Remittance Girl's Blog, page 35

First they came for the erotica writers : PayPal as censor | Remittance Girl | Blog Post | Red Room

First they came for the erotica writers : PayPal as censor | Remittance Girl | Blog Post | Red Room.

Call For Submissions: Transgressive Erotica

This is quoted directly from the blog, by Eden Connor:

Transgressive erotica is being targeted.

Corporate entities seek to suppress legal content. To limit where your imagination may go, and which piece of plastic your reader may use in order to follow.

The 'Great Smut Purge of 2012′, instigated by corporate morality, has caused vendors to pull legal content from their digital shelves. There indeed may be titles among them with no redeeming value, titles that cross the line between legal content and illegal content. But shelved next to those are stories of merit and value, employing the same transgressional themes.

Like Lolita. Like The Beauty Series by Anne Rice. Like many of the 'classics which have inspired you.

Like yours.

The challenge:

Transgress.

Write a story using any transgressional theme you choose.

Get as gritty as you need to to grind down to the pure truth of human sexuality embedded in your story.

Show the critics and moralists why your sub-genre deserves amnesty.

There will be no word limit. Any length story will be considered.

But make each word count.

Deadline for submission: May 28th, 2012.

Publisher: TBD

All authors with accepted stories will be asked to collaborate on title and cover art.

I think this is an exceptional challenge. Please consider submitting for it. It is incredibly important to be able to show the world that writing on transgressive themes is more than simply a tactic for a quick sale or a literary shock.

At its core, the power of good literature lies in its ability to take something we thought we knew about, something we thought we really understood, and challenge us to look again.

Themes such as bestiality, incest, rape and underage sex haunt the dark spaces of our culture and our minds. Often these are subjects that terrify and disgust us.  In the attics of our minds, these things grow into monsters, accreted other meanings, take on heavy semiotic cloaks. When we look at the things that scare and disgust us, we learn about ourselves and who we are more fully.

Please consider submitting a masterpiece for this one. Transgressive Erotica Call for Submissions.

Eden Connor's Dirty Mind vs Debit Card Series #censorship #paypal #erotica

In March, Eden Connor began an creative and eloquent response to the PayPal book banning issue. She has invited a number of writers, affected by the ban, to talk about who they are, what they write and why they write it.

Although none of us feel that a writer should have to justify why they write what they write, I believe this sort of series gives readers and others on the fence in the 'obscenity' ban issue some insight into why this type of censorship works to impoverish the landscape of women writing for women.

Here's the interview with me, regarding my banned book Gaijin.

 

The Night That Frank Scored #shortstory #erotica

If Frank had kept his eyes open while his cock erupted into the wickedly tight passage of the pretty little thing flattened beneath him, he would have seen her pupils dilate and her irises momentarily change from their charming blue to a bilious yellow. But he was too busy coming.

Frank liked blue, so that's what she wore. Usually hers where wholly obsidian with tiny white pupils and situated rather differently. In fact, Endymia's face was far stranger than the one she was showing Frank. But when she had read his mind, it was clear that Frank suffered, like so many other humans, from an addiction to cliché. He thought blue eyes were sincere and non-threatening.

He was wondering, as he pulled his spent and shrunken cock out of her pert body, why he felt overcome with exhaustion. It was deeply unfair that, having actually scored the sort of hottie he had previously written off as unattainable, he was going to perpetuate the ultimate unforgivable faux pas and fall asleep.

Endymia patted him on the thigh as he settled onto his back.  "Never mind."

She had, after all, got what she wanted. Even as Frank's first porcine snore emerged from his snout-shaped nose, her body was absorbing and breaking down the generous sticky deposit he had left inside her.  Proteins were being re-chained and transported, molecules broken apart to release their energy and feed her insatiable engine.

She got to enjoy her moment of ecstasy in the privacy of Frank's oblivion.  Thick essence, free now of all impurities, streamed into her highly specialized circulatory system. As it hit her version of a cerebral cortex, she arched her back and hissed at the hit of pleasure.

He smelled of beer. It was coming through his pores. In the greenish light of the street lamp, which leaked through the cheap, woven motel curtains, she watched the pale wick of his cock curl almost snail-like into the flabby lea of his overhanging gut.

What Endymia had seen when she invaded his skull was an overwhelming sense of doubt about his virility. It was mostly born of his homophobic reluctance to look at anyone's cock other than his own and a monotonous penchant for quantity-over-quality style porn.

