Lately I’ve been contemplating why, of all the things I could write about, I am so motivated to write about sex. Why, if I could live my dream of directing films, I would insist on including sex in them. Surely, nearly all consensus reality agrees there are “nobler” pursuits. Even past versions of myself are appalled to see me opting to write “smut” and pursue professionally a task so challenging.
Challenging? Yes. It seems, to me, no one today takes sex or erotic art seriously. Writing about sex and producing erotic art is seen as base, cheap, easy, and devoid of intellectual rigor, when in fact it is (or at least can be) quite the opposite.
If I wanted to get a bunch of Instagram followers, almost any topic or profession would be easier to pursue than sex writing. As I look forward to selling a book, agents ask me about a “platform” and “followers” but nearly ever social media site–Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, even search engine results–explicitly ban or demote “sexually suggestive” content. In so doing, it is very challenging to be a “legitimate” sex anything. Why am I doing this?
If a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.
Plato
I admit, I do love a challenge. But more than that, I love life. I love people. And our stories are not complete when they exclude anything. To tell a story of Marilyn Monroe and to leave out her work ethic would be to miss critical details about who she was. To love Muhammad Ali but not his position on the draft is not real love or admiration. To love life and seek to tell its story and sing its praises without sex is, to me, the most glaring and grave injustice of our time.
I see the havoc of this incompleteness everywhere I go. At a party, friends who spoke to me at the last event totally ignore me at the next when I wear provocative clothing–why? Nothing about me has changed, but they can’t face the thoughts in their minds so they shun me. Couples who started out passionate let love fade as they deny critical parts of their lived experience because societal norms demand monogamous couples be blind to attractive people who aren’t their partners, not unlike how “good” liberals must pretend they “don’t see color.”
As time went on, I did, of course, learn about the nature of sex. This was not from my parents, you understand. My father and mother would not have dreamed of discussing sex with me (or, I suspect, though I may be wronging them, even with each other)….Nor did I learn about sex from any reasoned source of instruction. I learned about it from the distorted and imperfect knowledge of other boys. This is the usual fate forced upon youngsters by a society that is too prim and too hypocritical to have sex taught like any other branch of knowledge.
-Isaac Asimov, I, Asimov
Women, dear friends of mine, have never pursued sexual pleasure (I think) because no one talks about it–not their mothers or sisters, not their friends, teachers or mentors–and they never see it in any media they consume. Isn’t this the role of art? To help us process and experience those things to which we we otherwise lack access or exposure? It is nearly 2025, a year that sounds so futuristic, and yet one third of women have never orgasmed. This means they don’t even know how to make themselves come. And orgasms are no trivial thing–they literally increase one’s lifespan, in addition to oxytocin, creativity, and relaxation.
If you bring forth that which is inside of you, that which is inside of you will save you. If you do not bring for that which is inside of you, that which is inside of you will destroy you.
Jesus of Nazareth
So, fine. I may not garner a million, or even ten thousand Instagram followers. Fine, maybe I won’t win an Oscar. But I will produce writing and art that saves lives. I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and I will help as many as I can rip off the duct tape that covers their mouths and thoughts; loosen the chains they’ve so willingly donned. Because, life, without wholeness, without truth, is not life at all.
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves – such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
May you, and me, and we, all be a little more free in 2025,
With love and fearlessness, Honey
