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 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
Writing this entire piece while ignoring the fact that Libes is an explicitly right-wing writer, advancing right-wing "morality" in her piece, feels like it misses the point. On purpose, to avoid any "taint" of politics. As far as I recall, though, Libes is explicit that she is objecting on morality consistent with her politics, and that seems relevant. Otherwise a nice piece that makes your points well.
Hey Greg! I thought about glossing Liza’s position, but decided in the end it was up to her about what identity she wants to claim or not. Appreciate you reading though!
I took it as a position that her argument was primarily aesthetic rather than political, and having perused her feed, disagree that they are separate, though I am sure she would like to claim that. Her identity as a conservative, also Jewish, writer who is not esteemed by mainstream publishing because of those two claimed identities, is all over her writing here on Stack. I agree you were free to decide as you did, and I am not trying to criticize that position in the sense that you couldn't make it. I just disagree about it because I think she has explicitly politicized her aesthetic arguments.
I'd say she's conservative, but right-wing may be a bridge too far. She's more into the Great Western Literary Tradition (quite defensible in my view, particularly for someone who studies literature) than Qanon and antivax.
A) people seem to insist that right-wing is some sort of specific term for MAGA fasicsts, but it is descriptive, I'm not using it to mean extremist; B) she complains about "left-wing" people so I mirrored her language to be proportional; C) She has made positive comments about Ben Shapiro, who certainly performs as a far-right extremist, so I am not sure why you all want to speak up to defend someone's views when I am sure she is quite willing and capable of doing it herself.
I recently read two books, both published in 2025, that REALLY would have benefited from a sex scene (fwiw, between characters in long term relationships), and I was like "OH NO! Is that post coming true and writers/publishers are avoiding sex scenes!?"
This piece is sooooo good! Overall I like Liza and think she’s one of the more talented writers on Substack, though about 20% of the time I find myself a little put off by the content of her ideas. I disagree with the user who called her "right-wing." While she certainly leans conservative right-wing, to me, implies extremist, and Liza is no extremist. She's a champion for the humanities, for god's sake. There's nothing less right wing than that. With that said her anti-sex screed was wide of the mark. In literature nothing should be off limits. Literally nothing. Great to see this counter-argument.
"She's a champion for the humanities, for god's sake. There's nothing less right wing than that."
This is incorrect. Lots of right wingers are champions for the humanities, with a strong preference for classic/canonical literature. There are whole systems of right-wing private schools based around this exact vector.
I don’t think so. Look I could be wrong, but I think you’re conflating conservatism with being right wing. Right wing is extremist and you may find extreme right wing religious schools out there, sure, but most of them are not going to be reading Plato and Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Though there are certainly conservative schools like this. But even assuming you are right and there are a lot of right-wing extremists out there who love the humanities, Liza still does not strike me as an extremist based on her writings.
You are wrong, though. Notwithstanding the fact that "right wing" doesn't inherently mean "extremist" until you you mash the two phrases together, there are schools that are very (maybe even extremely) right wing who do, in fact, assign their students Plato and Shakespeare and Jane Austen. My first job out of college was teaching at one of these schools, and, since then, I've researched the movement it was a part of pretty extensively.
Also, for whatever it's worth, the other commenter said she's "explicitly" right wing, not "extremely." And given how much she complains about Marxism and such, I think that's probably a fair statement.
I’m not right wing and I think Marxism is awful. And I’m just a plain old centrist. Though from a Marxism perspective I suppose centrism equals right-wing. These are dumb labels. Especially when you intend it as a slur as the original poster did. It’s a short cut to avoid having to think for yourself.
Yup, she's all about Shakespeare and Dickens and Eliot (and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy). Probably the most recent equivalent would be Tolkien or Bellow--conservative, but not fascist. Frankly I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of it--the MFA complex and publishing company consolidation turns (American) literary fiction into this sort of homogenized Park Slope voice that's definitely one point of view, but others exist. So, hey, why not a prudish Azerbaijani Jewish lady into Eliot and Gogol, kinda like an English major 50 years ago? You've got a few hundred years of literature to draw on, after 50 years you'd probably come up with something new.