Frank was dreaming now. Viscous threads of imagery tugged at her senses.

She was down on her knees, blue eyes wide and gazing up adoringly as she licked her lips and swallowed the head of his cock.

The warm rush of his dream pleasure spilled over. Endymia smiled.  She didn't share the same erotic responses as humans, but she'd grown to appreciate how pliant it made them.  For her, reproduction was a rhizomatic affair that had far more to do with soil temperature.  Still, she got her pleasure from consumption; they had that much in common at least.

Beside her, Frank's dream took an interesting detour. She was still on her knees, pert and cheerleaderesque, but her jaw had unhinged and his cock, now truly swallowed, had only been the appetizer.  The main course was his belly. Her lips peeled back to reveal a circular whorl of serrated teeth. They fastened onto his abdomen and…

Whoops! A bit of psychic backwash there.

Humans never ceased to fascinate Endymia. They weren't just food. They were amusing, too. She would go along for centuries thinking of them as little more than a herd of unruly milk cows and then, suddenly, one of them would show an unexpected and uncanny sensitivity. Only the rarest had any inkling of what lay beyond the visible realm of their everyday world.  She regretted never having had the pleasure of feeding on William Shakespeare, but she'd had Nils Bohr several times and he had been delicious.

Who would have guessed that pudgy old Frank had a sensitive bone in his body?

With a mixture of mild curiosity and queasy trepidation, Endymia dipped back into his mind only to find herself, still dressed as a cheerleader, gorging herself on his upper bowels and spleen.

Why were they all so damn literal? And so detailed?

He certainly wasn't having fun any more. His legs jerked and twitched. His heart thundered along like a Camaro with 4 flat tires. The veins stood up along his forearms and his hands were balled into desperate fists. His sweat dampened the sheets beneath him as if he were attempting to flush the nightmare out through his pores along with an excess of Coors.

Most humans never dreamed after she'd had her way with them. They usually collapsed into a groggy, semi-catatonic state until their bodies burned the necessary blood sugar to put them back on an even keel. They woke up alone, smug and unexpectedly ravenous.  But due to what she was almost certain was a minor thyroid problem, poor Frank was dreaming of disembowelment.

In Frank, Endymia could sense no feelings of hostility or bitterness towards her as her dream incarnation began gnawing on a lower rib.  There was only a resigned sadness at the realization that he should have known better than to think he could attract someone as beautiful as Endymia.

Oh, for fuck's sake! He wasn't THAT bad, she thought. She'd fed quite happily on humans with far more flaws. There wasn't anything irredeemably wrong with Frank.  Nothing that a little medication, exposure to literature and a wider range of people couldn't cure.

"Wake up!" she said, poking one chubby man breast to bring him to the surface.

He surfaced with a full-body jolt.

"Wha… I'm awake. I'm awake!" he muttered, as if he'd been caught committing some embarrassing indiscretion.

As he stuttered and blinked into the half-light, Endymia let her façade drop. Her skin lost its rosy blush and her face morphed into its truer, more reptilian state.  Her forward-facing eyes drifted back towards the sides of her head and the pupils resumed their natural goat-like shape.

She straddled his hips, the rough texture of the scaled skin rasping over his pink, sweaty flanks. She lashed her long, whip-like tail across his bare legs once, smartly, in an effort to claim his focus. It worked

"Oh, Lord. Oh, fuck. Jesus… Jesus…' Frank wailed, calling upon all sorts of mythical personages in his panic. He  struggled and bucked beneath her for a while, which amused Endymia enough to laugh. Not that Frank could tell it was a laugh. To him it sounded more like a snake inhaling a baby chicken. When it became obvious he was not going to be able to dislodge her, he made a whinnying sound and voided his bladder. The hot gush of liquid puddled around Endymia's bent knees.

"Hush up, Frank," she said matter-of-factly, bending over him, letting him have a good look at her inhuman form.

He gave another, sharper wail, like a newborn puppy being stepped on.

"Shut up. Stop whining!" Endymia snapped. "I'm going to do you the favour of a lifetime."

"Don't eat me. Oh, GOD, don't eat me!"

"Eat you?" The thought made her shudder in disgust. "Are you crazy?"

This, had she considered it for a moment, was an unfair question. But she was a sentient creature herself, with feelings and just as much dignity as any other. "Don't be disgusting!"

With one long-talonned forepaw, she grasped his chin and forced him to look at her. "Are you going to listen?"

