I've Got No Use For Innocence

[redbrunja]

(It was hard picking which ~provocative~ icon to use for this post, let me tell you.)

The combination of a conversation I was having with fairest1 and reading the first Psy-Changling book (Slave to Sensation, which I’d heard raves about and is not living up to the hype) reminded me that a lot of fandom and the larger cultural context (especially with romance novels) seems to think it’s just so. damn. sexy. to have a virgin heroine. And I am just 100% not on board with this trope. Just… no. It’s almost 2014, can we please, please, please stop with this.

I’m not even going to go into how virginity is a bullshit patriarchal and heteronormative construction (but it totally is, and the more you learn about how and why it was constructed and the very real consequences of that, the more horrifying it is), I am going to stick with the fact that I JUST DON’T FIND VIRGINITY SEXY.

I come to fandom and romance novels for entertaining, titillating fiction, and do you know what I find sexy? People who know what the fuck to do in bed. People who have previous sexual experiences (good and bad) that inform how they interact and what they feel about their current partner.

I am so not down with the whole virgin protag that I don’t even like the male subversion where he’s the virgin and she’s more experienced (those two Steve/Darcy fics, excluded, you know the ones what I’m talking about).

Comments

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

And please add for widows, "My first husband was a lousy lover/gay/whatever" so they're either a virgin or still totally sexually clueless.

Oh, man, that trope makes me want to THROW THE BOOK AT A WALL. Because that is one of the BEST ways to have a historical romance heroine who knows about sex and authors will throw it away to worship at the alter of female virginity.

Because a.) God forbid she actually have experienced TRU LUV before the Earl of Romantic-Fuckingdale and b.) God forbid she ever have had a fulfilling sexual experience. Only the hero is allowed to give her that!

That's how she knows that his dick is the One True Dick.

[deathmallow.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I mean, as I said below, I don't mind virginity--it's simply a state of being, and I think realistic sexual exploration could be pretty fucking hot. I just dislike it being fetishized and then suddenly once the hymen's no longer an issue, the heroine fucks like the porntastic version of the Energizer Bunny.

The One True Dick, as carried by the Fellowship of the Wang?

I think my "favorite" Regency nobility (seriously, FFS, I don't give a shit about dukes and earls, let's actually hear about some normal people in history with real problems rather than just whining about how this woman is such a slut and only chasing him for his money) was the "Duke of Bedwyn" and it's like BE MORE OBVIOUS THAT HE'S SUCH A STUD OK.