I'm sorry, but this is utter nonsense. It's one thing to dislike someone's writing or question the quality or purpose of it, but there is no such thing as a universal morality. This is one person's declaration that everyone should align to their particular aesthetic and moral philosophy. It's absurd and egotistical dreck masquerading as critique.
Whether or not Gaitskill's short story is "vulgar" or "pornographic" to argue that it has no place in "literature" is laughably asinine. The world is full of vulgarity, violence, and any other number of objectionable material. To strip literature of the objectionable is to strip literature of its meaning, the very essence that you claim to be central to its existence and purpose.
This is not literary critique, it's moral relativism.
hell yeah Vinny. agree with every word. i had the opportunity to present this argument to the author in a notes thread not too long ago. it wasn’t a contentious conversation, but it seems they haven’t changed
Controversy creates cash, so I’m sure that has something to do with it judging by her checkmark. I ignored the initial kerfuffle but seeing this in ROL kinda upset me.
It's like hot takes in sports: no one cares for nuance or gradations of meaning. You're either the GOAT or a failure. It's the same with literature, or literary criticism. There is of course room for vulgarities and kink and fetish, and its place in “literature” is only as relevant as it's quality. The same way that a description of a flower or the ocean or a neckline or (insert your aesthetic ideal here) is only worth reading if it's well-written. The way to dross has many roads.
I recall reading the exchange and her just basically parroting what she’d already said. I said it to someone else on here, but her position is intellectually indefensible because it attempts to ascribe morality to art, a thing that exists to challenge existing conceptions of morality!
“Controversy creates cash” is her whole shtick. Look at her Instagram, it’s disgusting. I’m glad your comment is the first comment on this post — I’m always wary of engaging with such posts because it’s rage-bait and we’re falling for it, but also find that it’s our responsibility to call out the bullshit. It’s quite tricky, but this is my long winded way of thanking you, Vinny.
Just because art is not to your taste does not make it art. So many seem to forget that if you don’t like something, that doesn’t mean you are inherently morally superior to that work.
At what point is a take so dog shit that it's actually counterproductive to refute it? I completely agree with you, but we all quietly know that it's a stupid take that is designed to provoke exactly this kind of reaction.
There’s a funny scene from the TV show Third Rock from the Sun, where they’re trying to explain to Dick the difference between art and smut, and (because he’s an alien) he keeps getting turned on by the art and not the smut.
No, what she’s saying is that it’s all decadence that can be written by any pubescent boy. It’s all quite banal after a while and lacks the post modern creativity of a Sade or Bataille which Im sure you are an avid reader of. You can live in their sexual universes. I’ll live in hers and to believe that these vulgar motifs and the spread of pornography has no down side is yes quite “relative”.
Good grief. What a load of sanctimonious bilge. I’m sorry, but you are not the arbiter of “health” and “harm.” You are not the arbiter of sexual “realism,” either. Your distaste and disapproval of BDSM-themed sexual relationships and their depiction is uninformed, over-the-top, and prompts speculation about reaction-formation. And that’s just for starters. The depiction of “kink” (ugh) can be beautiful, but again, you are not the arbiter of “beauty,” nor is literature required to strive for that.
My personal taste in reading about sex tends to the subtle. That extends to movies as well.
I'll say this about some of the more pejorative comments––if art and what's appropriate writing about sex are in the eyes of the beholder as many of the comments claim in vigorous dispute, then how can you dismiss Liza's point of view? She has certain standards about sex writing. And she has beliefs that cannot be disproved that modern sex writing has had negative effects on society. Why aren't her standards and beliefs just as valid as yours or Tolly's or mine?
To Tolly's essay, I commented that the scene below in the movie May December was the sexiest movie scene I've seen in a very long time. Because it fires and uses your imagination. It's great acting in my opinion.
Hello, David. I noticed your comment here reached second place, just below Vinny's. This is most likely due to the nature of your verified check mark and your 12k+ subscriber count. It certainly isn’t because of the actual content of your reply, which is largely vapid.
No one is disputing the validity of her beliefs. I believe that Liza is fully cognisant of her behaviour, especially on a platform like Substack. But by the grace of this place’s extremely laissez-faire environment, we reserve the right to label her essay as pejoratively as we like, just as she reserves the right to explicate her viewpoint. We can call out its lack of philosophical or educational profundity just as much as she can call out contemporary literature for having “bad morals”, whatever that means.
As for whether or not “modern sex writing has had negative effects on society”, that’s a sweeping generalisation begging further discourse. It’s not a statament to be taken for granted, and certainly not without nuance.
Strongly disagree. This is a very prudish take and I find Tolly's argument far more convincing. Even pornography can be art, and I don't think creating this distinction between art and pornography is useful. And to say that Gaitskill's story does not reveal character because it is clinical and grotesque is silly. It is that clinical grotesquerie that reveals character. I feel like LIza just wants her literature to be exceptionally high brow. I'll bet she doesn't like Henry Miller or William S. Burroughs either. Which is fine. We each have our own tastes. But I think once someone starts telling me what is okay and what is not okay to write about I sort of tune it out. Tolly is right that if you don't like it, don't write it, no harm no foul. Liza is wrong when she implies that if you don't write in a way she approves of then it's not serious literature. Literature can be anything and her take is pompous and the equivalent of gatekeeping. Who the fuck is any one person to say "what I call literature is literature and if you have different ideas about it it's not." Seriously.
Liza is the new Virginia Woolf. Prude snobbery masquerading as "aesthetic critique". Wants to be considered high art and fashionable but without shocking old ladies at tea time. Milquetoast Bloomsbury group nonsense.
