When Sex Was Invented: Erotic Pleasure in Individual and Collective Memory

by | June 18, 2015 | General | 6 comments

Donna George Storey

I want to change the world one dirty story at a time. When I posted this mission statement on my website, I hoped my cheeky ambition would make my readers smile. I smile every time I read it myself. And yet I’m totally serious. I truly believe that writers who are brave enough to speak their truth about the erotic experience in all its complexity—the yearning, the pleasure, the conflicts, and the sweet satisfaction—do change the world for the better. So if you’re here at ERWA because you’re already writing erotica, a big thank you and keep on doing what you’re doing. If you’re more a reader than a writer, I encourage you to start dreaming and writing and expressing the truth and magic of this fundamental part of the human experience in your own unique voice. Can there be a more pleasurable way to change the world? I'm the author of Amorous Woman, a semi-autobiographical erotic novel set in Japan, The Mammoth Book of Erotica Presents the Best of Donna George Storey  and nearly 200 short stories and essays in journals and anthologies. Check out my Facebook author page at: https://www.facebook.com/DGSauthor/  

6 Comments

  1. Rachel Green

    fascinating. Thank you.

    • Donna

      Thank you, Rachel!

  2. Lisabet Sarai

    "If sexuality were a country, its history suppressed, its language silenced, its native art forms outlawed, its citizenry mocked as stupid and shameful, we would say this poor nation has been subject to a cruelly repressive colonialism." What a fabulous analogy, Donna!

    I was not familiar with this poem. It certainly reads ironically in this era of plastic boobs and designer vaginas, AIDS and right-to-lifers, gay bashing and jihadi brides.

    I had to stop and ask myself whether sexual intercourse began for me in 1963, but no, it was a bit later (1968 if I'm not mistaken). And the more I read other people's blogs, the more I realize how fortunate I was to grow up with a relatively stunted sense of sexual shame.

    • Donna

      You were very fortunate, Lisabet! I'd love to hear more about how you escaped. I'd bet it was a combination of personal strength and a friendly environment, but it would be good to know how people manage that so we can develop a toolkit of resistance to those pressures :).

  3. Fiona McGier

    Though she never really "walked the talk", my mom brought me up to view sexuality as totally normal and okay to talk about. Unfortunately she was married to my dad, and he was a different sort of bloke, being from Scotland. She often warned me not to marry a foreigner. I didn't.

    Husband used to be shocked at how I talked in front of our kids, but I told him that I didn't want any of them having hang-ups about sex, so I did as Mom had done, and talked about it as if it were a perfectly natural body function…like eating. Which, of course, it is. Luckily we brought our kids up free of organized religion, so there weren't any negative influences on them.

    Once, when our oldest was in middle school, he was complaining about how in school (we live in a very Christian area), in sex ed classes all they were being taught was abstinence, with graphic pictures of diseased organs and dire threats of the pain and suffering caused by sex outside of marriage. We were at the dinner table, and his 3 younger siblings were eating also. I told him to do and say what he had to do, to pass the class. But to remember that "whenever Winky comes out to play, he needs to wear a raincoat." The boys burst out laughing, my husband spat his food out then laughed, and the youngest child, a girl, asked who "Winky" was. I answered her question, then we went back to having dinner. It was typical of our family dynamics, and I'm proud to have raised to adulthood, kids who have no ridiculous fears/attitudes about something so natural to all life forms.

    • Donna

      What a wonderful story, Fiona! First and foremost, being comfortable enough to engage in discussions about sex with that kind of humor (rather than nasty humor, which is too common in sexual matters) as a family is an excellent foundation for kids. I also talk/talked a lot about sex with my kids, critiquing media portrayals as well as how we are shamed in different ways, as in being shamed for inexperience, which is more of a problem in our liberal town where the high school distributes free condoms on demand. We each have the right to choose if we want to wait for a special relationship or experiment with consenting partners, which is rather different from my youth during the Sexual Revolution, when it felt required to have lots of sex, no matter the quality.

      Anyway, thank you for your heartening response. The past may be a blank, but the future is much brighter.

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