This post was sparked by a mix of things: conversations around You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty, Tender Is the Flesh, and Manhunt; reading Clive Barker’s Books of Blood, The Vegetarian, and The Ballad of Sword and Wine; and the broader cultural climate in the US: book bans, persistent disdain for romance/romantasy, and the accusation that women reading romance is basically the same as watching porn.

Before getting into it, I want to acknowledge that sex and sexual depiction can be genuinely triggering for some readers. Since my first jump scare with a very graphic sex scene at 13, I’ve always felt content warnings should exist for books the way they do for movies—not as censorship, but in the back for some of us to brace ourselves hahah😅

Imo sex is part of life and I think it deserves less shame and stigma, that includes depictions in books. That said, I’ve never really clicked with erotica or romance. I’ve tried, but most of it felt mechanical and/or cringey to me.

Anyway, for me sex scenes in books can serve a lot of purposes:

• Character development ( to show desires, vulnerabilities, identity shifts)
• Relationship dynamics (depict power, trust, intimacy, betrayal, transformation)
• Plot movement (forming alliances, triggering consequences, catalyst for turning points)
• Thematic exploration (consent, commodification, grief, freedom, shame)
• Social commentary (gender norms, sexuality, systems of power)
• Emotional realism (longing, confusion, shame, repression, internal conflict)
• Titillation

For me, effective sex scenes usually do at least one of the first 6. The last is optional and not too common. For me when the focus tilts too heavily toward explicit mechanics at the expense of interiority, character, or theme, that’s when it starts to feel disconnected and gratuitous to me.

Some examples:

• You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty uses sex to chart Feyi’s grief. The contrast between the pretty,delicate prose and what she’s actually doing or thinking added candor for me. The sex never really felt gratuitous to me.
• Tender Is the Flesh uses sex to underline exploitation and dehumanization, the core theme of the book.
• Manhunt is a book I largely didn’t enjoy, but interestingly, the sex was one of the most grounded and honest parts. It explored power dynamics, fetishization, bodily autonomy, and self-acceptance—especially given that many characters are trans and their bodies and sexuality are under constant scrutiny.
• Then The Ballad of Sword and Wine surprised me. The sex scene in question isn’t very explicit at all, but the prose conveyed desperation, desire, and loss of restraint so effectively that it has stayed rent-free in my mind 🥵

So I’m curious what others think:

• What do you think of erotica and sex scenes in books?
• Is it “gooning”? (I see that term thrown around a lot regarding sexy books, but I’m in my mid-30s and I don’t fully get it. From what friends explain to me, it doesn’t seem to match but 🤷🏻‍♀️)
• Why do you think sex in books makes some readers uncomfortable?
• How much does gender matter—the reader’s, the characters’, the author’s?
• Do you see sex in books as comparable to porn?
• Do you think that there is a level of sexism in how women (especially) are judged for reading romance?
• What makes a sex scene work vs feel gratuitous for you?