Writer and former guest editor of Aotearotica, essa may ranapiri, considers the history and possibilities of erotic literature from a te ao Takataapui perspective.
In our whakairo, in our waiata, sex is undoubtedly present. And so, when us takataa write erotica we are writing in a tradition as old as time.
When we speak about sex we bring it back to our bodies. We bring back our bodies from the shroud of the past. Pulling our ancestors through the veil.
Our ancestors weren’t being crass when they spoke loud and proudly about their sexual exploits gestured to the mana of their ure and tara, they were acknowledging the world we live in!
I think of the carvings on a papa hou held at the British Museum depicting two people with ure fucking and that of a former ridgepole that depicts the same, we celebrated our sexual lives in a scope and nature far beyond what we have now. My heart breaks to know the ridgepole has been cut in two, one half in Leipzig, Germany the other in St. Petersburg, Russia. These should all be brought to Taheke asap and rejoined.
I think to Richard Davis reporting on some Maaori ancestors who had had sex with an English man called Reverend William Yate and that they ‘showed no shame. They simply declared that they were unaware of any sinfulness in such practices…’ and damn right our fucking is absent of sin!
I think of my maunga pae Tararua which literally means Two Vaginas, because of the way in which the mountain range looks like the body of two waa reclining. Named by Rangitaane chief Whaatonga for his two wives Hotuwaipara and Reretua. The world we see is an erotic world and we’re not afraid to name it after our desires. The mana of a waa’s naked form to be evoked in the naming of an entire mountain range.
I think of the older ancestral maunga of the Raukawa people, Maungatautari, and how on one side it is wahine and on the other side it is taane, this maunga the OG genderqueer. I found this out not long after coming out as trans and the power this little story gave me! To be takataapui and not talk about the queerness of our world and to not talk about sexuality of our world is to close us off to who we really are.
I think of the way many baby queers discovered their sexuality first in writings, whether that be sexy lit on Tumblr or in the sex scenes excavated from parents’ saucy novels. These first tender encounters where it is the word on the page inviting us to imagine things we haven’t yet dreamt. A fucking that often has more range than the pump and dump of male-gaze (not gays) het-porn. Though I don’t think I’ll forgive some of those writers for the dick-euphemism of “member”. Just say penis, please!
A kaituhi takataa I met the other day stood up at an open mic and read a poem about the island of Lesbos (where we get the word lesbian from), in all their mana takataapui they put their queer love into sensual detail and pulled that ole dyke island into the Pacific with their words. And it’s moments like these where we break through puritanical expectations that excite me the most about the pornographic in writing.
Erotica is powerful and important because it allows us to imagine ourselves in ways so often denied to us.