Where's my lesbian porn guide?

[amaresu]

Written for the prompt: Where Is All My Hot Lesbian Porn?



I can, without much effort, find a half dozen essays on writing gay male sex. Without hitting Google. I can't say the same for lesbian sex. Why is that?

We live in a society where cosmetic surgery for female genitals exists. We live in a society where despite knowing that the vast majority of women can't orgasm through penetration alone women still feel like failures for not orgasming through penetration alone. I've personally talked to people who didn't realize that their urethra and vagina were different things. How many women actually know that their vagina isn't their vulva? What about the labia and the clitoris? In a society that tries to pretend that female sexuality doesn't exist is it any surprise that some of us might need primers on just how lesbian sex works?

Of the people who would be willing to write lesbian porn how many of them know what the vulva looks like? How many have looked at their own? How many know what other people's look like? How about shaving? Why do women do it and just how popular is it? What about the G-Spot? Fingers, tongue, both? Are teeth a good thing? When do you bring toys into it? I could go on and on about the things that it would be nice to have people actually talk about when it comes to this subject.

I can write about oral sex for men, but I wouldn't have the first clue where to start for women. And that's really sad. I think the basic assumption is that we are women (most of us anyway) and thus should know these things, but we don't. Not all of us. And where exactly are we supposed to learn? Google really isn't a whole lot of help there.

So, really, help a girl out. Tell me how to write this stuff.

Comments

Re: Warning: Incoming TL;DR, TMI, and NSFW descriptions of female sex acts

[dagas_isa]

See and now you've just added to the list of questions that I have no answer to.

I don't know if my last post was clear enough, but I don't think any of those questions even have a definitive answer, even in a fannish sense. And I don't necessarily think there should be definitive answers for any of these, except as to what any person can write in character without feeling too embarrassed about.

Heck, I think that's the huge problem with all the research about female sexuality, every new finding is presented as universal and/or prescriptive, when really it should only be taken an observation of a select group of women, and then maybe seeing if one fits into that group of women.

And, honestly, as cool as I'm sure the m/m sex guides are (not really a boyslash-fan), I think they might also narrow the range of what writers think is okay to portray m/m slash as and what's not okay (even if some real-life gay couples do exactly what is 'not okay' in slash writing and enjoy it). So, while yes, guides about the range of various fem-sexy behaviors would be awesome awesomesauce, I think I'd rather see them as more of an imagination/idea sparking tool than a guide for how-to write explicit femslash.

The thing is, even for my most explicit sex scenes, I really don't know if I need to describe exactly what is being done and how it's happening, or what it looks like down there. It's not about being coy, just my porn is very mentally-situated, so I'm more concerned with the thoughts and feelings of the characters as this happens, and not so much with the mechanical stuff, as long as I'm not doing describing something that's physically impossible.

Re: Warning: Incoming TL;DR, TMI, and NSFW descriptions of female sex acts

[thegeneral.insanejournal.com]

All of that last paragraph and a half, especially, YES. In some senses, writing sex is a lot like writing humor --not everyone is going to "get" it-- but it helps to have a basic understanding of sex with regards to the anatomy you're working with. I probably wouldn't ever write extensively or explicitly about a man having sex because a) I don't read it and b) I'm not interested in experiencing it.

A guide of sorts would be great, but so would recs of fics and writers that are "doin' it right." Sometimes you have a writer who has the right ideas, but the way they word and describe things is so... unsexy.

Re: Warning: Incoming TL;DR, TMI, and NSFW descriptions of female sex acts

[cleo]

A guide of sorts would be great, but so would recs of fics and writers that are "doin' it right." Sometimes you have a writer who has the right ideas, but the way they word and describe things is so... unsexy.

Yes! Recs for authors/fics that have done something especially effectively...that's a cool idea.

Re: Warning: Incoming TL;DR, TMI, and NSFW descriptions of female sex acts

[cleo]

Yes to everything in this comment and your first, and especially to this:

The thing is, even for my most explicit sex scenes, I really don't know if I need to describe exactly what is being done and how it's happening, or what it looks like down there. It's not about being coy, just my porn is very mentally-situated, so I'm more concerned with the thoughts and feelings of the characters as this happens, and not so much with the mechanical stuff, as long as I'm not doing describing something that's physically impossible.

That's how I feel when I write explicit scenes as well, and those are the types of scenes I like to read best. Sometimes, depending upon the perspective in which I'm writing, I feel like it's okay to push the physically impossibly just a little bit if it works for the scene. But overall, bare mechanics tend to be a bit of a turn off for me, so there's definitely a personal preference thing there.

And because there really is no universal for every woman, that's something to keep in mind. Get to know your character...what does she really like, what works for her, etc. And I find that certain canonical character traits lead me to certain assumptions about what a character might like or like to do, what might work for her. I mean, I'm not talking "well, Character A looks butch, so she obviously gets off on fucking girls with a strap on," but more just watching characters react to things, their movements, facial expressions, their little habits, etc.

Re: Warning: Incoming TL;DR, TMI, and NSFW descriptions of female sex acts

[dagas_isa]

And I find that certain canonical character traits lead me to certain assumptions about what a character might like or like to do, what might work for her. I mean, I'm not talking "well, Character A looks butch, so she obviously gets off on fucking girls with a strap on," but more just watching characters react to things, their movements, facial expressions, their little habits, etc.

Yeah, I know what you mean, I think, though I tend to be in more general terms. Like character A would probably be more comfortable touching than being touched, or character B would only enjoy sex if she were in complete control of how and where she was touched. It's more about particular attitudes towards sex, and how they behave in general, then about particular acts that they like, with maybe the exception of possible kinks/squicks or a little bit of sex trivia based on their canon.

Re: Warning: Incoming TL;DR, TMI, and NSFW descriptions of female sex acts

[woldy]

I don't think any of those questions even have a definitive answer, even in a fannish sense. And I don't necessarily think there should be definitive answers for any of these, except as to what any person can write in character without feeling too embarrassed about. Yes times a million to this!

IMHO there are already far too many efforts to normalize women's sexuality, and I'd be sad to see femslashers going down that route. There's almost nothing one can say about sex that will be true for everybody, and almost nothing that won't be true for somebody - including things that many folks would claim were physically impossible - so I'd rather steer clear of boundary-policing in the name of 'realism'.

Re: Warning: Incoming TL;DR, TMI, and NSFW descriptions of female sex acts

[dagas_isa]

Totally. You know I'm all for people getting to know themselves and their partners and what works and what doesn't, but to say that scientists say that the G-spot doesn't exist so don't write about that, or that 70% of women can't orgasm from penetration, so don't write a character who's in that 30% (or who just enjoys it despite not orgasming, which...I think is another thing that should stop getting policed is what defines good or bad sex).

I'd rather people maybe see guides to lesbian sex as a starting point for ideas and then tailor it for what appeals to them and what works for the character. But I wouldn't want there to be this idea that a good f/f sex scene needs to have x, y, and z in order to be 'realistic' sex.