Well, with respect, who says the *only* purpose of art is beauty? By that definition, you are disqualifying a lot of art.
Let's first consider painting. Is "The Scream" beautiful? Is "Guernica" beautiful? You want to stick to writing? How beautiful are "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," or "All Quiet on the Western Front," or "The Things They Carried," or Kafka's "The Metamorphosis?"
I think you are defining "pornography" both too broadly and too narrowly. Yes, one meaning is sexual depiction. But a better meaning is lurid or sensational material. The superior definition refers to the intent of the work. Is it merely to stimulate the instincts? Not just the sexual urge, but the sadistic or masochistic or sentimental or horror tendencies, with no other purpose?
I mean, I would call cat videos on the internet a kind of pornography. Nothing to them but to make you feel completely superficial things. They make you want to stroke your cat, which in this case is not a euphemism, but stroking is stroking, it's all just sensation.
Are D. H. Lawrence or Henry Miller pornography? Not at all. What you are missing is that the human condition, closely observed and accurately rendered, is what literature is for, not "beauty."
Unless you agree with me that exploring how we are, in all our glories and with all our warts, is what literature is for, and that seeing with a clear eye and writing with a courageous hand--regardless of the subject--is quite beautiful, so you can have beauty after all. Sex is part of life. Just like defecation and decomposition and disease. Just like love and flowers and children and walks on the beach.
I appreciate your insights, illuminated with examples—a specificity lacking in most of the denunciations of Liza’s post. Furthermore, you venture an appealing definition of literature as the exploration of the multifaceted human condition, whereas many of the critics state or imply that literature is whatever you think it is, a relativistic claim that is self-refuting and renders the word “literature” meaningless. I suspect that Liza herself may be sympathetic to your viewpoint.
Your essay contains a fundamental contradiction that undermines its entire argument. You acknowledge that "everyone's sexual appetites are so different," yet you immediately pivot to declaring that sex scenes are "distasteful and often gratuitous" - a universal aesthetic judgment that your own premise makes impossible.
If sexual appetites truly vary (which they do), then what you find distasteful, others may find beautiful, meaningful, or revelatory. Your personal cringe response to Gaitskill's clinical prose isn't evidence of bad writing - it's evidence that the text wasn't written for your particular sensibilities.
Consider: people have wildly different responses to depictions of violence, death, grief, and trauma. Some readers find graphic war scenes unbearable, others find them necessary for understanding human experience. Some can't stomach detailed descriptions of illness or death, while others find them cathartic. Yet you're not writing "Stop Writing Death Scenes" or "Your Gore Isn't Art," despite the fact that these scenes could be called "distasteful and often gratuitous" by those who find them disturbing.
Why is sex uniquely subject to your aesthetic policing? Could it be that your discomfort with certain sexual expressions has more to do with your personal boundaries than with any objective literary standard?
Your claim that literature "must reflect human nature through a certain moral orientation" is particularly troubling. Whose moral orientation? Yours? The degradation and power dynamics in Gaitskill's work ARE reflections of human nature - just aspects you'd prefer not to examine. That discomfort doesn't make them less literary.
The leap from "I don't like kinky sex scenes" to "kinky sex scenes erode meaningful human connection" lacks any supporting evidence beyond your personal distaste. You're conflating consensual BDSM in fiction with assault (via the Gaiman reference) and using ER statistics about physical injuries to make claims about emotional and relational health. These are not serious arguments.
Literature's purpose isn't to reflect only the tender, soul-merging sex you personally find beautiful. It's to explore the full range of human experience, including the uncomfortable, the transgressive, and yes, the kinky. Your essay amounts to demanding that all literature conform to your personal comfort zone.
The very universality of death, violence, and grief - like sex - means they manifest in radically different ways across human experience. A writer exploring the clinical dissociation of trauma (as Gaitskill does) is just as valid as one exploring tender connection. Literature that only depicted death as peaceful passing surrounded by loved ones would be laughably incomplete. The same is true for sex.
Your argument essentially demands that literature present only a narrow, sanitized version of human sexuality that aligns with your personal comfort. That's not protecting meaningful human connection - it's denying the full range of how humans actually connect, disconnect, and experience intimacy.
The idea that literature (and, I guess, Art) must only comment on universal human experience through "meaning" or "beauty" is both totally banal and utterly incoherent. This is essentially, "I know it when I see it" aesthetic critique, which always trades heavily on the subjective judgment of the observer and allows essentially anything to be or not to be part of the favored category.
50 Shades of Grey is, as far as I know, a really badly written and dumb book, but to claim that it has led to a decline in moral values is a) quite a bold claim for a work of not-art; b) quite a vague claim that is undefended and unarticulated.
A sex scene that "isn't about sex" is tautological nonsense. Yes, in just about any book, a sex scene may or may not have meaning or weight beyond what it depicts, but if it wasn't about sex why is it depicting sex? Why not depict robots ripping up squirrels, or dogs happily gnawing on the excavated bones of infant victims of plague? The author chooses to set a scene featuring sex because sex is part of the scene!
Finally, you were doing so well for a while but couldn't quite resist blaming "left-wing moral relativists" for what you don't like in literature or what aspires to it. You are placing a moral judgment over the aesthetic one, while claiming that the aesthetic judgment is independent of that moral judgment. Pick a lane; either be a moralistic scold like 19th century critics of all novels, particularly Flaubert, Zola, and Collins, (and in the 20th, Lawrence) or render aesthetic judgment without resort to cliches that deaden your thought and reduce you to the generic.