Honestly I think she is really, really vanilla ('tendersexual' to quote Aella), hates all the kink modern authors are sticking in their literature, and that's what's driving this. Look at her attack on Gaitskill--she thinks she put the famous scene from Secretary in to turn everyone on, when actually it's written to be totally *un*erotic and to make us feel as uncomfortable as the character Debby. (I find the femdom thing as annoying as she does kink in general and tend to do something else in a movie or flip past it in a book, but I don't write articles talking about how bad it is.)
Indeed, if she's going to invoke Eliot, one might also be tempted to refer to a writer whom Eliot himself admired, someone he thought was bringing a whole new mode into modern literature with his "mythical method": James Joyce. The novel Eliot discusses in his "Ulysses, Order and Myth" includes tons of sex and other bodily functions: taking a shit, masturbation (more than once), sex, sexual fantasy... Physicality and erotic life that shocked, that was banned, that was denounced... And yet is considered one of the great monuments of Modernist fiction.
Any time* I'm reading a novel and the author "shuts the door" (in Libes' words), I think... what a coward. Just write a story where no character has sex, if that's how you're going to be about it!
*Exceptions, of course, for books written in different eras with more closed off norms.
Ahh just wrote the longest reply back to you T. that I accidentally erased 😭 But, Cliff’s Notes version: the first author who did *not* shut the door, for me personally, was Judy Blume. Her YA book “Forever” in particular. It felt so honest about sex, in all its awkwardness/humanness, in a way that most other adults in my life were not. I still feel a deep gratitude to Judy, for not patronizing to me about sex or covering it up in the story. It felt like a sort of maturity step, and I still get quasi-emotional thinking about how special that felt, to be shown something intimate and being trusted that as a reader…I could handle it.
So FWIW I went over and took your side vs. Libes. I'm probably closer to her politically but honestly, sex can most definitely tell us about the characters, tell us about their sufferings and joys, and allow other people to find people to identify with and feel less alone.
It's part of humanity. It's a biological function but so is eating--remember Babette's Feast? There's a famous bit in Fresas y Chocolate (Strawberries and Chocolate), a Cuban film, where one character recreates a banquet described in a book by the author Jose Lezama Lima, which is supposed to represent the vitality of art. In Matthew Gasda's Sleepers, a character eats a totally joyless lunch and it's supposed to show how their life is joyless overall.
Nobody really wants to talk about the other end, but you could probably use constipation as a metaphor for repression.
So absolutely, of course, 'serious' literature can have sex scenes. Sex is part of life. I think this is part of the American puritanical heritage, frankly. Why would we say this is worthy of examination, and this other thing isn't.
Hey thank you! And you know I’ll be honest, while the discussion was happening, I mentally put myself in the position of having to evaluate graphic violence in art, since that one is much harder for me than sex to digest. Just to kind of orient myself in the type of framework Libes offered, y’know? And where I landed was somewhere beyond politics — more like, death is a part of life, injury is a part of life, and what matters is how those depictions organically contribute to the world-building or ambience (thinking about Tarantino films and the deliberate pulp/comic book feel), and/or the character development. So, more a craft thing than a moral thing.
BUT I actually did really appreciate some people pushing back on me on the “normalizing kink” point, since that does venture into moral / social good territory. My piece may have been stronger without it.
BUT!! Now I’m going to write a piece on my Ss about kink. All to say — I really appreciate your contributions to this one Anonymous Dude. Who abides.
Thank you! I've seen the Big Lebowski but it was more of a joke of 'I'm just some guy on the Internet'.
Yeah, I'm basically on your side on that one. It's too bad because I actually would like to see more engagement with older art and more emphasis on beauty, and that's a big part of Libes' project. There is a lot of disagreement about what art is supposed to be--I'd argue even if you aim at beauty you could write a kink scene where everyone's having a good time. (I have a dirty tarot deck from Italy and on the non-swords cards most of the people are enjoying themselves.) But it doesn't have to be about beauty--you could argue it's supposed to reflect life, argue for social change, and in older time periods glorify God.
