, lingerie, fabulous clothes - visual, tactile arousals mostly. I'm more Dionysian than Freudian.

The whole incest thing astonished the fuck out of me when I first got to Lit - I'd encountered it on occasion (Anais Nin), but to discover it was such a huge thing just had me scratching my head. I still can't figure it out - siblings maybe, but even then, not really.

 

[XerXesXu]

Child of a mixed marriage, Catholic/Anglican, both parents non/practicing but superficially conforming, brought up in Catholic faith ie: subjected to periodic bouts of indoctrination until mid-teens. Taught that sex was permitted, only between married couples (Male and female), for the purpose of procreation. Beyond that, all sex was morally Taboo. Legally, buggery/sodomy (un-natural sex ie: anal and with animals) was Taboo. Homosexual practices had been made illegal by statute. The ‘Zeitgeist’, commonly accepted social inhibitions were, no masturbation, and no sex before leaving school.

You’d occasionally observe these taboos broken, but my parents taught me to respect neighbours' privacy, “If you weren’t meant to hear it, you didn’t hear it. If you weren’t meant to see it, you didn’t see it. Don’t gossip.” My peer group taught me to “watch the wall m’hearties while the gentlemen go by.’ So, my moral and legal taboos were relaxed around the edges and other peoples’ frivolities were to be respected. However, I never wanted to do something BECAUSE it was prohibited, including Taboo Sex. I wanted to do these things because they aroused me, they were things I’d like to do. I had my first serious girlfriend when I was 15 and our relationship continued ‘til we went to university in different geographical locations, it was a story of torrid teenage lust. I never had sex with my sister. I never had sex with my classmates, they were also my little sisters. I never wanted to have sex with them, even the hot ones, but their friends were a different matter.

I struggle with this idea that the mere fact that a sexual practice is Taboo makes it more arousing. The only sexual practices that arouse me are those that I want to do. I’ve explored at the edges, ticked the box, and moved on. Fantasising and writing or reading about things that I don’t want to do, and finding them arousing because they’re someone else’s Taboo kink will not happen for me, and I’m Mr Typical out of Central Casting. I doubt it happens for other people.

If you write fantasies about a particular sexual kink and you find it arousing, that’s who you are. I quite accept that many people are ‘fluid’ in their sexuality.

If you write kink fantasies which don’t arouse you, and you do so for acclaim or money, you’re a professional writer or a ‘wannabe’. Nothing wrong with that.

I struggle with the idea that an element of Taboo either creates or intensifies arousal that you would not otherwise have, hence my disapproval of rape and racist fantasies. But, for most kinks, I can 'watch the wall'.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I reckon one thing that's become more taboo in my lifetime is cheating. The mantra nowadays is if it involves only consenting adults, it's fine. But if you've contracted with someone, specifying monogamy, that's now not 'just to be expected'.

Taboo is a fancy word for going against expectations of you. I like stories which explore it in detail - someone guilty about first time sex because someone won't approve, two people deciding to do something somewhere where it's not allowed, someone experimenting with gay sex even though they're not attracted to the person. It's hard to find stories which go into psychology rather than a simple "I knew I shouldn't - but I did it anyway". It's that inner conflict which is the interest and the erotic bit, to me.

 

[TheRedChamber]

For me, it's a big deal. Happy, healthy sex between two people who have no barrier at all in their sexual relationship is great, but it's not especially erotic, to me. To reach erotic potential, there has to be an edge of some kind. That's why I tend to write stories about people who are partaking of something sexually new--they're doing something they're not entirely comfortable doing. I find that makes it more erotic.

Taboo is a fancy word for going against expectations of you. I like stories which explore it in detail - someone guilty about first time sex because someone won't approve, two people deciding to do something somewhere where it's not allowed, someone experimenting with gay sex even though they're not attracted to the person. It's hard to find stories which go into psychology rather than a simple "I knew I shouldn't - but I did it anyway". It's that inner conflict which is the interest and the erotic bit, to me.

This is an interesting topic and one that I've been chewing over on my morning walk as I wasn't really sure how much it applied to my work. It seems to me that there are two types of taboo that you're driving at - one is a 'societal taboo', other people (or maybe the government) disapproves of the activty and there will be real negative consequences if you're discovered doing it. The other is a 'personal taboo', something someone knows is 'wrong' but they find they want to do anyway. These are related to some extent, because if society tells you something is wrong you're likely to believe it, but not quite the same.

Thinking about what I write, I don't think I focus that much on simple societal taboos - although I suspect its impossible to write erotica for any length of time and avoid them completely. My Nude Day story naturally includes public nudity and that's clearly a taboo. Sex workers of various kinds and their clients have also featured in some of my stories - this is a societal taboo, but generally the sex workers I've featured so far are not too hung up on their job - it doesn't really exists as a 'personal taboo' for them or else they wouldn't do it (I've yet to write a SW who really really needs the money, maybe I should...)

The important point, I think, is that different people have different personal taboos and different sub-societies within a country have different societal taboos and when two people meet, or when a person enters a new environment these taboos rub together and get challenged and this can often create the internal and external conflict which is important for drama. A lot of my stories (and I suspect a lot of other stories on Lit) feature an element of liberation - a moment of the character from a situation or emotional state where there desires are not being met, to a state where they can be, and with the activity no longer considered taboo by themselves or by others.

