Let’s Get Real - #censorship #hormones #teensex

 Image by lisajules from Pixabay

A while ago, I received the welcome news that a short story of mine had been provisionally accepted into an anthology. The editor wrote:

“I love your story, but it will need a little bit of amending: we cannot have any mention of anyone under the age of eighteen having sexual thoughts or masturbating. (I know this is absolutely silly but we are not in a position to risk it.)”

Let me make it clear that this story (which would probably be categorized as literary erotica) does not feature underage sex. The main character has an unusual and rather dangerous fetish, which first appeared after an experience in his mid-teens. The story includes a flashback in which the protagonist describes those early events and how they shaped his current, adult sexuality. Like most teens, his reaction to arousal was to masturbate.

I didn’t fight with this editor, first of all because I really wanted to be part of the anthology and secondly because she recognized the ridiculous nature of the prohibition. However, this state of affairs still makes me fume. I mean, let’s get real. Nobody masturbates more often than teenage boys! And sexual thoughts? As I recall my high school years, it was pretty difficult to focus on anything else!

It’s hard for me to understand the logic behind this rule. We’re not talking about pedophilia here. We’re discussing private sexual stimulation. Who is being hurt? Why should this be a forbidden topic?

The first time I remember masturbating, I was four. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing, but I knew it felt good. I had erotic fantasies in grade school (about being kidnapped at the beach by a classmate who wanted to pull off my bathing suit). It’s an accepted scientific fact that children have sexual urges, and that in the years right after puberty, hormones run rampant. What purpose does it serve to pretend otherwise?

Does anyone still cling to the myth of childhood purity and innocence?

In fact, fetishes often have their roots in childhood experiences. Changing my story probably won’t do great violence to its main points, but it does reduce the authenticity of the tale.

People write, and read, erotica for many reasons. As for me, I’m simply fascinated by sex. My personal motivation in writing is to explore the way sexuality complicates, illumines and transforms human existence. I want to realistically portray the experience of desire and to show its varied impacts on the lives of my characters. If I can arouse my readers in the process, I’m pleased, but that’s a side effect rather than my primary goal.

It become quite difficult to achieve this goal when I’m forced to deny power and importance of teenage sex. Confusing, scary, wondrous, indescribably intense—our earliest encounters with sex strongly influence our adult fantasies and needs.

Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar, or out of touch with reality.

Some people just won’t mind their own business... #Extremism #Prejudice #SexPositive

The title of this post is the first line in the blurb for my newest erotica title, Babes in Bondage. A lot of the plot motion in this sizzling novella (and yes, despite all the sex, it does have a plot!) comes from the actions of an anti-porn terrorist group who will stop at almost nothing to punish people who practice any sort of “perverted” sexual activity—same-sex interactions, oral sex, anal sex, and of course BDSM. As one of their protest signs proclaims: “Missionary position: Good enough for my parents, good enough for me.”

This entire scenario is intended to be somewhat tongue in cheek— but not completely. I try not to mix too much politics into my erotica, but I do sometimes worry about half-crazy fundamentalists who want to impose their sexual mores on me.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that each individual has the right to any sort of beliefs about sex (or religion, or pretty much anything else) and to live according to those beliefs—as long as they don’t impose these beliefs on anyone else, or infringe on other people’s rights to behave as they believe and choose. So, in my view, you’re perfectly free to think that lesbian and gay people are going to hell. You may not, however, attack, mistreat, or discriminate against someone who’s lesbian or gay.

C’mon, if you really believe those people are damned, let God take care of it.

Meanwhile, I think that in many cases extremist beliefs stem from the believer’s personal uncertainties about the issue in question. It’s well documented, for instance, that many men who exhibit homophobia actually harbor secret homoerotic desires. If you weren’t secretly fascinated by kinky sex, why should you care if someone else practices it?

So this idea found its way into Babes in Bondage also. Patricia Hastings, the guiding light of the Anti-Porn Brigade (a more extreme splinter group inside the Citizens Resisting American Perversion), constantly fights her own kinky fantasies.

Of course, given that this book has a happy ending—she ultimately learns to embrace her inner submissive!

Here’s the excerpt in which we first meet the delectable and conflicted Patty.

“Lock ‘em up, lock ‘em up!”

