Show notes
Erotic writing is becoming more explicit
Gardening metaphors are out. Other things are very much in
Feb 27th 2025
START WITH the nipples. The lover does in “Mistress and Mother”, a steamy romantic novel from the 1990s. Though, since it was written three decades ago, they are not always called “nipples”. Instead, the author also discreetly describes them as “little buds”.
Other erotica from this era has a similarly hearty, horticultural air: in another novel, the paramour enjoys his lover’s “rosebuds”; in a third, he moves lower to her enfolding “petals”. In other books there is swelling, blooming and, of course, “seed”. The aim is oblique eroticism. The overall effect is of an unexpectedly energetic gardening catalogue.
But eroticism is changing. Open “Onyx Storm”, the latest romantasy book (a genre that blends romance and fantasy) by Rebecca Yarros, and things are rather clearer. Hardy perennials are out. Words like “hard” are in—as too are words including “cock”, “fuck” and “straddle”. And people are buying it. Sales of erotica are booming: thanks to pre-orders, “Onyx Storm” had already been on Amazon’s bestseller list for 19 weeks by the time it was published in January. After release, it shifted almost 3m copies in a week. It sold faster than any novel in America in the past 20 years.
There is now a vast variety of erotica available, including cosy erotica (knitwear is torn off), Austen erotica (Mr Darcy has assets even more impressive than £10,000 a year) and fairy erotica. There is even erotica featuring—readers may wish to brace themselves—physicists. These titles contain such explicit lines as, “Your dissertation on liquid crystals’ static distortions in biaxial nematics was brilliant, Elsie.”
Sex is not entirely novel for the novel, as readers of E.L. James and Alan Hollinghurst will know. But it is more frank and frequent. “The spiciness seems to be increasing,” says James Daunt, chief executive of Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, two bookshop chains. Look at the corpus of English fiction and the word “nipples” has doubled in frequency since the year 2000, while “orgasm” has quintupled; use of the word “clit” is 14 times higher.
In some ways this is unexpected. It was once assumed that erotica was a male pursuit and that its appeal was not merely the sex but the sin. Obscenity was legally defined in Britain in 1868 by a judge called—in a detail no novelist would dare attempt—Justice Cockburn. “Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography”, wrote Bertrand Russell, a philosopher, “is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young.” Obscenity laws were relaxed in Britain in the 1960s in the wake of the “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” trial, but the illicit thrill remained.
The world has changed since then. The moralists have faded. Whatever hold the patriarchy had on publishing has waned. Yet the sex remains, and it is women who are driving it. Most of these books are being written, edited and published by women. They are bought, in vast numbers, by women. The novels are promoted by women on social-media platforms, particularly TikTok, using hashtags such as #Spicybooks and #Steamyreads, then appear on Amazon with the phrase “TikTok made me buy it!”, which sounds less like an endorsement than a defence.
As the interest in #Darkromance shows, this sex is not all nice. In Ms Yarros’s books, the hero pins the heroine violently to the floor in wrestling matches; in the romantasy novels of Sarah J. Maas, who has sold almost 40m copies, faeries do things that would make Tinker Bell blush.
What has driven this is new digital formats, such as audiobooks. (Ms Yarros and Ms Maas dominate those charts, too.) The e-book has been especially consequential. It is discreet—no one can see what you are reading on a tablet. And it lets authors self-publish cheaply, as Ms James did in 2011 with “Fifty Shades of Grey”, a story of sadomasochism. It was later republished by Vintage, but romance lovers retained the habit of reading books digitally.
Authorial autonomy online means it is “impossible to police” what goes into books, says Hal Gladfelder of the University of Manchester. The ubiquity of internet pornography means that even to try to do so would feel “ridiculous”.
In one sense this new generation of erotic prose is more realistic than what came before. Floral analogies are out; proper body parts are in. But in another sense, it is not remotely realistic. Everyone is gorgeous; names like “Xaden” and “Aetos” dominate; most characters have remarkable powers, if not superpowers.
In Ms Yarros’s books, the hero and heroine, who are long-term lovers, can creep into each other’s minds, where they find each other thinking hot thoughts in an italic font, such as “How do you want me to take you?” and “You’re astounding” rather than, as might be the fear, “Did I switch the tumble dryer on?” or “It was definitely your turn to take the bins out.”