A lot of my stories involve the opposite of 'taboo' whatever you want to call that - 'repressed' maybe but that's not always quite it. I've had foreign students who don't want to start a relationship because they're only in the country for a year and it would be too complicated, or people who have reached the age of thirty and are still virgins just because it's never quite happened for them - or my perenial favourite, the nerd who just isn't very good with the opposite sex. During the course of the story they will be thrust into situations where the previously impossible becomes possible.

An example from a plot bunny I've had kicking around for a while would be - It's 1969 and at the start of our story, our heroine is a young talented artist from a convervative upbringing who is made fun of at art school because not only is she not sleeping around, but she also doesn't have a boyfriend. Things however get crazy when her art is selected to be the album cover for one of the world's biggest rock groups and she suddenly has a front row seat to the summer of love and super-star excess. While her sexuality will be changed by all this, she's also going to need to be firm with her romantic partner about exactly where she thinks the lines are in the relationship.

A follow-up question for everyone. If you're stories do involve taboos, how often do your characters get caught and face society's disapproval or consequences? I'd suspect not often, or not to any significant degree - most incest stories surely don't end up with the protagonists being dragged off to jail.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

After we opened up our marriage and began dating others, my wife once made an interesting observation about what is "kinky" to others. A lot of the guys she dated really thought it was hot to take a shower together (and maybe "do it," too!). For her, well, we had been showering together since our dating years - sometimes with sex, but mostly just to get clean and enjoy each other's company while maybe conserving some water, too.

With that said, I tend to deal with a lot of first-time experiences and people wrestling with the implications of a new twist in their sex life. So, it's either that or cum play. Damn, I like me some cum play.

 

[Voboy]

A follow-up question for everyone. If you're stories do involve taboo's, how often do you're characters get caught and face societies disapproval or consequences? I'd suspect not often, or not to any significant degree - most incest stories surely don't end up with the protagonists being dragged off to jail.

More often than one might think, though often the "society" that disapproves is small (one or two other characters, or even themselves) and the consequences are generally minor, and are played for lightly comedic effect. A lot of my early stuff ends on partial cliffhangers, which were designed to suggest that some sort of retribution was about to occur... but with an out, so that readers could convince themselves the characters were still going to avoid consequences.

I like that kind of ending.

 

[SimonDoom]

A follow-up question for everyone. If you're stories do involve taboos, how often do you're characters get caught and face society's disapproval or consequences? I'd suspect not often, or not to any significant degree - most incest stories surely don't end up with the protagonists being dragged off to jail.

That's an excellent follow-up question. My answer is, almost never. My characters almost always get away with it. That's consistent with the theme I'm usually striving for, which is one of sexual positivity. I'm not interested in writing a Thomas Hardy novel where characters make questionable decisions and spend their whole lives paying for them. My stories are more comic than tragic, although the endings can be open-ended.

 

[XerXesXu]

- most incest stories surely don't end up with the protagonists being dragged off to jail.

In the UK adult (over 18) incest will not normally be prosecuted. The Crown Prosecution Service guidelines specify that it will not normally be in the public interest, even if the incestuous couple have children. In short, no one really cares, and it's a law that society doesn't wish to spend taxpayers' money enforcing against two adults. I suspect the same approach will be taken in other jurisdictions.

 

[SimonDoom]

In the UK adult (over 18) incest will not normally be prosecuted. The Crown Prosecution Service guidelines specify that it will not normally be in the public interest, even if the incestuous couple have children. In short, no one really cares, and it's a law that society doesn't wish to spend taxpayers' money prosecuting two adults. I suspect the same approach will be taken in other jurisdictions.

I believe the same is true in the US. It's more difficult to summarize because incest laws vary from state to state. I believe the rule in the US is that in most states, including even states that usually have laws regarded as permissive, like California, consensual adult incest is nominally illegal, but rarely if ever prosecuted anymore.

If you're writing about characters in the US having an incestuous relationship and looking for a safe haven, have them move to New Jersey or Rhode Island. Apparently, it's legal there.

 

[Voboy]

I believe the same is true in the US. It's more difficult to summarize because incest laws vary from state to state. I believe the rule in the US is that in most states, including even states that usually have laws regarded as permissive, like California, consensual adult incest is nominally illegal, but rarely if ever prosecuted anymore.

If you're writing about characters in the US having an incestuous relationship and looking for a safe haven, have them move to New Jersey or Rhode Island. Apparently, it's legal there.

Kinda like sodomy laws in the US. There are still states where a blowjob or a buttfuck remain technically illegal, but it's not ever prosecuted.

One justice system where some of these charges do sometimes find their way into a courtroom is the UCMJ, the American criminal system for people serving in uniform, which is generally separate from state laws. I've seen sodomy charges brought to trial based on blowjobs, but even in the military, it's usually an "add-on" charge where the main offense doesn't specifically involve where the penis went, but rather who it belonged to and that person's command relationship to the recipient.