Frank swallowed between strangled, desperate gulps of air.  He nodded.

"I mean it Frank. Are you listening?"

"Yup."

"Good. " She sat back on his hips and took a cleansing breath before beginning. "There's absolutely nothing wrong with the size of your cock, Frank. I know that's what's bothering you. But it's perfectly normal.  Your endurance is for shit though. You might consider a regime of 20 minutes of cardio three times a week.  It would help a lot. "

He stared up at her. Speechless.

"Also, next time you hit the men's room, you might consider sneaking a peek at some of the other males of your species.  If you're basing your survey of the male reproductive organ on the stuff they're sporting in porn… well… " Endymia shrugged. "The scale's all wrong. Believe me."

Endymia could see she was getting through to him, even if only a little. Frank swallowed against his dry throat, making it a noisy affair.

"Yeah?"

"Yup."

Caught up in the role of temporary truth-teller, Endymia was beginning to enjoy it. "Oh, and you might consider reading more. Not the shit you read. Sports Illustrated does not give you a rounded view of the world, Frank. It really doesn't. Try a novel. Maybe Dan Delilo?"

"Dan..who?"

She checked herself then and reconsidered. "Well, okay. You could start off with someone a little less challenging. Steven King? Reading really does expand your horizons, you know. And, maybe take a few trips somewhere. Ghana, Morocco, Greece…"

"What's Gana?"

Endymia waved his question aside. "Even Mexico. It's big wide world, you know. Try some sushi."

It seemed absurd, considering the situation, but the suggestion of raw fish actually prompted a sound of disgust from Frank. As if the demon sitting on his chest and the puddle of piss he was sitting in wasn't enough.

The urine soaked sheets beneath him were turning clammy.  "Uh… anything else?"

Endymia thought for a moment, rolling her goat-eyes up into her head. She was well aware this was disconcerting to look at, but it helped her order her thoughts, particularly after a large meal.

"Oh! And get your thyroid checked, tubby."

"What?"

"Well, you eat crap, drink too much beer and do absolutely no exercise. But that's not what is causing this," she said, landing an ungentle slap on his belly. The rounded pyramid of fat jiggled like a jelly mold.

"Ow!"

She laughed a wheezing hiss. "I can smell it in your blood. Something's wrong. Just take my advice and get it checked. They can fix stuff like that nowadays."

Feeling that she'd been more than charitable to someone who had originally been nothing but an energy snack to her, she climbed off him, wrinkling her nose at the scent of his accident.

Only once the succubus was hunting through the scattered clothes on the motel floor, did she notice the full weight of his humiliation.  He tried to kick away the wet sheets and prop himself up on his elbows.

"I should have known you were too good to be true," he said. There was the same sad resignation to his words as she sensed in his dream. "First time I get laid in two and a half years, and I end up pissing myself with an extra-terrestrial." He shook his head at what Endymia assumed was his perception of the unfairness of it all. "You sure got a fine set of titties on you, even if you are an alien."

Endymia, who had managed to find her slinky purple and turquoise dress and was struggling a little with zipping up the back, glared at him. "I'm not an alien, you cretin. I belong on this earth just as much as you do. Probably more. I've been here a lot longer."

Frank looked abashed. It was clear he hadn't considered her feelings at all. " Uh… pardon me. I didn't mean to…"

She was at the door, pulling it wide to let in the night's humid air and a view of the badly lit forecourt of the motel.  One again in her human-friendly form, she glanced back at the vulnerable human on the bed. "You know, Frank. You can stop being an asshole anytime you like. It's not genetic."

As she walked out into the darkness, the crickets stilled in the wake of her five-inch fuck-me pumps as they clicked on the asphalt.

Frank scrambled off the bed, grunting as he fought to disentangle his legs from the sodden sheets. He half-tumbled, half-launched himself towards the motel room's open door.

"Hey!" he called out into the night. "Can I get your number?"

But there was no one there and nothing but the drone of passing cars on the state highway in the distance.

Defending the Indefensible: Bestiality in Erotica #censorship #erotica #paypal

…if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.

Why defend freedom of icky speech? Neil Gaiman, 2008

This week, I've seen a lot of authors, publishers and others turn on their own kind. I've read a lot of statements that look like this: 'I'm all for free speech, but PayPal is doing the internet a favor by banning this disgusting crap."