I was also kind of pissed off she used Gaitskill as an example of BDSM porn aimed to titillate. Uh, 'Bad Behavior' is not supposed to turn you on. It got turned into a kink-romance by Hollywood much later--Gaitskill was so upset about this perception she *actually wrote a followup story* where Debby goes after her boss decades later. Look, Liza, I've read what you're talking about, *I've written what you're talking about* (privately sent to partners), and that is not it. It's like arguing A Modest Proposal is an argument for cannibalism and using it as an example of British callousness toward the Irish.
TOTALLY about Bad Behavior…the sex functions super super differently there, than a beautiful Lawrence-like union. I also think about recent sexuality examples like “Rejected” by Tony Tulathimutte: the last story in particular is sexual and savagely disgusting, AND is a perfect send-up of a very online individual. (*AND* is one of the most deliberately cringe, empathically humiliating stories I’ve read in a long time.) Now that I’m talking about it, it may in fact be shock value lol — but it’s also fucking deliberate, in that the whole story is so much more about Internet identity and a twisted sense of worthiness, than it is about “sex.”
Vinny I’ve been following all your thoughts on this one, dude thank you for being so invested! I’ve thought about it a lot over the past few days, and this convo has inspired me to write a post (on my Ss) about kink..so TY for amplifying the discussion. Appreciate it!
I mean, I'd like to see less culture war and people trying to ruin people each other over something they said 10 years ago, but civilized exchanges about literature are a good thing in my book. We should have different views available.
I remember this discourse happening and kinda felt bad for Liza at some point when it started getting out of hand and some users were just out right trying to insult her. I liked her article and her argument because it got me thinking. I didn't agree with her necessarily, arguing that sex is a part of life and literature captures life, so why shouldn't it be in the pages? I do agree it gets to a level of useless pornography at times, especially certain genres and writers. But, like you were saying in the article, sex writing is another way of discovering the inner world of a character, which can theb make us learn and think in a different way, as great books do.
Liked this article, cool to bring this topic back but hopefully it doesn't go crazy again.
"Secretary" ends with the character being asked by a reporter if her boss ever exhibited untoward behavior. To answer this question she has to clarify her feelings towards what happened, and that's just beyond her. She's stuck and unable to express herself. So you really feel for the character in the end, there's no easy answer for her.
The scene from "Secretary" you included has a greater narrative purpose. It doesn't just show her kinks or whatever, it's a building block in the story that leads to that final turn of the screw. So to me that's the question: what purpose does a sex scene serve? If it only exists to titillate there's a good chance it's pornographic.
I think if you "normalize kink," you really destroy it. If your view of sex is that everyone needs to walk around with a list of kinks in their head ("sexual self-awareness"), and sex is verbally exchanging kinks with your partner and carrying them out, well, that sounds pretty algorithmic to me. Writing that reflects such a simplistic worldview is likely to be bad writing, whether it includes a sex scene or not.
Oh, man. We can see from something even as recent as "Mad Men" that if you literally can't show everything that gives you more room to show psychologically complex adult relationships and the results can be very, very sexy. But part of the deal with modern literature is that no topic is off limits for a literary sensibility.
There is a spectrum of whether sex scenes are gratuitous or use such pedestrian or purple language that the writer should not have bothered but the idea that they are part of human experience that literature is supposed to explain to us cannot be faulted.
* Matt Weiner was very proud in the first season that they were going to win that boatload of Emmys as a basic cable show that could essentially show what a network show could.
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
When she pulls her voice in... woof! 🥵
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
Lmk when your novel comes out Barbara!
Will do!
Writing this entire piece while ignoring the fact that Libes is an explicitly right-wing writer, advancing right-wing "morality" in her piece, feels like it misses the point. On purpose, to avoid any "taint" of politics. As far as I recall, though, Libes is explicit that she is objecting on morality consistent with her politics, and that seems relevant. Otherwise a nice piece that makes your points well.
Hey Greg! I thought about glossing Liza’s position, but decided in the end it was up to her about what identity she wants to claim or not. Appreciate you reading though!
