Framing Erotica

In either case, the female is thereby rejected; she is excluded. Therefore, she is devalued. All stories in which two males or a male and a shemale, rather than a male and a female, form a couple (or merely couple) are tacit rejections-by-exclusion of the female. Erotic stories involving homosexual or a male-to-female transsexual and a male partner devalue women by excluding them from consideration.

But let us return to an earlier point. Framing, by including some details while excluding others, also focuses the reader's attention where the writer wants it to be, thereby valuing those elements or features of the story's subject (as well as the subject him- or herself) over others which, by virtue of their having been excluded, are devalued. Often, in heterosexual erotica, what is ignored, or rejected, is the personality of the female character. Often, she is rendered as an object--a sex object--or as a barely human persona. The treatment that female (and, sometimes, shemale) characters receives is summed up, visually (and in an exaggerated fashion), by cartoons which purport to depict the "perfect woman."

In one such cartoon, she is depicted as two headless and armless pairs of legs and buttocks, complete with a pair of vaginas. While one pair of legs kneels, the connected pair, knees bent, rest upon their buttocks and the soles of their feet. Nothing is left of the rest of the woman: no brain, no vocal cords, and no arms are necessary in this view of the "perfect woman." The essence of women, the cartoon suggests, is comprised of the features that are included in the drawing; those parts that are excluded are unimportant. In a similar cartoon, a Baubo-like figure (see my novel, Baubo) is presented as exemplifying the ideal woman. She consists of a pair of legs which end in a truncated torso which consists of breasts in front, under which is a vagina, and buttocks in the rear. There is no back, stomach, arms, neck, or head. The point that these cartoons make seems pretty clear. The "perfect woman" is a sex object, without need of a mind, a heart, or a soul. As long as she has the essential features of womanhood--tits, cunt, and ass--she is "perfect."