Why are women horny for beasts with horns?

'Monster smut' is a publishing trend that's white-hot on more than one level

Audiobook of “Morning Glory Miking Farm” / Audible

I once spent three days interviewing romance novelists at a trade show, and one of the surprises of the assignment was that most of them defined themselves as feminists.

At the time, I took it as a sign that the women —and they were all women —hoped my newspaper would rebut a stereotype: that romance novelists were throwbacks to a pre-liberated era. That was easy to do, given that most of my sources were educated and intelligent writers who had turned to their work after successful careers in fields such as journalism or business.

But there was more to their feminism than wanting to avoid being stigmatized as sexual reactionaries. Or so I realized while reading C.M. Nascosta's Morning Glory Milking Farm, a star in a fantasy subgenre that —on more than one level — is white-hot: "monster smut," which involves people who have sex with mythical or other beasts.

How hot is "white-hot"?

Nascosta's novel has been a USA Today bestseller and, at this writing, is the №1 bestseller in the Science Fiction Erotica category on Amazon. It's gone viral at #BookTok on TikTok and inspired four sequels.

And its heroine, an avowed feminist, isn't waiting to be rescued.

A hero who's half-man, half-bull

Violet, a human, loves Rourke, a minotaur, half-man and half-bull, who wears smart business suits and white shirts.

But she balks when he tries to pay for dinner in Cambric Creek, a lively interspecies town with farm-to-table restaurants selling desserts like tiramisù and tuxedo cheesecake. Violet berates herself for having let Rourke pay for an earlier date:

"What kind of feminist are you?!

"She couldn't remember the last time she'd been out and hadn't paid for her half…which accounted for how infrequently she went anywhere."

Violet nonetheless goes along when her minotaur crush wants to pay for another date. She knows she's still "a good feminist, and she definitely couldn't be bought."

But by then Violet is hooked. She’d do anything for a beast with broad horns and a "silky-coarse hide, his bulging thighs giving way to hocks and hooves, his thin tail a sinuous whip behind him." 

Suffice it to say that his thighs aren't the only part of his anatomy that bulges.

A heroine with too much student-loan debt

Twenty-six-year-old Violet met Rourke while saddled with heavy student-loan debt after getting a master's degree in a field with few jobs. She couldn't afford her big-city rent, and in desperation, took an out-of-town job milking bull minotaurs by hand for semen a multinational drug company would use to make Viagra-like "blue pills."

Violet is supposed to keep the hand jobs professional, but she and Rourke can't deny the sparks flying between them. Before long, they're going through typical stages of an enemies-to-lovers romance novel : jealousy, misunderstandings, unexplained absences. And they're having enough over-the-top sex to justify that "monster smut" tag on Amazon.

An interspecies town

What's not typical is that because Violet and Rourke meet in an interspecies town, they go about their daily routines amid creatures who don't look like them. Cambric Creek has orcs, elves, lizardmen, mothpeople, and a ram with dreads. A vampire stands in for the human gay male best friend who's become a romcom trope.

Why do stories like this appeal to women?

I found Nascostas's book no more of a turn-on than, say, a romance novel by Danielle Steel or Colleen Hoover. But maybe it's because I've seen too many brown skinks slithering across my back-porch screen to grasp the appeal of lizardmen? 

It was mildly interesting to learn that bulls have foreskins, but if you're looking for cross-species sex education, you'd do better by having a chat with your vet. There’s only light worldbuilding and nothing on the Greek roots of the minotaur myth.

Emily Gould wrote recently in New York magazine that monster-smut novels can have kinkier heroes than does Morning Glory Milking Farm. That might explain their appeal to some women:

"Their penises might have odd shapes or abilities, ridges and spurs and bulbous knots at the base. Monster heroes might also possess tails that enable double penetration. Tongues, as well, can be textured or thick or long and prehensile with a tip capable of suction. They are monsters, on the one hand, but on the other hand, they are a sex-toy shop made flesh and blood."

Readers can explore 'taboo' instincts

The boom in monster smut may have an additional explanation, according to Jane Nutter, the director of communications at Kensington, which publishes romance and more. Nutter told New York that novels with monster heroes let readers explore sexual instincts they might otherwise see as shameful:

"I think people are definitely looking for ways to make things more palatable to themselves. They're thinking, Well, of course, this guy's a monster, it makes sense that this is how he is and this is how they explore together, rather than thinking, I have a taboo kink."

Where does feminism come in?

Nascosta mentions it only twice, but you could argue that her heroine practices a form of "do-me" feminism and its corollary: If you don't do me, I'll do it to myself with a vibrator. Violet is a woman who takes things into her own hands when a man —or minotaur —isn't around.

Morning Glory Milking Farm may be, as Tom Lehrer sang, "smut / and nothing but!"

But its heroine isn't a victim of anything except perhaps price-gouging graduate degree programs. She appreciates what she calls "difference" as it's represented by the varied species in Cambric Creek. And she exercises her own type of "agency," a cliché Nascosta isn't too proud to use.

A backlash against Sally Rooney's 'sad girl lit'?

You could see Nascosta's success as part of the backlash against the feminism or anti-feminism of the anxious and depressed millennials in Sally Rooney's "sad girl lit," which also has a lot of sex.

The main characters in Rooney's new Intermezzo are two brothers, each clueless about women in his own way. Ivan is a chess prodigy who wonders if he might be an incel. Peter is a lawyer who condemns "gender inequality in the workplace" during a trial but who's dishonest and cowardly with Sylvia, an ex-girlfriend he still loves.

Sylvia is cruel, too, even as she pays lip service to equality and gives university lectures on lofty topics like "Aesthetic nullity of contemporary political movements."

Rooney has higher-flying literary aims than Nascosta. But you can see why more than a few readers might prefer the exuberant sex in Cambric Creek the joylessness of some in Rooney’s Ireland. You're not expected to take Nascosta’s sex as seriously. Which one you prefer might depend on what kind of feminist you are, or aren't.

Jan is an award-winning critic and journalist who has been the book columnist for Glamour, the book editor of a large newspaper, and a vice president of the National Book Critics Circle.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to Jansplaining, which will give you access to capsule reviews of 50 her favorite novels in its “100 Books I Like” section. The list will expand to include 50 nonfiction and children’s books in the coming weeks.

=