The TV footage of the righteous crowd besieging the convention center entrance filled Patty with pride. This had to be one of C.R.A.P’s most successful actions ever. Police armed with shields held back the protesters, creating a gauntlet through which other officers escorted the attendees and vendors exiting the facility. Looking harried and scared, the perverts flinched away from the taunts and the occasional rotten vegetable as they scrambled toward buses waiting outside the perimeter. It served them right. Maybe the experience would make them change their ways.

Patty caught a glimpse of her father, standing with a mic on a flat bed truck, leading the chants. In his tailored suit and white Stetson hat, Senator Ernest B. Hastings was rugged and distinguished, a beacon of moral rectitude, a man with a mission. A pity his tactics were so old-fashioned.

The broadcast cut to the buxom anchorwoman, who gazed into the camera with feigned concern. 

 

“We’ve just learned that the Worldwide Pleasure and Lifestyle Exhibition will close this evening, two days ahead of schedule. There are rumors that the organizers plan to sue the city.”

“Whooee!” Jinx and Joey, her two lieutenants, crowed in unison. “We did it! We shut the pervs down.”

“We did indeed,” she answered. “I really appreciate your help, boys.” Jinx had hacked into the convention center management systems to pinpoint the location of the electrical control room. Joey had driven the motorcycle she’d used for her getaway. It had been Patty’s job, though, to infiltrate the building, find the transformers and plant the explosives.

It has been surprisingly easy. Amid the garish costumes and general lewdness of the Fair, nobody had thought twice about stopping a pretty blonde wearing a leather bikini, high heel boots and elbow-length satin gloves.

Her father believed demonstrations by committed citizens would stem the tide of twisted filth washing over America. Patty knew more radical action was needed.

She clicked off the news, then rose to her feet. “You’d better go. The banquet’s at seven, and I’m supposed to give the keynote. I’ve got to shower and get ready.”

Jinx unfolded his skinny limbs from the hotel room couch. He stuck a hand under his military-style fatigues to scratch his belly. “I’m beat,” he said. “Gonna get some shut-eye before the festivities. Unless of course you need s’more help…” His transparent leer made her skin crawl.

“Thanks, but no. You and Joey have done more than enough. See you tonight.”

“Okay, Miss Patty.” Joey scooped up the last two potato chips from the bowl in front of him and crammed them into his mouth, then lumbered after Jinx. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

Patty closed the door behind them with a sigh of relief. She’d deliberately recruited guys who not only possessed the skills she needed, but who were also physically unattractive. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by any weakness of the flesh that might derail her plans. Furthermore, she had to maintain her image as the incorruptible virgin vice-president of Citizens Resisting.

It’s so, so hard sometimes, she thought, as she tossed her own fatigues in the laundry basket. I’ve got desires, like any young woman. But I’ve got to be strong, for Dad – and for Mom…

Want more? Get your copy of Babes in Bondage today!

Kinky Literature – https://www.kinkyliterature.com/book/4255-babes-in-bondage-vegas-babes-book-5/

Amazon US – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZNSS576

Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZNSS576

Smashwords – https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/988144

Barnes and Noble – https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/babes-in-bondage-lisabet-sarai/1134430382?ean=2940163375479

Kobo – https://www.kobo.com/th/en/ebook/babes-in-bondage-vegas-babes-book-5

Add on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48643050-babes-in-bondage

Thoughtcrime - #censorship #fantasy #taboos #1984

In January, I released the third book in my Vegas Babes erotica series, Sin City Sweethearts. This no-holds-barred erotic romp features a pair of fraternal twins, Marcie and Maddy, who come to Las Vegas to attend university and to escape from their overprotective family. They move into the apartment below Annie and Ted, a slightly older, recently married couple who have an open relationship. Annie and Ted undertake to initiate the two newcomers into the hedonistic, carnally-permissive lifestyle of Sin City. Needless to say, the twins are eager and attentive pupils who take their lessons to extremes even Annie and Ted didn’t predict.

In self-publishing this tale, I used the procedure I’ve adopted recently, setting the book up as a pre-order on both Amazon and Smashwords. This tactic means that by the time release day rolls around, the book will have purchase links on all the third-party platforms to which Smashwords distributes, such as BN and Kobo. In the past this has always worked like a charm.

With this book, though, I ran into problems, specifically with Kobo. On release day, more than a week after I submitted the book, there was no trace of the title on Kobo. I waited for another week. Still no Kobo link. Finally, I sent a support request to Smashwords.

I got a prompt and courteous response promising to investigate. After a couple of rounds of emails, I got the answer: Kobo had rejected my book because it violated their content standards.

