Women and Erotic Fiction

Erotic texts written by and for women play a significant role in negotiating relations of gender, sexuality and kinship, and in shaping popular ideas about romance and the erotic. Examining the “mainstreaming” of women’s erotica following the runaway success of Fifty Shades of Grey, this collection of new essays focuses on the publication and reception of women’s popular erotic fiction across various genres and cultural contexts. The contributors draw connections between feminist and cultural studies scholarship on visual pornography and critical research on popular romance fiction. Essays explore a range of writing: popular erotic romance novels; “feminist porn”; male/male and ménage fiction; lesbian romance; sex blogs; new Chinese erotica; BDSM novels; and slash fiction. Topics discussed include the ideological and critical aspects of popular texts, audiences and fan communities, the disciplinary function of popular speech about women’s erotic fiction, and the technological and social shifts which have facilitated women’s access to new forms of erotic material.

Kristen Phillips is a lecturer in the School of Media, Culture, and Creative Arts at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. Her research interests include law, gender, sexuality, the politics of border and migration, kinship, post-feminism and popular erotic texts.

Edited by Kristen Phillips
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 272
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2015
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9584-9
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2260-6
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Shattering Releases (Kristen Phillips) 1

Part 1: Originating the Erotic
From Black Lace to Shades of Grey: The Interpellation of the “Female Subject” into Erotic Discourse (Simon Hardy) 25
Steamy, Spicy, Sensual: Tracing the Cycles of Erotic Romance (Katherine E. Morrissey) 42
Refiguring Penetration in Women’s Erotic Fiction (Amalia Ziv) 59
Erotic Pleasure and Postsocialist Female Sexuality: Contemporary Female “Body Writing” in China (Eva Chen) 79

Part 2: Interrogating the Erotic
Good Vibrations: Shaken Subjects and the Disintegrative Romance Heroine (Naomi Booth) 99
On Not Reading Fifty Shades: Feminism and the Fantasy of Romantic Immunity (Tanya Serisier) 117
Selling Gay Sex to Women: The Romance of M/M and M/M/F Romantica (Carole ­Veldman-Genz) 133
Permissible Transgressions: Feminized ­Same-Sex Practice as ­Middle-Class Fantasy (Jude Elund) 150

Part 3: Uses of the Erotic
The Politics of Slash on the High Seas: Colonial Romance and Revolutionary Solidarity in Pirates Fan Fiction (Anne Kustritz) 169
Male Homoerotic Fiction and Women’s Sexual Subjectivities: Yaoi and BL Fans in Indonesia and the Philippines (Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin) 187
Selling Authentic Sex: Working Through Identity in Belle de Jour’s The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl (Victoria Ong) 204
Sexing Education: Erotica in the Urban Classroom (Alyssa D. Niccolini) 225

Bibliography 241
About the Contributors 259
Index 261