Pleasure Mechanics

Erotica for Women

Erotica is read by women all around the world, and has been part of human sexuality for centuries. From the first cave paintings to the kindle craze of Fifty Shades of Grey, human beings have used the technology available to them to express and explore sexuality.

The best erotica is often based in fantasy, and transports the reader to a new world where anything is possible. Fantasy is an essential part of human sexuality, allowing us the freedom and catharsis to explore and be aroused by situations we would never want in our real lived lives. This need for fantasy extends way beyond sex – think about how many of your favorite books, movies and shows are fantasies at heart!

People who love action movies or superheroes don’t problematize their interest in the fantasy world. Yet somehow we give ourselves permission to watch action movies and enjoy the car chases and explosions, but when we read erotic fantasies many of us are worried about being aroused by fantasies – even though we wouldn’t want to be on a pirate ship in real life any more than we’d want to be in a high speed car chase. The idea of it is exciting, the reality might be devastating. Fantasy gives us this alternate reality where anything is possible, there are no limits and we are free to imagine and be aroused by our creative visions.

Compilations of short stories are useful because they allow you to sample a wide range of voices, scenarios and characters without the time investment of a whole novel. Many women report, however, that they enjoy going on a journey with the main character of erotica, and find short stories limited in the emotional intimacy department. Do you prefer long epic trilogies or quickie short stories? Let us know in the comments.

Here is some of our favorite erotica for women. Know about great books you want to share? Let us know in the comments or get in touch privately!

Best Erotica Series for Women

The Sleeping Beauty Series by Anne Rice writing as A.N. Roquelaure (The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment and Beauty’s Release)

The Fifty Shades Series by E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed)

 

Best Erotica Books for Women

The Story of O by Pauline Reage (a classic, almost old-fashioned, which only adds to the charm!)

Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin (also be sure to read her diaries, for a complete training in sensual and passionate living!)

Spring Into Summer by Eden Baylee (four short erotica novellas from one of the best contemporary erotic fiction authors)

Best Erotica Short Stories for Women

The Best Women’s Erotica Series Edited by Violet Blue

Best Sex Writing 2012: The State of Today’s Sexual Culture Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel and Susie Bright

Five Minute Erotica Edited by Carol Queen

Macho Sluts by Pat Califia (A classic in the field, featuring very heavy lesbian bdsm!)

Gay Erotica? Fireman Erotica? Fetish Erotica? Cleis Press has you covered with a “Best Of” anthology covering a big range of interests!

On Our Nightstand To Read:

Slammed by Colleen Hoover

 

 

 

 

We’d love to hear your votes for the best erotica for women –  be in touch with your recommendations!

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

If you have just finished Fifty Shades of Grey and are wondering what to read next, or are just looking for your next hot erotica trilogy, all roads lead to The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, a trilogy by the incredible Anne Rice. Originally published under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure, this series has just been released in an all new edition, just in time to satiate eager Fifty Shades fans!

I first discovered this series as a teenager, and have read it dozens of times over the years. No matter how many times I revisit it, I fall in love with Beauty all over again and her epic erotic journey never fails to arouse and inspire me.

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty opens just like the classic fairy tale. Sleeping Beauty is under a spell, and her prince comes to her rescue, waking her not with a kiss but with ravishment. In this moment, right at the beginning of the first book, we know we are in a whole new world with our heroine. The prince “claims” her completely, and whisks her off into a world of sex slaves, heavy BDSM and spectacular erotic rituals. We as readers are immediately immersed in a fantasy world, where along with Beauty we can be seduced by the extreme pleasures and proclivities of the wicked Prince, the Queen and their imaginary kingdom, where every prince and princess receives rigorous training in sexual submission.

What is so amazing about this series is the complete fantasy of it. Anne Rice understands fantasy and elevates every sensual detail until the reader is transported to another world all together, where anything is possible and we have permission to be turned on by the extremes and intensity.

The world of fantasy is an essential part of the human erotic imagination, and all too often we blur the line between fantasy and desire. When we read vampire novels we allow ourselves to be transported to that fantasy world, without worrying about if we actually want to be the living undead in real life. We must allow ourselves the same freedom with erotic fantasy. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty allows us to make the leap into the sex-saturated castles and, just like our heroine, we can find ourselves aroused at the cruel prince, the powerful Queen, the indignities of Beauty’s punishment. In this fantasy world that Anne Rice so beautifully weaves for us, our sexuality is free to be aroused and inspired, and in that freedom is an erotic liberation that can change your sex life in a very real way.

Each book in the Sleeping Beauty series by Anne Rice is a new experience, exploring a new terrain of turn-on. In the second book of the series, Beauty’s Punishment we are transported away from the castle down to the village, where all new erotic adventures are possible. Instead of lavish garden parties with naked servants we find Beauty being spanked with a bread board, chained up in the town square for all to see, and violated by rough hands at the tavern.

The third book, Beauty’s Release, has always been my personal favorite. Beauty is swept away by an exotic sultan and we are transported to a world with new flavors of sensual detail and sexual debauchary. In the fragant halls of the sultan’s palace Beauty experiences the final chapter of her sexual training, and we are treated to scenes with golden body paint, harems of exotic beauties and hands down the hottest sex scenes in the trilogy.

Be forewarned: the themes of Dominance and submission, of physical brutality and painful pleasures are way more intense in Sleeping Beauty than Fifty Shades. No detail is spared as every orifice of our princess is used and abused. Household objects take on new meaning as the characters are beaten, penetrated and stimulated with everything from jeweled swords to thorny roses. The sex is heavy, and the BDSM is otherworldly.