I'm sorry, Tolly, I have to note that I told you so.
Libes may have conveyed the idea badly but "not about sex" means that the scene is pointing to something that isn't sex or at least connecting to ideas in the rest of the book. It is not just there because the writer thought without a sex scene the book wouldn't get published.
No, I agree that a sex scene is of course about sex but good symbols don't stand in the middle of the text shrieking that they are a symbol either, they can be taken literally.
This essay operates from a number of untenable—and frankly, silly—positions about what constitutes literature. In light of that, I applaud the author for taking on the task of attempting to defend these positions, self-evidently ridiculous as they are.
The reading of Gaitskill is particularly uncharitable and incurious. Simple depiction is not endorsement, or even an attempt to normalize, “deviant” behaviors. There is not a serious argument here
How would you assess the literary significance of the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch from whose names the two main kinks get their names ?
We had this argument a while back, actually. Unsurprisingly she's not a fan, though I wouldn't really encourage her to try it, Sacher-Masoch is boring as heck (though maybe because I'm not into femdom) and de Sade...yeah, if you get grossed out you really, really, shouldn't go there, that's one of the few books outside of Lovecraft stories that can cost a few sanity points for reading.
Such an interesting follow-up to the first piece, Liza, and I have a few thoughts.
First, I am a gigantic prude. I prefer my sex scenes to be alluded to, rather than graphic, for a reason. If I can't read it on a bus without flushing crimson, it's just not for me. I don't take on book manuscripts that are heavy with needless sex, and if I see the phrase "throbbing member," I'm 100% out. Just a good, loud NOPE.
That said, I must push back on the statement about "what sex is supposed to be—an act of love and beauty."
No, sex is a biological, reproductive process. Sure, plenty of people have sex in love and for beauty, but that's not the only kind of sex people have and isn't the only kind of sex valued by a diverse and free people. Sex doesn't have to be done in love. It doesn't have to be beautiful. It most certainly does not constitute art in a vacuum, no matter how lovingly or beautifully it's done. Sure, we have opinions of when and how people should have their sex or how it's supposed to be, but "should" and "supposed to" are limiting and devalue the depth and breadth of the human experience.
And The Secretary is a piece of art, graphic as it is, expressly because the author is exploring identity and association within power structures. I've also seen the movie and have recommended it to folks because of the story's message.
Maybe kink itself isn't art, but the presence of kink doesn't discount the art either.
I would say the presence of kink doesn't discount the art but that definitely the kink itself cannot be art. In essence, kink is boring and transparent, especially with men. It's submissive dudes who are ashamed of their sexuality and escape into BDSM because it's the only outlet for their repressed masculinity (and when that repressed masculinity comes out, it can be ugly). A lot of them are younger when they escape into porn, and despite thousands of hours spent masturbating to women being used, end up becoming sissies in their 40s and 50s. And if those men, in this example, were writing that story and not a power fantasy, there is the potential, for as kink-filled as the story may be, that it could be art. Because the author would be revealing to us how the sexually confused mind jumps from niche sex act to niche sex act--maybe even fetishes--and mistakes each for being something new when it's the same boring, transparent slop every single time. If the character can escape their fear and become a real person, then it might even be high art. But if the ultimate purpose of the story is, "I want control over everything because I can't control myself and I can't admit that to myself so I will project my weakness onto women and/or objects--because I don't see any difference between them--then attempt to control them and then punish them instead of myself but it's cool because she came and the story is in her POV and I will do this with no irony and no metaphor and no learning," it's not art, it's shame that the author cannot access because their horniness and fear has blotted shame out of their existence, IMO. They are so afraid of being themselves and so paranoid of others that they can't even tell a basic story. Sex is not sex, at that point. It's a skin being put over everything that scares the author because they would prefer the feeling of their fear being taboo to just being plain-old cowardly.
I don't see why you couldn't make art out of repressed sexuality. It was quite common--look at Michelangelo. If the dude had been able to go to gay bars he'd probably be a lot happier but we'd never have the David.
You can make art out of it but you need at the very least the self-awareness of that repression. I can't speak to Michelangelo, because I don't have a good understanding of him as a person. But, was he repressed simply because he lived in a time when he could not visit a gay bar? In order to "not be repressed," one has to be able to exercise loudly their lack of repression upon others or they are somehow less free? To me, I would not classify a gay man who is private about his sexuality, or does not discuss it publicly, as being repressed. Being "in the closet," so to speak, in my understanding, has more to do with believing you are straight, living as if you are straight, when you are gay and essentially hiding from yourself. We see gay men as being less manly or less capable of violence, and that stereotype covers up uncomfortable discussion about closeted individuals--that the anger and isolation they feel can often lead to domestic abuse against their female partner when they are living a their life as a straight person. Of course, the key here is metaphor. Physically, sex is nothing fantastic. It's simply the union of two physical bodies meant to protect an exchange of fluids and ensure impregnation. Psychologically, sex is better described as a dream than it is as a tangible act. It's a place where even our deepest shame--things like racial preference, etc--come out against our will, like they might in a dream. It's a mistake to take anything, or write about anything, that happens in these dreams too literally, and it's a sign that the writer has not unwrapped the fantasy elements at play to see what truly lies in their heart.
We don't know what Michelangelo thought--given the era he probably thought he had sinful thoughts, didn't act on them, and turned his appreciation of the nude male form into epochal art.
But I'm not sure I really agree with any of this. You need self-awareness of the repression to make art? Well, what if you decide to paint flowers or do some other form of art that doesn't touch directly on sex? I imagine with enough an aesthetic sense you could still produce quality art, though I'm obviously not an artist.
