The Semiotics of Semen

A post over at AlexSuze on Bukakke got me thinking. Semen is semiotically heavy - especially in erotica. Yes, come on, admit it! Cum isn't just cum. The load, to put it coarsely, is loaded.

I've heard some men be very disingenuous about this, and it annoys me. "It's just semen!" they wail. Either they're so stupid to have given it no thought, or they're being nauseatingly coy.

I'm not going to get into the actual physical components of semen. You can read that here, if you're interested. But it is the prime carrier of male genetic information. That in itself makes it powerful, symbolically. All the accumulated genetic details of all your ancestors just ended up on someone's tits. Don't pretend that doesn't matter.

It gets more interesting from a cultural perspective. The Old Testament rates semen on the same level as blood in terms of problematic fluids. Problematic because they are at once life-associated, and can render a person ritually unclean for performing sacrifice in the temple. Plus there are the strict prohibitions against wasting it on fallow ground. And yes, no matter how beautiful they may look to you, my tits are definitely fallow ground.

With the rise of Christianity, it got stranger. If sex for anything other than procreation was lust, then the more permanent physical manifestations of it must also be wrong. What is that sperm doing outside your wife's womb? Put it back in, immediately! Disgusting!

The only reason why Christians don't have the same hang-ups about female effluvia (lubricant) is because most priests knew fuck all about it. In fact, you just try and google the components that make up girl juice: good luck. You'll have problems even pinning down a search word.

But... back to the topic. If semen is ritually unclean, an artifact of lust, and the bearer of your genetic identity to boot, then buddy, it matters. And where and how you use it matters too.

Semen plays a significant semiotic role in many of my stories. I chiefly use it the way most erotica writers do, as evidence of desire sated. But I also love the purely sensory aspect of it: that hot, wet streak that hits skin at the height of passion, or the rip of the flood tide buried inside. In the scene, I envisaged it as a physical thread of desire between Alex and Sophie.

Shudders took her over as the pleasure washed through her. In the midst of the neural storm she heard him grunt, and she glanced down to watch as he came: hot pulses of fluid spurting onto her neck, her chest, running down over her breasts as he squeezed himself, his body convulsing. (The Waiting Room, Chapter 1)

In Divestiture, which some of my very old readers were unfortunate enough to read, I used it as a mark of membership:

He pulled her back a little and smiled, bringing his other hand up to her neck, wet with his cum. He laid his wet fingers there and slid them down into the hollow of her throat, leaving a trail of it in the wake of his fingertips, she felt it chill and go tacky dry on her skin in the air.

"I mark you, little bird."

I also use it more subtly in Gaijin as a form of female rejection (a sort of love me, love my cum in reverse):

The first time, he shuddered. The next, he made a little sound and jerked. It only took a few more swallows until he grunted, his hands balled into fists around her hair, and he erupted into her throat.

The initial spurt caught her by surprise and made her gag. Salty, hot fluid flooded into her mouth as he pulled out of her throat. She let it seep from her mouth around his cock while he kept coming. (Gaijin, Chapter 1)

And again,

Jennifer's breathing slowed as the adrenaline born of fear and sex ebbed. As the roar in her ears died away, she could hear him breathing - evenly - as if nothing had happened. As if he were just a normal person lying down for a rest. She made as if to speak, but she could think of nothing to say that would make any difference to him, as if there was no language to bridge them, as if he were another species of animal. Something with teeth and claws lying beside her, with its own impenetrable reasons for the violence it wrought.

Feeling the wetness between her legs, a visceral disgust crept up her spine until the thought of having this man's fluids inside her for one more second would, somehow, like a venereal disease, leave her permanently insane. (Gaijin, Chapter 4)

What I have never done in any of the erotica I've written is use semen in humiliation. Not because I don't acknowledge that it could have that function, erotically, but because I've never written a character, male or female, who was so ashamed of sex that they'd see being marked with it as humiliating.