Like this article points out, the fact is none of my useful sex education came from school. None of it. All of it came from porn, advice columnists & podcasts, bloggers, and experience.
Which is why, as an erotica writer and a blogger who talks about sex a lot, I think it's so important to not only include things like enthusiastic consent and negotiation and communication, but to make it sexy too. To not let it be some kind of downer or obligatory write-off that needs to be rushed through so we can get to the sexy bits.
It, in and of itself, needs to be part of, wrapped up in and inextricably bound, with the sexy bits. I strive to make it so that my stories do not work without those parts. That, if you take them out, the story doesn't make sense anymore.
Because I am a firm believer that our culture needs to start thinking of sex like that. It needs to become our romantic and sexual narratives. It needs to be normalized and embraced.
Because, in real life, sex doesn't work without those things. It just doesn't. And we need to stop pretending, and definitely need to stop promoting and romanticizing the idea, that it does. It should break our fourth wall and take us out of the story, if that basic level of decency and ethics doesn't exist. Its lack should leave us wanting more, wanting better, from our stories.
Because, if we continue to treat consent and communication as unnecessary drags in our stories, can we really be surprised, when so much of our sexual knowledge and culture is shaped by what we in the porn industry do, that they're treated that way in real life too?
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