Today, I decided to approach this from a different angle. I don't have too hard a time defending the validity of most of what PayPal has decided it won't process sales on. Like Mark Coker, I really can't see what is particularly obscene about fictional descriptions of incest. Unlike Mark, I find it very easy to defend fictional rape in erotica. Probably because I have, on several occasions, written it. I find the ban on under-age sex very problematic. At a gut level, I find the concept of sexualizing children, even fictionally, very disturbing. On the other hand, this blanket ban also precludes perfectly defensible coming of age stories. It puts YA writers in a position where they cannot write about adolescent sexual experience – which pretty much means they aren't able to address the real-world experience of being an adolescent in their fiction.

For me, fictional bestiality is by far the no-go area I have most problems with. It's a gut level thing for me. I am just so utterly squicked out by the idea of sex with animals, I find it hard to assess it rationally.

So, because I believe that NO fiction should ever be banned, or put beyond the reach of grown up readers willing to read, I have set myself the challenge of justifying why I think that even the fictional taboo I personally have the most problems with, should be available to willing readers.

These days, the vast majority of erotic fiction that contains the taboo of bestiality comes in the form of were-animal erotica. There are probably a number of authors who write these books who are mortified to think they're even writing bestiality at all.  But I want to examine the history of the ways in which we have represented congress with animals and why we do it.

The folklore, mythologies and religions of many cultures have represented sexual intercourse between animals and humans.

In Hindu mythology, humans are portrayed as having sex with animals. These animals are believed to be earthly incarnations of gods. (Bestiality and Zoophilia: Sexual Relations with Animals). This is also the case for many Native American, Canadian and Inuit tribes all have tales of humans marrying animals. These are spirit animals, and congress with them was believed to afford the lover a foot in both the material world and the spiritual one. (Studies in the Psychology of Sex). Many Aboriginal peoples are proud to consider themselves the descendents of these pairings.

Greek and Roman concepts of bestiality or zoophilia have their roots in the cult of Dionysus, in which orgiastic behaviour was seen as a way for man to transcend the earthly plane in a state of ecstacy. (The shadow of Dionysus: a contribution to the sociology of the orgy).

Mythology has it that seven unwed maidens as year were sent to the Minotaur for his feast. One assumes that their 'maiden' state was important to the whole event. He apparently consumed their virtue, and then consumed them.

Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan, seduced her (or raped her, depending on the version) and she bore him two children, Helen and Polydeuces. The pictorial versions of it we see today are from the Renaissance, and it is generally believed that this is when the story became eroticized.

The Lamia are supernatural snake-tailed women, who seduce young men and feed on their blood. I once did write a story about them.

Dream of the Fisherman's Wife by Hosukai

Asia also has its share of zoophilic mythology.  A particularly popular one is depicted by Hosukai in the famous woodcut 'Dream of the Fisherman's Wife' and has evolved into the meme we know today as 'tentacle sex'. Oh, wait, I also wrote one of these.

And, of course, we must come to fairy tales. The Beauty and the Beast is a particularly interesting one. There really can be no 'Beauty' without its opposite.

Most of these exemplars of ritual and mythological bestiality have something in common. They are about a type of sexual ecstasy that becomes transcendent of the specifically human world. It is about man entering a magical realm with the aid of an animal.

I suspect that these stories of the past, just like the were-animal erotica of the present, are using the metaphor of congress with beasts to examine two things: man's relationship with the natural world and man's acknowledgement of the animal within himself.

Just writing this post, I realized that I have also written stories that have bestiality in them. If I count lamias and sushi. And you know what? I was surprised. But I think they are both worthwhile stories.

Hey! you say. Most of these books are just about women 'doing' dogs. Well, that may be true. And personally, I won't indulge in those particular literary masterpieces myself, but if you ban them, you will also be banning some very interesting and enlightening explorations of who we are and how we separate ourselves from the rest of the species on our planet.

One of the strongest recurring elements in modern erotic were-fiction is the longing for sexual experience past the cool web of civility.  And yes, it is often represented with the characters in their human form, but actually, it is incidences of when it is represented with the were-being in beast form that both the taboo and the heat really arise.  Because animals don't 'behave' or have human laws to bind them. They are driven by instinct, just as we are. I think they are all simply incarnations of us, fictionally torn apart into the rational and intellectual side of ourselves, and the other, instinctual, non-rational side.

As humans, we tell stories to each other in very complex ways. Not all stories are for all ears. But we really need to learn to respect the way we tell each other.  Otherwise, one day, we will wake up to a world that has no stories at all.