It is easy to smirk, but writing about sex is tricky—as a trawl through the back catalogue of the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards shows. The now-defunct prize, which ended during the pandemic, was set up in 1993 by Britain’s Literary Review to “highlight and gently discourage redundant, poorly written or unnecessarily pornographic descriptions of sex in fiction”. Given that the contenders in its final years included such phrases as she “offer[ed] her moist parts to my triumphant phallus” and her vagina was “slowly chugging my organ as a boa constrictor swallows its prey”, perhaps the discouragement was too gentle.
Part of the difficulty in writing about sex is what Julian Barnes, an English writer, called “the naming of parts”: “At the basic level, he put his what into her—or indeed his—what?” “Boa constrictor” is probably best avoided, but, as Mr Barnes observed, almost all terms are tricky. “Where between the Latinate and the Anglo-Saxon do you pitch it?”
Being biological can be as bad as being too oblique, as a contender for the Bad Sex award in 2019 clearly showed. “I have 8,000 nerves in my clitoris,” explained one character. “Your penis gets by on 4,000.” (Such a pronouncement would leave most lovers unsure whether to take notes or take flight.) At times characters seem to be enjoying sex as little as the reader. In a nominated work of 2019 a character, in a moment of high passion, “screamed as though [she] were being run over by a train”. The reader can only sympathise.
Most winners of the prize were, unsurprisingly, men: the male gaze does not always improve male prose. But the internet is changing the balance of power in fictional sex, just as it has in actual sex. Male misbehaviour is called out by such things as the “menwritingwomen” Reddit thread. (John Updike—the “penis with a thesaurus”—features heavily.) A popular parody pokes fun at a man writing a woman’s morning: “Cassandra…breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards.”
Eroticism always “reflects what is going on in society at the time”, says Sharon Kendrick, a popular British romantic author. In the liberal 1970s, literary lotharios were in fashion. The arrival of the AIDs pandemic in the 1980s brought on a period of “sexual fastidiousness” and heroes who had one true love and a condom.
The new generation of erotic prose may be easy to mock. But it is reflecting a society in which women can often get precisely what they want. That should give any feminist a bit of a thrill. ■
