Of Course "Serious" Literature Can Have Sex Scenes
Tolly Moseley on High-Brow Fucking
Dear Republic,
The Republic of Letters is the proud sponsor of this debate between Tolly Moseley and Liza Libes, which started here, roiled Substack for a little while, and now has come back to roost at ROL.
-The Editor
OF COURSE “SERIOUS” LITERATURE CAN HAVE SEX SCENES
Not long ago, a piece I wrote on sex writing got the attention of Liza Libes: author-writer behind the Substack
. Her piece is titled “Stop Writing Sex Scenes” and opens with an admission:There was an article floating around Substack titled “What Makes Good Sex Writing?”
I confess that I did not read it fully because I could not keep reading after I hit the following quote:
“God,” he groans, "you're such a little slut sometimes."
The author of the original piece gives this excerpt as an example of “good” sex writing. Now, unless your conception of “good” writing is an adequate command of punctuation, I see no “good” writing here at all.
Reader, I salivated. Oh, we’re doing this.
Because her thesis is one I want to challenge very strongly:
“The fact is that there is no such thing as good sex writing because sex writing is nothing other than pornography—and the quicker we stop diluting serious literature with pornography, the quicker the publishing industry will stop signing ‘writers’ whose only talent is talking dirty to their one-night-stands.”
What I’m hearing is: sex is for base entertainment, literature is for enlightened mind expansion, and never the twain shall meet. I couldn’t disagree with this more wholeheartedly, but first, I’d like to share a confession of my own.
I Remember Thinking This Way
Absolutely. I remember walking around with this binary in my head.
I remember thinking sex, if it appeared on the page at all, should be suggestive — not explicit. I remember thinking sex cheapened the seriousness of the work. I remember thinking sex scenes were candy, because we love candy, but we don’t respect candy. I remember thinking this was more or less assumed, that sex wasn’t a serious line of inquiry for ambitious writers. And I was an ambitious, tasteful writer.
We (Americans) haven’t been taught to relax around sex. You have to be at least a little countercultural to question the shame we reflexively associate with bodies and desire. And this is sad to me, because this thinking traps us in a state of emotional immaturity that always and forever equates sex scenes with titillation and juvenility, rather than, I don’t know, increased depth of honesty between two or more characters? Embodied trust and hard-won intimacy?
But again — I’ve been there. Because this is the air we breathe: that sex is for entertainment, not high art. Take it from Liza:
It is the very sort of writing that T. S. Eliot describes in “Tradition and the Individual Talent”—not a “turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.” Good writing, Eliot tells us, certainly makes reference to the author’s original emotions but ensures that these emotions do not appear in their unadulterated form; a writer’s emotions must be transmuted into a purer, higher sort of poetic language because only such language will touch all members of the human race.
T. S. Eliot would call sex an escape from emotion, first of all. This is the same man who said he possessed “a Catholic cast of mind, a Calvinist heritage, and a Puritanical temperament.” You don’t say!
Back to Liza’s thesis though, that “there is no such thing as good sex writing because sex writing is nothing other than pornography” and this idea that “serious” literature doesn’t contain sex scenes — OK. I need to ask Liza what she thinks of Walt Whitman, in all his queer, body positive, multitudinous glory. Or Oscar Wilde: OG queer-poly influencer, famously wrote about a hot dude, went to court for being gay. Are they not “serious” Western canonical writers? What about Zora Neale Hurston? Alice Walker? I’m spit-balling. There are so many effective examples of sex and sexuality in Western canonical literature. I don’t really believe in the serious/non-serious literature binary anyway, but I take Liza’s point — it’s just very broad, like slapping a Parental Advisory label on a Sally Rooney book and thinking you’re protecting readers from Ron Jeremy.
Sexual prudishness is porn in reverse if you think, like T. S. Eliot, that sex is only for escapism. But, it’s not. Sex on the page can serve so many purposes, literally endless purposes!, but here are three other things sex scenes can do besides get you off. (Btw it’s completely legitimate to get off to a sex scene.)
