Sex Is All Metaphors
by Jean Roberta

In his poem "Altarwise by Owl-light," Dylan Thomas wrote:

Death is all metaphors, shape in one history;
The child that sucketh long is shooting up,
The planet-ducted pelican of circles
Weans on an artery the gender's strip.¹

If the exact meaning of these words escapes you, you are not alone. Thomas was better known for his lush, startling imagery, the evidence of his Welsh hwl (soul, creativity), than for the soundness of his logic. (He was also known as a lush whose behavior was sometimes startling, but never mind. His rockstar-poet lifestyle led to his death during a reading tour in 1953, and I hope he has been at peace since then.) Hwl, of course, is like lust. It is the impulse that gives rise to expression in various forms.

Dylan Thomas has always been one of my favorite poets, and his big themes (the circularity of life and death, the interconnection of all living things) seem sexy to me in a way that goes deeper than literal descriptions of body parts in action. The line "Death is all metaphors" seems self-evident to me. It is one of the universal events which can have diverse and contradictory meanings.

Sex, like death, can represent, embody or symbolize a dizzying variety of things. Sex can be communication, joining, delight, ecstasy, transformation, escape. It can be silly and fun. It can be profound and life-changing. It can be an elegant dance or a clown act. It can be bittersweet, especially when it causes two or more people to believe there is a personal bond between them when they are really responding to pheremones and the magic of touch. Sex can be comfort in a time of grief or trauma. It can be reassurance and emotional support. It can be a learning and teaching experience, or a form of research.

Editors of erotic magazines, websites and anthologies usually claim to want "sex-positive" stories. In some cases, this simply means that writers must avoid the standard taboos: no incest, no sex between characters under the age of consent in their jurisdiction (whether this age is 14 or 21), no sex with real animals (excluding magical creatures such as werewolves, mermaids and centaurs), no rape (non-consensual sex), or at least no rape described with approval. Any reasonably intelligent writer can see that these taboos are subject to interpretation and debate, and that all of them have been broken, not only in the kind of "porn" which is assumed to be a badly-written aid to masturbation, but in the kind of literature which is taught in universities. Don't blame erotic editors, however. They need to protect themselves from the enforcement of vaguely-worded laws against "obscenity."

This brings me to the issue of sex-negative writing, assuming there is such a thing. If sex is all metaphors, it can't always be a simple way to get happy. Sex can be a desperate, doomed attempt to bridge a gap in credibility or understanding. It can be an extreme form of exploitation. It can be the event that turns a high school girl who is desperate to fit in into a target for contempt from everyone she knows. It can be an attempt to prove something unprovable. Sex can be an act of self-hatred, or hatred of the other. It can be the means by which invading armies literally colonize the bodies of civilians, hoping to impregnate as many "enemy women" as possible. Sex, broadly defined, can destroy both body and soul.

Should erotic writers avoid saying anything disturbing about sex? The terms "adult" and "mature" are often used as euphemisms for sexual content, yet to avoid mentioning any negative emotions (guilt, hatred, rage, fear, despair, regret, etc.) in connection with sex is to limit oneself to a fairly childish view of the world. See Dick and Jane. Dick loves Jane. Jane loves Dick. See Dick and Jane fucking happily ever after. (For variation, see Adam and Steve or Xena and Gabrielle.)

Living in a human body seems inherently sexual to me. It is hard to imagine any situation involving human beings which couldn't include sexual feelings, if not sexual activities. Therefore the claim that erotic writers are "limiting" themselves to a literary ghetto seems bizarre to me. If anything, erotic writers are so diverse that we don't always speak the same language. Some honest members of the various lists here at ERWA have complained that they don't understand X (female/female or male/male attraction, polyamory, a particular fetish, role-playing, Dominance/submission, or the range of activities summed up as BDSM - bondage/discipline/sadism/masochism). There is usually someone else on the list who can explain X, as far as it can be explained in words.

A more fundamental credibility gap exists between those who believe that erotic writing should be sexual fantasy, an escape from the stuck zippers and frustrating interruptions of real life, and those who believe that literature worthy of respect, including the sexually-explicit kind, should shed light on the real world. The realists complain that the fantasists write unbelievable stuff, while the fantasists complain that gritty realism just doesn't satisfy a reader's need to get off. I believe there is room for both realism and fantasy in erotic literature, but the differences need to be acknowledged. In an ideal world, sex would always satisfy everyone involved. In the real world, sex often dramatizes social and political conditions, including differences in power. When a relatively privileged person buys sex from someone who needs to sell it to survive, it is clear whose lust drives the plot.

In this column, I hope to discuss a range of issues of interest to erotic writers, without violating any of the basic legal taboos. (Be warned that I might grumble about them.) Sex has been various metaphors in my life. Like a kaleidoscope, it shows a different picture with every change of position. Welcome to my world.

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¹ From Dylan Thomas: The Poems, by Dylan Thomas (J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1971 (first published 1937).

Jean Roberta
July 2008

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"Sex Is All Metaphors" © 2008 Jean Roberta. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written


About the Author: Jean Roberta is the thin-disguise pen name of a writer who teaches mandatory first-year English classes in a Canadian prairie university and who writes fiction (erotic and otherwise), research-based articles, opinion pieces and reviews. She joined ERWA in December 1998, and has never looked back. Several of her stories can be found in the “Treasure Chest” gallery.
Jean has many publishing credits to her name, including Obsession (Eternal Press 2008), her single-author e-collection of erotic stories in various genres and flavor. “Smoke” in Best Fantastic Erotica Circlet Press 2008), “The Personal Is Political,” appears in Coming Together: With Pride (Phaze Publications June 2008).
Jean is a staff reviewer for the monthly reviews site, Erotica Revealed (edited by D.L. King). She blogs on Livejournal as "Lizardlez" and at www.goodsturdyjeans.blogspot.com. Her website (www.JeanRoberta.com) is a work in progress.
Read Jean's full bio at the Erotica Readers & Writers Association.

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