TITLE    : Catalogue of Desire Pt. 02
STORYID  : catalogue-of-desire-pt-02
SUMMARY  : What does sex suggest about human nature?
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2009-12-11
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |essay|sociology|human nature|power|self-worth|


Literotica's table of contents, or list of "Stories By Category," represents, as its title suggests, a classification of erotica, or of such erotica, at any rate, as that which the website features. A casual glance at the categories suggests the rich variety of sexual behavior in which men and women engage. The nature of these categories also suggests something about the nature of the human beings who consume such material (which is to say, everyone).



In the previous essay, I touched briefly upon some of the categories of Literotica's contents that interest me, either personally or intellectually, skipping those which either don't appeal to me or about which I lack the requisite knowledge, experience, or skill to write. There are many categories of desire, so, most likely, a third, if not a fourth, installment of my article will be necessary to accomplish my goal.



The ancient world was not adverse to incest, whether among father and daughter, mother and son, brother or sister, or cousins, as both the Bible itself and many other ancient documents attest. What constitutes incest is, once one moves beyond the immediate family, difficult to say, and incest is defined differently by various nations and states. In the United States, some states, for example, allow marriage between first cousins; others do not. Today, incest between parents and children or siblings is forbidden universally, although such was not the case in the early days of the Old Testament, among God's chosen people, the Hebrews, or among heathens, including the ancient Egyptians, whose royal sons typically married their sisters to preserve the family seed without the taint of outsiders' blood.



A brother may be sexy to his sister or a sister to her brother (or, for that matter, a brother may be sexy to his brother or a sister to her sister), just as a parent can find his or her son or daughter attractive and vice versa. Physical, emotional, and sexual attraction is not limited to individuals who are other than one's kinsmen. The family that plays together may or may nor stay together, but, certainly, for a time, at least, sexual intimacy between close family members is apt to strengthen family ties--at least among the members of the family who are lovers of one another.



There is probably not a man or a woman who has sisters or brothers who has not wondered, at least once, what his or her sibling looks like naked; many have, in addition, fantasized about having sex with a sibling. Some have more than wondered, of course. For both those who have dared to fantasize about fucking a brother sister, mother, or father and for those who have actually given sex with a parent or sibling a try, stories of incest are often alluring for obvious reasons. The law may say NO, but the heart--or the gonads--may say YES, nevertheless; incest, like other forms of sexual deviancy remind us that we are lawless creatures at heart, many of whom would have sex, anal, oral, or genital, with our own mothers, fathers, sisters, or brothers.



Incest is also transformational. It turns a mother, a father, a sister, or a brother into a lover, changing forever the dynamics both of their relationship as parent and offspring or as siblings and the dynamics of the family of which they are a part. 



Incest seems to be enjoyed more when it is regarded as offensive, as wrong, or as shameful, for, in a couple of my own stories concerning sex between siblings ("Stocking Stuffers" and "Pooling Around"), I make the parents aware of their children's activities, and these stories, while just as hot, in my view, as those in which the parents are not privy to their offspring's sexual proclivities, the stories in which the parents are in the know have not fared as well among readers as the other sort of narrative. The ratings favor the stories in which the son and daughter, while living under their parents' roof, fornicate with one another on the sly. I guess it takes the fun out of incest between siblings when mom and dad not only know, but also either tolerate or approve of their children's sexual intimacy with one another.



In some parts of the country, interracial sex is frowned upon (and could possibly lead to bloodshed); a generation or so ago, it was illegal in many states. Miscegenation, or interbreeding between different races, is not confined only to blacks and whites, but applies to interracial sex between a man and a woman (or, indeed two men or two women) of any racial combination. When Native American men became sexually involved with white women, the resulting offspring was known as a "half-breed." The products of sexual intercourse between African-American men and white women were, likewise, called "mulattos" or said to be of a "high yellow" skin tone. Such children were always designated as members of the race or ethnic group that enjoyed less, not more, social status, so that both the "half-breed" and the "mulatto" were considered members of the Native American and the African-American racial groups, respectively, and not members of the white community.



Because white women have been historically forbidden to black men, Caucasian women's value has been seen as higher to black men than that of black women, which has caused a good deal of resentment and hostility among black women, both toward white women and toward black men.



In addition, there continues to be serious problems between African-Americans and whites, because of slavery and other issues, past and present, and, of course, interracial sex plays into all these social, political, and historical aspects of American history. If politics has failed to level the playing field between African-Americans and whites, maybe interracial sex can do so, its participants sometimes seem to believe. In acquiring a white woman as his lover, an African-American man not only exhibits his own worth (in his own eyes, at least), but he also avenges himself, as it were, upon white men by using one of their women for his own sexual purposes, much as white men, as slave owners, in the past, used African-American men's women for their own sexual purposes.



There is also an element of racism in the notion that black men are more bestial than white men. Those who believe this way insist that black men are more animalistic, as their typically longer, more virile penises and their generally superior physical prowess, suggest. In fucking a black man, a white woman, they contend, is fucking the nearest thing to an animal as is possible, barring actual bestiality. For these reasons, racist though they may be, interracial sex is also sexy to many, both black and white.



I will take up my thoughts concerning the remaining categories of desire in which I am interested in a subsequent installment of this series. However, in my consideration of incest and interracial sex, I discern a few general statements that seem worth mentioning concerning human nature as it is revealed by men's and women's sexual interests and behaviors. Sex is symbolic. That is, it is a way of representing things beyond itself. In incest, sex can stand for familial purity, of the cleanness of the most basic and intimate form of "us" against the world of "them." By restricting sex to parent-child or brother-sister relationships, the products of such unions can be born only of the untainted seed of the family. There need be no fear of contamination, infection, or corruption from strangers. The bloodline is safe; it is preserved. Such an attitude is not only arrogant, but it also reflects a fear--even a terror--of the other, of the stranger, so, it seems safe to say, that the basis of incest, in this context, is xenophobia. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt did not want to "mix" with others, even of their own kind. To keep their line holy, or separate, from the world, they resorted to incest, brother fucking only sister and sister fucking only brother.



For others, incest is attractive for the same reason that other paraphilias and fetishes are alluring to many: it is taboo. To violate the prohibition is to set oneself apart from those who dare not violate the forbidden and to show oneself as superior in courage to the many who are ruled by fear, whether the fear is morally, socially, religiously, or otherwise sanctioned.



For African-American men, interracial sex with white women may be a means of paying white men back for the indignities, cruelties, and inequities that blacks have suffered, and, to some extent, still suffer, at white men's hands. It is also a way of publicly showing the African-American man's status; he is wealthy enough or virile enough or charming enough to wrest, as it were, a white woman from white men and to make her his own. Thus, for African-American men, interracial sex is a symbol both of personal power and of self-worth, two commodities, so to speak, which are often in short supply in the black community.

