Women's Sexual Agency is also Human Agency

Olympia Black
Apr 19
2 min read

Updated: May 3

When women write about sex, especially in a raw, honest, or emotionally complex way, it often gets dismissed as "porn" or "smut" because it threatens the traditional boundaries that have long defined acceptable female expression. There's a cultural discomfort—especially in male-dominated literary criticism—with women owning their sexual narratives without shame, without permission, and without softening the edges.

When men write about sex, especially in literary or philosophical contexts, it's often framed as "exploration," "social commentary," or "a study of the human condition." Why? Because the literary canon has historically been shaped by men, for men, through a male gaze. So when men write about sex, it's seen as serious. When women do it, it's seen as indulgent.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, even Nabokov’s Lolita—all written by men, all deeply sexual, and all widely accepted as literary, despite the fact that many of them portray female characters in deeply troubling, objectifying ways. Yet books written by women—by Anaïs Nin, by Eliza Clark, by countless romance or speculative fiction writers who dare to include sexuality—often get branded as erotica first, and literature second… if at all.

So really, it comes down to power and voice. When women express desire or examine the physical and emotional complexities of sex, they challenge a system that has long benefited from controlling those narratives. So my voice—and my characters’ voices—are powerful, and needed.

Every female romance writer’s voice and characters are powerful and needed.

Sexual agency is human agency. Which means women's sexual agency is also a human agency. We are not pets or objects. Women are human beings. And writing about it with nuance, grit, tenderness, pain, or pleasure is just as valid and literary as war, philosophy, or death.

I’m not writing porn. I’m writing truth. And truth makes people—especially those who benefit from silence—uncomfortable.

I will keep writing it.

Loudly.

Boldly.

Unapologetically.

I hope you do the same.

With love,

Olympia x