What is Transgressive? What is Offensive?

There is this collection of short stories called “Little Birds” which is quite explicit in its treatment of sex and sexuality. And there is one particular story where a woman describes being taken by a man in a crowd as she goes to witness a public execution, without the man ever asking for her consent; she first submits passively, and eventually enjoys it. Then there is this other story of a bisexual woman more or less drugging her lesbian friend to get the latter to have intercourse with a man. And another about a married man fantasizing about and eventually exposing himself to schoolgirls. Other stories too are filled with stuff which would greatly offend the campus liberal’s mind.

Here is a thought experiment: should one introduce this collection to a lib-left student crowd and say that it was written by Bataille, there would be explicit disgust, if not outrage at coarseness and vulgarity and, of course, white cis-gendered male entitlement.

But reveal that these stories were written by Anais Nin, and the stories become transgressive feminist erotica.

Should art be evaluated by its content or by the identity of the artist? Can transgressive content be only the prerogative of those who have had the actual experience of transgression? Can artistic creativity be reduced to one’s immediate or obvious identification? If one’s representation of others is constructed, isn’t one’s representation of self equally so? And if representation is to be critiqued, again, shouldn’t the focus be on the content and form of the art rather than on which race or gender the creator was born into?