The title pretty much explains it, but this has been irritating me SO bad.
I have seen so many people — on this sub and others — shame people who read smut. I've seen people go as far as to say that smutty romance books have no substance or literary merit.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with sex. Sex is a common part of many romantic relationships and a common part of life. There is nothing taboo or wrong with talking, thinking, or reading about sex. Just like there is nothing wrong with NOT talking, thinking, or reading about sex. It's personal preference. The issue is that people who don't tend to see themselves as high and mighty; a more sophisticated breed of romance connoisseur.
If you want to read a book about people who don't have sex, go for it. There are millions of books out there that are perfect for you. In fact, the vast majority of books are completely sex free. You can even skip explicit sex scenes in some books, if you really wanted to. You would not be a better or worse person for doing so. You can do so without hating on others.
An argument I've seen a lot has been that all smut books are "trauma porn" and "r@pe fantasies", which could not be more incorrect. So many of the explicit romance books I've read have been beautifully written with complex characters, twisting storylines, and meaningful relationships. That's because I decide what books I want to read, based on the content. If I don't want to read dark romance, I don't. If I don't want to read a mafia romance, I don't. It is that simple.
I don't see people hating on graphic horror fans for being disgusting or "murder fetishists". They find beauty and enjoyment in reading these books, because they're well written and enjoyable. If you find graphic horror uncomfortable, you just don't read it. You don't shame those people for being "gross".
This just grinds my gears. I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.
by bubbly_bun
32 Comments
I don’t even read Erotica, but the constant sex-negativity from adult puritanical Americans is ridiculous.
Unfortunately, there is a LOT of gatekeeping/shaming on Reddit in general, and it’s quite sad how it extends to this sub as well.
Personally, I don’t care what fellow adults read in their spare time, as long as it’s not hurting anyone else. There’s a lid for every pot. Not everyone is going to like every single genre. It doesn’t mean certain genres are superior, or that people are “bad readers” for reading adult romance or what have you.
I just find it weird that people read porn on the subway or in schools or wherever. Like more power to you but if someone was listening to porn getting all hot and bothered next to me on the bus I’d think that was weird too.
I get the appeal, but it’s not my genre. I go for horror, which has its own explicit nature. I won’t yuck your yum if you leave mine alone. 😃👍
The problem with most erotica is how poorly written it is. 😂 I used to write it as a side gig 20 years ago. Who cares if it has substance? People enjoy it and it’s not harming anyone.
I agree with you to an extent. My issue with it is that genres like YA and fantasy are increasingly full of it. It’s become really hard to find books that often seem marketed to tween/teen readers that don’t contain graphic sex or relationships that hinge on abuse that they won’t recognize and thus normalize. And this isn’t a won’t somebody think of the children thing. It’s just a muddying of the genres that makes it so much harder to choose books if you’re not into that.
Regarding the trauma porn argument….
I enjoy listening to mm romance audiobooks but there are a few authors who write entertaining, largely plot focused books but Jesus Christ the level of trauma they put their characters through either in their background or throughout the story is frankly concerning.
Sometimes I want happy bubbly stories, sometimes I want some angst, usually I want interesting stories (mystery, detective, sci-fi, etc) with lgbt characters. Sadly it often does lead to ‘ok when do the hate crimes start’.
Gregory Ashe is really bad for this… every layer you peel back on main characters it’s just more trauma backstory
Meh.
A lot of smut does lack literary merit and is total crap though, as is true of horror or thrillers or whatever. Maybe I’m not paying enough attention, but the criticisms I see aren’t critiquing the presence of sexual content, they’re criticizing the lack of quality.
Just to take the most obvious example, 50 shades isn’t crap because of the sex, it’s crap because it’s crap.
The presence of or even concentration on sex doesn’t redeem shit writing.
I have no problem with sex. I’m not puritanical – very far from it!
But I very rarely enjoy *reading* about sex. It’s very rarely done well, in my experience, and very often just makes me cringe a little.
Also, if I’m reading a book, I’m not generally expecting it to go into graphic detail, in the same way I’m not expecting a regular film to go hardcore porn for a love scene.
There are exceptions – I *love* The Boys for example, which is pretty graphic – but it’s all for a purpose, it’s in service to the story. It’s *done well*, and for a reason, in other words.
I can’t really think of a book equivalent tbh. I loved Kushiel’s Dart, but though it’s often *talked about* as if it were explicit, it really isn’t.
