DNF for sexual content

I see this often in reader reviews. DNF = Did Not Finish. As in, the reader gave up on the book. Sometimes, more frequently than I’d supposed, it’s because of the sexual content – and we’re not talking pornography here or straight-up erotica, which, I assume, readers know will be heavy on the sexy stuff. No, this rejection of a novel can apply to fiction in general that has offended a reader’s sensibility. I know because a few of my own reviews mention it. There are even warnings of “Graphic Scenes Ahead.”

It interests, and bemuses, me. Sexuality is an integral part of our human experience. Whether we admit or not, we are all sexual beings. We can choose not to be, like nuns or monks or Catholic priests, but that doesn’t mean we purge the urge. We simply choose to live without expressing it. But for the vast majority of humanity, sex remains a primal need. It is how we procreate. We’re designed by nature to be sexual not only to have children, but also for pleasure; of the thousands of species on our planet, humans are among the few who engage in sex strictly for pleasure. In fact, the clitoris is the only human organ specifically designed for pleasure. How about that?

Yet due to a variety of societal factors and issues, sexuality is not an easy subject for some of us to talk about, or, apparently, read about. For years, the romance novel was heralded as a “wholesome” way for readers to indulge in sexual fantasy; there was always a Happy Ever-After, as opposed to just a happy ending, and the sex was rarely described too much. Or, if it was, pulsating loins and heaving bosoms were usually a la carte. Then erotica crept onto the romance landscape like a panther. Suddenly, we were inundated with graphic sexual content: BDSM and MSM, supernatural hybrids doing the dirty deed under the full moon, well-muscled, tattooed hunters with a bedroom penchant for their prey, and a myriad of variations on the theme. Sex came out of the closet in a genre known mostly for wilting heroines in chiffon and highlanders with their shirts blown open against tawdry sunsets. These enterprising new romance writers turned the very genre on its head. Or on its tush, to be more precise. They shattered the rules, and readers flocked to it. The genre exploded in both popularity and sales. Erotic romance, it seems, was something we were missing.

However, in historical fiction, sexuality is still an area where authors feel the need to tiptoe around. How much sex is too much? How much should be implied and how much should be described? The lines are tenuous, and while our editors might encourage us to add more sex (because, as the adage goes, sex sells), we tend to cringe at the mere thought of what some readers might say if we go full Monty on them. That said, it’s really an unavoidable and a ridiculous conundrum. Sexuality in our characters is essential. How a person feels about sex, and engages in it, can shed as much light on their personality as what they say. Under our clothes, we have the same equipment, equivalent to our gender, but how we employ that equipment ranges in an astonishing amount of ways. To ignore our characters’ sexuality is dangerous because it denies them an essential human reality.

In my novel MARLENE, the sex is apparent. Dietrich was known to moviegoers as the “goddess of desire”— with all the sobriquet implies. She came out of the frenetic louche world of Weimar-era Berlin, the cabaret scene, where diverse sexuality was both widely celebrated and practiced. This was not just some prurient rebellion on Berlin’s part. After the devastation of WWI, with hundreds of thousands of young men maimed or killed, the sexual revolution that emerged in Germany was a defiant rally call to live life while you can, and not waste a moment on regret. Marlene imbued this lesson in her very being; she was open about sex, she enjoyed it, and she refused to label it. In her screen persona, she conveyed sex in ways we’d not seen before. She was not a tragic Garbo or wise-crackin’ Mae West. She was feral, even rapacious, yet also ambivalent. Love might be her drug of choice, but the sexual Dietrich on film was also a promiscuous wet dream. No obligation. Let’s get on with it and not make a fuss. In private, however, Marlene’s sexuality was more complex. She still liked to get on with it and not make a fuss, but she also explored who she was as a person through sex. She sought connections with it, and not connections that would necessarily further her career. Nevertheless, she created the legend of Dietrich because she wasn’t afraid to delve into her sexuality and admit it, albeit with less public liberality than we see today.

Or maybe not so much. In our modern age of Kardashian bare-all selfies and cable TV romps in the hay, we’re swamped by sex that sells. Our primal need moves product, and studios have always recognized that. But in Marlene’s 1930s Hollywood, sex remained somewhat forbidden and coy. And you rarely, if ever, saw homosexuality or anything too out of the norm on film. Today, many gay movie stars still remain in the closet. Why? Because studios, as they did in the 1930s, believe that we, the movie goers, won’t accept an openly gay actor in a heterosexual role, never mind that gay actors have been playing it straight since the first camera started rolling. The double-standard persists; to her credit, Marlene found it ludicrous. Still, in our age of here a butt, there a butt, everywhere a butt-butt, we still get qualms when we read about it. Is it because words reach deeper than the visual medium? Or are we just uncomfortable by the ways others behave in novels much in the same way we’re uncomfortable with seeing frontal nudity or a gay couple kissing on the street?

DNF for sexual content. Frankly, I find it a shame.