Yes, maybe I should have used 'pornified'? *g* It is heavily emphasized that sexual acts are the truest form to express the complex emotion of love. I think it's so easy to equate the two that everybody's jumped on board. That's why everything from shoes to food is sold with sexual innuendo. Granted, there's always a sexual aspect in any romance but sex does not equal love and it's not, IMHO, the only act that expresses love.

I was reading the TWOP eaier and found so much contempt for the act that love saved the day that I'm stunned. Love is one powerful emotion but if it's just expressed as 'pornified tales', it loses plenty of the power.

I do think it has relevance with the emancipation of female sexuality that happened as a result of the introduction of mostly reliable contraception. We're not quite there culturally yet and that may be why we write so much about it. *g* Earlier sexual acts were much more tied to possible procreation (for f/m relationships or possible condemnation and marginalization for same sex relationships). Today it's more or less still used as a tool for power just as much as an expressions of love, or at least that is the implication I read in many fics.

And I think it's the power-aspect of sexuality that still bothers me.