From what I understand, the closet is not being openly gay--even if you haven't fooled yourself and simply calculate that being gay can get you killed (as it still can in many parts of the world), most people would still classify you as closeted.
This is the first I heard of stereotypes about gay men covering up closeted domestic abusers--I imagine that can happen but I wasn't aware of it being a trope among gay men. Nowadays, from what I can tell, the #1 thing closeted gay men married to a woman do is *cheat with men*, as you might expect.
I agree about the return of the repressed and taboo being erotic (look at Lehmiller's work in 'Tell Me What You Like' on Democratic vs Republican kinks)...but taking anything that happens in dreams too literally? I don't know, sometimes people act on their fantasies and sometimes they don't. A lot depends on how dangerous it is to act out the fantasy and how realistic it is.
I’m not sure if you even want a response to this. I don’t see a central argument to your refutations but you’re an intelligent commenter so maybe I’ve missed them. Basically, the scenario you’re implying, where someone just literally writes out their fantasies with no analysis or arc, to me, is journaling. It’s useful for harvesting content and it’s creative but it’s not art, imo. It could be prep work for a great piece of art but it’s not going to be great as a standalone.
I've actually lost track of the original argument, even after going back and rereading the thread.
I guess my central argument was that art doesn't necessarily require self-awareness or its lack--maybe for very interior arts like modern fiction, sure, but there are others that don't. You have to be able to move people emotionally, and lots of people could do this before the era where knowing yourself was valued or even thought about. Kink could do that, or (as is more likely) it could not.
You seem in the original post to be describing a particular genre of submissive men who turn their fantasies into attempted art. I could definitely see a lot of that being bad. Some of it might be good. It's not my preferred kink *or* art type so I'm not that familiar with it. But if that much is made I'm sure some is artistically valuable.
We probably have different concepts of art, which is pretty common as people have argued over 'what is art' for years.
Also, I would say, many people prefer the "edgy" feeling of eroticizing their fear or cowardice. But that's lame, IMO. No different or deeper than a teenager thinking dying their hair and listening the moody music is somehow edgy. It's edgy for them, where they are in that moment, but eventually they will look back and laugh at it. Fear and cowardice are just fear and cowardice. When a writer refuses to call a spade a space, you know the writing is an internalized-propaganda for their own paranoid worldview. It's meant to reinforce their own delusion, not destroy it.
Look, I have it from no less an authority than fricking *Aella* that some people ARE NOT INTO THIS STUFF AND NEVER WILL BE. It's like being gay or straight--some people are bi but you're not going to turn most gay people straight (or vice versa).
I think this essay would have been stronger if it stood alone and wasn’t in direct response to the essay it’s reacting to.
I would have liked to read other examples that have turned Liza off from sex in literature, because these two examples aren’t helping the anti-sex scene argument.
There is bad writing and it is plentiful, especially when it comes to sex. But good writing isn’t harmed by sex scenes. Perhaps the real issue is that many don’t know how to write sex well enough to make it palatable for the author?
I have always enjoyed reading a well written sex scene because it serves a greater purpose of the novel or story through character development or contextual storytelling.
All men leaving the comments so far. Interesting. I was an English major and have read voraciously all of my life. I am an adult female. I agree with the author, Liza Libes. I have learned to skip over graphic sex scenes in books. They distract from the plot … having no purpose in my mind other than the obvious, or they are just page fillers for a writer.
"Gaitskill, on the other hand, does not attempt to reach such heights; there is nothing “deeper” going on in her scene. The sex is just sex, and it does not try to be beautiful or even erotic. Her language is clinical, grotesque, and intentionally disgusting; the experience she chronicles is degrading and even vulgar. Gaitskill’s writing might be the literary equivalent of Duchamp’s urinal: there is neither moral tension nor narrative consequence, and its entire purpose is to delight in the taboo by dressing up soft-core BDSM porn in a veil of minimalist prose."
OK, but that's *not what Gaitskill's doing*.
She wrote a story about a depressing and upsetting situation that got turned into a kinky romance by Hollywood. The original 'Bad Behavior' story is not intended to delight in taboo or be erotic at all--it is indeed intentionally disgusting and is supposed to show how uncomfortable the protagonist is (even if she's also turned on a little--life and people are strange and contradictory, a major Gaitskill theme), at which I would argue it succeeds very well.
Republic, let's keep it classy in the comments, shall we?
I'm sorry, but this is utter nonsense. It's one thing to dislike someone's writing or question the quality or purpose of it, but there is no such thing as a universal morality. This is one person's declaration that everyone should align to their particular aesthetic and moral philosophy. It's absurd and egotistical dreck masquerading as critique.
Whether or not Gaitskill's short story is "vulgar" or "pornographic" to argue that it has no place in "literature" is laughably asinine. The world is full of vulgarity, violence, and any other number of objectionable material. To strip literature of the objectionable is to strip literature of its meaning, the very essence that you claim to be central to its existence and purpose.
This is not literary critique, it's moral relativism.
hell yeah Vinny. agree with every word. i had the opportunity to present this argument to the author in a notes thread not too long ago. it wasn’t a contentious conversation, but it seems they haven’t changed
Controversy creates cash, so I’m sure that has something to do with it judging by her checkmark. I ignored the initial kerfuffle but seeing this in ROL kinda upset me.