Why We Write What We Write and Why PayPal Should Butt Out #censorship #erotica

Please hop on over to the very lovely Eden Connor's blog and read her series of interviews with banned authors.

I am honoured to be the very first of them. Dirty Mind vs. The Debit Card.

What I'd like you to do, if you are an author of a banned book, is consider writing about why you write what you write. I am not asking you to defend your reasons, just to give your rationale. I think this is important to show people that we really do THINK about what we write. We have good and rational reasons for it.

 

A Dialogue: Visu & Playpal #censorship #erotica

Setting: A darkened room. Two voices on a crackling telephone line

Playpal: You want us to do what?

Visu: Stop processing payments on those disgusting novels. Not the nice ones. The really raunchy ones, you know?

Playpal: Er… raunchy in what way?

Visu: You know! The disgusting ones. With the incest and the bestiality and the sexy rape scenes. Those ones.

Playpal: Um… Like Oedipus?

Visu: Did you just say 'Eat A Puss'? What the hell's gotten into you?

Playpal: No… Oedipus. The Classical Greek play by Sophocles.

Visu: Suffocate…nah, we don't want any of that kinky stuff either.

Playpal: You realize, this is going to make us look really stupid. I mean…. Freud practically based the whole of psychoanalysis on it. The play is considered a literary classic.

Visu: Exactly! Fucking perv. Anyway, get rid of it.

Playpal: What about Nabokov?

Visu: Look, you can nab whatever cocks you want in private. Just stop those damn books. I found my wife with one of them. I'm not competing with that filth for my wife's attentions!

Playpal: Um… exactly what kind of book was it, sir?

Visu: Don't call me 'sir', you know that gets me hard.

Playpal: I mean, describe the book.

Visu: It was on her kindle. It had a scantily dressed woman in the arms of a werewolf on the cover.

Playpal: Oh, THOSE kinds of books. That's erotica, sir.

Visu: Whatever. Just STOP those motherfuckers. She wants me to do her on all fours while howling now. This shit is ruining my marriage!

Playpal: That's unfortunate. Well, that's definitely going to be a lot easier.

Visu: Why's that?

Playpal: Well, no one is going to stick up for writers who write that kind of stuff. And anyone who reads it is too ashamed to admit they do.

Visu: Excellent! Excellent. Er… meanwhile…

Playpal: Yes, sir?

Visu: Do any of those online stores you deal with sell furry gorilla suits?

Playpal: I'm sure someone does. I'll get right on it.

Visu: I need one with a hole for my dick to stick out.

Playpal: You may have to cut that hole yourself, sir.

Visu: Why's that?

Playpal: The last online store to sell those sorts of sex costumes went under.

Visu: Really? Why?

Playpal: We cut off their transaction privileges and froze their account.

 

Erotica Writers: Be Passionate but Be Careful with your Facts #paypal #censorship #erotica

I am overwhelmed and delighted to see the gloriously spirited and passionate response to the PayPal censorship issue. It's good to see so many writers of all stripes blogging so eloquently about this issue.

However, there is something that is disturbing me. I'm seeing a lot of  understandable but er… careless wording. This is not going to help our cause. It makes us look like we don't know what we're talking about. It allows assholes to paint us as hysterical, over-dramatic 'girls'. And that makes us easier to ignore.

US Law does guarantee its citizens the right to free speech. It guarantees the right to publish that 'speech' in the public sphere. It doesn't, however, guarantee anyone the right to make a living out of it. There is a distinction here – a fine one, to be sure – but it is significant.

For the non-Americans among us, freedom of expression is guaranteed under international and national human rights law and is included as part of the European Convention on Human Rights and, in Africa, under the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.

Another reason to be precise with language is that it is easy and in the interests of supporters of this type of censorship to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction. It is important to be clear that fictional, textual descriptions of criminality are NOT crimes in themselves, nor are they in any way incitement to commit crimes. Portraying a fictional werewolf having sex in beast form does no more to encourage bestiality than murder mystery novels or thrillers encourage murder or terrorism.

PayPal's decision to refuse to process the sales of erotica ebooks containing certain types of taboo content is not illegal. It's not a violation of your right to free speech. Corporations are not government entities (although, god knows, you'd think some of them are, these days) and, so although they cannot stop you from writing whatever you wish to write, they can indeed refuse to sell it, or be a party to the selling process, the way PayPal is.

