I’ll say a phrase, and you tell me the first words that come to your mind.<\/p>\n
Okay? Ready? Here we go:<\/p>\n
“Lesbian vampire erotica.”<\/p>\n
\nEven if you haven’t read any of this subgenre, you are probably coming up with words [in no particular order] like the following: women, gay, queer, homosexual, sex, sexy, sexuality,\u00a0fangs, blood, bloodsucker, undead, porn, etc., etc., etc. You know, words related to the phrase in question.<\/p>\n
The first word that comes to mind is not<\/i> “vagina,” contrary to the belief espoused by Delilah Devlin, editor of Girls Who Bite: Lesbian Vamprie Erotica,<\/a> which I had the misfortune of purchasing recently from my local Barnes & Noble. Why yes, the authors did indeed begin their intro with the claim that “vagina” is the first word that comes to mind upon hearing the phrase “lesbian vampire erotica.”<\/p>\n What the heck do vaginas have to do with lesbian vampire erotica? There’s nothing in the definitions of any of these terms that says anything about vaginas. I suppose there is a slight correlation, since some lesbians have them and may use them in erotic contexts. However, because a vagina is only one of many body parts that a lesbian can have and only one of many body parts that can be used in a sexual context, it connotes an extremely limited definition of the word “lesbian” and an extremely limited definition of the word “erotica.” Awesome — I just love being alienated and excluded from books for which I am probably the targeted audience.<\/p>\n In case you are not convinced that this book [despite multiple 5-star ratings on Amazon] is horrible, take a look at the cover. Hey look — 2 identical, skinny, white, naked\u00a0women contemplating each other’s lips with a stoned expression. It’s the ol’ “lesbians are narcissists essentially in love with their own reflections” hoo-hah, as well as the “vampires are all perfect and pale and WHITE” racist bilge.<\/p>\n Even if you are looking for queer erotica and this is one of the only selections in your local bookstore’s abysmally small “women’s\/gender\/gay\/lesbian\/trans studies” section [yes, it was all smooshed into a single section], do not buy this book. Not only is it structurally unsound, but also all the stories are grindingly shallow, copycat\u00a0and mediocre. Try Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica<\/a> edited by Tristan Taormino, which has its own problems, but is also uniformly full of well-written, sexy stories [with plot! and character development!] and no stupid hangups like “vagina = woman.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ll say a phrase, and you tell me the first words that come to your mind. Okay? Ready? Here we go: “Lesbian vampire erotica.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[672,696,656,662,679,702,677,678],"class_list":["post-2671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books-i-actually-like","tag-books-that-piss-me-off","tag-racism","tag-sexist-stereotypes","tag-stupid-cis-people","tag-trans-yay","tag-transmisogyny","tag-transphobia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2671"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5278,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2671\/revisions\/5278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}