Erotica author Kristina Lloyd of Erotica Cover Watch reflects on the cover of a new fetish/erotica anthology and muses on the seeming inviolability of Rule #2. (Emphasis hers.)

The various blurbs to Best Fetish Erotica add to the book’s list of fetishes the phrase ‘ – nothing is off limits!’ or describe the stories as ‘taboo yet tantalizing‘. Well, clearly something is off limits: men! The desire for a male body is a taboo too far for erotica covers.

She said it here.

She reflects as well on the formal meaning of the word of “fetish.”

The word ‘fetish’ is frequently used to mean ‘kinky sex’ rather than obsessive devotion to an object or activity. However, this anthology (out next month), does seem to be true to its word with stories featuring ‘corsets, girdles, high-heeled feet, cross-dressing, rubber balls, spanking, fast cars, voyeurism, masochism, knives and plushies’. So it’s a book about desire for weird things but, as per usual, the cover falls into the idea of desire being solely represented by desire for women’s bodies meaning once again, we get a cover image of a woman, irrespective of the book’s content.

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[D]oesn’t it look like a paraphilia when there are two sexes and the focus is entirely on one?

I’m trying out a new scheme for making the “Continue reading if…” photos even more optional. My old scheme kept them off the main pages but showed them on the click-through-to-comments page. This displays them in an entirely separate window. I keep meaning to stop posting them altogether but dang it, but I started posting them in the first place in part out of the same frustration Kristina Lloyd expresses at Erotica Cover Watch: despite considerable interest, erotic representations of heterosexual men are… well… poorly represented.

If you’re an adult you can click here to see a possibly not-work-safe image.

Let me know if the new scheme works for you.