I took it as a position that her argument was primarily aesthetic rather than political, and having perused her feed, disagree that they are separate, though I am sure she would like to claim that. Her identity as a conservative, also Jewish, writer who is not esteemed by mainstream publishing because of those two claimed identities, is all over her writing here on Stack. I agree you were free to decide as you did, and I am not trying to criticize that position in the sense that you couldn't make it. I just disagree about it because I think she has explicitly politicized her aesthetic arguments.
I'd say she's conservative, but right-wing may be a bridge too far. She's more into the Great Western Literary Tradition (quite defensible in my view, particularly for someone who studies literature) than Qanon and antivax.
A) people seem to insist that right-wing is some sort of specific term for MAGA fasicsts, but it is descriptive, I'm not using it to mean extremist; B) she complains about "left-wing" people so I mirrored her language to be proportional; C) She has made positive comments about Ben Shapiro, who certainly performs as a far-right extremist, so I am not sure why you all want to speak up to defend someone's views when I am sure she is quite willing and capable of doing it herself.
I recently read two books, both published in 2025, that REALLY would have benefited from a sex scene (fwiw, between characters in long term relationships), and I was like "OH NO! Is that post coming true and writers/publishers are avoiding sex scenes!?"
Oooh now I want to know the books Liina 👀
This piece is sooooo good! Overall I like Liza and think she’s one of the more talented writers on Substack, though about 20% of the time I find myself a little put off by the content of her ideas. I disagree with the user who called her "right-wing." While she certainly leans conservative right-wing, to me, implies extremist, and Liza is no extremist. She's a champion for the humanities, for god's sake. There's nothing less right wing than that. With that said her anti-sex screed was wide of the mark. In literature nothing should be off limits. Literally nothing. Great to see this counter-argument.
Just jumping in to say thanks Timothy for the kind words!
"She's a champion for the humanities, for god's sake. There's nothing less right wing than that."
This is incorrect. Lots of right wingers are champions for the humanities, with a strong preference for classic/canonical literature. There are whole systems of right-wing private schools based around this exact vector.
I don’t think so. Look I could be wrong, but I think you’re conflating conservatism with being right wing. Right wing is extremist and you may find extreme right wing religious schools out there, sure, but most of them are not going to be reading Plato and Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Though there are certainly conservative schools like this. But even assuming you are right and there are a lot of right-wing extremists out there who love the humanities, Liza still does not strike me as an extremist based on her writings.
You are wrong, though. Notwithstanding the fact that "right wing" doesn't inherently mean "extremist" until you you mash the two phrases together, there are schools that are very (maybe even extremely) right wing who do, in fact, assign their students Plato and Shakespeare and Jane Austen. My first job out of college was teaching at one of these schools, and, since then, I've researched the movement it was a part of pretty extensively.
Also, for whatever it's worth, the other commenter said she's "explicitly" right wing, not "extremely." And given how much she complains about Marxism and such, I think that's probably a fair statement.
I’m not right wing and I think Marxism is awful. And I’m just a plain old centrist. Though from a Marxism perspective I suppose centrism equals right-wing. These are dumb labels. Especially when you intend it as a slur as the original poster did. It’s a short cut to avoid having to think for yourself.
Yup, she's all about Shakespeare and Dickens and Eliot (and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy). Probably the most recent equivalent would be Tolkien or Bellow--conservative, but not fascist. Frankly I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of it--the MFA complex and publishing company consolidation turns (American) literary fiction into this sort of homogenized Park Slope voice that's definitely one point of view, but others exist. So, hey, why not a prudish Azerbaijani Jewish lady into Eliot and Gogol, kinda like an English major 50 years ago? You've got a few hundred years of literature to draw on, after 50 years you'd probably come up with something new.
Honestly I think she is really, really vanilla ('tendersexual' to quote Aella), hates all the kink modern authors are sticking in their literature, and that's what's driving this. Look at her attack on Gaitskill--she thinks she put the famous scene from Secretary in to turn everyone on, when actually it's written to be totally *un*erotic and to make us feel as uncomfortable as the character Debby. (I find the femdom thing as annoying as she does kink in general and tend to do something else in a movie or flip past it in a book, but I don't write articles talking about how bad it is.)