It's like hot takes in sports: no one cares for nuance or gradations of meaning. You're either the GOAT or a failure. It's the same with literature, or literary criticism. There is of course room for vulgarities and kink and fetish, and its place in “literature” is only as relevant as it's quality. The same way that a description of a flower or the ocean or a neckline or (insert your aesthetic ideal here) is only worth reading if it's well-written. The way to dross has many roads.
i wish i could easily find the thread (substack notes ya know?) but she had no real answer to me, from what i recall.
I recall reading the exchange and her just basically parroting what she’d already said. I said it to someone else on here, but her position is intellectually indefensible because it attempts to ascribe morality to art, a thing that exists to challenge existing conceptions of morality!
“Controversy creates cash” is her whole shtick. Look at her Instagram, it’s disgusting. I’m glad your comment is the first comment on this post — I’m always wary of engaging with such posts because it’s rage-bait and we’re falling for it, but also find that it’s our responsibility to call out the bullshit. It’s quite tricky, but this is my long winded way of thanking you, Vinny.
It should be a logical fallacy to say that knowing who wrote the piece tells me all I need to know—but it’s not.
Down. With. Rococo. Art.
There will be no NeoRococo. I will burn it down.
Myself. Personally
With my fire-breathing vagina. In the name of the Marquis.
fire breathing vaginas…. now… they would sort a LOT OF bullshit out wouldn't they…
Just because art is not to your taste does not make it art. So many seem to forget that if you don’t like something, that doesn’t mean you are inherently morally superior to that work.
Agree.
You don't need to apologise for someone else's bad opinion
At what point is a take so dog shit that it's actually counterproductive to refute it? I completely agree with you, but we all quietly know that it's a stupid take that is designed to provoke exactly this kind of reaction.
The question I pose in my photography , and I’ve used literature as examples, is what is the line between erotica and art or pornography and art
There’s a funny scene from the TV show Third Rock from the Sun, where they’re trying to explain to Dick the difference between art and smut, and (because he’s an alien) he keeps getting turned on by the art and not the smut.
That’s funny . I have to write a short story like that!
Agree Vinny 👍👍
No, what she’s saying is that it’s all decadence that can be written by any pubescent boy. It’s all quite banal after a while and lacks the post modern creativity of a Sade or Bataille which Im sure you are an avid reader of. You can live in their sexual universes. I’ll live in hers and to believe that these vulgar motifs and the spread of pornography has no down side is yes quite “relative”.
I’m confused, is literature dead or is it corroding our society with it’s vulgarity? Because it really is one or the other…
Literature is dying because it’s corroding our society. I think you might like the paradox. Lol, one man’s opinion.
Good grief. What a load of sanctimonious bilge. I’m sorry, but you are not the arbiter of “health” and “harm.” You are not the arbiter of sexual “realism,” either. Your distaste and disapproval of BDSM-themed sexual relationships and their depiction is uninformed, over-the-top, and prompts speculation about reaction-formation. And that’s just for starters. The depiction of “kink” (ugh) can be beautiful, but again, you are not the arbiter of “beauty,” nor is literature required to strive for that.
"Sanctimonious bilge." Chef's kiss, Connie.
Yes 🙌
My personal taste in reading about sex tends to the subtle. That extends to movies as well.
I'll say this about some of the more pejorative comments––if art and what's appropriate writing about sex are in the eyes of the beholder as many of the comments claim in vigorous dispute, then how can you dismiss Liza's point of view? She has certain standards about sex writing. And she has beliefs that cannot be disproved that modern sex writing has had negative effects on society. Why aren't her standards and beliefs just as valid as yours or Tolly's or mine?
To Tolly's essay, I commented that the scene below in the movie May December was the sexiest movie scene I've seen in a very long time. Because it fires and uses your imagination. It's great acting in my opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sssVJ44d8yc
Hello, David. I noticed your comment here reached second place, just below Vinny's. This is most likely due to the nature of your verified check mark and your 12k+ subscriber count. It certainly isn’t because of the actual content of your reply, which is largely vapid.
No one is disputing the validity of her beliefs. I believe that Liza is fully cognisant of her behaviour, especially on a platform like Substack. But by the grace of this place’s extremely laissez-faire environment, we reserve the right to label her essay as pejoratively as we like, just as she reserves the right to explicate her viewpoint. We can call out its lack of philosophical or educational profundity just as much as she can call out contemporary literature for having “bad morals”, whatever that means.
As for whether or not “modern sex writing has had negative effects on society”, that’s a sweeping generalisation begging further discourse. It’s not a statament to be taken for granted, and certainly not without nuance.
You had me at "vapid."
Strongly disagree. This is a very prudish take and I find Tolly's argument far more convincing. Even pornography can be art, and I don't think creating this distinction between art and pornography is useful. And to say that Gaitskill's story does not reveal character because it is clinical and grotesque is silly. It is that clinical grotesquerie that reveals character. I feel like LIza just wants her literature to be exceptionally high brow. I'll bet she doesn't like Henry Miller or William S. Burroughs either. Which is fine. We each have our own tastes. But I think once someone starts telling me what is okay and what is not okay to write about I sort of tune it out. Tolly is right that if you don't like it, don't write it, no harm no foul. Liza is wrong when she implies that if you don't write in a way she approves of then it's not serious literature. Literature can be anything and her take is pompous and the equivalent of gatekeeping. Who the fuck is any one person to say "what I call literature is literature and if you have different ideas about it it's not." Seriously.
Liza is the new Virginia Woolf. Prude snobbery masquerading as "aesthetic critique". Wants to be considered high art and fashionable but without shocking old ladies at tea time. Milquetoast Bloomsbury group nonsense.
thank you
Yes 👍
Well, with respect, who says the *only* purpose of art is beauty? By that definition, you are disqualifying a lot of art.
