Catharsis

Many readers and writers enjoy horror as a cathartic experience. My guess is that they’ve had less genuine horror in their lives than I have. Fear is not my friend, and I will not recreationally seek it. Does this mean catharsis is absent from my experience? Absolutely not—it just means that I find catharsis elsewhere.

I find that a lot of people think they have the right to judge me for my cathartic literary choices, especially what I write. That’s because I find catharsis in writing erotica. Porn, if you will. Do I think that someone who enjoys glorified violence has any sort of moral high ground from which to judge my glorification of sexuality? Nope. I don’t think anyone has a right to judge an experience they haven’t lived, especially if they’re engaging in the same indulgence in a different genre.

If I read horror or watch a horror film, I have nightmares. My nightmares are not about whatever fictional horror I’ve ingested; they’re replays of lived experiences that I never wanted to have. Five hundred dollars tempted me to consider that room, but by the time I finished unlocking it, I knew I would never enter of my own free will. Further, what happened to me in there is none of your business, and you have no right to a single description of it. I’ll never give it to you. Anyway, if I did, you’d hate me afterwards because I would make you feel like it happened to you.

Here’s the problem: people who enjoy the catharsis of horror are not judged for it, but people who enjoy the catharsis of erotica are. Really? Human sexuality is more offensive than human violence? Bloodlust is preferable to lust? I reject this type of thinking as hypocritical judgment from extremely unstable ground.

If we look back in literature, especially to Elizabethan literature, death was a euphemism for orgasm. Let that sink in. Death is more socially acceptable than sexual satisfaction. Somehow, through violent slasher films, the horror industry has, in a subgenre, merged the two meanings. Many horror films include a sexual aspect wrapped into the violence, but society doesn’t judge the people who enjoy these films as immoral. I write sexually explicit fiction without violence, without horror, without terror or fear, and I’ve been labeled a whore for it. Seems a bit hypocritical, unless we’re going to start calling horror fans murderers. Let’s not do that. How about we just stop judging others for their cathartic preferences and safe spaces.