Indeed, if she's going to invoke Eliot, one might also be tempted to refer to a writer whom Eliot himself admired, someone he thought was bringing a whole new mode into modern literature with his "mythical method": James Joyce. The novel Eliot discusses in his "Ulysses, Order and Myth" includes tons of sex and other bodily functions: taking a shit, masturbation (more than once), sex, sexual fantasy... Physicality and erotic life that shocked, that was banned, that was denounced... And yet is considered one of the great monuments of Modernist fiction.
Any time* I'm reading a novel and the author "shuts the door" (in Libes' words), I think... what a coward. Just write a story where no character has sex, if that's how you're going to be about it!
*Exceptions, of course, for books written in different eras with more closed off norms.
Ahh just wrote the longest reply back to you T. that I accidentally erased 😭 But, Cliff’s Notes version: the first author who did *not* shut the door, for me personally, was Judy Blume. Her YA book “Forever” in particular. It felt so honest about sex, in all its awkwardness/humanness, in a way that most other adults in my life were not. I still feel a deep gratitude to Judy, for not patronizing to me about sex or covering it up in the story. It felt like a sort of maturity step, and I still get quasi-emotional thinking about how special that felt, to be shown something intimate and being trusted that as a reader…I could handle it.
And Summer Sisters! Judy Blume is a fcking icon.
⬆️👏YEP
You can’t read Marguerite Duras’ The Lover without the eroticism and sex in it. The entire novel just doesn’t work without sex.
Really enjoyed your piece and all of these excellent points, Tolly. It's a discussion I'm very interested in, thank you so much.
Thank YOU Allison! I could do this aaall day — talk sex in literature, where it works, where it doesn’t — so I appreciate ya being here.
Brilliant! I've just popped over and subscribed to Submit Here. Looking forward to digging into more of your work!
Thx Allison! And for this discussion vibe, this post might be up your alley…https://submithere.substack.com/p/three-books-that-changed-the-way
Perfect! Thank you oh so very much... I'm there. ;)
🥰🤟🦄
So FWIW I went over and took your side vs. Libes. I'm probably closer to her politically but honestly, sex can most definitely tell us about the characters, tell us about their sufferings and joys, and allow other people to find people to identify with and feel less alone.
It's part of humanity. It's a biological function but so is eating--remember Babette's Feast? There's a famous bit in Fresas y Chocolate (Strawberries and Chocolate), a Cuban film, where one character recreates a banquet described in a book by the author Jose Lezama Lima, which is supposed to represent the vitality of art. In Matthew Gasda's Sleepers, a character eats a totally joyless lunch and it's supposed to show how their life is joyless overall.
Nobody really wants to talk about the other end, but you could probably use constipation as a metaphor for repression.
So absolutely, of course, 'serious' literature can have sex scenes. Sex is part of life. I think this is part of the American puritanical heritage, frankly. Why would we say this is worthy of examination, and this other thing isn't.
Hey thank you! And you know I’ll be honest, while the discussion was happening, I mentally put myself in the position of having to evaluate graphic violence in art, since that one is much harder for me than sex to digest. Just to kind of orient myself in the type of framework Libes offered, y’know? And where I landed was somewhere beyond politics — more like, death is a part of life, injury is a part of life, and what matters is how those depictions organically contribute to the world-building or ambience (thinking about Tarantino films and the deliberate pulp/comic book feel), and/or the character development. So, more a craft thing than a moral thing.
BUT I actually did really appreciate some people pushing back on me on the “normalizing kink” point, since that does venture into moral / social good territory. My piece may have been stronger without it.
BUT!! Now I’m going to write a piece on my Ss about kink. All to say — I really appreciate your contributions to this one Anonymous Dude. Who abides.
Thank you! I've seen the Big Lebowski but it was more of a joke of 'I'm just some guy on the Internet'.
