Sex is everywhere. Books, movies, TV shows, commercials, print ads. Given its prevalence, you’d think humans spent all their time banging. Rather we simply spend all our time thinking about banging. Kinky sex in the media is a little more rare…and often portrayed as a character flaw meant to be fixed. ICK!
Our goal here is to take a look at portrayals of “fringe” sex acts and give our thoughts. If you know of any we should add (and there will be a lot, I have no doubt), let us know!
Cate and Darrell from the Swinging Downunder Podcast are doing something similar to what we are on this page. It’s a video series on YouTube called Swingers React. During each video, the pair watch a movie with lifestyle themes and events and give you the breakdown on how realistic of a depiction the events in the movie actually are. Hilarity ensues.
They are only two in at this point, but I understand The Sex Monster and Good Ol’ Fashioned Orgy, both discussed below, are on their list. Looking forward to seeing how they react to those!
Movies
Good Ol’ Fashioned Orgy
We were pleasantly surprised by this movie, which features a group of friends celebrating a life-changing event by having an orgy. We expected the orgy to happen in the middle of the movie and the end would be about the fallout (i.e., jealousy and other issues damaging friendships). In fact, the orgy only brought everyone closer and helped the characters grow.
Indecent Proposal
Really? Having a guy spend one night with your wife was enough to end your marriage? I’ve told Erin if she can get a discount on getting her oil changed by banging the mechanics (yeah, plural), she should do it.
Sex Monster
A married couple has a threesome with another woman. This then leads to the wife become a sex-addicted monster, banging everyone she can get into her bed. We watched this back in college. The scenes after the first threesome are amusing (I love when he calls the pizza delivery place!), but it ends up feeling like a cautionary tale against trying to convince your wife to have a threesome. Or maybe just another story about how men fear women’s libidos.
Savages
We really enjoyed the polyamory in this movie. Blake Lively lives with two boyfriends, and she has very different, but equally solid, relationships with both men. The two guys are best friends and, as far as I recall, jealousy never really enters the picture.
TV Shows
Firefly
Erin thought we should mention this one due to how sex workers are handled in the story. Inara Serra is a Companion by trade, which means she’s a very classy prostitute. More akin to a geisha than a street walker. It’s a very respectable career, allowing the ship access to ports she wouldn’t otherwise be welcome. One episode even shows how much power the Companions have when Inara black-lists a wealthy noble for being disrespectful and threatening her, a move which comes with a hefty cost to his social standings. Companions are juxtaposed with brothel workers in the episode Heart of Gold, showing that not all sex work is respected.
The L-Word
Far be it for us cis-gender, hetero-normative people to comment on how accurately this show portrayed queer relationships and sex, but it touched on so many fringe topics (lesbians, transsexuals, cross-dressers, non-binary experiences, and so on) that we wanted to add it. I felt later seasons got a little too dramatic, as tends to happen, but overall, we both really liked this show.
Sens8
If you haven’t watched this Netflix original show, do yourself a favor and go binge it. Warning: It takes a few episodes before things start making sense, but it’s worth the wait. Sens8 was cancelled after only two seasons (damn you, Netflix!), but they made a movie to wrap up the plot (thank you, Netflix!) because fans were so pissed.
Basic idea is that eight people around the world are mentally connected (they call it a cluster). Not only can they talk to each other in their minds but they actually visit each other and take control of each other’s bodies. As this connection becomes stronger, every time people in the cluster have sex, the entire group ends up having a mental orgy with each other, which is super hot. It’s a full on pile on. This show is full of fringe connections, including drug use. It will probably get a full review write up in the future.
Swingtown
If you don’t know the premise, Swingtown takes place in 1976. Bruce and Susan Miller move into a new home across the street from Tom and Trina Decker, who are swingers. It doesn’t take long before the Millers and Deckers swing together, and the previously vanilla Millers are brought into the Deckers’ wild world of parties, drugs, and crazy sex.
Needless to say, we really liked the Deckers and would love to have a social circle like theirs. It was not only a good story with interesting characters and relationship developments but also the glimpse into the 70s was a nice addition. The woman had some great outfits, men’s “fashion” and the interior design…wow, that was hideous! It’s a shame the show only lasted one season. We actually came up with a synopsis to flesh out how the story lines could have wrapped to create closure for ourselves. Maybe we’ll share it at some point.
Books
50 Shades of Gray
Sigh. There are so many things wrong with this series. My biggest problem with it is that the entire premise of the story is that Christian’s sexual preferences were caused by his damaging childhood. Although I have no doubt that childhood experiences influence sexuality, I think it is irresponsible and reductive to imply that if you are into BDSM it is because of some sort of trauma. And not only that, but also that having those preferences makes you a damaged person.
I also hated that Ana came into Christian’s life and basically sacrificed herself to him in order to try to “heal” him even though she was not enjoying the “kinky” sex. Speaking of which, the portrayal of BDSM in this series is eye-rolly at best. Not to mention the horrible writing. All in all, very disappointing. The one good thing I can say about it is that it got women talking about non-vanilla sex. When the first book came out, I heard conversation about it everywhere; the hairdresser, yoga class, the grocery store, etc. If nothing else, at least it opened the topic for socially acceptable conversation.
Sunstone
Produced by comic publisher Top Cow (who seem to be creating a line of romance/sex positive comics, which is super exciting) and written by Stjepan Sejic, Sunstone is the story of two women, a domme and a sub, who meet online and then in person and start a relationship. The art is amazing and sex, the characters are fantastic, and the narrative has a great voice. I bought it on Amazon because I like having physical comics, but you can read it online. Erin is in the process of reading it now— her first time reading a comic!—and she’s digging it. What I like about it the most was that everyone was unapologetic about their kinks. Sure, the characters had their histories and conflicts, but no one was kinky because they were somehow traumatized or damaged in some way, and no one went vanilla because they were somehow “healed.”
Swing
Another comic produced by Top Cow, this one by Matt Hawkins (though one of the artists is Linda Sejic, wife of the creator of Sunstone; I feel like I would enjoy hanging out with the Sejics), is the tale of a couple just getting into swinging. I’ve only read Volume One so far, but I liked it. Again, like Sunstone, great art and awesome story. The sex club they go to is nicer than any I’ve ever seen (also fictional, yes, I know!), but it still comes off as genuine. The wife calling up her best friend for an impromptu threesome also seems a bit unrealistic (yes, I really do understand it’s fiction), but I’m sure such things have happened in real life. Just not to me.
The Wheel of Time
Really? Robert Jordan’s 14-book fantasy series? The one he died before finishing, and the last few books were written by Brandon Sanderson? Yep!
At the time I read it, I never thought about how Rand Al’thor is in ployamorous relationships with Elayne, Aviendha, and Min—I don’t think Jordan would have even thought to use that term; I certainly wasn’t mindful of it, and really, I didn’t expect the four of them to end up together—but the main protagonist loves three women (though he feels guilty about it through most of the book because society doesn’t approve of non-monogamous relationships), and all three agree to share him and be equal partners with him as best they can.
Elayne and Aviendha even go so far as to use their magic to help Min, who has no such abilities, to magically bond to Rand the way they are to keep their connections to him equal. When I finally return to this epic fantasy, I’ll be much more mindful about watching those relationships.