So, I’m like. Weirdly torn between shyly raising my hand and going “me” and being like HERE IS AN ESSAY, I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS ON THIS TOPIC.
But, really, what it comes down to is this: naked does not mean invalid. The things we do with our clothes off are just as important to our lives and emotions and relationships as the things we do with them on. And so much of our body image and representation gets policed, because of Puritan ideology masquerading as morality.
But demonizing sex, sexual pleasure, and the naked body, hiding it, instilling shame for it hurts everyone. It devalues sex workers. It makes it acceptable to direct scorn and even violence towards those sex workers, but also towards anyone with an “abnormal” or “deviant” sex life, which translates to queer people, to the poly community, to kink. It hurts people with uteri, because we end up with the unhidable evidence of sex-having in the form of pregnancy, and then the policing and judgement ascends to new levels. Especially if you’re young.
It hurts people because, if bodies are bad, if which bodies we see and when and in what contexts is tightly controlled, people with bodies outside of the presented standard struggle with even more shame. It hurts disabled people, who don’t get represented, who’s bodies are desexualized when we have sexual orientations and needs and desires, too. It privileges the sexuality of certain races above others, trying to convince us that colour of your skin informs the content and quality of your fucking. It makes sex and sexuality this strange thing, with so many unwritten social rules and expectations that it is simultaneously everywhere and slightly taboo, so omnipresent and considered so universal that people on the ace spectrum aren’t believed, are threatened with physical and sexual violence, dehumanized because we’ve been taught that, while fucking is dirty, it’s also human.
I write sex scenes and deal with sex and sexuality in my fanfic AND my original work because all of those things matter. Because trying to carve out a space in which to inhabit my own sexuality as a queer, disabled woman is hard, and I know I’m not the only one struggling. I do it to write myself back into a body that has experienced far too much violence, a body that too many others thought they had a right to for a plethora of reasons. I do it to remind myself on the bad days that this, these feelings and these wants, this flesh is MINE, and no one gets to take them from me. Everyone who tried? Fucking failed.
Writing good sex scenes is ridiculously hard, but I want the people who most need those truths up there–that sex is not the enemy, that sex workers are human and deserve respect, that bodily autonomy matters, that fucking is not dirty, that it might be life-affirming but it is not the proof our humanity–to walk away from my stories feeling seen. I am not perfect. I am still learning, and trying to figure out better ways to represent the groups I mentioned, especially if I’m not part of them. I do my best to not speak over the people who know better than me about these issues, to listen, but also to remember that my voice matters, too.
(Apparently I dove into essay territory. Whoops?)
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