Puritan Moralism in Erotic Writing

[Vanz Oiseau]

I find it curiously odd that, while this literature tends to be generally irreligious (even anti-religious), there's a decided Puritan hew to the authors' morals. Women who like or seek sex are automatically "sluts" and men who have sex with anyone other than their spouse is a "cheater."

It seems odd because some stories go into all sorts of "perversions" (I would call them kinks), but they almost always express some form of moral guilt or judgment. Aside from swinging, there's very little open advocacy of desires and kinks. It's always "perverts" whispering to one another.

[Sarah_1964]

I'm not familiar enough with stories here to judge, but I can see that 'cheating' is when you quite literally do cheat on your spouse - by lying to them or concealing something, which is, surely, the very essence of cheating? I wouldn't presume to judge it morally - and ony partly because I have been guilty* of it, but it is surely almost by defintion cheaing?

(*guilt being of course an outcome of moral self-judgement..?)

As to 'sluts', I haven't seen that here (but I haven't read much yet..) but have elsewhere - and I do find it ... well, disturbing.... the implication that simply by having a high sex drive, or even a vivid sexual imagination, I (taking it personally..) am somehow then degraded, contemptuous...

Slightly tangentially, though, I do admit that guilt and shame, for me, do enhance the intensity of sexual feelng: but they don't really, in rea life - the ony time I felt real shame at someting sexual was when I had an actual full-blown affair, and the shame then was at the lies I told, the deceits I engaged in, the 'cheating' I did... so the sexually arousing 'shame' and 'guilt' for me, are sort of fake - virtual, if you like - part of a fantasy where I am indeed somene who feel shame, guilt, reluctance..

God, this is complex....