The dilemma of writing queer ownvoice smut is this: readers love transgressive tension and taboos, but being queer itself is still a pretty big taboo in a lot of places.
To be clear, this is in no way a condemnation or criticism of any sort of erotica or consensual porn. It is not even about all queer erotica; there’s plenty of queer taboo erotica out there, and I like a lot of it. This take is just about my feelings about the erotica I’ve written and plan to write, and how I fit in to the larger genre of erotic fiction.
I don’t really write taboo smut, as many of my readers undoubtedly know. My most recent piece is “I Blew Him While His Wife Watched.” But read through it (please do, holiday gifts ain’t buying themselves), and you’ll see that it is not actually a Hothusband reversal of Hotwifing. A wife watches her husband get blown by another man, yes. But it is her idea to begin with, and she acknowledges her discomfort in the beginning and shows more at the end. The sex is from the perspective of the other man, and mostly about my self-insert’s feelings.1 It concludes with the wife having a very big emotional reaction that is not positive, and both her husband and the other man are very sympathetic and caring about her feelings. The concluding chapter will feature all three of them having sex, then tearfully confessing love for each other.
Of course that’s not taboo: it’s a romance with three people. It’s only taboo if you think sex itself is taboo. So what tension am I writing to, and why am I habitually avoiding the cheesing that usually comes with hotwife/cuckold/free use erotica, or step erotica (fucking your step-relative or in-law), or soft coercion (and more than soft) ie “my boss made me fuck him while my husband watched”?
In short, I’m writing to my own circumstances. Cheating has been meaningless to me for decades. The last time I cared about it was when I dumped my first college girlfriend for it, but then I kept sleeping with her anyway while she was cheating on her next boyfriend, so I clearly didn’t care that much about it. X1 screamed at me she was cheating all the time, and once said that our oldest son isn’t mine. X2 constantly fretted that I would leave her, then accused me of sleeping with men for no reason or evidence whatsoever after I came out to her as bisexual.
Cheating is just a word to me, so there’s no tension in using it as sexual transgression. I’ve never done it while monogamous, but I don’t intend to be monogamous ever again at this point. Technically I’m still married to X2 and I have now forgotten how many other people I’ve slept with. I didn’t think anything of it one way or another, and was genuinely surprised when X2 had an angry meltdown over it.2 Thus, I see a hotwife or cuckolding story about being a voracious slut who fucks men who aren’t her husband, and my first reaction isn’t “hot” or “ew,” but more like “K.” K just isn’t hot. Believe me, I’ve been married twice and found out.
The other major branch of taboo erotica is step erotica. Let’s get one thing out of the way: step erotica is wildly popular. Check out PornHub, and step porn is practically all you’ll see. Check out Medium or Substack, and it is most of what you’ll see. That’s fine! It’s not like I could argue people out of their smut preferences even if I wanted to, and I definitely do not want to. And to be clear, I understand forbidden sexual tension and often play off of it in my writing, such as with gay vampire sex in the French Quarter.3
But queer family tension is a lot, lot different than straight family tension.
I’m bisexual, and I’m ostracized from almost all of my biological family. Some of this is directly due to me being bisexual and slutty myself. But that’s not how homophobia works most of the time. It works in silences and gestures and projections, with convenient fig leaves to explain away objections that the family just coincidentally seems to be coming at the queer a lot more than anyone else. The bottom line is while yes it is a lot better now, queer people, especially older queer people, have often spent a lot of time being anxious, nervous, and/or afraid of our families. And that is not hot either. Fear can be hot, but not that kind of fear.
Thus, when I see erotica about how it’s oh so forbidden to have feelings for your step sister but she is oh so good at sucking dick, my first reaction is not “hot” or “ew” but more like “….what?” There’s just no tension there. Transgressive tension requires a Madonna to complement the Whore: if I’m a good boy/girl I’ll have a comfortable and safe life, but if I’m a bad boy/girl then oh god the sex is so hot. But I have not had a comfortable and safe life, and being good had no bearing on it.
There’s also that queer people have, shall we say, a fraught relationship with sexual taboos. Even now, viral social conservatives spam grooming attacks against any and all queer people they can find. It’s not hot to me to write into that noise (though again to be clear, there’s a ton of queer taboo smut including step smut). And queer people have much higher incidence rates of abuse: one of my first male sexual partners confessed to me that his first sexual experience was both coercive and with his cousin. Erotica around that can be hot in a restorative or reclaiming sense. But I did not find it as such: I hugged him and told him my father molested me too, and it was okay. Then I fucked his brains out.
The reality is that like many queer people, my yearning in writing is foremost just to be seen and heard. I don’t want to walk into the room with taboos; too many people already consider me just living my life a taboo. I just want to sit down at the table with stuff I personally find hot: awakening into bisexuality, enthusiastic consent, and yes, fluid sexual roles.4 A gay friend recently told me he couldn’t tell I was actually writing a female POV till he got to the word “bra,” and it was one of the best compliments I’ve ever received.
I’ve written gay rival sex before, which is fun. How many of us have seen two men scowling at each other and muttered “just kiss” or “now kiss”? It’s hot! And also when I write it, it’s not taboo at all: they scowl with enthusiastic consent and both have a great time. Then they go back to calling each other motherfuckers and scowling at each other. That’s pretty hot to me too: showing that wild sex happens alongside mundane day to day life. It certainly does in my mundane day to day life.
But for the most part, my “transgressive” themes tend to be about walking away. I walk away from my marriage to be bi in Uptown Rebound. Helena abandons men for a hot lesbian with a motorcycle, then abandons her family at Thanksgiving. In the next installment of the series, a new male divorcee will walk away from women for men (Kaz, that is). That’s my version of transgression, because that’s what I’ve faced: pressure to stay in terrible and toxic relationships, or conform to my family’s expectations. I’ve walked away from both, and now my attitude to sexual mores can best be described not in step erotica, or cuckolding, or coercive dom/sub, but just in the simple taunt I’ve thrown at ridiculous straight dating takes on Medium:
“How about you stand there being right, while I go fuck men?”
While the sex is fictional, the beginning is not. I really did end up crushed and sobbing on the sidewalk by X1’s house after she refused to let the kids come out to me for Father’s Day.
My ideal reshoot of Crazy, Stupid, Love involves Ryan Gosling seducing Steve Carell, Emma Stone seducing her sibling’s teacher, and all three of them cattily mocking Julianne Moore for picking Kevin Bacon of all people for her exit ramp.
Though even then, the vampire fucking my self insert uses a condom.
What? You think just because I roll my eyes at the term means I don’t like it? Pfff, talk to more bisexuals.