Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at some element of the fantasy genre. You’ve been warned!

IT WAS INEVITABLE: WE NOW HAVE FANTASY-THEMED PORN

I confess that this week, I’m a little conflicted. As editor of this website, I naturally do a lot of web-surfing using variations of the word “fantasy.”

Um, yeah. You can imagine what kind of results I often get.

But interestingly, this week I found a result that was “fantasy” in both the porn and the swords-and-sorcery meaning of the word.

Elf porn. Or — more specifically — fantasy-themed porn.

First, a very strong warning: these links are very, very, very NSFW! Basically, it’s hard-core graphic porn.

Got that? Still interested? Okay, here you go.There’s WhoreLore: Swords, Sorcery, and Sex. And there’s BareMaidens.

There’s (a lot) more where that came from, but I think you get the general idea. For our gay male readers, there’s probably gay-themed fantasy porn too, but in general, straight men seem to be leading the way on this one.

And as I often do, I’m finding myself a little torn.

Part of me thinks, Well, hey, why not? Those of us who love fantasy, really love fantasy, so it makes sense we’d love it in all its, um, incarnations, right?

And more than anything, these sites seem to have a sense of humor. WhoreLore.com? That’s pretty funny. For me, nothing kills sex faster than not having a sense of humor about it. I mean, come on: sex often is funny — not in a snickering, giggly way, but in the sense that people can be so different in bed (or “wherever”) than they are in real life. Both sex and laughter are about celebrating life, so it seems natural to me that they should go together.

Furthermore, if you’ve been reading this site regularly, you know what I fan I am of author Jacqueline Carey — not just her storytelling skill, but the audacious notion of hers to bring sex and erotica into the sometimes-staid and old-fashioned (in the bad sense of the word) world of fantasy.

So where’s my ambivalence?

There’s always been a strain of deep, deep of sexism in the fantasy genre: in the art where women have long been sexual playthings of men, and, more depressingly, in the stories where women are either (a) basically non-existent, or showing up as passive objects to be rescued or protected, or beautiful, unattainable elven queens to offer comfort and advice, or (b) appearing as the sexual playthings of men.

Obviously, that’s changed enormously in the last twenty years. With the rise of Xena and Buffy and all the other strong female characters since then, women are now active players in the fantasy genre (although there’s still the whole Bella-in-Twilight thing, determined to drag us right back into the 19th century!).

But even today, fantasy stories are still usually written for and about men. And that’s not only unfair to women, it makes the genre more boring and repetitive and one-dimensional than it has to be. And that’s bad for everyone, female or male.

For me, “elf” porn — and, of course, it is all about women as sexual objects — is kind of a reminder of one of the things I really hate about fantasy. It’s ironic that people are producing fantasy-themed stories that mostly star women — but only so they can all have sex with each other.

But I’m thinking about this too much? Fantasy porn is what it is, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch.

Incidentally, I didn’t search to see if there is “dwarf” porn — not “dwarf” as in “little people,” but as in the bearded-and-muscled-female-warrior type. But I bet it’s there, isn’t there?

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Similar Posts:

• The Tinder Box: What Ever Happened to Swords and Sorcery?
• The Tinder Box (This Fantastic Week, Dec. 11, 2009)
• The Tinder Box: Does Loving Fantasy Mean I Have to Romaniticize the Past?
• The Tinder Box (This Fantastic Week!)
• The Tinder Box (Feb. 19, 2010): Happy Birthday to TheTorchOnline.com!