In my mind, the typical exploration of sexual psychology in literary fiction is one of these:
- A character meets someone at a bar, then has a one-night stand. The one-night stand represents their alienation and the thrill of something secret.
- A character has a weird kink or paraphilia, one that’s probably criminal or sadistic in nature. It represents the depravity of humanity or the downfall of society. The story perhaps unintentionally suggests that anyone in real life with a weird kink or paraphilia is a depraved human emblematic of the downfall of society.
I’m so bored.
It took me a long time to realize it, but I really want to see more stories about how character psychologies are entwined with their sexuality—where their sexuality is considered nonnormative. Here “nonnormative” encompasses anything you can think of, anything that comes to mind.
I’m sure there are many works of literary fiction that involve this, but…how do I search for them? There aren’t convenient listicles for this, unless the stories are a) about the depravity of humanity or the downfall of society or b) erotica.
And dude, I’ve got nothing against erotica (in general), I just have a history of being avoidant and uncomfortable about sex. Getting used to sex as a mere concept has been a very long process for me. Some of the complex psychologies I’m looking for, I could absolutely find in some top-class erotica. But then I’d have to, like, read erotica, and I’m alright reading some flavors of it but not alright reading others.
I became dully aware that the psychology of erotics (or whatever you wanna call it) was something I wanted to read about at the same time I discovered that it was something I wanted to write about, and so in college I tentatively put Lolita and J. G. Ballard’s Crash on my must-read list (still unread to this day, though). Now, I know that these books are both about depraved supercriminals, but dude, what else have I got?
Speaking of depraved supercriminals, the first time I was actively interested in a character’s nornormative sexuality as I was experiencing a story was probably The Talented Mr. Ripley. Apparently the film version very much suggests that Tom Ripley is homosexual, but in the book, he seems more asexual and sex-repulsed—or that’s certainly how I read him; of course the book was published in 1955.
The telling moment is when he has an introspective crisis and remembers the party where he told someone, “I can’t make up my mind whether I like men or women, so I’m thinking of giving them both up.” It was a joke and not a joke; when no one laughed, he felt rejected. Meanwhile, I felt caught off-guard, engrossed and seen, then realized that unlike Tom, I wasn’t a depraved supermurderer.
Reading Rubyfruit Jungle is moving and disturbing, and unlike Mr. Ripley, the book is obviously not describing a pathological case study. The narrator Molly’s love of women does not cause her to be outspoken, but certainly is entwined with her outspoken nature. You could say it “forced her into it,” but she doesn’t view the way she is as a burden on her being—rather as, if anything, a sign of the freer, less judgmental way human relations should be, versus how cruel and stupid it is to break off a friendship because your friend is a lesbian. It’s a message I hear a lot now, but the book was boundary-breaking when it debuted in 1973, and even today it sheds light on faces of bigotry I had never known existed or given a thought to.
Engaging with one’s sexuality on those deeper levels fascinates me—going down paths that reach from within your own stormy psyche to verdicts that are societal, spiritual, moral. So many people with sexualities considered nonnormative are forced to do this; you ask “why am I like this?” and then figure out an answer yourself, because in the end, I think, nobody will do it for you.
I love Madame Bovary and The Graduate! Great, unsettling stories about straight affairs! But I am most interested in seeing things considered weirder, and considered in a different way.
Look, furries have been memed on since 2002. Some have a fully nonseuxal interest in furry fandom, but others have a sexual interest. Where are our furry main characters or our furry sidekicks? And get that Bojack Horseman shit out of here, I didn’t mean that!
The internet has given us a greater awareness of the diversity of kink, but can you think of a main character who’s interested in such things in a story considered mainstream, where it’s not purely a one-off joke or running gag, where it seems entwined with their perspective on the world even in some small way? Where it’s not mainly emblematic of the encroachment of modernity on our humanity and the depravity of it all.
If sex and sexuality basically runs the world (to say nothing of romance! literally nothing; I haven’t spoken to nonnormative romance, in fiction or life, at all, but that would be a huge and fascinating topic too), then how interesting is it that we have so many varied outsider perspectives?
I think it’s well-known at this point how vital gay, lesbian, and bisexual narratives are. It will take a while for the other sexualities reliably recognized by my local college (ex. asexuality) to be seen as vital in the mainstream. But then there are outsiders to the outsiders and outsiders within the outsiders. We can get downright fractal with it; there are endless ways to be considered marginal, esoteric, or other. And I’m not being theoretical; I mean actual lived experiences! That most people have no inkling about, and have no chance of having an inkling about, except maybe, maybe through the lens of fiction, and online confessions.
Now, I’m also fascinated by all the countless blog post confessions about sexuality. But so many are like a name without a face. For various reasons, most people aren’t going to tell all about their weird sex life while also telling you their schedule, full name and birthdate. Fiction breaching the privacy of fictional people doesn’t have the same danger. It can fill out imagined lives with convincing power.
At this point, most people have heard in passing about wacky kinksters, of some kind, even if that’s just my grandmother watching Fifty Shades of Gray. But I think there’s very little awareness that such people Walk Among Us and aren’t all mythical monsters in basement armchairs perpetually spamming 4chan. Not that people need to be sharing every last particle of their sex lives on the street—but I think it’s a weird disconnect. Fiction could be taking a stab at bridging the gap, but outside of some indie spaces (as vital and cool as they are), I…am not sure that it is.
If you have some counterexamples, please comment—or make your own list, I dare you!
Thank you for reading, and Patrons, thank you for Patreonning.
This is going to be suspiciously specific denial, but I’m not a furry despite having said this exact same thing in another article that touches on weird sexuality and writing a story about a “catgirl system.” And speaking of people who “only live online,” I wrote this post vaguely, vaguely touching on being plural, a condition which I’m now going to deny having or being, again suspiciously specifically. (Note: Catgirl System is strangely not about being a system.)