Let's first consider painting. Is "The Scream" beautiful? Is "Guernica" beautiful? You want to stick to writing? How beautiful are "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," or "All Quiet on the Western Front," or "The Things They Carried," or Kafka's "The Metamorphosis?"
I think you are defining "pornography" both too broadly and too narrowly. Yes, one meaning is sexual depiction. But a better meaning is lurid or sensational material. The superior definition refers to the intent of the work. Is it merely to stimulate the instincts? Not just the sexual urge, but the sadistic or masochistic or sentimental or horror tendencies, with no other purpose?
I mean, I would call cat videos on the internet a kind of pornography. Nothing to them but to make you feel completely superficial things. They make you want to stroke your cat, which in this case is not a euphemism, but stroking is stroking, it's all just sensation.
Are D. H. Lawrence or Henry Miller pornography? Not at all. What you are missing is that the human condition, closely observed and accurately rendered, is what literature is for, not "beauty."
Unless you agree with me that exploring how we are, in all our glories and with all our warts, is what literature is for, and that seeing with a clear eye and writing with a courageous hand--regardless of the subject--is quite beautiful, so you can have beauty after all. Sex is part of life. Just like defecation and decomposition and disease. Just like love and flowers and children and walks on the beach.
Agree. The essay is lacking both nuance and an open mind.
I appreciate your insights, illuminated with examples—a specificity lacking in most of the denunciations of Liza’s post. Furthermore, you venture an appealing definition of literature as the exploration of the multifaceted human condition, whereas many of the critics state or imply that literature is whatever you think it is, a relativistic claim that is self-refuting and renders the word “literature” meaningless. I suspect that Liza herself may be sympathetic to your viewpoint.
Dear Liza,
Your essay contains a fundamental contradiction that undermines its entire argument. You acknowledge that "everyone's sexual appetites are so different," yet you immediately pivot to declaring that sex scenes are "distasteful and often gratuitous" - a universal aesthetic judgment that your own premise makes impossible.
If sexual appetites truly vary (which they do), then what you find distasteful, others may find beautiful, meaningful, or revelatory. Your personal cringe response to Gaitskill's clinical prose isn't evidence of bad writing - it's evidence that the text wasn't written for your particular sensibilities.
Consider: people have wildly different responses to depictions of violence, death, grief, and trauma. Some readers find graphic war scenes unbearable, others find them necessary for understanding human experience. Some can't stomach detailed descriptions of illness or death, while others find them cathartic. Yet you're not writing "Stop Writing Death Scenes" or "Your Gore Isn't Art," despite the fact that these scenes could be called "distasteful and often gratuitous" by those who find them disturbing.
Why is sex uniquely subject to your aesthetic policing? Could it be that your discomfort with certain sexual expressions has more to do with your personal boundaries than with any objective literary standard?
Your claim that literature "must reflect human nature through a certain moral orientation" is particularly troubling. Whose moral orientation? Yours? The degradation and power dynamics in Gaitskill's work ARE reflections of human nature - just aspects you'd prefer not to examine. That discomfort doesn't make them less literary.
The leap from "I don't like kinky sex scenes" to "kinky sex scenes erode meaningful human connection" lacks any supporting evidence beyond your personal distaste. You're conflating consensual BDSM in fiction with assault (via the Gaiman reference) and using ER statistics about physical injuries to make claims about emotional and relational health. These are not serious arguments.
Literature's purpose isn't to reflect only the tender, soul-merging sex you personally find beautiful. It's to explore the full range of human experience, including the uncomfortable, the transgressive, and yes, the kinky. Your essay amounts to demanding that all literature conform to your personal comfort zone.
The very universality of death, violence, and grief - like sex - means they manifest in radically different ways across human experience. A writer exploring the clinical dissociation of trauma (as Gaitskill does) is just as valid as one exploring tender connection. Literature that only depicted death as peaceful passing surrounded by loved ones would be laughably incomplete. The same is true for sex.
Your argument essentially demands that literature present only a narrow, sanitized version of human sexuality that aligns with your personal comfort. That's not protecting meaningful human connection - it's denying the full range of how humans actually connect, disconnect, and experience intimacy.
That's not criticism. It's projection.
Agree. Too one-sided. Moral superiority.
The idea that literature (and, I guess, Art) must only comment on universal human experience through "meaning" or "beauty" is both totally banal and utterly incoherent. This is essentially, "I know it when I see it" aesthetic critique, which always trades heavily on the subjective judgment of the observer and allows essentially anything to be or not to be part of the favored category.
50 Shades of Grey is, as far as I know, a really badly written and dumb book, but to claim that it has led to a decline in moral values is a) quite a bold claim for a work of not-art; b) quite a vague claim that is undefended and unarticulated.
A sex scene that "isn't about sex" is tautological nonsense. Yes, in just about any book, a sex scene may or may not have meaning or weight beyond what it depicts, but if it wasn't about sex why is it depicting sex? Why not depict robots ripping up squirrels, or dogs happily gnawing on the excavated bones of infant victims of plague? The author chooses to set a scene featuring sex because sex is part of the scene!
Finally, you were doing so well for a while but couldn't quite resist blaming "left-wing moral relativists" for what you don't like in literature or what aspires to it. You are placing a moral judgment over the aesthetic one, while claiming that the aesthetic judgment is independent of that moral judgment. Pick a lane; either be a moralistic scold like 19th century critics of all novels, particularly Flaubert, Zola, and Collins, (and in the 20th, Lawrence) or render aesthetic judgment without resort to cliches that deaden your thought and reduce you to the generic.
