Plenty of books contain sex. It is an almost universal human experience, so it is an inevitable subject to be breached within literature. Though it has become far more acceptable in recent decades, sex in literature has been around since before Shakespeare. You would think, therefore, in all that time, we’d have come up with a better bank of vocabulary to describe sexual experiences, particularly the bodies that engage in them.
Kate Lister’s enlightening book, A Curious History of Sex, dedicates considerable space to sex and words. Because, of course, words have histories and deeper meanings beyond the most obvious. For example, “vagina” evolves from the Latin word for “sheath”, which is what a sword goes in. Subtlety clearly wasn’t the strong point of whoever came up with that one. It is also scientifically messy; “vagina” refers to one specific part of the female sexual anatomy, so it should not, as so often is the case, be thrown around as a term for the entire thing.
For women, the choice of words is severely lacking. Many pieces of fiction prefer to skirt around the fact, with flowery allusions to the female body: “heat,” and “honey”. I might vomit. But by contrast, the anatomical terms sound so clinical. D.H. Lawrence, in his famously banned erotic novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, repeatedly opts for “cunt”, a word with a great level of shock factor. I surprisingly don’t mind it. It is straight to the point without feeling like you’re in a biology class. Unfortunately, the cultural distaste for the word means it is all too often replaced with bizarre euphemisms that present the female body as an abstract vessel for pleasure rather than a physical entity. We can’t give Lawrence too much credit, who also calls it a “mound of Venus” elsewhere in the novel, perfectly demonstrating my latter point.
On the other hand, there are almost infinite options for the male anatomy, all of which are just, well, terrible. “Member”, “length”, “shaft”, and, as Prince Harry notoriously calls it in his recent memoir, “todger”. Reading any of those words makes me cringe. I have a particular distaste for “manhood”, which implies that masculinity centres entirely around sexual strength. It must be remembered that, for a piece of writing to flow and remain engaging, a variety of vocabulary must be used. Therefore, even if a couple of words aren’t bad, it is inevitable that writers are forced to turn to euphemisms at some point to avoid becoming monotonously repetitive.
It may sound prudish to admit that I prefer when sex is expressed in more of an implied sense in fiction, but it is simply because this avoids the need for the broad repertoire of cringe-worthy language employed to describe it. However, I simultaneously disagree with any depiction of it as a mystical, spiritual experience detached from humanity. There’s a fine line to be drawn, and though they don’t always get it right, I commend writers who have a good go at striking this balance.
Image “Lady Chatterley’s Lover – front cover” by Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.