Experimental Shelf

Experimental

Experimental literature refers to written work鈥攗sually fiction or poetry鈥攖hat emphasizes innovation, most especially in technique.

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How to Survive Being Committed to a Mental Hospital by Doug Cameron

How to Shit in the Woods by Kathleen Meyer

Orna'mental' Illnesses

115 books — 6 voters

The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington by Leonora Carrington

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

Manifestoes of Surrealism by Andr茅 Breton

Surrealist & Experimental Book List

12 books — 1 voter

Maris McLamoureary's Dictionnaire Infernal by Chris McCreary

Empty Set Press

4 books — 1 voter

With the People from the Bridge by Dimitris Lyacos

Alternative and Experimental Literature

44 books — 22 voters

Cult fiction

535 books — 492 voters

Conceptual Writing

152 books — 23 voters

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“ This distorted lens may lead someone studying human sexuality to ask: 鈥淲here are you on a spectrum from straight to gay?鈥� This question would miss a pattern we found in our data suggesting that people's arousal systems are not bundled by the gender of whatever it is that turns them on: 4.5% of men find the naked male form aversive but penises arousing, while 6.7% of women find the female form arousing, but vaginas aversive. Using simplified community identifications like the gay-straight spectru This distorted lens may lead someone studying human sexuality to ask: 鈥淲here are you on a spectrum from straight to gay?鈥� This question would miss a pattern we found in our data suggesting that people's arousal systems are not bundled by the gender of whatever it is that turns them on: 4.5% of men find the naked male form aversive but penises arousing, while 6.7% of women find the female form arousing, but vaginas aversive. Using simplified community identifications like the gay-straight spectrum to investigate how and why arousal patterns develop is akin to studying historic human migration patterns by distributing a research survey asking respondents to report their position on a spectrum from 鈥渨hite鈥� to 鈥減erson of color.鈥� Yes, 鈥減erson of color,鈥� like the concept of 鈥済ay,鈥� is a useful moniker to understand the life experiences of a person, but a person鈥檚 place on a 鈥渨hite鈥� to 鈥減erson of color鈥� spectrum tells us little about their ethnicity, just as a person鈥檚 place on a scale of gay to straight tells us little about their underlying arousal patterns. The old way of looking at arousal limits our ability to describe sexuality to a grey scale. We miss that there is no such thing as attraction to just 鈥渇emales,鈥� but rather a vast array of arousal systems that react to stimuli our society typically associates with 鈥渇emales鈥� including things like vaginas, breasts, the female form, a gait associated with a wider hip bone, soft skin, a higher tone of voice, the gender identity of female, a person dressed in 鈥渇emale鈥� clothing, and female gender roles. Arousal from any one of these things correlates with the others, but this correlation is lighter than a gay-straight spectrum would imply. Our data shows it is the norm for a person to derive arousal from only a few of these stimuli sets and not others. Given this reality, human sexuality is not well captured by a single sexual spectrum. Moreover, contextualizing sexuality as a contrast between these communities and a societal 鈥渄efault鈥� can obscure otherwise-glaring data points. Because we contrast 鈥渄efault鈥� female sexuality against 鈥渙ther鈥� groups, such as the gay community and the BDSM community, it is natural to assume that a 鈥渢ypical鈥� woman is most likely to be very turned on by the sight of male genitalia or the naked male form and that she will be generally disinterested in dominance displays (because being gay and/or into BDSM would be considered atypical, a typical woman must be defined as the opposite of these 鈥渙ther,鈥� atypical groups). Our data shows this is simply not the case. The average female is more likely to be very turned on by seeing a person act dominant in a sexual context than she is to be aroused by either male genitalia or the naked male form. The average woman is not defined by male-focused sexual attraction, but rather dominance-focused sexual attraction. This is one of those things that would have been blindingly obvious to anyone who ran a simple survey of arousal pathways in the general American population, but has been overlooked because society has come to define 鈥渄efault鈥� sexuality not by what actually turns people on, but rather in contrast to that which groups historically thought of as 鈥渙ther. ...more ”
― Simone Collins, The Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality

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