Yeah, I'm basically on your side on that one. It's too bad because I actually would like to see more engagement with older art and more emphasis on beauty, and that's a big part of Libes' project. There is a lot of disagreement about what art is supposed to be--I'd argue even if you aim at beauty you could write a kink scene where everyone's having a good time. (I have a dirty tarot deck from Italy and on the non-swords cards most of the people are enjoying themselves.) But it doesn't have to be about beauty--you could argue it's supposed to reflect life, argue for social change, and in older time periods glorify God.
I was also kind of pissed off she used Gaitskill as an example of BDSM porn aimed to titillate. Uh, 'Bad Behavior' is not supposed to turn you on. It got turned into a kink-romance by Hollywood much later--Gaitskill was so upset about this perception she *actually wrote a followup story* where Debby goes after her boss decades later. Look, Liza, I've read what you're talking about, *I've written what you're talking about* (privately sent to partners), and that is not it. It's like arguing A Modest Proposal is an argument for cannibalism and using it as an example of British callousness toward the Irish.
TOTALLY about Bad Behavior…the sex functions super super differently there, than a beautiful Lawrence-like union. I also think about recent sexuality examples like “Rejected” by Tony Tulathimutte: the last story in particular is sexual and savagely disgusting, AND is a perfect send-up of a very online individual. (*AND* is one of the most deliberately cringe, empathically humiliating stories I’ve read in a long time.) Now that I’m talking about it, it may in fact be shock value lol — but it’s also fucking deliberate, in that the whole story is so much more about Internet identity and a twisted sense of worthiness, than it is about “sex.”
Stop the fight!
Vinny I’ve been following all your thoughts on this one, dude thank you for being so invested! I’ve thought about it a lot over the past few days, and this convo has inspired me to write a post (on my Ss) about kink..so TY for amplifying the discussion. Appreciate it!
Looking forward to it!
I mean, I'd like to see less culture war and people trying to ruin people each other over something they said 10 years ago, but civilized exchanges about literature are a good thing in my book. We should have different views available.
Cliff notes version: Sex is part of life. Five word essay.
I remember this discourse happening and kinda felt bad for Liza at some point when it started getting out of hand and some users were just out right trying to insult her. I liked her article and her argument because it got me thinking. I didn't agree with her necessarily, arguing that sex is a part of life and literature captures life, so why shouldn't it be in the pages? I do agree it gets to a level of useless pornography at times, especially certain genres and writers. But, like you were saying in the article, sex writing is another way of discovering the inner world of a character, which can theb make us learn and think in a different way, as great books do.
Liked this article, cool to bring this topic back but hopefully it doesn't go crazy again.
Ya Brandon! Overall, I think we don’t have to flatten the complexity of sex to render effective art. It’s part of the human experience, as you say.
"Secretary" ends with the character being asked by a reporter if her boss ever exhibited untoward behavior. To answer this question she has to clarify her feelings towards what happened, and that's just beyond her. She's stuck and unable to express herself. So you really feel for the character in the end, there's no easy answer for her.
The scene from "Secretary" you included has a greater narrative purpose. It doesn't just show her kinks or whatever, it's a building block in the story that leads to that final turn of the screw. So to me that's the question: what purpose does a sex scene serve? If it only exists to titillate there's a good chance it's pornographic.
I think if you "normalize kink," you really destroy it. If your view of sex is that everyone needs to walk around with a list of kinks in their head ("sexual self-awareness"), and sex is verbally exchanging kinks with your partner and carrying them out, well, that sounds pretty algorithmic to me. Writing that reflects such a simplistic worldview is likely to be bad writing, whether it includes a sex scene or not.
The only thing this essay demonstrated is that the Literary Review needs to bring back the Bad Sex Award.
Oh, man. We can see from something even as recent as "Mad Men" that if you literally can't show everything that gives you more room to show psychologically complex adult relationships and the results can be very, very sexy. But part of the deal with modern literature is that no topic is off limits for a literary sensibility.
There is a spectrum of whether sex scenes are gratuitous or use such pedestrian or purple language that the writer should not have bothered but the idea that they are part of human experience that literature is supposed to explain to us cannot be faulted.
* Matt Weiner was very proud in the first season that they were going to win that boatload of Emmys as a basic cable show that could essentially show what a network show could.