What would cause someone to break a sexual taboo (legal or illegal)?

Question

I am writing an erotic novel in which several characters break sexual taboos (some just taboos, some also illegal) - I'd like them to have differing reasons - so I thought I'd take a poll - what would cause someone to break a sexual taboo (both legal and illegal)?

Answer 1

Curiosity.

Answer 2

There are only a couple of taboos in my book. These are illegal and rightly so. Rape is one. Pedophilia is the other. I hope you don't intend to write about breaking those for your erotic novel.

Anyway... here's a "novel" way of describing why married men cheat.. get down and dirty with other men, women, trannies.. swingers... all in the one night.. a 6 hour orgy at a bisexual s*x on premises night club or wherever with whatever.. you choose its your novel... I've said this before in Answers.... sorry for repeating myself....

When a person falls in love.. it's not like you check to see whether she has a V8 under the hood ... you know... maybe she just sort of parks intercourse on the bench in terms of her main areas of interest. You are really not to know... and before you know it.. you are hooked on her and nobody else.

This is a serious and concerning dilemma for a guy who is really just a dirty little s**t after all said and done. A polyamorous person is not always lucky enough to fall in love with someone just like him/her.

So what are we to do... 25 years into marriage... suppressed sexuality .... looking down the barrel of another 25 years of unfulfilled and repressed sexuality... let's face it... something's going to give one day... and it usually does.

We always hear about the divorce statistics. Fact is, after the kids grow up... for the majority of divorces it's the women who instigate it. Are they just looking for an excuse? Infidelity is the excuse that is often used but it is also one that many polyamourous couples embrace. So cheating needn't carry the badboy image that it has.

All guys are polyamorous. We just haven't realised that it's OK to be that way. It's our women who suppress our sexuality ~ our liberty.. our natural tendancy for a polyamourist lifestyle and our instincts! Women control the pusssy and therefore control the sexing. Bloody matriarchal societies.... this has gone on long enough!

Answer 3

read Anais Nin, either the Delta of Venus or Little Birds.  Enough taboo breaking erotica to last a lifetime.  Also you could try Aretino's The Ragionamenti: the lives of nuns, the lives of married women, the lives of courtesans which proves that there is nothing new under the sun.  

Answer 4

lust and years and year and decades and century's and millinia god d**n it I wanna get laid! and eons of never having sexcould break anyone.

Answer 5

I think few people here have broken any sexual taboos, and those that have are hardly going to confess them in a public forum regularly read by police officers and psychotic vigilantes.

So, one idea would be to look at those you know about who have broken taboos and see what made them do it.  One famous example is of course a well-known 1970s glam-rock star.  In his case, I think it was perceived freedom - he believed he was going to a country and a society where this particular taboo did not exist.

For much the same reason I too broke a legal taboo.  In the UK it is highly frowned on for there to be a 25-year age gap between lovers (I am 52 and my girlfriend is 27), but in the Philippines this is not considered unusual.  So as a man over 50, if I wanted a 20-something girlfriend, better to go to the Philippines than attempt this in the UK.

If you were an English sheep-shagger, would you be advised to travel westwards where this is regarded as a mark of local national pride?

Another useful source may be The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp, or indeed any accounts from g*y people before homosexuality was legalised.

Nabokov's Lolita written over 50 years ago is a famous novel exploring the breaking of a taboo.  Another groundbreaking one is Lady Chatterley's Lover which broke the class taboo in England.

I don't think much has been written since then, so I am looking forward to one that addresses 21st century taboos.

Answer 6

Terrific question ... and kudos for you in writing an erotic novel.

You've received some excellent recommendations already and, simply to reinforce what some have mentioned, it is worth reading Nin, and Aretino, as well as the Marquis de Sade, and -for a contemporary take on erotic matters, try Saskia Walker.

Sexual taboos can be broken for a laundry list of reasons -some great ones already offered by previous respondents, however, maybe it's worth considering creating one character in your erotic novel who simply breaks sexual taboos because s/he can.  

That is, this character's personality allows for her/him to actually seek out taboos to break ... as if challenged by the feigned aloofness of taboo-setters and taboo-adherents.  This particular character doesn't engage the debate of whether someting sexual is classified as "right" or "wrong" and "good" or "evil" but instead thrives on confronting the very idea that a sexual activity could even be labeled taboo and, as such, sets out to convince (manipulate) others to participate in her/his taboo breaking.

In the simplest of terms, this particular character is a sexual rebel who gets her/his kicks from doing those things that others (society) has said s/he shouldn't do.  

Answer 7

What kind of "taboos"? People would have different reasons for different taboos...

Answer 8

Write what you know.  Nobody EVER wrote a successful novel about something they did not already know...

Answer 9

years and years of repression because religion or other belief system was against it  

Answer 10

To get back at someone else.

For the thrill of doing something you shouldn't.

Answer 11

Anger, and  fetishes, come to mind right now. I do not believe in taboos though. When I close the door nobodys business is what happens there. I like erotic novels though so I wish you well.