The Vibrator-Light-o'-Truth: Selling a Sex Positive America

In recent years corporate publishers have had some deep marketing insights such as:

a. sex sells, and

b. consumers, both female and male, who would never enter a porn shop will buy sex-oriented books in non-threatening places and in packaging that doesn't make them feel "sleazy" (i.e., like they just purchased a masturbation aid).

Thus the contemporary saturation of bookstore chains by "erotica": a small word for mankind, but for corporate publishing, a billion dollar genre category. This hip, four-syllable, pseudo-European-sounding, word-o'-gold throws seven veils of sophistry, uh, I mean "sophistication", over what would otherwise be just good old monosyllabic smut. See how "pornography" is dumbed down to the crass-sounding, "porn", while "erotica" keeps its snooty, multi- syllabic form and is never shortened to a crude "er", as in "Where is the er section?" or, "Do you have any er?"

Erotica's manifest destiny can be seen in the flood of corporate subsidiaries and femme-friendly-sounding genre publishers like Blue Moon Books (classic and modern erotica), Silver Moon Books (erotic female submission and bondage), Circlet Books (erotic sci-fi and fantasy), Red Sage Publishing (erotic romance), Alyson Publications (gay and lesbian erotica), Etchings Press ("the thinking woman's erotica"), and in the glut of women-edited erotica collections like Susie ("America's favorite X-rated intellectual") Bright's endless volumes of Best American Erotica, Herotica (volumes 1-3), and other collections all featuring the diamond-studded E-word and Ms. Bright's "intellectual" blessing. The demand for "thinking people's" erotica has also fertilized the Internet with women-oriented erotica sites like Dare, Clean Sheets, Scarlet Letters, Her Curve (lesbian), the Femmerotica Network and the inevitable SusieBright.com.

So much of the wattage of the erotic realm is expended upon establishing a relentlessly enlightened, tasteful, educational and morally pioneering ethos that there is sometimes little energy left for eroticism. The halogen glare of Susie Bright's ego, for example, is an instant passion killer: "Why do I write about sex? Because no one else has the balls to, I guess ... I often get called 'guru'. I think people have given me that name because there is an absence of leadership and charisma in affairs of sex ... People look to me for answers about the most intimate parts of their lives ... men and women of every age, who feel like they were lost in darkness and painful propaganda, and that I was the honest woman with the flashlight/vibrator who came in and said something that finally made sense.'

Yet thousands put up with Susie, because in her hectoring way she has pioneered the role of the Sex Positive Woman whose task it is to assure us, the guilt-ridden masses, that our desire for smut is OK. It's as if the Statue of Liberty were to sit America down and say, "Kids, jacking off to juicy stories is perfectly healthy. Why I've been doing it for years! See -- here's my vibrator collection." Although Susie sometimes feels like, "a reluctant sexpert ... intimidated by the burden it takes to expose sexual dishonesty and illusions," she makes us, the blushing, sweaty hordes who are "lost in darkness and painful propaganda," feel that we have a purpose: we can also lend our fumbling hands to Susie's illusion-shattering labor. As we turn the pages of her anthologies we are not groping in shame and darkness. Au contraire, we are helping to illuminate the puritan gloom: masturbating our way to enlightenment!

More Women-Friendly Erotica

Susie Bright is by no means the only female figurehead of women-friendly erotica. Marcy Sheiner, who took over the Herotica series (vols 4-6), also edits the copy-cat Best Women's Erotica series and has, like Susie, diversified into the equally lucrative "How To" (be erotic) genre with her modestly entitled Sex For The Clueless: How To Enjoy A More Erotic and Exciting Life. Hipper than Susie and Marcy is Tristan Taormino, editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series, and also author of The Ultimate Guide To Anal Sex For Women. Of course authors like Anais Nin, Collette and Pauline Reage were writing erotica before Susie, Marcy and Tristan were born, but previous women authors of erotica tended to be lone, bohemian figures: sexual and cultural outsiders.