Writing your own porno! Are you up to the challenge?

Nowadays, pornography is almost everywhere. Despite the different polarized views that can be conveyed, porn leaves no one indifferent. Now socially acceptable, it can allow the discovery of fantasies and practices, encourage masturbation, and can be used to spice up sex routines. However, porn has also negative consequences. First, it is impossible to know for sure the legitimacy of what you are watching. Mainstream porn had its fair share of scandals, for example, the ”Pornhub Purge”, where the giant website had to remove, in 2020 more than 60% of its content, which didn’t meet legal criteria. This represents more than 9 million videos. Negative effects on mental health have also been proven time and time again, a heavy and long-term porno consumption can lead to sexual dysfunctions, create relationship difficulties, also create body image and self-esteem issues.

So, what other options?

Thus, we are, as a society, now rather desensitized to sexually explicit content. Content that more often than not leaves no room for imagination, different fantasies, affection, and individual expression. However, with growing access to the Internet, alternative erotic practices have developed online, by and for people who don’t feel satisfied with mainstream pornography. For example, erotic literature/written pornography is a branch of porno that is growing steadily in popularity. Now writing, as well as reading this kind of literature, has been more and more common. The best example of this is 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon, with over 100 million copies sold worldwide. (Although, we need to remain critical of the content and themes in these books!)

Offering very unique possibilities and specificities, erotic literature finds its way in the middle ground between overly stereotypical and genital-focused mainstream porn and romantic movies and novels, overly corny and most of the time unrealistic. Plus, with erotic literature, you can be a reader, creator, or both!

Reading: the first step into erotic literature

Watching a porn scene has the primary goal of leading to orgasm quickly when reading can be immersive, which allows readers to project and imagine themselves in various universes. It makes it possible to prolong pleasure, leaving out the focus on orgasms, allowing more room for sensations and emotions. Reading enables more focus on building-up, where readers follow the sexual build-up of characters at the same time and mirror their rhythm, creating a greater identification to the scenario, as well as a higher sensory, intellectual, and emotional engagement.

Erotic literature offers a more precise depiction of internal/emotional experiences simultaneously to the sexually explicit content, conveying more realistic, holistic, wholesome, and sensations-focused storylines. Also, it becomes possible to find and read about female characters that are way more interesting and well developed than in mainstream porn!

With the very wide range of erotic stories and novels available, it is possible to overcome the burden of feeling alone and being less embarrassed about wanting to explore certain fantasies and practices. With all the novels, blogs, fanfictions, or other platforms dedicated to erotic literature, available for free online, in several languages, with endless possibilities of themes and subjects, it is impossible not to find something to your liking!

Writing: a safe (r) tool for exploration!

Letting our imagination run wild can be exciting in a whole new way. You can write and add whatever you want: magic, explosions, shapeshifting, imaginary places, people, and universes… There is no limit! Absolutely anything can happen, without any real consequences (nobody has to act the scene). Then, of course, we have to stay sensitive about the content that we share (to whom? where? in what context?). Writing can also be a way of finding ourselves in our headspace, and/or taking back control of our fantasy world, desires, needs, etc.

Just imagining certain scenarios can be interesting. Whether it’s to explore our limits, to confirm what we like and don’t like, or just for fun! It is a beneficial tool for creativity, to promote diversity, to explore sexual orientations and/or gender identities as well as alternative fantasies and fetishes, etc.

Unlike visual stimulation, everything in a story is fictional. It makes it possible (and safer!) to explore certain uncommon or less socially acceptable themes, even things we wouldn’t want to do in real life! (Legal stuff please). But still, there is no obligation to reenact our ideas!

Erotic literature as a therapeutic tool?

Writing is a less confrontational way of sharing fantasies and ideas with a partner and/or a therapist. By creating a story for characters to live, it is possible to take a step back on subjects we want to share and communicate, but that we find too embarrassing or too difficult to tackle directly.

Writing is also an interesting tool to get out of our comfort zone, and maybe, opening doors to new parts of our relationships and/or sexuality. It can also be an interesting/exciting way to keep things secret, to proudly publish them online, or have a hot reading session with a partner.

When something comes out of our head and becomes a creative thing of our own, often we feel relieved and happier. Pro tip: there is no need for erotic literature to be written perfectly, as long as it’s sincere, goal achieved!