“If there’s no sex, it ain’t LesFic”

Alright, so here’s a question for everyone:  What defines lesbian fiction?

For the month of December, I teamed up with three other lesbian writers (two of us with full-length novels already published; one of us published in a few literary journals; the last of us an aspiring novelist) who promised to write every day and hold each other accountable. Each day, we’ve been posting little snippets of our work to prove that we wrote at least a little something that day.

The aspiring novelist posted her first-ever sex scene.  That led to a side-conversation about how much we all hate writing sex scenes.  THAT led to another side conversation about how you can’t really avoid writing sex scenes if you write in the lesfic genre.

One of us writes mysteries with lesbian detective protagonists, and she said that in one of her early books, she had only one fade-to-black sex scene.  Guess what?  Her readers were incensed.  In another book, her two lead detectives were on opposite sides of the country through the whole story, so they never had sex.  That also incensed her readers.

Readers let her know:  If there’s no (explicit) sex, then it’s just not lesfic.

The problem for the writer is that the “mainstream” mystery genre rarely includes explicit sex scenes.

(* I put “mainstream” in quotes because it bothers me that “mainstream” automatically means “straight,” and LGBTQ+ automatically means “outside the mainstream.”  Excuse me?  I’m a mainstream person.  I have a job, I pay my bills, I worry about the cost of health insurance, I binge watch Netflix.  Why am I “outside the mainstream” just because I’m queer?  But anyway.)

But if you leave explicit sex out of a book that you’re putting into lesbian categories, your readers will NOT be happy.  Hell, my first book only had 2.5 sex scenes (two explicit and one fade-to-black) and had people complain that it wasn’t enough!  I learned my lesson:  I always aim for at least three explicit scenes in each book.  That seems to chill people out.

But why do I have to include explicit scenes at all if I’m not writing romance?

When I wrote Princess of Dorsa, I included my standard three explicit sex scenes.

Here’s the problem:  PoD is an epic fantasy novel, and epic fantasy novels, like my friend’s mysteries, do not usually include explicit sex.  They usually include fade-to-black sex or else no sex at all.  The romance between the lead characters isn’t typically at the center of the story.  In fact, in PoD, I would say the romance is a subplot.

Readers of lesfic come to a book expecting explicit sex.

Readers of fantasy come to a book expecting fade-to-black sex.

That leads to reviews like this one:

As said above, there are explicit sex scenes in the book. I wasn’t… especially fond of them, but they didn’t take away from how phenomenally well written the book itself was elsewhere, nor were they the sole purpose of the book – it has a well written, solid story with a twist that I wasn’t expecting near the end. A fantastic read, if you don’t mind the lewdness.

– Amazon reviewer

I’m not saying the reviewer above was necessarily straight and feels grossed out reading about lesbian sex.  For all I know, they were a lesbian who only ever reads fantasy books with straight characters and they are therefore more accustomed to fade-to-black in a book.

So what’s an author who wants to satisfy everyone to do?

The trouble with writing a cross-over, and back to my original question

When I wrote PoD, I was hoping to attract two kinds of readers:  queer women who read fantasy and are hungry for characters who look/feel like them, and straight readers who read fantasy and don’t mind LGBTQ leads as long as it’s a good story.

As far as I can tell, about 95% of the readers fall into the first category, and just a handful fall into the second.  To be honest, I could probably attract more readers from the second category if I switched from explicit sex to fade-to-black sex.  But it’s not worth risking upsetting my core audience.

There *are* queer authors who succeeded in capturing more of the second category.  One of the inspirations for PoD was Huntress by Malinda Lo, which is definitely a high fantasy and definitely queer.  Huntress is sold as YA, so there’s nothing explicit in it.  However, I also get the feeling that even  if it had been written for adults, explicit lesbian sex scenes never would’ve allowed Huntress to be published by a Big New York Publishing House.

This brings me back to my original question — and a hypothesis.

My hypothesis is that queer women are hungry to see themselves represented in fiction — I know I am.  And where queer characters are relatively rare in the mainstream, queer sex is even more rare.

Although not as rare as it used to be.  Think about Sense 8, where the first time we meet the MTF+F couple, they’re in the middle of having strap-on sex.  And I’m guessing OITNB includes explicit f/f scenes?

Nevertheless, queer people still want to be able to see/read explicit sex amongst “our own kind,” given that we are constantly inundated in shows and movies that feature breeder sex.  

Ewww.

I mean, I love HBO’s take on Game of Thrones, but it’s practically soft porn!

But will we ever get to a point where readers of lesfic will tolerate books in their genre that *don’t* have explicit sex?  Am I going to be stuck the rest of my writing career saying to myself, “*sigh*, time to include another sex scene…”?

We’re here, we’re queer.  Will you ever get used to it?

Oh, and just one last point. 

Going back to GoT for a second:  To all my straight readers out there, we put up with having to watch Jamie and Cersei, Jon and Ygritte, Jon and Dany, Drogo and Dany get it on.  You can return the favor and put up with seeing a couple of women occasionally get it on without complaining, okay?

And know what I found out when I looked for that sexy scene between Dany and her handmaid? 

This. 

Do you see my point?  Maybe I don’t always like writing explicit sex scenes, but I get why Our People sometimes feel like they need to have them.