Taboos are different for everyone. Sure, there are some overarching topics that are pretty standard across North America as being taboo such as incest, but for the most part, one person’s taboo erotica is another person’s vanilla pudding.
This creates a little bit of a conundrum for me. I’ve gone searching for erotica sites that allow the taboo – my idea of taboo – only to find their idea of the spiciest, most taboo erotica features cheating wives and gay sex.
That’s not taboo to me. That doesn’t even faze me or slow me down.
I grew up devouring hentai porn. It’s not taboo until there’s a tentacle monster, a terrible beast, rape, incest, futanari and worse. Possibly some vore. Those are my taboos.
These are not the taboos of the erotica publishers market.
So I want to ask; what is pornography to you? What is explicit to you? What is hardcore to you? What is offensive or objectionable to you?
I bet you that you and I would have different answers to all of those questions because every single one of those words – pornography, explicit, hardcore, offensive, and objectionable – are all completely subjective and individual. Without explicit explanations of what they mean (pornography includes videos that focus primarily on sexual scenes and portray the entirety of the human body, uncovered, including genitalia, for example), there is no way to know that to them, pornography might mean graphic novels that show a couple having sex without genitalia being pictured. Or a love scene that’s described for more than a paragraph. Or an artistic photo of two nude women lying on a bed and lightly kissing.
It’s not that these publishers aren’t doing right by their customers. I’m sure that to their customers, two men having hot, sweaty sex is still the thing to make them blush under the collar. That might be the most taboo thing they could possibly indulge.
It’s not the most taboo thing I’ve indulged in, to say the least.
However, it does strike me as odd that these taboo things are so, well, common. Most erotica sites with a wide market do have gay stories, or cheating stories, or ménage stories.
To me, the taboo would be things that you can barely find a publisher for. The things that most companies won’t touch with a ten foot pole. Things like scat, or gore, or torture, or rape, or necrophilia.
I realize, though, that part of reading certain types of erotica such as infidelity is extremely taboo to some people – and it only gets hotter because it’s called taboo. Hell, I get that – forbidden things can be exceptionally hot and knowing or thinking it’s REALLY forbidden can add to that.
But it does make it more difficult to find what I consider taboo stories amidst all the acceptable-taboos.
Do you know an erotica site that specializes in extreme taboos? Share the link in the comments!
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When I was 14, I read The Picture of Dorian Gray and the divine Oscar Wilde say something that has lasted on me: There’s no such thing as a moral or an immoral book, books are simply well-written or not. With that said, what is or what is not taboo pretty much is defined by a general consensus on society about what is disgusting.
In the Venezuelan classic Doña Bárbara, the hero is implied to end up with his 14 years old cousin’s daughter in a romance. This is presented as not only just positive but completely normal. That was the norm then. My grandfather had sex with goats as a teenager as it was the norm in his little village in The Venezuelan Andes.
Pornography is everything that is done with the intention of sexually arouse and nothing else. You can include explicit sex, rape, incest, etc. and still use it to make a point or a statement but, as Umberto Eco defined, if a movie all what they do is walk around waiting until they have sex, then it’s a porn. Personally, my limit on what is taboo comes when there’s cohertion: rape, vore, etc. since pornography by default is meant to be enjoyable and joy obtained from the removal of someone else’s joy is abuse.
As Alan Moore once argued, by making pornography in general something shady and sleazy we have been forced pairing something harmless and enjoyable with more dangerous and unhealthy elements.
Taboos are definitely cultural. We try to pretend that there are moral absolutes, but there are not.
I remember reading a sexuality textbook that spoke of one Tribal group in which they welcomed boys to adulthood at 13 or so by having an older, sexually mature woman have sex with them – and teach them how to pleasure a woman. Here, not only is that taboo, it would be illegal.
I find it fascinating to look at how society influences not just cultural norms, but the definitions of abnormalities.
As well, most porn films and books, at the very least, try to have some plot so they’re not solely to arouse. It may be their main purpose and goal, but isn’t the main purpose and goal of erotica to titillate and arouse? Or even romance?
Yes, the main goal is arouse, but I would say there’s a lot of grey area between erotica, romance and pornography. Romance appeals to a more emotional and intimate relationship, I think and the difference between erotica and pornography is the difference between a fillet mignon and a Big Mac. One is made with dexterity and effort to be enjoyed every bit of it, if a bit overrated and the other one is to consume as fast as you can and leaves your fingers sticky.
Most porn have plots, though I would call them more “scenarios” than actual plots but there’s a whole lot of people who reallly don’t care about it. The plot is meant to complement the experience of the viewer regarding sex but more often than not seems to fit more as an ornament than a complement.
By the way, interesting tidbit about that Tribe! I have been thinking something similar to add to the fictional indigenous group I have been fleshing out lately for a story.
I have never really understood taboos. I’m not sure if I have any that I might call such, and only pay attention to the taboos of others from a sort of anthropologist viewpoint. But I do know what I find erotic and naughty. To me, the line goes in consent. Rape fantasies are fine for others to have, but depictions of actual rape (including that of those who can’t legally consent no matter how horny they are at the moment) are not hot at all. And that’s why I mostly stay clear from hentai. Even when according to the story the girl having sex is doing so willingly, the art sure as hell doesn’t look like it.
Thinking about the topics most consider taboo, I guess to me the hottest combination is a taboo and consent. Yes, that includes even things such as gore and vore. I guess I just like seeing people have fun, even if it hurts them. They chose it, they enjoy it, so why not? And even more I like the narrative of breaking taboos without it ending up hurting anyone. Things like sibling incest, BDSM kink and interspecies romance (between sapient beings) are often positioned as something that people end up doing if they’re messed up in the head. It’s sad. To me, sex is and should be a positive thing.
Oh gods, hentai is terrible for the pained moan. The forced seductions. The I’m saying no but meaning yes but maybe nos.
I definitely like the idea of two consenting individuals going against societies taboos and doing something because they’re so passionate about one another. That’s very hot. I love interspecies (humanoid) as well – like the troll/blood elf pair my partner and I roleplayed in World of Warcraft. Because of the racial tension between elves and trolls, it just added so much more conflict and passion to their relationship.
They were in love, and they didn’t care if someone thought they were messed up because of it.
I like relationships like that.
For awhile, Robin Wolfe and I ran a small press that specialized in these sorts of taboos—Freaky Fountain Press (www.freakyfountain.com—the site is still up, and all of our titles are still available). We closed in November of last year for the usual reasons: our very busy lives, a lack of profitability.
But here is another thing: in the year and a half of running the press, I learned that to most erotica writers “taboo” is not really taboo at all. We received submission after submission of BDSM-style stories despite making it very clear that we didn’t consider BDSM to be taboo at all. Our guidelines were very specific; we wanted the bestiality and necrophilia stories, the lust murder fantasies, cannibalism, the whole nine yards. The erotica community simply did not deliver.
Hello, Catherine,
I always regretted that I wasn’t able to publish with FFP when it was still running, and I lament that loss of chance. I really respect and admire what you and Robin were doing, and I’ve been searching since for other publishers that truly push the bounds of good taste and taboos.
I think it’s simply gotten to a point that we’ve been told for so long that BDSM and menage and homosexual relationships are taboo that some have truly started to believe it. The fact that most publishers and distributors don’t allow bestiality, rape or incest, to speak nothing of necrophilia, reinforces this idea.
Thank you for your comment and I truly hope there is more support out there for the truly boundary pushing press. Without it, we’d never have been graced with Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Lolita.