Reveal a Character’s Emotional Weather System
Liza makes the point that sex scenes are too specific to be universally appealing, on top of the fact that they’re prurient and gratuitous. But emotions are universal, and emotions underlie sex. Take this passage from Lady Chatterley’s Lover:
Then she quivered as she felt his hand groping softly, yet with queer thwarted clumsiness, among her clothing. Yet the hand knew, too, how to unclothe her where it wanted. He drew down the thin silk sheath, slowly, carefully, right down and over her feet. Then with a quiver of exquisite pleasure he touched the warm soft body, and touched her navel for a moment in a kiss. And he had to come in to her at once, to enter the peace on earth of her soft, quiescent body. It was the moment of pure peace for him, the entry into the body of the woman.
–D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Liza had to know I would go here.
Because if you exfoliate the shame from sex itself, you get to know something about Connie’s lover — the gatekeeper who lives on the estate. You discover that dude loves that first moment of penetration. Cool! It’s “pure peace” for him, this sensual man who wants to kneel at Connie’s feet and kiss her stomach. I don’t think I would call this pornography, but I would call it explicit — and this explicit act is filling out the details of this man for me, shading in his emotional nuances, helping me understand his internal weather system.
For example: the fact that he’s not rushing to thrust (just lemme cook), that he’s all about that exquisite stillness. That this is about relaxation for him. I feel the implied sigh, I feel him emotionally setting his burdens down the moment he enters Connie. I don’t have a penis, but I can relate to the ache, the “ah, finally” feeling. Just because it’s happening in a moment of P-in-V bliss doesn’t mean it’s inherently escapist or cheap.
Put a Spotlight on a Character’s Private Pain (and Pleasure)
Does every character need sex to be fully realized on the page? No, of course not. I’m not arguing Liza’s point in the opposite direction. But I am saying that what a character does with their body can advance our understanding of their inner world. This allows us access to dimensions of their being we might not be able to witness otherwise. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
:The last time I made a typing error and the lawyer summoned me to his office, two unusual things occurred. The first was that after he finished spanking me he told me to pull up my skirt. Fear hooked my stomach and pulled it toward my chest. I turned my head and tried to look at him.
“You’re not worried that I’m going to rape you, are you?” he said. “Don’t. I’m not interested in that, not in the least. Pull up your skirt.”
I turned my head away from him. I thought, I don’t have to do this. I can stop right now. I can straighten up and walk out. But I didn’t. I pulled up my skirt.
“Pull down your panty hose and underwear.”
A finger of nausea poked my stomach.
“I told you I’m not going to fuck you. Do what I say.”
The skin on my face and throat was hot, but my fingertips were cold on my legs as I pulled down my underwear and panty hose. The letter before me became distorted beyond recognition. I thought I might faint or vomit, but I didn’t. I was held up by a feeling of dizzying suspension, like the one I have in dreams where I can fly, but only if I get into some weird position.
At first he didn’t seem to be doing anything. Then I became aware of a small frenzy of expended energy behind me. I had an impression of a vicious little animal frantically burrowing dirt with its tiny claws and teeth. My hips were sprayed with hot sticky muck.
“Go clean yourself off,” he said. “And do that letter again.”
- Mary Gaitskill, Bad Behavior, the short story “Secretary”
Here’s what’s happening: this young secretary, a lost girl with latent submissive and masochistic tendencies, just got ejaculated on. By her boss. It’s a little horrifying for her. Also, she goes and masturbates in the bathroom right after this.
It’s not an easy read. And I get that you might not agree with or like the fact that this character behaves this way — totally understandable. You may personally find this entire scene disgusting. But if you hang in there, you’ll also start to piece together that this character has a deep internal link between humiliation and arousal. And that is extremely important to our understanding of this character as a whole.
Interestingly, I found this piece by Mary on Substack while writing this essay. She’s reflecting on Secretary, and her mixed feelings about the 2002 Maggie Gyllenhaal / James Spader film version of her famous short story. And Mary says this thing that is so moving to me: “I am not sure why it is so important for me to remind the world that such people deserve respect, particularly the respect of seeing them as they are.” I couldn’t have said it any better.
But in “Stop Writing Sex Scenes,” Liza writes that “great novels respect not only their characters but also their readers — and enough to know when to shut the door.” Through erasure? Is that respect? To deny characters the full spectrum of their humanity, which also includes their sexuality?