They are most definitely unethical, since they have a TOS that they apply very unequally. They are very probably terrible hypocrites, since they certainly aren't about to stop selling non-erotica books that contain the exact same content they say the won't process in ours. And it seems to be increasingly clear, from the time they cut off Wikileaks, to their refusal to process the sale of Cuban cigars in Germany, to this latest idiocy, that they are a company clearly driven by a political/moralistic agenda. Finally, they are probably liars. Since one of their arguments for not wanting to process these works is that the charge-back rates are too high. There is every likelihood that this is the case on pornsites and online sex services, but I would like to see the numbers on charge-backs before I accept their word. My guess is that the charge-back rate on 'problematic' ebooks is no higher or lower, book for book, than it is on other ebooks.

The second thing I'd like you to consider is that although this state of affairs affects writers economically, there are relatively few of us. Who it hurts most, by far, are readers who should have a reasonable expectation of having the freedom to choose what they want to read and how, within the bounds of law, to spend their money.

It is very easy to make this about us – the writers. But please be rational about this. It is not easy to find people, especially influential people, who are going to be willing to stand up and defend a group of writers who dabble in fictional descriptions of incest, bestiality and rape. They should, yes. But they won't.

But the chances are much better that someone will defend the right of grown adults to purchase and read whatever they want and to not have a payment processing company dictate their reading habits to them or, in the case of the credit card companies, price gouge them for reading something transgressive.

Again, please… this is not a criticism of your wonderful, feisty and vibrant posts and comments. This is a plea for us to present ourselves as educated, fair-minded individuals who have a firm grasp on the issues and magnificent pens with which to state our case.

Meanwhile, a few of us feel this thing is better fought as a group than individually, and I have established the blog www.BANNEDWRITERS.com for this purpose. Please feel free to visit and join. I set it up as a clearing house for ideas, strategies and remedies to our dilemma.

I love you all,

RG

 

 

 

 

 

Pragmatic Compromises & The Moral Hazard of Expediency

As you can see, my last post generated a huge number of comments from both readers and writers.  I gave Mark Coker a very rough ride and, to his credit, he responded eloquently and in a very gentlemanly fashion. I want to reiterate that I think Smashwords is a vital, valuable and outstanding site for indie authors. And I am glad it will continue with or without my books on it.

What you don't know is how many emails I received passionately defending Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords. And these defenses came from people I admire greatly, like Alessia Brio and Kitty Thomas. Both these admirable women and brave writers have felt the sting of the PayPal whip.

Many people told me that I was aiming my ire at the wrong person. This is a fair point. Perhaps I did shoot the messenger. But I would have preferred a messenger to come sans their own moral judgements about my work. A neutral stance would have been easier to take.

What you also don't know is that my novel Gaijin has now been removed from Smashwords, and I just received an email from the principal editor of my publisher, Emma Holt at Republica Press, expressing her sorrow in having to do it. More disturbing, I think she and her partner are worn out from the good fight. I'm not sure how much longer my publisher will be in existence.

There are two things, though, I find disturbing:

All this listing of 'banned' subjects obscures the fact that many good novels that include those subjects contain a lot of other worthy writing.  Remember that when a book is pigeonholed for containing underage sex, you need to think of some very classic works: Marguerite Duras' achingly beautiful "The Lover", the stark and surreal "The Tin Drum" by Günter Grass and, of course, the morally haunting "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov. When it comes to eroticized rape, "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess narrates the rape through the eyes of Alex, the rapist. Both I, Claudius and Game of Thrones contain erotic portrayals of incest. Equus is a marvelous, disturbing and multi-award-winning  play by Peter Shaffer involving a boy's erotic obsession with horses.

Of course, PayPal can't refuse to transact sales of these works. They aren't filed under the erotica genre and they are classic works, for the most part.

But it is also worth remembering that few of these authors did not pay a price for writing these works. Most were slammed by the critics, accused of writing obscenities by the mainstream press. Most had a hard time finding publication for these works. Being a good writer who writes about difficult subjects has never been an easy path to walk. And perhaps it should not be.  Imagine how many authors wrote books just like this and lost their nerve, destroyed their manuscripts, could not find the courage to push for their publication? Thousands, I imagine.

What we see today are the tough ones. The brave ones who would not back down.