I'm sorry, Tolly, I have to note that I told you so.
👍👍
Libes may have conveyed the idea badly but "not about sex" means that the scene is pointing to something that isn't sex or at least connecting to ideas in the rest of the book. It is not just there because the writer thought without a sex scene the book wouldn't get published.
I urge you to reread my comment before engaging in any further mansplaining.
No, I agree that a sex scene is of course about sex but good symbols don't stand in the middle of the text shrieking that they are a symbol either, they can be taken literally.
This essay operates from a number of untenable—and frankly, silly—positions about what constitutes literature. In light of that, I applaud the author for taking on the task of attempting to defend these positions, self-evidently ridiculous as they are.
The reading of Gaitskill is particularly uncharitable and incurious. Simple depiction is not endorsement, or even an attempt to normalize, “deviant” behaviors. There is not a serious argument here
Agree. Lacks nuance. Has an obvious bias. One-sided.
How would you assess the literary significance of the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch from whose names the two main kinks get their names ?
I was hoping someone would jump in with the sadism / masochism origins! Chef’s kiss, Tony
We had this argument a while back, actually. Unsurprisingly she's not a fan, though I wouldn't really encourage her to try it, Sacher-Masoch is boring as heck (though maybe because I'm not into femdom) and de Sade...yeah, if you get grossed out you really, really, shouldn't go there, that's one of the few books outside of Lovecraft stories that can cost a few sanity points for reading.
My view is that their literary quality is low but their historical significance is high.
I could endorse that. Especially 120 Days of Sodom. It's really just a catalog of really disturbing fantasies near the end.
Such an interesting follow-up to the first piece, Liza, and I have a few thoughts.
First, I am a gigantic prude. I prefer my sex scenes to be alluded to, rather than graphic, for a reason. If I can't read it on a bus without flushing crimson, it's just not for me. I don't take on book manuscripts that are heavy with needless sex, and if I see the phrase "throbbing member," I'm 100% out. Just a good, loud NOPE.
That said, I must push back on the statement about "what sex is supposed to be—an act of love and beauty."
No, sex is a biological, reproductive process. Sure, plenty of people have sex in love and for beauty, but that's not the only kind of sex people have and isn't the only kind of sex valued by a diverse and free people. Sex doesn't have to be done in love. It doesn't have to be beautiful. It most certainly does not constitute art in a vacuum, no matter how lovingly or beautifully it's done. Sure, we have opinions of when and how people should have their sex or how it's supposed to be, but "should" and "supposed to" are limiting and devalue the depth and breadth of the human experience.
And The Secretary is a piece of art, graphic as it is, expressly because the author is exploring identity and association within power structures. I've also seen the movie and have recommended it to folks because of the story's message.
Maybe kink itself isn't art, but the presence of kink doesn't discount the art either.
!!! Amen 🙏
I would say the presence of kink doesn't discount the art but that definitely the kink itself cannot be art. In essence, kink is boring and transparent, especially with men. It's submissive dudes who are ashamed of their sexuality and escape into BDSM because it's the only outlet for their repressed masculinity (and when that repressed masculinity comes out, it can be ugly). A lot of them are younger when they escape into porn, and despite thousands of hours spent masturbating to women being used, end up becoming sissies in their 40s and 50s. And if those men, in this example, were writing that story and not a power fantasy, there is the potential, for as kink-filled as the story may be, that it could be art. Because the author would be revealing to us how the sexually confused mind jumps from niche sex act to niche sex act--maybe even fetishes--and mistakes each for being something new when it's the same boring, transparent slop every single time. If the character can escape their fear and become a real person, then it might even be high art. But if the ultimate purpose of the story is, "I want control over everything because I can't control myself and I can't admit that to myself so I will project my weakness onto women and/or objects--because I don't see any difference between them--then attempt to control them and then punish them instead of myself but it's cool because she came and the story is in her POV and I will do this with no irony and no metaphor and no learning," it's not art, it's shame that the author cannot access because their horniness and fear has blotted shame out of their existence, IMO. They are so afraid of being themselves and so paranoid of others that they can't even tell a basic story. Sex is not sex, at that point. It's a skin being put over everything that scares the author because they would prefer the feeling of their fear being taboo to just being plain-old cowardly.
I don't see why you couldn't make art out of repressed sexuality. It was quite common--look at Michelangelo. If the dude had been able to go to gay bars he'd probably be a lot happier but we'd never have the David.
You can make art out of it but you need at the very least the self-awareness of that repression. I can't speak to Michelangelo, because I don't have a good understanding of him as a person. But, was he repressed simply because he lived in a time when he could not visit a gay bar? In order to "not be repressed," one has to be able to exercise loudly their lack of repression upon others or they are somehow less free? To me, I would not classify a gay man who is private about his sexuality, or does not discuss it publicly, as being repressed. Being "in the closet," so to speak, in my understanding, has more to do with believing you are straight, living as if you are straight, when you are gay and essentially hiding from yourself. We see gay men as being less manly or less capable of violence, and that stereotype covers up uncomfortable discussion about closeted individuals--that the anger and isolation they feel can often lead to domestic abuse against their female partner when they are living a their life as a straight person. Of course, the key here is metaphor. Physically, sex is nothing fantastic. It's simply the union of two physical bodies meant to protect an exchange of fluids and ensure impregnation. Psychologically, sex is better described as a dream than it is as a tangible act. It's a place where even our deepest shame--things like racial preference, etc--come out against our will, like they might in a dream. It's a mistake to take anything, or write about anything, that happens in these dreams too literally, and it's a sign that the writer has not unwrapped the fantasy elements at play to see what truly lies in their heart.
