An Erotica Writer's Responsibility in an Authoritarian Time
Politics: Like bondage but without consent or a safe word.
What is a writer’s responsibility?
E.B. White said he felt no responsibility to write about politics. Instead, “A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter.”
I write erotic novellas because erotica is sexy and fun. It excites my heart. It inspires me. It’s something I must do. It is not trivial; good erotica inspires people in the repressed worlds we know to become aware of their bondage and to throw off their chains and become their true selves. Erotica inspires people to live for the first time. The bondage of ropes and chains sets us free from the bondage of society.
That’s what Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s book Venus in Furs did for me. It showed that erotica can be literature, and it put into words the unexpressed desires I was feeling. Reading that book was one part of the process that led me to a dark basement in Seoul where I was whipped, part of the process that led me to meet Queen Nazz in Chiang Mai and kneel before her.
Erotica is sexy and liberating. Politics is dull and repressive. I’d rather ignore politics if I could. I do not feel inspired to write about whether the maximum taxable earnings cap for Social Security in the United States should be raised from $176,100 to $250,000 a year, and I guess you don’t want to read that.
But, as Pericles said, just because you don’t go looking for politics doesn’t mean politics won’t come looking for you.
Not “politics,” really, but authoritarians. In a sane and ethical society, there would be no place for a politician or government to try to punish a human for terminating a pregnancy, attending a protest, writing a book, dancing at a night club, or producing pornographic videos.
But we do not live in a sane society. About 60% of you, my subscribers, live in the United States, according to my stats. I hold a U.S. passport. I live in Thailand. And most, nay all, of us live in societies that, to one degree or another, limit our freedom in insane ways.
Even if I only focus on those issues and themes that impact my life as a kinky writer and man (and that would arguably be a selfish thing to do), I cannot escape tyranny redefined as politics.
I’m a submissive man. I’m a sexual man. I write stories about societies where husbands are subservient to wives, where women are to be worshipped, where women wield whips and keep men on leashes. Shouldn’t a submissive male who professes to believe in a version of “female supremacy”--whether in society or in personal relations--speak up against a government run by rapists that is pushing misogyny as its guiding ideology?
Some male subs only play the submissive for their own pleasure. I grappled with this issue in my book Punished by the Vigilante Dominatrix out for Revenge. In the femdom-themed bar, a customer was having a conversation with Mistress Tae:
“If only there were a matriarchical country I could move to…” Seong wistfully pondered after opening his third beer.
Silly boys with their silly fantasies, Tae thought. Silly boys who can’t even use the word “matriarchal” properly. They come here for the thrill and the escapism for a few hours a couple of times a month. They call themselves “slaves.” They talk this shit about how they want to be completely subjugated. Then they go back home at 2 am, feeling safe on the street, and go to their job in the office the next day, having a week to let their scars heal.
“I want to be under the control of my superiors 24/7/365. Live in a country built on female supremacy,” the drunken Seong continued.
They think they can handle it. They don’t know. We have to live in the world they build every day. Even mistresses.
"You talk about 'female supremacy,' but I don't think you know what it means. How about a world of equality for a change? That’s what we want. Not a land of leather and leashes that simply caters to your male fantasies.”
“Still, wouldn’t a country run by women be great?," Seong said. "There’d be no rape, no war, no homelessness, quality education, peace with nature. Everyone, young and old, weak and strong alike, would be taken care of…”
“What stereotypes are you ascribing to women? You don’t think I can get mean and nasty??! How long have you known me???”
Any sane and ethical person ought to stand up for women’s rights and gender equality. A submissive male ought to support women’s rights all the more so--even from a self-interested standpoint. Women cannot easily express their divine female energy in a world that attacks femininity or stand atop men in a world that enforces rigid gender roles; nor would the man have as much freedom to assume his natural role under his mistress.
Okay, but what if you are a casually dominant vanilla man who just likes to fuck women? You should stand up for women’s rights, too--including for your own interests. Straight men will have a harder time finding sexual partners if women are afraid that pregnancy can be a life sentence. A man who foolishly gets a woman pregnant can fuck up his own life, too, if she is forced to give birth to a child that one or both of them do not want.
Now the U.S. government is killing women just because they have sex. In many U.S. states, including Texas, the government has banned doctors from providing life-saving medical care (or forced them to delay care, causing injuries and deaths, or pressured them to not provide care, or given fanatical doctors the green light to deny care out of their own volition). Those states would also throw women and doctors in prison for providing necessary healthcare or abortions.
Authoritarian governments also restrict the ability of humans to express themselves--an important issue for writers and eroticists. eyemblacksheep pointed out in my interview with him, “At the minute there's generally more concerns about the landscape with many countries trying to implement laws restricting access to adult content by one means or another.”
One country he mentioned was the United States. The U.S. has been attacking individuals and institutions for their speech and opinions at a rapid rate ever since Donald Trump and Elon Musk took over the government in January. The administration has done petty things, like purging Democrats off the board of the Kennedy Center, and it has done fascistic things, like siccing unaccountable ICE agents on a green card-holding graduate student just because he organized protests expressing opinions that the Republican Party disagreed with.
There have been book bans in the states, bans on drag shows, bans on universities teaching any vaguely defined “woke” or “DEI” topic (right-wing buzzwords that can be twisted to mean anything), and government employees being fired just for writing two words--“he/him”--in his email signature.
(Full disclosure: The proper pronouns to refer to me are also “he” and “him,” but I choose to exercise my freedom not to state them in my email signature. I also ask anyone what pronoun I should use when I am uncertain, and I do not express offense when I am corrected. It’s up to anyone to express their gender as they wish.)
One problem with writing about “politics” is that articles inevitably wander and grow long. I wonder if I would trigger anyone by publishing this? Would anyone subscribe to a newsletter premised on the idea that girlfriends, wives, paramours, and mistresses should hold a whip over their boys unsubscribe because they suddenly found out the writer believes in women’s rights and free speech? Well, if Larry Craig is unsubscribes, I won’t miss him.
After all, a writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy and unlimbers his keyboard. I pour out the contents stewing in my heart.