I could slip Gaijin into the Literary category on eBook stores. But the 'literary' genre does not provide content warnings.  And I need to know I have done the right thing. I need to know that a woman who may be disturbed by the contents of my novel is forewarned.  I do not think I could live with myself if a survivor of rape bought my book, was unprepared for the content and re-traumatized by what I had written. It doesn't matter that the book isn't 'all about rape'. For someone who had experienced real rape, the story may very well appear to be 'all about rape' for them.

I need to remember and accept that doing the right thing has a cost.

But so should circumventing ethics for the sake of expediency. And although I understand pragmatically why AllRomance and Bookstand and Smashwords felt they needed to do what they did,  I'm pretty sure most of them know it was an ethical back-down. And I can't pat them on the back for it. Yes, they did what they had to do, but I'm not going to feel to badly to know it bit at their consciences to do it. And I won't be a party to salving that conscience.

Ultimately the villain here is Paypal and the credit card companies. I don't believe for a moment that the 'charge-back' rates are higher on 'taboo' erotica than it is on any other genre of books. In fact, because they are so well labelled and readers are so informed of the transgressive nature of what they are purchasing, I'd hazard a guess that the charge-back rates are minimal.

So, there are only two explanations left. Either they are pursuing a moralist agenda to rid the world of material they consider should not be allowed in the public sphere OR they are price-gouging customers who are purchasing sexually-explicit content.

If it is the first, then they are, if not legally, then ethically contravening their own constitution. And they are certainly skating very close to laws with govern the abuse of the marketplace by monopolies.

If the second, they are being evil, manipulative and shaming vulnerable customers into coughing up more money because of the socially problematic nature of what they are purchasing. What they are doing is something very close to blackmail.

But we, as a culture, need to take some responsibility for our own victimization. Because if we refused to be shamed for our interest in sexually transgressive literature, or sexually explicit videos, or sex services, it would not be possible to victimize us. As a culture, it is our own inability to shake off the ridiculous veil of shame that surrounds sex that makes us weak and leaves us open to this sort of despicable treatment.

The final thought I've had on this is just how many of the victims of this latest debacle have been women. Women readers, women writers. I know there are some male writers that have also been affected, but the vast majority of us are women. And we are especially socially vulnerable to having our sexuality used against us, to being shamed for our desires, to having our sexual identities decided upon by men. PayPal and the credit card companies may not have thought they were targeting a gender, but they have. The works they have sought to excise overwhelmingly represent the landscape of modern, female sexuality.

I have formally sent a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights, alleging the targeted commercial suppression of women's literature by PayPal on the grounds that it specifically stifles the free speech of a 'persecuted gender grouping'.

Let us see what comes of it. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps something.

Two Legs Bad: An Open Letter to Mark Coker #smashwords #censorship #erotica

[image error] This post is a public response to an email sent by Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, asking all erotic writers to take down any books that contravene their Terms of Service

Dear Mark,

I thank you for taking the time to write all published erotica writers offering their work for sale on Smashwords. I thank you for the effort you took in explaining why Smashwords has decided to allow a plutocracy to determine what is or is not publishable on your groundbreaking and exceptional site.

I applaud your passionate defense of creative freedom amongst erotica writers, as long as it is eroticism that you personally find acceptable.

Let me offer you some thoughts in return for your very generous ones.

First, let us be clear about the law.  There is no legal issue with literary representations of any form of sexuality besides pedophilia. None. You and Paypal may feel morally discomforted by what, in literature, some people find arousing, but let us be clear: fictional, textual depictions of pedophilia are the only content that is specifically prohibited by law. All other forms of explicit material must bear the legal test of containing 'no artistic merit' in order to be considered an 'obscene publication'. As a writer, although I find the standard to be highly subjective, is one I can live with comfortably. My work has literary artistic merit. So let us be clear, since Smashwords has always prohibited the publication of material containing underage sex. This is not a legal decision, it is a moralistic and financial one.

You wrote: "PayPal is requiring Smashwords to immediately begin removing the above-mentioned categories of books."

No, sir. Smashwords is requiring the removal of these books to maintain its relationship with Paypal. Please let us be clear on this. I am sure your aspirations regarding the founding of Smashwords were and are very noble. But it is YOU who have decided to let a financial services provider dictate your TOS and therefore impose censorship on the authors who post their works on your site.

Secondly, you, like so many other people seem to have intellectual difficulty in distinguishing between the textual, fictional representation of something and reality. The language you use in your letter is evidence of a conceptual inability to do so. You are not alone in this: forces within our society who wish to 'protect us' from ourselves have used this blurring of the fictional with the concrete to great effect, whipping people who also can't distinguish the fundamental difference up into froths of moral outrage.