We don't know what Michelangelo thought--given the era he probably thought he had sinful thoughts, didn't act on them, and turned his appreciation of the nude male form into epochal art.
But I'm not sure I really agree with any of this. You need self-awareness of the repression to make art? Well, what if you decide to paint flowers or do some other form of art that doesn't touch directly on sex? I imagine with enough an aesthetic sense you could still produce quality art, though I'm obviously not an artist.
From what I understand, the closet is not being openly gay--even if you haven't fooled yourself and simply calculate that being gay can get you killed (as it still can in many parts of the world), most people would still classify you as closeted.
This is the first I heard of stereotypes about gay men covering up closeted domestic abusers--I imagine that can happen but I wasn't aware of it being a trope among gay men. Nowadays, from what I can tell, the #1 thing closeted gay men married to a woman do is *cheat with men*, as you might expect.
I agree about the return of the repressed and taboo being erotic (look at Lehmiller's work in 'Tell Me What You Like' on Democratic vs Republican kinks)...but taking anything that happens in dreams too literally? I don't know, sometimes people act on their fantasies and sometimes they don't. A lot depends on how dangerous it is to act out the fantasy and how realistic it is.
I’m not sure if you even want a response to this. I don’t see a central argument to your refutations but you’re an intelligent commenter so maybe I’ve missed them. Basically, the scenario you’re implying, where someone just literally writes out their fantasies with no analysis or arc, to me, is journaling. It’s useful for harvesting content and it’s creative but it’s not art, imo. It could be prep work for a great piece of art but it’s not going to be great as a standalone.
I've actually lost track of the original argument, even after going back and rereading the thread.
I guess my central argument was that art doesn't necessarily require self-awareness or its lack--maybe for very interior arts like modern fiction, sure, but there are others that don't. You have to be able to move people emotionally, and lots of people could do this before the era where knowing yourself was valued or even thought about. Kink could do that, or (as is more likely) it could not.
You seem in the original post to be describing a particular genre of submissive men who turn their fantasies into attempted art. I could definitely see a lot of that being bad. Some of it might be good. It's not my preferred kink *or* art type so I'm not that familiar with it. But if that much is made I'm sure some is artistically valuable.
We probably have different concepts of art, which is pretty common as people have argued over 'what is art' for years.
Also, I would say, many people prefer the "edgy" feeling of eroticizing their fear or cowardice. But that's lame, IMO. No different or deeper than a teenager thinking dying their hair and listening the moody music is somehow edgy. It's edgy for them, where they are in that moment, but eventually they will look back and laugh at it. Fear and cowardice are just fear and cowardice. When a writer refuses to call a spade a space, you know the writing is an internalized-propaganda for their own paranoid worldview. It's meant to reinforce their own delusion, not destroy it.
I agree. Let's keep it classy.
"Who the f*ck wants that?"
ME! I DO!
I'd love for Liza to have a less vanilla sexual experience that opens her horizons and inspires her greatest literary work, but it seems unlikely.
Look, I have it from no less an authority than fricking *Aella* that some people ARE NOT INTO THIS STUFF AND NEVER WILL BE. It's like being gay or straight--some people are bi but you're not going to turn most gay people straight (or vice versa).
I think this essay would have been stronger if it stood alone and wasn’t in direct response to the essay it’s reacting to.
I would have liked to read other examples that have turned Liza off from sex in literature, because these two examples aren’t helping the anti-sex scene argument.
There is bad writing and it is plentiful, especially when it comes to sex. But good writing isn’t harmed by sex scenes. Perhaps the real issue is that many don’t know how to write sex well enough to make it palatable for the author?
I have always enjoyed reading a well written sex scene because it serves a greater purpose of the novel or story through character development or contextual storytelling.
All men leaving the comments so far. Interesting. I was an English major and have read voraciously all of my life. I am an adult female. I agree with the author, Liza Libes. I have learned to skip over graphic sex scenes in books. They distract from the plot … having no purpose in my mind other than the obvious, or they are just page fillers for a writer.
I’m a woman — an old woman, even (66) — and I commented (see below). Her essay is ludicrous.
"Gaitskill, on the other hand, does not attempt to reach such heights; there is nothing “deeper” going on in her scene. The sex is just sex, and it does not try to be beautiful or even erotic. Her language is clinical, grotesque, and intentionally disgusting; the experience she chronicles is degrading and even vulgar. Gaitskill’s writing might be the literary equivalent of Duchamp’s urinal: there is neither moral tension nor narrative consequence, and its entire purpose is to delight in the taboo by dressing up soft-core BDSM porn in a veil of minimalist prose."
OK, but that's *not what Gaitskill's doing*.
She wrote a story about a depressing and upsetting situation that got turned into a kinky romance by Hollywood. The original 'Bad Behavior' story is not intended to delight in taboo or be erotic at all--it is indeed intentionally disgusting and is supposed to show how uncomfortable the protagonist is (even if she's also turned on a little--life and people are strange and contradictory, a major Gaitskill theme), at which I would argue it succeeds very well.
This summarizes it without a New Yorker link: https://allegrasamsen.substack.com/p/victims-and-losers-mary-gaitskills
But if you have a New Yorker subscription, here's a few articles:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/mary-gaitskill-has-come-online
https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-week-in-fiction/mary-gaitskill-03-27-23