To think that women reading erotica, however smutty, is not the same as men watching porn?

[Carla786]

I've seen some posts here and various articles elsewhere speak of women reading smutty books as if it's equivalent to men watching porn.
I can see how if a woman read huge amounts of them they might have unrealistic expectations. How common is this though?

I've had the misfortune to read a few pages of masterpieces like 'Bull Moon Rising' and 'Morning Glory Milking Farm' and I think the 'monster mance' trend is quite grim. I also find the popularity of dark romance including rape & abuse disturbing.

So I agree with some criticisms of romance fiction trends. But isn't equivalent to porn. Porn usually involves real actors, and even if the scene isn't violent, pressure is rife, performers suffer from injuries, men are pressured into using viagra to keep erections going. None of these issues are present in romance fiction.

Romance fiction doesn't lead men to suffer physical harm either. What romance novel has led to men being choked or pressured into anal sex?

I feel that sometimes coverage seems to want to imply that men and women' faults are equivalent. But if one sex is worse at something, men or women, it should be permitted to say that : if that's the reality. And I think porn is clearly worse. This doesn't mean issues with romance fiction shouldn't be discussed, it just means there' no need to equate them

AIBU?

It isn’t the same as porn because no performers are involved. The actual acts and kinks described are often certainly as extreme as anything you’d see in porn though.

It always makes me laugh when Mumsnetters suggest that men are more pervy than women, that women don’t like anal sex, that women don’t have major kinks, that women don’t like this that or the other, and it’s just men getting their ideas from porn and imposing them on women. Because anyone who has ever read any of the vast multitudes of smut fiction and fanfic written by and for women will know that women write and consume material that is full of fantasies every bit as weird, dark and kinky as anything any man gets off on.

From my brief sojourn on the subreddit Romancelandia, strange ahem... mechanics seemed to be a draw for some readers. I will say a lot of the threads were about fairly standard stuff without weird sex or monsters, but there was a lot of weirdness as well.

I love reading smut

Its hardly disgusting

Erotica is literally just words on a page; just an extension of people's imagination

Men are much more likely to commit perverted crimes than women though. Most women don't try to expose themselves to men, or photograph their genitals unawares, or sexually assaulted them. Most men don't do that, but significantly larger numbers do than women.

And I'm willing to bet most women don't like anal sex. Written fantasies don't necessarily mean they want it in real life. That would be odd as anyway women don't have a prostate so generally men will enjoy it more.

I'd also challenge the idea of women's fantasies being as dark as men's. Women's darkest fantasies will usually involve them being the one in pain, forced to have sex etc. Men's darkest fantasies are more likely to be sadistic than masochistic.

Reading erotic novels doesn’t tend to make women masturbate to the point they are unable to have functional sex with real life partners. Well not as far as I’m aware anyway. What’s the female equivalent of porn sickness?

Is erotica per se disgusting? If it's misogynistic or abusive, yes. But is sexually explicit text bad in itself?

Some men argue that women who read too many od these novels want dominant, ever attentive billionaires who they can't measure up to. I do think some women have unrealistic demands but is it common for them to be that bad?

Most men seem to realise that porn is basically a kind of vice or potentially a vice, and about sexual satisfaction.

• I'm not fully sure. A lot of men seem to argue there's nothing wrong with porn per se,,even if they acknowledge addiction as a potential issue.

Carefully

You should see what some writers have Alasdair and Rory doing…😂

ACOTAR was one of my gateway books. I literally signed up to kindle unlimited so I could read every book in the ice planet barbarians series its magnificent 😂

The only reason books like that exist is because there is demand for it. Same as anything

Does demand existing automatically mean that demand is OK and we should accept it?

Erotica is just smut with no literary merit whatsoever. Just like porn has no cinematic merit whatsoever. It is just there to titillate and arouse.

Morning Glory Milking Farm? Good heavens

This did make me laugh. I suppose thats the same as middle aged men wanting Bonnie Blue to do whatever weird thing with their bums is currently trendy on porn sites.

The difference is women who read trashy books are still able to maintain a sexual relationship and procreate normally with Darren from down the road when the billionaire isn’t forthcoming (!) whereas porn addicted men are in many cases taking themselves out of the gene pool. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out in the future.

I said "IMO" so no one has to agree! My opinion remains the same and vice versa!

Why do you like these books?

'The series follows a group of human women who crash-land and become stranded on Not-Hoth, an ice planet, where they meet a tribe of large, blue-skinned creatures called the Sakh. In the first book, Georgie, the de-facto leader of the women, is drawn to Vektal, the leader of the tribe. '

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Planet_Barbarians

They sound...interesting.

Never understood why the women in erotic novels are so passive. No-one's forced to read or write them like this, so it must be what people like to read about.

There are disturbing turns of dark romance. Usually authors have trigger warnings and sometimes I will not read the book or won’t finish the book if it takes a turn for the worst. Generally, an average dark romance can be fun to read between other books - that’s how I read them. For me, I’m not into the supernatural books but I appreciate it is a huge market.

Porn is different, it’s real people performing acts visually in front of an audience whether they (the performers) have signed up for it or not sadly. Reading doesn’t involve anyone in reality acting out the fantasy-written performance.

I think your original question about porn v erotic literature has an obvious answer.

I have consumed material for sexual arousal since puberty, and for a long time used porn. But eventually I had enough of cognitive dissonance and switched to erotica. I haven't watched porn in years. I did it for moral reasons because I couldn't guarantee that the actors weren't being coerced or otherwise abused, and the guilt got to me. I have absolutely no such worries with erotica because there are no real people involved. Even though erotica can describe things that couldn't even exist in real life, let alone be filmed, I still think that porn is significantly more harmful.

Porn promotes laziness as well, in that there is no imagination involved.

My masturbation frequency hasn't altered since giving up porn, nor am I any less satisfied. My partnered sex life is better though.

Porn is much worse than erotica in my view. My only concern is that it really isn't difficult at all to find written stories involving incest, children and animals. IMO such things should be banned for obvious reasons.

So anything depicting sex outside of a loving relationship, even just words, is bad?

What about people, men and women, who choose not to have sex within a loving relationship. Are they bad?

If you think erotic fiction is disgusting then how did you ever manage to have sex in real life? Never before have I heard of this. No fantasies or desires at all?