Column #6 - What Do Women Want?

It’s unlikely that Sigmund Freud was the first to ask, “What do women want?” Neither is it likely he’ll be the last. Men will always wonder what we want, and that could be because we’re wonderfully mysterious. Or it could be that we don’t know what we want, either.

I think the question poses such a conundrum because it is completely asinine. If I were to ask five of my friends what they wanted from their mates, from life, from sex, or from a car, I’m pretty sure I’d get five different answers. That doesn’t mean we’re confused, though. It just means that an entire gender doesn’t have its own unique personality.

This will be an unpopular viewpoint, I suspect. I mean, here I am writing this column for a site that’s targeted primarily to. Don’t I believe in the power of women? Don’t I want to see sisters doin’ it for themselves? Don’t I value the uniquely feminine point of view? Of course I do. I just don’t think I want a label slapped on me that will supposedly inform all non-female humans how I think and feel.

Okay, okay. I do believe there are certain general differences between men and women. Take, for instance, the widely held view that women tell stories to vent and men tell stories to elicit solutions. Most of the time, this will probably be the case. But when I relate a story to a man, do I want him to assume that I just need sympathetic nods? I think that’s a little patronizing, don’t you? It depends on the content of the story I’m telling, as well as how I tell it, how long it takes me to tell it, the tone of voice I use, and the man’s relationship to the situation I’m talking about.

And while we’re at it, let’s address sex. “Women like to be held.” “Women need a lot of foreplay.” “Women want to be made love to, not fucked.” Yes, that’s right—for some women with some men at some times. As this very Web site can attest, the range of what women want sexually is far-reaching and diverse. (Just as it is for men, but that’s a topic for another column.)

When we try to anticipate what an entire gender wants, we shortchange everybody. Publishers have been doing this with erotic fiction for about two years now. For those of you who have the distinct pleasure of not having to guess what the publishing industry thinks is hot at any given moment, let me give you a little background. At some point in 2003 or 2004, major publishers began to ruminate on the notion that women might in fact be a lot more sexual than they’d previously given them credit for. How did this idea germinate? Theories abound but I’m going to boil it down to a couple of triggers, just for the sake of simplicity. Trigger One: The television series, Sex and the City, which dealt with four very different women and their sex lives had been wildly popular for several years. Trigger Two: Sales for traditional romance novels were plummeting. Publishers started connecting the dots and began to realize that women liked and seemed to relate to characters who were sexually adventurous and curious.

And so every major publishing house decided to launch an erotica imprint. As some of you may already know, smaller publishers such as Cleis, Magic Carpet, and Black Lace (to name but a few) had discovered this penchant among women several years earlier, and these publishers were putting out some fairly explicit books. So, writers and agents started submitting work to the major publishers that resembled that being sold by the smaller publishers. And it was promptly rejected for being too explicit. “Women aren’t ready for this,” the big guys said to the hopeful writers when what they really meant was that they were afraid of religious fundamentalist backlash and potentially unpleasant media attention. Plus, it seemed that bastions of fine literature such as Waldenbooks not only didn’t know where to place erotica in their stores, they didn’t want to have to deal with outraged shoppers who might be offended by the stuff so prominently displayed.

So, the big publishers then modified their rules for erotica and specified that “erotic romance” was what women actually wanted. (No, they hadn’t polled them or anything.) Erotic romance means the stories are still about love but that the sex scenes can be described rather than alluded to—as long as the language isn’t too harsh. What qualifies as “harsh,” by the way, is subjective and varies among publishers.

Isn’t it encouraging to know that it’s not only boyfriends and husbands who don’t know what you want? To the list of employers, psychiatrists, psychologists, news reporters, marketers, sales people, and fashion designers who desperately want to figure you out, you can now add publishers. I could encourage you to write to houses who publish books you’ve enjoyed in the past and tell them what you want, but let’s face it, you wouldn’t do that. Who would? Who can describe exactly what she likes to read if she hasn’t actually read it yet?

And the bottom line is simply this: you all want something different. You may be one gender but you are definitely not of one mind. And doesn’t that make life interesting?

Sage.
Custom Erotica Source