I think I know what you mean. Even though I primarily write het and have usually faded to black when it comes to slash sex (I keep getting mental images of my gay friends pointing and laughing at anything I might write in this regard), my experience has been that many readers--whether pro-sex or anti-sex--feel inordinately distracted by the sex I've written, regardless of the fact that it is R-rated sex, not NC-17, and that it's a minute percentage of my output. The point that I think they've missed is that I've never included sex when it wasn't important to the plot/characterization, chiefly by illuminating one or both of the characters involved or foreshadowing something important, but the character illumination and plot foreshadowing seems to fly over most people's heads while they are either thinking, "All right! More sex!" or "Good grief! Why can't this woman lay off the sex?"
What I've written isn't ABOUT the sex, but loads of folks (pro and con) don't seem to get this. As a result I'm fading to black with the het sex now as well, because what I'm writing about has always been ideas bigger than slot A into slot B. I think it's possible that if the reviewer of the book in question had looked a little deeper into the character having all of the sex he/she would have seen that there is a reason for the sex (at least I hope there is). It could be that the author thought that some people would be drawn into the story to be titillated and leave with a lesson that was slipped into the story in a stealthy way. I think that that is a valid use of sex in writing, as much as drawing a reader into a story for the adventure, mystery, etc. Unfortunately, for the reviewer, the big "idea" seems to have been lost amidst all of the moaning and orgasms, but then I'm getting the impression more and more that JKR's big ideas are being utterly missed by a load of folks who are fixating on the adventure and mystery of it all. The ideas are being served by that stuff, not the other way around. Ideally the same should be true in a story with sex, and if the reviewer is that distracted by something that is the author's means to an end there's either something wrong with the balance in the story or (more likely) with the reviewer's ability to analyze literature without being distracted by window dressing.
no subject
What I've written isn't ABOUT the sex, but loads of folks (pro and con) don't seem to get this. As a result I'm fading to black with the het sex now as well, because what I'm writing about has always been ideas bigger than slot A into slot B. I think it's possible that if the reviewer of the book in question had looked a little deeper into the character having all of the sex he/she would have seen that there is a reason for the sex (at least I hope there is). It could be that the author thought that some people would be drawn into the story to be titillated and leave with a lesson that was slipped into the story in a stealthy way. I think that that is a valid use of sex in writing, as much as drawing a reader into a story for the adventure, mystery, etc. Unfortunately, for the reviewer, the big "idea" seems to have been lost amidst all of the moaning and orgasms, but then I'm getting the impression more and more that JKR's big ideas are being utterly missed by a load of folks who are fixating on the adventure and mystery of it all. The ideas are being served by that stuff, not the other way around. Ideally the same should be true in a story with sex, and if the reviewer is that distracted by something that is the author's means to an end there's either something wrong with the balance in the story or (more likely) with the reviewer's ability to analyze literature without being distracted by window dressing.