"The whole business of eroticism is to strike at the inmost core of the living being ... to destroy the self-contained character of the participators as they are in their normal lives," Georges Bataille said. And that's why last week's two sex-and-internet stories have been so fascinating. Two women were stripped bare: one intentionally, by selling the weblog of her life as a callgirl to a publisher; and one unwittingly, by pressing the "reply to all" button when sending an email to her boyfriend - within hours her sweet but decidedly down and dirty musings had been read by millions on the internet.
In both cases, the media and a prurient public sniffed blood. One of the women - the callgirl - is still anonymous, and in control; the other is not in control, and rather a lot of people know who she is. Poor thing. (I refuse to add to the office worker's mortification by telling you her name.)
What is the sniggering allure of her oh-so-private email? Its very normality. We're all at our most vulnerable when it comes to sex; it's the closest we get to revealing our true selves in all our banality, desperation and foolishness. The intrigue lies in the glimpses behind the masks we all wear in our public lives. For the truly erotic isn't about perfection and accomplishment - it's about shedding our protective armour, lowering ourselves, fumbling, being embarrassed.
But the intense interest in both the accidental email and the weblog (which had a cult following long before the publisher snapped it up) is also explained by the tension between contradictory erotic forces within women, an ambivalence that's long cast its spell. Freud cherished it in the Mona Lisa, in whom he saw a "contrast between reserve and seduction, and between the most devoted tenderness and a sensuality that is ruthlessly demanding." These 21st-century internet stories are the embodiment of the fantasy of the demure office girl who's a sex goddess underneath. Their fumbling, horny emails, their internet diaries, allow us a glimpse into a woman's secret, dirty world. They're compulsive because this world is usually so hidden.
Would men be as humiliated to be unmasked as our poor emailer was and the weblog callgirl is so determined not to be? I suspect not. Men don't have that pesky shame factor to deal with. The recounting of their sexual exploits usually has more to do with bragging - and it's less affecting because of it. Men's office emails never enter internet lore, because they are not seen as real, or vulnerable, but as pornographic - the magic and messiness of interaction between two people is deadened. When her office email was exposed to strangers it revealed an everyday woman's innermost being - and for a woman and a woman alone, that's mortifying.
Anonymity, on the other hand, is empowering. All the publisher will reveal about the mysterious callgirl, known as Belle de Jour, is that she's highly educated and in her 20s. At this point, she's utterly in control.
Her agent says she'll remain anonymous "to protect her friends and family". I really hope so. I've spent the past 18 months dealing with being outed as the anonymous author of the sexually explicit book, The Bride Stripped Bare, and it's been the toughest time of my life. Already the speculation has begun that Belle's confessions are a publicity gimmick, as it was said of my book. Well, why don't you try writing with ruthless, unflinching honesty about sex - and put your name to it. It's exhilarating if you're anonymous, but highly traumatic if, like me, you're a wife and mother of two little boys, not to mention a daughter of two gently bewildered people in their 60s.
Belle and myself are far from unique in finding anonymity liberating when it comes to sex, and the office emailer and myself are not the only ones to feel mortified on being found out. A survey last year in the Journal of Sex Research found women lied more often than men about sex - and their answers changed dramatically when they believed they were answering anonymously. Embellishments under their own names included reducing the number of partners they'd had and lying about use of pornography: the respondents were extremely sensitive to social expectations about how they're meant to behave.
Anonymity opens a door to a reckless, exhilarating world where you can be utterly honest as a woman. A lot of us can't face the thought of people seeing us as we really are - for it means we are losing control of the public persona we've so carefully maintained. And we never get closer to the truth of our dark, vulnerable, messy selves than with sex. Perhaps that's why the prospect of unmasking for these two new internet stars - and myself - is so very difficult to bear.
· Nikki Gemmell is the author of The Bride Stripped Bare