What? I pointed out that the two previous volumes of the series, which are just as explicit, were available on the Kobo platform. The diligent customer service rep from Smashwords dug further and came back with the news that the following lines had caused the book to be banned:

"Holy Shit! Was Marcie licking her own sister? That thought, along with the blonde's oral talents, pushed the ignition button."

Apparently this was considered as breaking their rule against depiction of incest.

Note that there is no actual incest going on in this scene. Ted has Maddy sitting on his lap, bouncing up and down on his cock. Here’s the context, the paragraph preceding the offending sentences:

“Argh…” he sputtered. The sensation was almost too intense. Marce backed off a bit, letting him breathe. When Maddy raised her body off his shaft, Marcella swiped her tongue along the exposed length. He arched up to bury himself in the brunette’s juicy passage. The blonde’s daring tongue followed, keeping contact with his rod until it was completely hidden in Maddy’s cleft.

In short, Sin City Sweethearts was banned from Kobo because one of the characters was thinking about incest, and finding that thought arousing.

We’ve apparently reached the state described in George Orwell’s 1984, where merely thinking about forbidden things is considered a crime.

Arousal begins in the mind. Imagination is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Our characters’ sexual journeys originate in their fantasies, before they take any action. If Kobo’s rules were consistently applied, our characters’ hottest, most taboo fantasies would become unpublishable. This includes not only incest fantasies but also rape fantasies, golden showers, enemas, fantasies about dogs or horses...

After twenty years in the business, I still don’t understand the double standards that govern sexually explicit fiction as opposed to other fiction. If authors can write about murder, terrorism or war, why the special rules for sexual activities? But even if I’m willing to exclude some categories of sex acts from my stories (and there are some actions I’d be loathe to write about), must I censor my characters thoughts as well?

I suppose that Kobo might argue that there is no distinction in fiction between real actions and character fantasies, in that both exist only in the imagination of the author and the reader. I think this is wrong-headed. In reality, and in fiction, humans have control over what they do, but not what they think. If I’m attracted to my brother, I’m not going to do or say anything to reveal this situation, but that doesn’t make the attraction disappear.

In 1984, the supposed antidote to “thoughtcrime” is called “crimestop”.

The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak.

He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions—'the Party says the earth is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water'—and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them.

My brother is not attractive. I don’t find that horse’s schlong arousing. I have no interest in watching two eighteen year old sisters pleasure one another.

Doesn’t seem to work for me...

The rep at Kobo suggested that they’d reconsider their decision if I modified the offending line. I thought about it. It’s not as though my sales are so high that I can afford to forgo listing on a popular platform. Indeed, I’ve been buying many ebooks for my own consumption from Kobo. I find their interface, their policies and their service far superior to the Mighty Zon.

Ultimately, though, I balked at the notion. I’m not willing to participate in this ridiculousness.

So you can buy Vegas Babes Books 1, 2 and 4 on Kobo, but not Book 3. I do hope some eager readers will bug them about this inconsistency.

O Pioneers! (#censorship #pornography #literature)

I've been publishing books about sex, including sexual activities that many people consider profoundly deviant, for more than fifteen years. So far, no one has given me any trouble. No jackbooted feet kicking in my door. No placard-waving fanatics protesting in front of my house. It's true that I carefully guard my anonymity, maintaining as strict a separation as I can between my writerly personna and my more prosaic day-to-day identity. Still, if someone wanted to unmask me, I don't doubt that it would be possible.

Maybe if I were more popular, I'd be more of a target. As it is, I feel moderately confident that I can continue to quietly pen my dirty stories (storing them on an encrypted drive, just to be on the safe side) and sell them to publishers without being ostracized by my neighbors, losing my job, or being hauled off to jail.

It wasn't always like this.

My contemporaries and I like to believe we are in some sense pioneers by writing openly about sex. The true pioneers, however, were the authors who fought to publish sexually-explicit work in the first half of the twentieth century, giants like D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Pauline Réage, and James Joyce. All of them faced legal battles against forces who wanted to ban their work because of its sexual content. Avant-garde publishers like Barney Rosset and Maurice Girodias circled the wagons and defended their authors against charges of obscenity (though perhaps with as much of an eye toward notoriety-inspired sales as for moral principle). Gradually, these trials led to a grudging acceptance of sexually-oriented fiction as a legitimate form of literary expression, at least in most Western countries.

