Do vampires have a sex drive?
Would vampires enjoy sex? This is the highly scientific question that this article aims to answer.
On that matter, there appear to be two opposite camps. One camp says that vampires could never have sexual desires, and another camp that says that vampires would obviously have sexual desires… and both are 100% correct in what they say.
For the purposes of this article, we will assume that vampires are actually undead. I've seen works wherein this is not true, but in those cases the answer is a blindingly obvious “yes”.
Why would vampires not enjoy sex?
To answer why vampires would not enjoy sex, all we need to do is to examine why humans (or any other living being, for that matter) enjoy it: It's because that leads to procreation. Any living thing that does not enjoy procreating will soon enough be outcrowded by living things that do.
The problem, then, is that vampires do not procreate via sex. They procreate via… actually everyone seems to have a different opinion regarding the exact details, but it almost always involves an exchange of blood. In that sense, there should be nothing that a vampire enjoys more than said blood exchange.
This is, more or less, the argument made by camp no. 1. “It is utterly unfathomable that vampires could be sexualised!”, they say. “This is a complete perversion of the lore!”. If you meet such a person, please respond in my stead: “I am earnestly sorry that somebody sexualised your innocent story about the forcible and hedonistic exchange of bodily fluids”. Bonus points if you can keep a straight face.
Why would vampires enjoy sex?
Yeah, from where I'm standing, it doesn't take a particularly dirty mind to make the connection. The only ways in real life to exchange bodily fluids without specialised equipment are all lewd. From there, considering vampires as innately lewd is a pretty natural logical step.
Furthermore, it's not as if the only things that are enjoyable in (un)life are those that directly connect to one's biological needs. I myself am a huge tea snob, and tea has barely anything to do with biological needs at all. (Hydration can be achieved by ordinary water. As for caffeine, there's none in the cold infusions I enjoy so much in the summer.)
So, uh… what to choose?
I strongly believe that what to choose depends hugely on the tone of your writing, and how exactly you want to portray your vampires. Off the top of my head, I can think of the following:
- The closer your vampires are to inhuman monsters with alien thought processes, the less sense it makes for them to be sexual.
- On the other hand, the closer they are to idealised or libertine humans, the more sense it makes for them to be sexual.
- The more their feeding resembles a compulsion and an addiction, the harder it will be to view it as lewd. Particularly so if it's done via blood-packs or similar.
- On the other hand, the more their feeding resembles a seduction, the easier it will be for your readers to make the connection—whether you intended it or not. Particularly so if it's done mouth-to-skin.
- Any vampire that's human enough to fall in love with a human, is also human enough to bed a human.
- If two vampires are in an intimate relationship, they could exchange more than just blood.
Representative examples of fiction that get this either very right or very wrong are very much appreciated!