Picture the following:

Let’s make an incredibly cheesy sex story laden with tropes. We need solid archetypes – I don’t think I’ve yet written a “hot female teacher, nervous student boy” story yet (which is crazy considering I’m familiar with teacher X student stories and usually write more confident female characters). Let’s go super cheesy, the type of story premise you’ve seen a million times – she sees the way he looks at her in class, and asks him to stay after class. She tells him upfront that she’s seen the way he looks at her, and she notes his grades have been slipping lately. Whether real or faux, she puts on this concerned face and asks him if it’ll help him focus if he sees her breasts and he gets it out of his system. She opens her blouse and gives him a look at the goods, pretending (or naively assuming) this will help him in the classroom. Even if we haven’t actually read a story quite like this, we know the trope, right?

Pause.

Reverse the genders.

He sees the way she looks at him in class, and asks her to stay after class. He tells her upfront that he’s seen the way she looks at him, and he notes her grades have been slipping lately. Whether real or faux, he puts on this concerned face and asks her if it’ll help him focus if she sees his pecs and he gets it out of her system. He opens his button-up and gives her a look at the goods, pretending (or naively assuming) this will help her in the classroom.

Suddenly, this story seems a lot less real, doesn’t it? It almost sounds ridiculous. He lets her look at his pecs? How absurd! But more than that – if you’re anything like me and you’re being honest, you’ve likely seen the former time and time again in stories in one form or another, but never seen the latter… ever. Why is that?

The easy explanation is that society has sexualized female breasts. Even if whether they’re a “sexual organ” is up for debate, they’re associated with sexuality in our society at this time. But that feels… dishonest somehow. Again, if you’re truly being honest with yourself, the story seemed weird even at the outset, didn’t it? He sees the way she looks at him in class, and asks her to stay after class. He tells her upfront that he’s seen the way she looks at him, and he notes her grades have been slipping lately. Doesn’t something about it seem… less real? Harder to picture with a male teacher?

When I first thought of this, I thought this could have been my own bias, so I asked a few online friends to engage in a thought experiment for me: under the pretend guise of seeing how their “director mind” worked, I asked them to pretend they were shooting a teacher x student scene where the teacher is the dominant one, and they had full creative control. I asked them to play out how they’d direct it. I gave them no more information than that. Out of the eight people I surveyed, six defaulted to a female teacher, whereas the other two asked if the genders were important – I told them no. In those cases, one went with a female teacher and one went with a male. These friends were chosen deliberately – four men, four women.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence to note that my (admittedly small) sample size of people wanted their fantasy teacher stories to feature women as the teachers, and that in the real world, it’s more often men who are the type to actually engage in those sorts of situations. (The ratio differs from area to area, and by all means look it up if you’re unconvinced.) I think a part of this bias is the uncomfortable realization that if it’s a man in a position of power, it feels… too real. It reminds us of consequences and discomfort. We want a story, but this dynamic reminds us just that little bit more of the real world.

But I think it’s more than that. I first clocked this bias within myself – even in my stories with male teacher leads, they’re usually less official (Teaching Assistants and seminar leaders rather than full-fledged professors, such as in Here’s My Snapchat and The TA and the Tease) and cast opposite deceptively cunning female leads, and even though the cunning nature is played differently, that’s still ultimately the skeleton of both stories. In the only high school stories I can think of off the top of my head where a teacher deliberately takes part in the sex, when the man does it, such as in Being More Social, it’s played for horror. In Teacher’s Threat, where the teacher is a woman, it’s played for hotness. These are all stories I have written, so it may seem silly to suggest that the way I write stories is “the way things are,” but I don’t exist in a vacuum, nor did I invent the trope. The thought experiment I referenced earlier reinforces this; there’s a demographic of people that default to certain roles being played by certain genders, certain ages, etc.

I think it’s too simple to just conclude that because women have sexualized breasts, that’s the reason it’s easier to picture a woman in this role. Have you talked to young adult women? A lot of them go gaga over defined pecs and biceps. Why is it so absurd to imagine a male teacher opening up his shirt and showing a female student the goods? Is it because of the real-world connotations? Is it because a primarily male readership base would prefer to see a woman in the domineering position of desire? Is it because there’s already this expectation in life for people to fill certain roles if we want to see them as desirable?

I think it’s probably a mix, but I think that last component is often overlooked. If we picture someone doing something sexy or being sexy, what role do we expect them to fill? “Sexy + teacher” is an easy thing to picture. So is “Sexy + high school crush,” or “sexy + boss,” or how about “sexy + secretary”? Odds are, you pictured a clear demographic for each. Try flipping them. Do you still feel as strongly about them? Does it work as well? If not, that means that to a certain extent, in order to even be sexy, the role needs to be played “correctly.”

In a past blog post, I asked what “porn” was, in response to a few past comments. Here, I’m asking what “sexy” is, using the trope-y story as an obvious example. As an erotica writer, I need to be aware that I’ll always have ideas of what is sexy, and what isn’t. I can still write commissions that I personally would not want to read, but I also have hard limits I will never write, such as sex between family members, etc. But the hard limits aren’t the only ones – what’s in my blind spot? What could I write about, but I never have and never will just because my subconscious never picks up that such a dynamic or character pairing would ever be “sexy” in the first place? And am I missing out on a great story by continuing to be blind? It’s food for thought for sure. I’ll talk to you all next week.

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