Normalize Kink and Sexual Self-Awareness
In my original piece, I used Casey McQuiston as an example of a great sex writer, and Liza took issue with it because one of the characters has the line, “God, you’re such a little slut sometimes.” The characters have a kinky D/s dynamic with each other, so of course they say stuff like this. Specifically, Theo is saying it to Kit, who loves being called a little slut.
So I want to come back to this, because Liza’s point is one about the current state of things in publishing. She says, “the quicker we stop diluting serious literature with pornography, the quicker the publishing industry will stop signing ‘writers’ whose only talent is talking dirty to their one-night-stands.” Real question, why doesn’t Liza want writers like Casey getting signed? Why, if two or more characters are being consensual about it, does the word “slut” = pornography?
Language is slippery. We know this. It’s also context-dependent; “queer” is pejorative until it gets reclaimed, same with “slut” and any shaming-word that is then picked up and used cheerfully by its target. Sex scenes do not automatically pornography make. But what they can do is normalize kink and the idea that you know what you’re into, like being called a little slut.
At its core, kink is a set of safety practices adapted from the queer community. And even though their dirty talk is edgy, Theo and Kit echo this ethos, that if you’ve taken the time to explore your arousal patterns, you can activate them in a container of trust with a safe person. This is Kink 101 and I love that it’s making its way into literature. Pornography, in the way I think Liza is meaning it, can reinforce unexamined, juvenile, and certainly patriarchal views of sex — but that’s why we should welcome writers like Casey. Writers who are showing us what kink looks like, not just what sex (however you define it) looks like.
Kink is communication, it’s self-honesty, it’s trust-building, it’s vulnerable — and, once again, I think it’s great that a contemporary writer has become so successful modeling that to us.
Because I don’t think scrubbing literature of sex preserves some imagined intellectual rigor. These are fake divides anyway: life of the mind vs. life of the body, higher poetic language vs. sensual bodily expression. Look, sex isn’t just fucking, the way writing isn’t just thinking. Art doesn’t automatically improve or become classier or “better” if you imply the sex rather than describe it, or couch it in so many metaphors your reader can’t actually tell what’s going on. What sex scenes can offer though is one more mode of human interaction that reveals something about the characters experiencing it. That’s literally it. If you don’t like sex scenes, you don’t have to read them! Or write them. But pronouncing them as always low-brow, always diminishing the quality of the work says more about your personal attitude towards sex than sharpening a deeper truth about the presence of sex in art.
So have your little slut cake and eat it too, because great news: taste is subjective, and readers smell honesty. If you tack to the latter in your writing, whether it’s fictional or non, the presence or absence of sex will organically reflect your own being. And that’s what we (the reader) are here for, or at least the reason I’m here. To experience the joy of catching YOUR voice across the chasm, embodied and full. To quote Western philosopher Rihanna, “baby, this is what you came for” and she’s right: I didn’t come for art rules (or shock value), I came to witness writers being themselves. Who’ve studied the craft and know their tools, and can apply those tools to the exceedingly more difficult work of understanding human psychology, and understanding their own voice. When an author is that dedicated to both craft and honest expression — meaning, not trying to sound like anyone else, embarking instead on the slightly existential task of discovering how they themselves sound in the lonely dark — I don’t even care if I find sex there. I’m just thrilled to be a guest in their inner world, one they’ve taken pains to understand. That, to me, is exciting writing: not because it’s so-called clean or dirty, but because it’s personally truthful.
What a privilege, to be trusted with those depths. That’s an offering I want to embrace, not shun.
Tolly Moseley proudly writes Submit Here, a Substack about sex, bodies, desire, and human connection.
Below is the best sex scene I've seen lately in a movie. It's from May December and I think it's hot because the sexiest part of it is what your imagination contributes. To me the best sex scenes in literature or movies are about desire, not fulfillment.
I like this debate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sssVJ44d8yc
I read this but still genuinely flummoxed as to why it's a debate at all. Most people have sex even if it's only with themselves. How can you possibly write about the human experience- which is what literary fiction is all about- and exclude sex? Are readers children that need the door closed?
Happily and proudly including explicit sex scenes in my forthcoming novel