Current mood:	accomplished
Entry tags:	books, meta, rant, sexuality, x-flies

Meta: Dana Scully is my Sexual Role Model – or Can I have some Feminist Porn, Please
In wich I discuss (okay, discuss is a bit of a wrong term, rant or rave would be much better) fandom, sexuality and current erotic books. It's looooong loong.....



Dana Scully is my Sexual Role Model – or Can I have some Feminist Porn, Please

When I was in secondary school I did a study on Harlequin novels (trashy romance you can pick up from the grocery store). My motivations were rather selfish, as by that time (tender age of fifteen) I had been involved in fandom for quite a few years and had been reading things our society thinks a 15 year old has no business reading. So I wanted to see if there was anything like that available in book form. Now as you can probably imagine I was severely disappointed. The books were formulaic, there was absolutely no sex (well, not by my fandom standards anyway), and worse of all the women were all spineless cunts. No, I didn’t quite use that word then, but I am using it now because truly I think it is the only way to describe the role of a woman in that kind of literature. The sad thing is, that this view of femininity was not restricted to the Harlequin novels I devoured that summer, but also to the YA books from my local library. As an adolescent I found these women very odd and felt that the adulthood they projected had nothing to do with the kind of person I was growing up to be. But I do wonder if, had I not had another more powerful literary force pulling me into another direction, I would have taken more from the women of Harlequin. Would I have become, in my own words a spineless cunt, searching the purpose and fulfillment of my life through men and romantic relationships, instead of an academic feminism? Yes, a rash caricature perhaps, but in a lesser degree would I have become sexually less autonomous and less independent had I not had fandom as my chosen tool of sexual education?

Now I’m the first to admit that fandom produces some of the most deprived fiction anywhere on the planet. Non-con, bestiality, chan, necrophilia (yes, I have to just love the Potter fandom), we all know these terms, and at least I have read examples of all. Some out of pleasure of reading, and some….. well, out of pure curiosity. However, the point I’m trying to make here is that there is very little in writing that can shock me anymore. Now maybe I should call myself hardened and perverse, but I see the whole journey fandom has taken me through the world of sexuality and I have to be grateful because it has opened my eyes, and taught me to look beneath the surface of people and understand the differences. Now you must be wondering what I’m on about, so I must go back into the very beginning.

Mulder and Scully. The team X-files: shimmering sexual tension, just there but no lemon, built up expectations. Yes, the X-files fever was at its peak and I was thirteen years old. I was a religious fan, with the posters and books and other nick nacks collected on the way. Most importantly I had an internet connection and my very own laptop. Now X-files was not my first fandom, so there was no thrill of discovery, merely a though “I do wonder if there is similar stuff of this as Star Wars”. So I looked, and I read, I discovered what things like NC-17, smut and slash meant (because Star Wars was back then, and I think partly still is, very pre-pubescent fandom.)

Now, we’ve all seen and heard the moral police raving about the indecent Potter fans and children reading adult material on the internet. I find this incredibly funny because I was that child (at thirteen I didn’t really rate myself as child, though, and I feel that this is an important point to make) reading and blushing and sometimes hitting the “back” button faster than my mouse hand could move. Have I been depraved and compromised, possibly, but for me that has never been a bad thing, and there is one person, if you will, who was responsible for that: Dana Scully.

The red-headed, steadfast and trustworthy heroine of the X-files. All fanfiction writers have a different style and a different interpretation of their favorite character, but some characteristics stay the same, and with Scully those were her independence, her uncompromising character and her thirst for knowledge. Sexually those aren’t bad characteristics to have, neither are they bad things to give a young girl just discovering her own sexuality. She became my sexual educator in the things that school quite often leaves out. We all know the mechanics of sex, the in and out principles, medical terms are thrown at us and pictures of disease paraded on the overhead. And yes, these are all important things to know, but I still value Scully’s way of educating me much more. She taught me about consent, about trust, the need to be true to yourself and your desires, about intimacy and that sex doesn’t always equal love or relationship, and most of all that it is about pleasure, my pleasure; orgasms, toe curling, back arching, screaming the house down pleasure and that I should expect it, that I should demand it, and my partner should want me to experience it. As strange as it may sound the ample smut of the X-files fandom became an integral part of my journey into feminism.