I have no issue at all with others reading it. Nor indeed do I object to hardcore porn, for that matter. But it’s rare that I’m going to want graphic sex in a book I’m reading.
I never shame people for wanting to read smut, whether it’s well written or terribly written. You do you. What grinds my gears is when I specifically state when I ask for book recs and I say no sex scenes or very few and easily skippable sex scenes and I get told that I’m somehow shaming others or making things “difficult” because I don’t want to read smut. No. I just want fantasy and horror and vampires and ghosts that aren’t don’t involve people screwing their brains out every few chapters. That’s just not my vibe. There’s a reason I don’t ask for recs publicly anymore.
As someone who has commented multiple times on this sub that I roll my eyes when sex is shoved into a story unnecessarily, I don’t get people actually shaming people who are into it. It’s like shaming someone for being into a specific music genre.
the closest I will ever come to gatekeeping comes from the mistake of reading comments on a booktok that popped up on my feed one time. I was genuinely just laughing – the commenters were talking about how they barely tolerated having to read 100 pages to get to the smut, and that that should really just be the whole book, and it should really start from page 1 pretty much.
porn. you want to read porn.
AND THAT’S FINE!!!! After all it really doesn’t matter, does it?! Read what you like! It’s just hilarious to me that these same tiktokers just use books as a pose or trend and all the comments are riding the wave and it’s all just about… generic porn. porn is fine- but that’s not *all* romantasy has to be! I feel like there’s a few really popular ones that are just pushing this image that romantasy has to be smut and it has to start asap.
Like I said, worst mistake of my life was reading tiktok comments, that was definitely my rock bottom. But it really drove me to an insanity for a while there.
I mean, I think the problem isn’t that people “shame” smut, it’s the rate at which people dress up smut as other things, and so you go looking for a “fantasy” recommendation and when you get smut, you’re like “this sucks, I was hoping for something way different.”
The bigger problem, overall, is people not being able to _admit what is smut in the first place_.
EDIT: Since this became a popular comment, I’ll briefly add that I think there is some “sore winner” stuff going on here, akin to “Don’t hate Taylor Swift!!”-brand poptimist sentiment.
Smutty fiction has taken over everything, the NYT Book section has to weekly run a giant profile looking at the latest sensation is smutty popular fiction: to the defenders of smut: You have absolutely won the monoculture. Why the insistence that everyone has to be happy about it all of the time?
TBH, I think that good smut is one of the hardest things to write. I read my first smut book the other day and while the characterisation and humour was pretty good, the romance itself isn’t quite steamy even though it’s explicit. I respect any writer who can balance sex, storyline, pacing and characterisation enough for me not to skim any parts.
My only complaint with smut in books is now that BookTok is wild for “spice” I feel like shoving as much smut into a book as possible is trendy and a lot of the newer stuff I’ve read lately is just so badly written. It’s like they’re trying to cram as much half baked erotica as they can into it to appease BookTok they forget that plot is also important.
Read what you like. Other people have all sorts of rules for reading. You’re allowed to ignore them.
I definitely don’t shame people for what they like to read, but I know I’ve been shamed a lot online for saying that I don’t want to read smut or spicy books.
I think people see comments like, “is it spicy? I won’t read anything without spice” and they make assumptions. Same way that people have seen my comments about not wanting spice and they make assumptions about me.
I don’t care what someone else reads, I won’t shame them and I hope they don’t shame me. We’re all just out here trying to enjoy books.
You’re right that shaming is bad. But you’re conflating books that include sex as a topic or plot point with written pornography. These two things aren’t the same
I agree with your point but:
>I don’t see people hating on graphic horror fans for being disgusting or “murder fetishists”.
You’ve been hiding under a rock hahahaha.
America has a weird relationship with sex and naked bodies. As an American who has moved to Europe, I can confirm this.
We also have a bunch of other weird hang ups and we can blame the puritan/Pilgrims for a lot of it.
A lot of people here are conflating erotica and romance.
Very very few of the books you see on shelves are going to be erotica.
Erotica are the books which can be compared to porn, in that they’re about a sexual journey. Although if that’s what people want to read, it’s not hurting anyone (unlike porn films which can be exploitative)
Romance are books about romantic relationships and may also have sex scenes in. But they also have plot and characterisation and relationship building beyond sex.
