The Evolution of Women’s Erotica

In my book, Understanding Erotic Hypnosis, I talk extensively about how cultural context influences what we perceive to be erotic. I’m not the first person to describe this relationship, probably not even the 100th. But I think that my watching the erotic hypnosis communities emerge and evolve offers a very different perspective on this relationship than that presented by either sexologists or other writers of women’s erotica. And I see a continuing evolution in progress.

The 20th-Century Perspective

Back in 1999, when I first decided to write an erotic hypnosis script for women, I studied the recommendations of experts on women’s erotica, like Candida Royalle. Royalle, who came from a porn background, said that erotica differed from porn in that it portrayed sex as an act of emotional intimacy.

I think that pornography itself is a reflection of how we have perverted our sexuality… what would be described as ‘male’ pornography makes sex look rather dirty, mechanical, and loveless. Erotica, on the other hand, can be an expression of intimacy and connection.”

Following this expert advice, I wrote my scripts to portray sex as an activity that combines physical and emotional elements. And that emotional element was often a connection between the listener and an imagined lover. I made this the predominant theme of A Tango in Subspace, The Ultimate Kiss, and Reorienting. I also echoed this perspective in my early articles promoting erotic hypnosis as women’s erotica.

But Royalle developed her perspective coming out of the porn industry in the 19802. This was long before the emergence of paranormal romances and erotic hypnosis as independent genres and long before we had internet communities for sharing innovative ideas and homemade erotic audio and video. Things have changed.

The 21st Century Perspective

When I released Demon Seed, one of my listeners told me it would appeal to the same women who loved paranormal romance novels. She referred to J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood as she explained the element of the genre she loved most:

None of that sappy pining away for the perfect lover. No mushy courting or poetry. Ward’s hero makes women feel raw animal lust. He turns two women’s brains to instant mush just by his presence.

So, of course, I read the first book in the series, Dark Lover. And I discovered that both Royalle and my listener were correct. Ward portrays sex as part of an intimate emotional connection between the main characters, but she also portrays both male and female characters as intensely passionate and vibrantly sexual beings. The male character, a 300-year-old vampire who exudes raw sexuality, does inspire mind-numbing lust. But once he fell in love, he helped that woman shed socially imposed inhibitions and discover her natural capacity for passion. (Forgive me for forgetting the characters’ names, but it has been 15 years, and I’ve probably read over 400 novels since then.) A couple of months later, I read Gena Showalter’s Heart of the Dragon. In this book, another 300-year-old male (this time a dragon prince with a human form) who exudes raw sexuality helps a woman shed her inhibitions and discover her natural capacity for passion as they fall in love.

These books illustrate (and sometimes celebrate) the joy of sharing a passionate sex-positive relationship, the type of relationship where sexual passion is the spark that enables personal growth. This leads both characters to healthier and happier lives. Readers create cognitive representations of these characters in their minds, just like they would develop representations of real people. They develop empathetic sympathies with the characters and live vicariously through these characters’ experiences, and share in the characters’ emotional experiences.

Passion can be intoxicating, even in the small doses we get living vicariously through fictional characters. And these vicarious experiences inspire the belief that increased passion could enrich our real lives as well. However, vicarious experiences are intrinsically limited. You don’t experience the full intensity of the lust you’d feel if you were actually enthralled by a vampire or a succubus. You don’t fully experience all the conflicting emotions of being sexually attracted to a werewolf or vampire. And you certainly don’t experience the perfect clarity of being completely brainwashed. But reading about such experiences, or watching them on TV, continues to inspire a desire for more. It also inspires us to create new ways to stimulate our dreams and passions.

Like erotic hypnosis, which has evolved into a genre of media-assisted role play (MARP).

What is Erotic Hypnosis

Erotic hypnosis is a broad term for a wide range of sexually-related activities. But the most common activity is listening to erotic audio files and imagining yourself in the situation the hypnotist describes. Hypnotic suggestions can elicit both the emotional experience and physical sensations, helping people realize their fantasies much more vividly than reading or watching TV. Hypnotists use words to inspire mental imagery. Listeners, following the hypnotist’s suggestion create elaborate erotic scenarios in their minds and see themselves live out their fantasy.

Pop culture has given us an infinite number of scenarios with erotic potential, inspiring both men and women to fantasize about supernatural seduction, erotic enthrallment, dominance and submission, forced arousal, personality transformations, and a wide variety of non-consensual scenarios. Some even fantasize about being raped by alien sea monsters with hundreds of tentacles.

These fantasies may seem like a far cry from Royalle’s definition of women’s erotica as ‘sex in the context of intimacy’. But it depends on your definition of ‘intimacy’. If you define intimacy as the emotional connection between two people in a long-term, committed relationship, then these fantasies are outside that definition. But if you define intimacy as any instance of emotional rapport, even a momentary instance, then Royalle’s definition of erotica still applies. Because the idea that the hypnotist will create that instance of mental and emotional rapport and use this rapport to create a shared sexual pleasure is what makes each of these fantasies erotic.

And now we can do more than just imagine these fantasies. We can play the roles we imagine.

Media-Assisted Role Play

Back in the 1990s, Star Trek fans laughed at Reginald Barclay using the holodeck to live out his romantic fantasies, and Quark suggesting his patrons use the holodeck to live out sexual fantasies with alien lovers. At the time, these ideas seemed comically absurd. But advances in computers and home recording equipment now enable us to produce erotic audio files almost as easily as we can write stories. Through guided visualization, erotic hypnosis creates virtual reality experiences, which makes those Star Trek scenarios not only more plausible but tame by comparison.

But it would be naive to assume that only socially awkward men indulge their fantasies with tech. Both men and women want to experience intense passion. Both genders are inspired by pop culture to explore fantasy scenarios with the potential to elicit raw animal lust. Both enjoy writing erotica, and both enjoy pushing the boundaries of their erotic imagination.

Erotica as an Educational and Therapeutic Tool

In many places, sex education is often plagued by religious and political interference, forcing people to fill in the gaps by searching the internet. Erotica authors (like me) often also write non-fiction (like the articles on this site) to help our audience understand why we explore certain fantasies. We use our erotica as examples to explain aspects of our sexuality, making them educational tools for other people to learn about their sexuality.

Therapists already use journaling, hypnosis, and role playing to help patients overcome problems like overcoming inhibitions, becoming more in touch with their bodies, and developing orgasm control. So it is conceivable that writing erotica or roleplaying erotic scenes could also be used as therapeutic tools.

A Broader Definition of Erotica

Erotica continues to grow in defiance of religious organizations’ efforts to lump it with pornography and ban it all as obscene. Should those nuts gain enough traction to pose a threat to our explorations, we can still argue that erotic is vastly different than porn and half-assed productions on sites like clips4sale.com. But how can we define erotica to include role play of scenarios that in real life would be potentially harmful, like demon rape and non-consensual mind control scenes?

I suggest:

Erotica is any artistic depiction of human sexuality or sexual activity that contributes to the understanding that sex and passion can be enriching aspects of life or that inspires sex-positive personal growth and exploration.

Of course, there are still some differences between men’s and women’s erotica. For example, in erotic hypnosis, we write audio scripts in the second person point of view for listeners of a specific gender. Scripts that talk to female listeners are distinct from scripts that talk to male listeners. But both men’s and women’s erotica explore a broad range of fantasies and experiences, far more than Royalle allowed for in her definition.

Conclusion

Women’s erotica has evolved from exploitive and emotionally empty porn to sex-positive role play that enables them to explore a wide range of virtual experiences. And it will likely continue to evolve as our culture and technology progress.