I think that fandom is a place for feminist porn; sexual pleasure and experience where women come first (literary sometimes). We write from the female perspective (because most of us are women) whether it be slash, chan or drippy sweet fluff. And now this is the crux, it doesn’t always have to be pretty or nice. Fandom taught me to accept the darker fantasies in myself, taught me that what is written and thought does not mean that you will it to be real, it is an exploration in your mind. Sexuality is not a one way street of romance, and take me in my wedding bed kind of scenes that are fed to young girls as the true form of “right” or “correct” female sexuality.

Now, this spring, like my thirteen year old self many years ago, I decided to see what was out there, in the book sphere of erotic literature. I was spurred on after reading Niki Flynn’s Dances with Warewolves, now I won’t go into details of that book because this essay is not about that, but I will say go buy it NOW, it is a fantastic piece of writing and deserves to be read. So, I browsed the amazon selection and came by Emily Maguire’s Gospel According to Luke, now it seemed interesting enough. Religious themes, sex and romance; it had good reviews and I decided to give it a go.

Now, I have nothing personal against the author, but could people please stop writing spineless cunts, please.

The plot is rather simple: Aggie runs a free sexual health clinic, Luke runs a youth church across the road, they fall in love/lust (I couldn’t really tell or care to be honest) and in between of having moral-religious-ethical debate-sex, they both get involved in the life of a pregnant and abused teenager Honey. Now the story starts okay enough (even though no teenager I know would call her private parts “vagina”) with Luke and Aggie trying to change the other into their beliefs (god and abortion respectively). The author keeps telling me that there is shimmering sexual tension between the two (yes, yes get on with it.) However I began to have serious doubts after this passage:

“She had rarely in her life felt the urge to masturbate and found now – to her shame – that she was horrible at it. She wore herself out trying to relieve the unfamiliar tension. She tried reading Anais Nin and Henry Miller and Colette, and applied the silver bullet vibrator her mother had given her last Christmas until the batteries went dead. Then she stayed in the bath with the shower nozzle massaging her throbbing clitoris until the water was cold and her fingertips were wrinkled. She continued to see him every day, and every night she tried but failed to convince herself that the large white hands between her legs were Luke’s small brown ones.”

Okay, so this tells me that Aggie is quite an asexual person, it has been up to Luke to “ignite” her sexual feelings altogether. Now I oppose this on principle. We are all sexual beings and the control of our sexual selves lies with one person, yourself! It is an archaic view that women require men to show them the real essence of their sexuality. Secondly, this passage claims that Aggie is extremely aroused (“soaking panties” were mentioned prior), if a vibrator and a massaging showerhead doesn’t work then there is something physiologically wrong and Aggie should see a doctor immediately, also she is supposed to be a sexual educator, how on earth is she not worried by her body’s inability to orgasm!? The author claims that the problem is “the wrong hands”, so Aggie is unable to bring herself pleasure that is only reserved to the man. The man is the only true way to gain sexual fulfillment. This argument is then proven when Aggie and Luke finally do the deed and Aggie nearly screams the house down in her fierce orgasm. What?! I shouted as the reader. The vibrator and showerhead didn’t work for you but suddenly a sexually inexperienced and celibate priest gets between your thighs and it’s fireworks all around. Now, somehow I don’t buy it.

Back to our lovely Dana Scully, I have never read a fanfiction that discourages masturbation or even a one where masturbation is portrayed as not “correct” or inferior to a coupling. Yes, of course I’ve read the “his hand was so different from my own” drivel, but never has it been “oh, his hand brings me pleasure what I cannot bring to myself at all”. Now Scully masturbated a lot, with toys, fingers and I think I remember one with a washing machine, and yes it was often portrayed as frustrated “I wish Mulder was here” but never did she fail (over and over again, I might add) to reach some kind of pleasure. It was a part of life and part of her.

