Sex and the Vampire

I just can't resist adding this piece of sexy slink to this page. After all, what is more vampy than a skimpy outfit to wear for seduction? And Vampire in our modern books are mostly about seduction.

(Add in the wonderfulness of the picture and you can understand the irresistiblity of the impulse!)

Vampires and sex. Predator and prey. Blood-seeker with walking refrigerator. I am a meat eater. There is little I enjoy more than a nice rare bacon cheeseburger. But I don't want to have sex with the cow. I will grant that there is a problem with this analogy. The human "food" that provides the vampire sustenance usually needn't be dead for the meal to be happy, and served up with a smile. And I admit that I am fully complicit in the society that views another living being as food. So, vampires and sex in literature; in stories, poems, and novels.

I have read widely in vampire literature over the past year, choosing texts for, and designing a course examining supernatural denizens in different genres. And have discovered that in most novels aimed at teenagers and adults, there is sexual tension, if not outright sex, happening between the protagonists. Occasionally the sexual scenes leave the bounds of reality. Occasionally they over-ride the plot and undermine the series and the books really belong in the "Adult" section of the bookstore.

Do we, as a society, have to have sex mixed into everything we read?

Sexy Vampires and the Women Who Love Them examines reasons why this sexual mating works so well in novels.

Arguably we, as human (still) readers have the built-in imperative to procreate and preserve our species. But the vampires we read about generally can't have children with the humans they mate with. Yet they still seem to carry the life-long desire towards the closeness and pleasure of sexual intimacy. Arguably, the vampires seduction could be that of the predator luring his / her prey into closer proximity for easier dining, but the authors of this literature usually, if not always, allow the prey to enjoy the processes.

While Ramsland has examined sex and vampires in her wonderful (I use it in my class) book The Science of Vampires, there are a few things we can still discuss.

SBI!