情色寫作變得更加直白
園藝隱喻退場，露骨詞彙登場
從乳頭開始。至少在《情婦與母親》這本1990年代的火辣愛情小說中，戀人是這樣的。不過，三十年前的作品裡，它們不一定被稱為「乳頭」，作者還會含蓄地稱之為「小花苞」。
那個年代的情色作品普遍有著濃厚的「園藝風格」：另一部小說裡，情人讚嘆伴侶的「玫瑰花蕾」；在第三部作品中，他往下移動，探索她環抱的「花瓣」。書中不乏「膨脹」「綻放」，甚至「種子」的意象。當時追求的是含蓄的情慾，整體讀來更像一本精力充沛的園藝型錄。
如今情色風格已然轉變。打開麗貝卡．亞羅斯（Rebecca Yarros）的最新浪漫奇幻小說《縱橫風暴》（Onyx Storm），場景截然不同。多年生植物退場，取而代之的是「硬」這樣的直白字眼——以及「屌」「幹」「跨坐」等詞彙。讀者也買單。情色文學銷量正大幅成長：靠著預購，《縱橫風暴》在1月出版前已連續19週位居亞馬遜暢銷榜。出版後一週內就賣出近300萬冊，成為過去20年美國銷售速度最快的小說。
現在市面上情色作品種類繁多，包括「溫馨型情色」（毛衣被撕裂）、「奧斯汀風情色」（達西先生的資產不僅僅是一年一萬英鎊）以及「精靈情色」。甚至還有主角是物理學家的作品，其中出現這樣火熱的句子：「你那篇關於液晶雙軸靜態扭曲的論文真是太出色了，艾爾希。」
性在小說中並非全新元素，EL．詹姆斯（E. L. James）與艾倫．霍林赫斯特（Alan Hollinghurst）的讀者早就知道。但現在它更直接、更頻繁。Barnes & Noble 與 Waterstones 兩大連鎖書店的執行長詹姆斯．道恩特（James Daunt）說：「辣度似乎在提升。」英語小說語料庫顯示，自2000年以來，「nipple（乳頭）」的使用頻率翻倍，「orgasm（高潮）」增加五倍，「clit（陰蒂）」更是高出14倍。
某種程度上，這樣的轉變出乎意料。過去人們認為情色主要是男性的嗜好，其吸引力來自於「性」與「禁忌」。1868年英國對「猥褻」的法律定義，由一位名叫——小說家恐怕不敢編造——寇克本（Cockburn）的大法官所作出。哲學家羅素曾寫道：「色情吸引力的九成，源於道德家在年輕人心中灌輸的猥褻情緒。」英國的猥褻法在1960年代《查泰萊夫人的情人》審判後逐漸鬆動，但禁忌帶來的刺激仍然存在。
而今世代不同了。道德家退場，父權在出版界的掌控力也減弱。然而性仍在，只是推動它的已是女性。這些作品大多由女性撰寫、編輯與出版，也被女性大量購買。社群媒體上，特別是在TikTok，女性讀者以 #Spicybooks 與 #Steamyreads 等標籤推廣，最後在亞馬遜出現「TikTok讓我買的！」的字樣——聽起來更像是一種辯解，而非背書。
不過，這些作品的性愛並非總是溫柔。#Darkromance 的流行便是一例。亞羅斯的小說裡，男主角會在角力中將女主角猛然壓倒在地；莎拉．J．馬斯（Sarah J. Maas）的浪漫奇幻小說裡，精靈的行徑足以讓小叮噹(奇妙仙子)臉紅。
推動這股浪潮的，是新的數位載體，例如有聲書（亞羅斯與馬斯在榜上同樣稱霸）。電子書尤其關鍵：它能保有隱私——沒人能看出你在平板上讀什麼；它也讓作者能以低成本自費出版，正如2011年E. L.詹姆斯的《格雷的五十道陰影》，後來雖由Vintage再版，但浪漫讀者已經習慣於數位閱讀。
曼徹斯特大學的哈爾．格拉德費爾德（Hal Gladfelder）指出，網路讓作者完全自主，因此「幾乎不可能審查」。在網路色情遍布的今天，即使想管制也顯得「荒謬」。
某種程度上，這一代的情色小說比過去更「寫實」：花卉隱喻消失，身體部位直接點名。但另一方面，它又一點也不寫實。角色人人俊美，名字不是「薩登」（Xaden）就是「艾托斯」（Aetos），多數還擁有非凡甚至超能力。亞羅斯筆下的情侶甚至能進入彼此的心靈，讀到對方用斜體字傳遞的火熱心思，例如「你想要我怎麼要你？」或「你太驚人了」，而不是「我有把烘衣機關掉嗎？」或「今天明明是你該倒垃圾吧？」
固然容易譏諷，但性愛描寫確實困難。《壞性描寫獎》（Bad Sex in Fiction Award）的歷年入圍作證明了這點。該獎於1993年由《英國文學評論》創立，目的是「提醒並溫和地勸阻多餘、拙劣或過度色情的性描寫」。不過，最後幾年的參賽句子像是「她將濕潤的部位奉獻給我勝利的陽具」或「她的陰道像蟒蛇吞食獵物般，慢慢啃食我的器官」，恐怕勸阻力道還不夠。
英國作家朱利安．巴恩斯（Julian Barnes）曾指出，寫性愛最大的困難在於「命名部位」：「最基本的層面就是，他把他的什麼放進了她——或他的——什麼？」「蟒蛇」的比喻或許最好避免，但正如他所說，幾乎所有詞彙都帶有難題——要在拉丁學術語與盎格魯粗俗語之間找到平衡並不容易。
過於生物學化同樣尷尬。2019年某部入圍作品中，角色竟在高潮時宣稱：「我的陰蒂有八千條神經，你的陰莖只有四千。」（這樣的話恐怕會讓伴侶不知該做筆記還是落荒而逃。）另一位角色則在激情時刻「尖叫得像被火車輾過」，讓讀者不禁同情。
這個獎項多數得主毫不意外地都是男性：男性凝視並不總能讓文字更好。而網路正在改變情色書寫中的權力分配，就像在真實性別關係中一樣。男性的失誤經常被公開嘲諷，例如 Reddit 的「menwritingwomen」版面（常客包括「拿著字典的陽具」約翰．厄普代克）。還有人戲仿男性筆下的女性日常：「卡珊卓……胸部晃動地走下樓梯，並一路抖動著往下走。」
英國暢銷愛情作家莎朗．肯德里克（Sharon Kendrick）說，情色書寫一向「反映當下社會氛圍」。在自由奔放的1970年代，浪子角色當道；1980年代愛滋疫情帶來「性謹慎」時代，小說英雄變成只有一位真愛、而且會戴保險套。
新一代情色小說或許容易被取笑，但它反映的，正是一個女性常能獲得她們真正渴望的社會。這對任何一位女權主義者而言，應該都能帶來一絲快意。
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