Perhaps, however, I am being overly complacent, believing that these battles are in the past. Certainly, individuals continue to be harassed and discriminated against if they engage in sexual practices that are considered "abnormal" [http://www.revisef65.org/discrimination.html]. The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2003 [http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/ind/PORNOGRAPHY.Public_opinion.1.html] reports that more than 38% of the U.S.population favors the existence of laws forbidding the distribution of pornography to adults and that this percentage has fallen only slightly between 1987 and 2002. Calls for censorship of the Internet are raised with increasing frequency and ferocity. I spent several hours on-line searching for authoritative data about societal attitudes regarding pornography but found only emotional diatribes and pseudo-statistics from both sides of the issue.

I did find an interesting scientific report on a survey taken in a mid-American city. The majority of respondents in this study thought that pornography was acceptable and should be legally available to adults. However, the people who voiced this pro-porn opinion believed that they were in the minority. Likewise, the minority who thought that porn should be banned were convinced that they held the majority opinion.

In short, you may support sexually-explicit entertainment, but you feel like an outlaw.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this argument. I personally don't feel that I'm taking risks or pushing boundaries in my work. Lately I've been writing more M/M erotica and erotic romance. It takes a deliberate effort for me to remember that many individuals regard homosexual relationships as an abomination. For me, men fucking men is more or less natural—maybe even more natural than being bound or spanked. Sex is sex, and variety is the spice of life. Very little of what I write feels particularly daring or transgressive.

I don't write for political reasons. I write to entertain my readers and myself. I would love to believe that my work is striking a blow for freedom of expression, striking down barriers, opening doors, but I strongly suspect that it is not. Those who read my work already appreciate erotic literature. I'm preaching to the converted. Embedded in a community of authors whose work is as sexually charged as my own, I find it difficult to comprehend that I may be engaged in activities that some view as immoral or illegal.

On the other hand, if the unthinkable occurred—if my website were shut down because of its prurient content or my books were banned, if I started to receive hate letters or the police seized my computer—I'd fight back. I don't know if my writing provides any societal benefits beyond recreation, but I am certain that it does no harm. And it is my right—perhaps even my responsibility—to express myself, to share with the world (or whatever segment is interested) my vivid, visceral, polymorphously perverse visions.

Who Decides What You Read?

If you're reading this blog, you're most likely someone who, like me, loves the written word. The typical reader of erotic romance consumes dozens of books per month. The advent of ebooks has made it easier and cheaper than ever for us to feed our addiction to reading. Hop over to Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, or All Romance Ebooks, or Smashwords, and in minutes you can be opening the latest scorcher from your favorite author. What a fantastic system!

In the last two weeks, though, we authors have been confronted with the darker side of this publishing revolution. Author-oriented lists and blogs have been filled with frantic, frightened, angry commentary regarding PayPal's recent ultimata to independent bookseller sites. I'm really not sure, though, how much visibility this issue has gotten among readers.

The situation in a nutshell is this. PayPal is trying to decide what you may and may not read, by restricting the content its customers may offer for sale.

Booksellers like ARE and Smashwords depend heavily on PayPal - not only to handle customer sales but also to pay royalties to authors and publishing companies. PayPal has threatened to cut off service to these enterprises unless they remove from their virtual shelves all books with the following categories of content:

1. Incest, including sexual relationships between distant relatives such as cousins, unrelated individuals like step siblings, and also "pseudo incest", that is, role play in which the partners are not related but are pretending to enact an incestuous relationship
2. Sexual activity involving "apparently" underage characters, including pretty much any story that includes a couple in which one member is a teenager of legal age but the other is significantly older
3. Bestiality (sexual activity involving animals) including sexual acts in shape-shifter books if the shape-shifter is in shifted form
4. BDSM stories about rape fantasies or role-playing, even when the submission is actually consensual.

Now, you may not personally like to read some of these categories of erotic content. However, some readers do. You may argue that PayPal is only enforcing the law, but in fact these definitions of prohibited content go far beyond what is illegal, forbidding fantasy as well as completely legal activities such as BDSM. In any case, nobody is trying to stop the sale of murder mysteries, despite the obviously illegal acts they describe. No, this action targets erotic sexual material only.

Many authors are screaming "Censorship!", with good reason - but since PayPal is a private company, with a commercial relationship to the booksellers involved, they cannot be accused of violating free speech protections. Well, they can be accused (and have been), but most commentators agree that there's no possible legal grounds for attacking these policies.