I read a lot of romance. There are some really well written books with all levels of “spice” and none. Generally, the ones recommended on Tiktok aren’t great, but they don’t speak for a whole genre. Reading one, or not even one, romance book and then lumping all books into “it’s romance so must be badly written” is pretty stupid IMO. But I love the genre and I’ll happily continue sharing great books with my fellow romance readers and leave you to your high and mighty opinions.
Of course there are badly written romances, just like there are badly written sci fi, thriller, fantasy, whatever other books you can think of. But I don’t see anyone assuming those genres are all complete trash because one they read wasn’t their cup of tea.
“Romance” does not have to equal “smut”
To be fair, I was shamed and abused by a religious teacher for reading age-appeopriate horror as a tween, and there are people actively agitating for removal and censorship of horror media in my country, so these things do happen, too. It did teach me to respect other people’s tastes and be polite when speaking about all kinds of media, even the stuff I personally wouldn’t read. Sex, violence, horror and terror… Imagine not having any of that in the world of literature. Some people would be fine, but others would be robbed of cathartic, healing or simply pleasant experiences, and we whould never rob people of that.
Also, it might be a strange tidbit, but in my entire 20+ years of active reading, where I have read pretty much anything that caught my eye, not looking up a single spoiler or warning, I can only rember two cases of stumbling onto a sex scene in a published book, both instances happened more than a decade ago, and they were both older books. Since then, nothing. Could me living in Russia and our Draconian censorship laws have anything to do with that? I see people on Reddit complain about sudden explicit sex scenes in everything they read, and I’m still awaiting my turn to run into one. I see them in fanfiction and original works published online, sure, but never in officially published books. Books just… Don’t have sex scenes, generally? At most, they will imply that it might have happened? Maybe my choice of genres is at fault here (I mostly read horror, historical fiction, memoires and Asia-inspired fantasy).
Agreed, OP.
My problem is more poorly written sex. I read a lot of science fiction and… god, there’s just so much insanely cringey sex stuff in there. The rest of the book can be fun and interesting and then you get a sex scene that uses mortifyingly cheesy epithets or reads like action figures fighting. Writing smutty bits—whether the point is to titillate, discomfort, whatever—is a *skill,* and some writers really don’t have it.
It all happens because people keep trying to derive some sense of superiority from media they consume instead of realizing they’re just consuming media and it doesn’t actually matter. I just don’t see why it must occupy real estate in one’s brain, what someone else reads.
I’m not super into sex scenes, either, but they have a time and a place, and there are stories that wouldn’t make sense if you exclude the subject.
Horror fans do get crap sometimes but thank god for Stephen King lol. My favorite intersection is science fiction and horror and I’ve definitely seen complaints about people not liking horror in their science fiction.
It seems similar to people not liking sex in their drama.
Valid, but it’s an issue of genres and categorizing books, but books are art, it’s never going to be that easy.
Gatekeeping is bad in each and every form.
Hating on sex scenes, hating on romance, we can’t have no portrayal of trauma… Motherhuggers, what are you even reading? Are you even really reading anything?
Honestly I read primarily classics, but occasionally in that I read smut as a breather. The current one in the latter category is so well done I don’t care about the smut the author has done so well at world building I want to learn more about it lmao.
Those who hate smut need to chill, I get it, it is not for everyone but hating others for it is pointless.
This really surprised me. I had no idea people shamed explicit romance. (Myopic, I’m sure. I’m not super active in book criticism communities, and don’t like the negativity of sites like Goodreads.)
If a book is well-written and balances sex with story, I think it’s an exciting diversion to the plot.
I’m in the middle of Mila Finelli’s _amazing_ mafia series, for example, and this is _really_ doing it for me. I can’t put them down. The tension between the crime families is countered with the hot sex and it’s a rollercoaster ride!
I think it’s unnecessary To shame anyone on what books they read. They’re reading what’s interesting or fun to then and that’s all that matters
I agree it shouldn’t be shamed. I do absolutely want to know if a book is primarily a romance or erotica though and I feel like a lot of newer fantasy is sold as fantasy and ends up being almost entirely romance which definitely can bother me. Same goes for modern literary novels.
I read a lot of different genres and am fine with romance, but I want to know what it is before I get into it because I’m not always in the mood for it.
Horror stories definitely get shamed, too, btw. I think they’d get even more hate if they were marketing themselves as other genres and hiding the Horror aspect and surprising people with it halfway through.
I love smut books it’s my favorite