I also found Aggie’s balant disregard for her own personal morals really disturbing. In one sequence after Aggie discovers that Luke has “stolen” Honey from her clinic and brought her into the church with the lure of paying for her upkeep and education if she keeps the baby. Aggie is furious with him, but only for a moment, only until she sees Luke eating a pear in an “erotic manner” (don’t ask me to define that, the author didn’t.) It seems that Aggie’s sexual hunger for Luke overpowers everything, now as a rule of thumb I’m not against that, but it seems that Aggie just gives up everything that makes her who she is, what makes her tick. She then takes Luke back to bed and states “let’s not speak of our work at all” as if her personal beliefs are only “work” not something that fundamentally defines her as a person. If Scully had ever done such a thing “Mulder, let us not discuss the existence of aliens or conspiracies and let’s just make love”, the author would have been kicked out of the fandom (figuratively.) It seems to speak that you, as a woman, should give anything and everything of yourself up for the chance of having a man.

Now the next particular paragraph, would basically have me rip the offending volume off my imaginary daughter’s hands and sit her firmly on the computer to read some X-files smut:

“He didn’t seem to realise that people have limits. He had hurt Aggie badly with his explorations and invasions. He had also made her come harder and for longer than she thought possible. He had burst into song about the miracles of rainbows while she sucked his dick and he had woken her in the night by licking her arsehole.”

Now where do I even begin to deconstruct that monster? Why did she not say “no”, or is that not a word in the vocabulary of a sexual health worker? Scully would have whacked Mulder on the head and said “oi, quit it!” (okay, maybe in an American way). And she did, several times in a few fics I read. This taught me, the insecure 13 year old, that even if you love somebody and they love you back they don’t know your body 100% and it really is okay to say “stop”, “no” and “not like that”, it won’t stop them from loving you. If I had a daughter that is the kind of lesson I would want her to have, not this absolute shit of just lying there and taking it because “it’s his first time”. I also find it incredibly patronising that pain should be accepted because he makes you come. Is it some kind of an exchange of prisoners: I let you hurt me so you can make me come? I have nothing to say on that except: What The Fuck.

Now to the “arsehole” part. I think that as a reader you are supposed to hold your hand over your mouth in shock and think that this man really has no sense of propriety. Me, I think drivel, driver woman! I have read detailed descriptions of fisting and it was very enjoyable for both parties, thankyouverymuch. What I find disturbing that it is lumped together with the hurt and pain; that somehow your ass is off the limits. Well, yes it is if you deem it so, but don’t go to your reader and claim that there are right and wrong kinds of sexual preferences and actions, what floats your boat might not float mine. In fandom just the wealth of material is a witness to that. We try to exist by a live and let live kind of rules. If you don’t enjoy something you can just hit the “back” button and around the corner there is something that you will enjoy. But we don’t go around calling other people depraved (okay, okay ideal world and all, but you gotta admit we are more forgiving of other people’s kinks than the general public.) In fanfiction and especially porn writing we explore things that women are not supposed to enjoy. I think that is partly why that paragraph is structured the way it is, there are things that are taboo, but fortunately fandom has skewed my views on taboo and no-go areas. It has taught me that it is all in my head, and in the spaces of my mind there are no no-go areas.

Now I’m not trying to preach some sexual gospel according to Claudia, but this book really got me thinking about the moral brigade and the things that we as a society deem indecent for “young minds”. I think that if I had just had the harlequins and the Story of O’s in my teens I would have turned out quite different. I think I would have respected myself less sexually, demanded less, accepted more mediocre lovers and suppressed a lot of fantasies. For me Dana Scully was the best sexual role model and I think us as fandom, as writers and as women should never stop writing her.