What gives us the freedom to enjoy such brutality is the masterful writing of Anne Rice, who so fully transports us into a fantasy world where anything is possible, giving us the temporary freedom to enjoy such a brutal world, and then happily return to our ordinary world of sexuality, inspired and aroused but with a clear sense of coming home to a safer and saner world of sexual ecstasy.

More of the Best Erotica for Women

 

Sex Educators Speak Out on 50 Shades of Grey

Sex Educators! Please share your opinions on the Summer of Grey! 

What Sex Educators Think About 50 Shades of Grey:

Top 50 Things You Can Learn About Sex from 50 Shades of Grey

Dr. Ruth on 50 Shades

My Sex Professor : Five Silver Linings of 50 Shades of Grey

Violet Blue : “An impostor in the context of its genre’s history”

Feminist Theorist Marina Warner:  “We are driven by what we dream and by what we desire and hope for. I don’t think fantasy is hermetically sealed from the rest of our lives.”

 

Writers Speak Out:

“The whole world knows women are sensual human beings as well as men. It’s no secret anymore that women want to read sexy fiction just as men do, and there’s a new frankness about the varieties of fantasies one might enjoy. So many clichés have been broken and abandoned. And this is a wonderful thing.” – Anne Rice, in the new forward to The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy

 

Women Speak Out:

“Why is an educated young woman living in the 21st century referring to her vagina as “down there?” – Ten Reasons I Hate Fifty Shades of Grey by Melissa_Thinks

“Fifty Shades of Grey is porn, and porn can be quite fun.” In Defence of 50 Shades of Grey by Laurie Penny

Sex Diaries Project

Christine Fawley on the experience of being “The Sensual Lesbian Sex Educator” of The Sex Diaries Project

I remember being at that big oval table, week after week, pens scratching our most intimate stories into wide ruled notebooks. Arianne Cohen and I were classmates at an elite private school in the wooded suburbs of Philadelphia. We were both honors students, and we might have been fast friends back then, but Arianne was a swimmer training under our school’s Olympic coach, and I was sneaking off campus to smoke and make out with older boys. So even though I didn’t know her well, I remember Arianne’s presence in our high school days: big, brilliant, bound for greatness.

In the days before Facebook, Arianne and I may have slipped from each other’s lives as soon as our tasseled hats hit the ground. I went off to Vassar, she to Harvard. Thankfully, those little blue boxes of social media reconnected us just in time for me to discover her amazing work with The Sex Diaries Project. I saw her facebook post about collecting sex diaries and I reached out to her, offering to repost the call to my very diverse network. After five years as a sex educator in San Francisco, I knew I had friends with interesting stories to tell.

In my professional life teaching about sexual pleasure, I have long recommended journaling about one’s sex life. The act of writing down our truth is one of the most powerful practices I know for revealing desire, understanding scripts and patterns, and discerning who we are as sexual beings. So I was thrilled to participate as a diarist, logging in to Arianne’s online diary portal where I would log both play by play confessionals and color commentary for a week’s slice of my erotic life.

At the time of my writing the diary, my sex life was in a particular moment in time, which now with a few year’s perspective I understand as part of the ever changing landscape of my life and my relationships. I was, for the first time in my adult life, in a monogamous relationship with an amazing woman, my fellow Pleasure Mechanic Charlotte. We lived together in a small brick ranch in Durham, North Carolina, running our online business together while filling our days with copious amounts of massage, sex and naked cuddling. I wrote about our lovemaking rituals, answered Arianne’s prompts about my deepest vulnerabilities and fears, and shared about the triumph of love I was experiencing.

Writing the diary was itself such a stimulating practice that I gave little thought to how it would feel to read years later. When Arianne told me that excerpts of my diary would be in the published book, I was honored. If my words can give readers permission to experience more pleasure, more touch, more nakedness with their partners, I am grateful for that opportunity.

Reading The Sex Diaries Project offers the incredible opportunity to peek into the intimate lives of others. It is a rare treat to read the thoughts of folks very much like yourself and wildly different, and find resonance in the unlikeliest of places.

And for those of you interested in getting to know yourself a little bit better, consider heading over to SexDiariesProject.com and keep a diary of your own. You’ll gain invaluable insight into your desire, goals and inhibitions.

– Christine, “The Sensual Lesbian Sex Educator”

Also check out The Pleasure Mechanics Interview with Arianne, Editrix of The Sex Diaries Project

The Joy of Sex on Handjobs

One of the great things about life as a professional sex educator is my reading list. Ever since I was 8 years old, I have spent hours a day reading about sex. It is one of my great fascinations and intellectual challenges, to learn about the complicated universe of human sexuality.

Today, I was revisiting an old classic, The New Joy of Sex. This cookbook style sex manual first appeared in 1972 and has been part of the sex education library ever since.

The passage on handjobs and fingering, which they call “HandWork” reminded me why our core guides are focused on the skill of pleasuring your lover with your hands.

“A couple who can masturbate each other really skillfully can do anything else they like. Handwork is not a substitute for vaginal intercourse but something quite different, giving a different kind of orgasm, and the orgasm one induces oneself is different again from orgasm induced by a partner.

In full intercourse it is a preparation to stiffen the man, or to give the woman one or more preliminary peaks before insertion. After intercourse, it is the natural lead in to a further round.”

(From the 1991 edition of The Joy of Sex)

The book goes on to describe “rolling the penis like pastry between the palms of two hands” and many other techniques. Want to learn masterful ways of touching your partner for maximum pleasure? Check out our online course, Foreplay Mastery and let us show you, stroke by stroke!