I used to work in porn. Now I write erotic fiction. Why "Mommy Porn" makes me see fifty shades of red.

I haven't publicly weighed in on anything relating to Fifty Shades of Grey, mostly because everything I have to say has been said a few dozen times over.  I have a problem with how BDSM is portrayed in the story, I find the publication of fan fiction (especially when promoted as such) to be unethical, and the male protagonist makes my skin crawl as much as the man he's based on, etc.

But that's not what this post is about.

This post is about "mommy porn." I don't know who coined the term, and I'm not going to Google it to find out because it really doesn't matter, but I will say this: the term bothers me to no end.  It does. It drives me batty.

Now, I don't have a problem with porn. As many of my readers know, I did a stint as an editor for an adult film company in the late 1990s. I do not have a problem with porn.  These days, I make my living writing erotic fiction. When I first started writing erotic fiction, people giggled behind their hands a bit, but for the most part, didn't give me too much hell for it. In the last few months, though, I've had more than a few people suddenly eye me like they did back when I would tell people I worked in porn. Because I'm not "writing romance" now. I'm not "writing erotic romance."  I'm "writing mommy porn."  Ten years and some change after I left an actual porn company, I am once again a pornographer.

What I write and what I used to edit? Ooh, boy. Those are two very different animals. The company I worked for produced sex-positive porn involving people who were couples in real life, and it still -- at least to me -- lacked the emotional depth of an erotic romance.  Of course it did.  Watching a porno of two real people who have a real relationship is essentially taking a sex scene out of a real-life romance and experiencing it by itself. Without the back story, without the connection with the participants, without any emotional context to make it more than just a sex scene. To me, that's the difference between erotic romance and porn.  In one, people are performing. In the other, they're connecting.

But honestly, that's just splitting hairs. One man's porn is another man's erotica.  And I really wouldn't have a problem with people calling erotic fiction "porn" if it wasn't for the stigma attached to the word. Especially in American culture, porn is bad. It's dirty, and not in a good way.   It's not something respectable people create or consume. It's a word that is spoken with a sneer and a wrinkled nose, and it's not by accident that that derision implies that the production and consumption of porn is shameful.  Shameful for men, but even more so for women.


And now, with this latest trend, we take it a step farther. In my opinion, calling erotic fiction -- whether we're talking about Fifty Shades or anything else -- "mommy porn" is degrading to both the producers and consumers of erotic fiction. Just think how creepy it would be if we called something "daddy porn." To me, mommy porn has roughly the same ring to it. It just sounds squicky...which is, I think, the point. And that bothers me. 

Honestly, it sounds to me like the literary equivalent of slut shaming.  "You're reading porn?"  "You're creating porn?" And, especially in our culture, "You're reading/creating porn? But you're a MOMMY!"  Because porn is dirty and taboo, and as a mommy...well...how dare you?  It's bad enough for a woman to be indulging in such garbage, but you have children now. As a MOMMY, what right do you have to read something naughty during that hour you get to yourself while your kids are napping in the other room? What is the matter with you, lady?

Here's the thing. It is the 21st goddamned century.

NEWS FLASH, AMERICA:

WOMEN HAVE SEX DRIVES.

SOME WOMEN LIKE SEXUAL MATERIAL.

SOME OF THOSE WOMEN ARE EVEN MOTHERS.

MOTHERS ARE STILL SEXUAL BEINGS
EVEN AFTER THEY HAVE PRODUCED CHILDREN.

So when it comes to the label "mommy porn", I get mad not because it's somehow degrades my art form, or because of some kind of snobbery in which I, an erotica author, look down at porn.  I get mad because I'm sick and tired of it being commonplace and acceptable to shame women -- especially mothers -- for having real, natural, healthy sexual desires, and for wanting to read or view material that caters to that.  

Oh, and last I checked? Most "mommies" got that way by having sex. 


And you know what?  I'd wager that a good percentage of those women enjoyed it.


So who are we to shame them for wanting sex, enjoying sex, and reading about sex?


Think about it.