You may shrug your shoulders here, saying, "Who cares? I don't like this kind of book anyway. Maybe this sort of content should be treated as obscene." But wait: will you still feel this way if PayPal decides that M/M sex is a no-no? How about ménage? Or even sex between a man and a woman who aren't married?

"That will never happen," you may say. Think about the virulent opposition in some quarters to gay marriage. Remember the "amazonfail" incident, where Amazon systematically purged GLBT content? I'll wager even money that if PayPal gets away with this ultimatum, we'll see a ban on homosexual content within twelve months.

Am I making you a bit worried? You should be. PayPal and the conservative forces behind it want to decide what you can and cannot read, based on their definitions of what is appropriate. Sweet romance will probably survive, but if this trend continues, erotic romance is likely to become a lot tamer - or maybe disappear entirely.

However, you have some power to influence this situation. You're the reader, the buyer, the one who's money greases the wheels of the huge ebook publishing industry. Speak up! Tell your favorite bookseller that you, not PayPal, should be the one who specifies your reading list. Contact your legislators and express your concerns. Contact PayPal and tell them you're an adult; you can decide for yourself what to read. You don't need them to babysit or protect you.

And share news about this situation with other readers. Post a link to this blog on your Facebook page, or link to the open letters from the National Coalition Against Censorship or the Electronic Freedom Foundation, both of which offer well-written rebuttals to the notion that PayPal's action is defensible. Tweet, blog, make noise! Help make PayPal realize how hugely unpopular this policy is, and how much it will cost them and their customers.

You'll see other authors blogging about how this is the first step toward a police state, with total control over the media. They may be right. As far as I'm concerned, this first step is bad enough. Nobody should have the right to control what I read. And that's true for you, too.

Life Without Wikipedia

By now, if you haven't been living under a rock, you know about yesterday's protest against SOPA, the anti-piracy bill currently being considered by the U.S. Wikipedia, YouTube, Reddit, and many other popular sites either shut down or organized protests and teach-ins against the bill. And the U.S. government, incredibly, is taking notice.

This post is not about SOPA. You can find far more authoritative columns than mine about the problems with the proposed legislation, pretty much anywhere right now. No, I'm considering what life would be like Wikipedia were permanently shut down.

It's a scary thought.

When I was growing up, we had a twenty volume set of the Encyclopedia Americana. I spent many happy hours pouring through its pages. By the time I inherited the massive set, though, it was sadly out of date. After all, my parents had bought it the year I was born. (They obviously realized they'd spawned an egghead and bookworm!) I still held on to it for the sake of nostalgia, as well as for the historical articles that (mostly) were still accurate.

When my husband and I sold our house and moved to Asia, the encyclopedia was one of the many possessions we jettisoned. Of course we didn't replace it - we don't have children ourselves, and in any case, there's always the Internet - right?

At one point I swore that I wouldn't get dependent on the 'net. Alas, that's one vow I haven't been able to keep, though perhaps my addiction is less serious than some people. I probably check facts in Wikipedia a couple times a day. It's not at all unusual for my husband and I to raise some point of dispute over dinner, and for one of us to run off to our home office to consult the online authorities. I've been known to get out of bed, just out of curiosity, to refresh my memory about something or to dig just a bit deeper with regard to whatever I'm currently reading.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia is often my starting point for researching my stories. I spent days reading multiple articles about Varanasi, Parvati, and Shiva before writing my succubus story "Naked in Varanasi". I used Wikipedia extensively for research on the Mayans, while working on "Serpent's Kiss". And I'll often flip over to the site to look for photos of historical costumes, or maps of places where my book is set, or a million other little details.

What would I do if the site went dark? Well, obviously there are other sources of information on the Internet, some of them probably more authoritative, but a lot harder to find, I'll bet. Anyway, if Wikipedia were silenced by government legislation, lots of other sites would likely be affected too. Censorship has a way of spreading - like cancer. And the thing about SOPA is that it allows anyone to complain that your site infringes copyrights and force you off the 'net.

Hmm. I have no doubt that many people don't approve of what I write, considering it wicked, perverted, obscene, even criminal. What would it take for them to shut down my website or blog, if SOPA became law?

Not much, I gather. Which is a chilling notion. Without an online presence, an author today might as well not even exist.

Even if Wikipedia's still around, my site may not be.

I guess this post is about SOPA after all.