In these novels, when white women's sexual practices contravene bourgeois ideals, the characters are often re-racialized, described as non-white. So if Russia-themed erotica tends to be about sexual slavery and sexual freedom, then — as in the construction of race itself — it's always in reference to others: other white women, middle eastern women, Black women. As a novel in this messy canon, Ariane is about all of these figures, about the history of racialization across the globe. Erotica is world history written onto the two hemispheres of a woman's butt. from Ice queens, sex machines by Fiona Bell [The European Review of Books; ungated] [NSFW text]