So, although I thoroughly condemn incest, bestiality, rape and necrophilia, I am quite capable of distinguishing between those acts in reality and fictionalized texts that contain descriptions of them. Scenarios played out within the pages of a fictional text are NOT crimes, sir. Although for the last 50 years, scientists with deplorably transparent agendas have sought to prove a link between textual depictions of sexual violence and sex crimes in the real world, they have not succeeded in doing so. In fact, quite the opposite. Cultures that tolerate highly sexualized, graphic depictions of rape, such as Japan, have some of the lowest rates of rape in the world. While countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, with only a debated 67.2% literacy rate, little access to erotic fiction, no significant pornography industry and low internet access, have among the highest incidence of violent rape in the world.

Or, if sexual torture is your concern, it is good to remember that Egypt, with an outright ban on erotic fiction, has the highest rate of female circumcision in the world. And if a clitorectomy doesn't count as sexual torture, I'm not sure what does.

So please do not make a pretense of care for social order or good corporate citizenship. These arguments hold no water and they never have. They have been assumed to have validity by dint of constant and irrational repetition.

Literature has always been the place where humans have been able to safely explore the darker sides of our natures, especially our sexual natures. And although I do not find fiction containing incest, bestiality or necrophilia erotic, I find that as an adult, I can simply choose not to buy or read fiction containing eroticised subjects that I find offensive, or disturbing or amoral.

You, sir, do me a deep disservice by patronizingly assuming I cannot choose my reading material for myself. Yes, you. Like the Church in the Middle Ages who felt women should read nothing but religious texts if anything, like the pseudo-scientists of the Victorian era who warned that Gothic novels were dangerous and  'too unsettling' for a woman's sensibilities. Like the sexist, elitist male literary critics who have so derided the romance novel… You are there, numbered amongst the age-old Masculinist Hegemony who have sought for millenia to prohibited me from finding my personal expression as a writer and as a reader.

Just about now I am sure you are scratching your head and wondering what this has to do with feminism. Well, it may be because the huge majority of erotica writer are women, and so are their readers. Please read on.

You wrote:

Although our Terms of Service prohibits books that advocate violence

against others, we did not specifically identify rape.  This was an oversight

on our part.  Now we have clarified the policy.  We do not want books that contain

rape for the purpose of titillation.  At Smashwords, rape has no longer has a

place in erotica.  It has no place anywhere else if the purpose is to titillate.

 Non-consensual BDSM – or any other form of non-consensual violence against another person – is prohibited.

Fictional depictions of violence do not 'advocate violence', and fictional depictions of rape do not advocate rape. If someone submits a non-fiction text for sale with you, advocating either, I will be the first person to agree that you should not sell it. However, fiction, sir, is FICTION. And although I understand how you, as a male, may be puzzled as to why eroticized fictional depictions of rape are erotic to some women, I am disappointed that you did not think a little more clearly about the matter.

40% of women have non-consensual sexual fantasies. I'm not pulling this figure out of my ass, sir. There is an excellent study (unlike some of the shoddy pseudo-scientific studies seeking to link erotica with sexual violence) by Joseph W. Critelli and Jenny M. Bivona "Women's erotic rape fantasies: an evaluation of theory and research" which estimates that in fact, the numbers are slightly higher.

There have been some intriguing attempts to answer the question of why so many women have these fantasies and a considerable number of feminist critics who have sought to humiliate the women who have them, but nonetheless, for whatever reason, we do.  And I claim it as my right, as a writer and as a woman, to explore this phenomenon in my fiction.

The fact that you would seek to stand among the moralizing, intolerant, sexist multitudes who would participate in censoring me is shameful. Because you… the person who started Smashwords, the person who wrote: "We read fiction to be moved, and to feel. Sometimes we want to feel touched, moved, or disturbed.  A reader should have the right to feel moved however they desire to be moved" has just denied me the right to do so – as a writer, as a woman, as a reader.

The publishers who published Nabakov did not sanction pedophilia. The publishers who published Yukio Mishima, or deSade, or Henry Miller did not sanction the morality in reality of what was contained fictionally in their novels. They sanctioned the prerogative of literature to fully explore humanity, no matter how dark the fictionalized explorations might be.  They sanctioned the author's right to explore it and the reader's right to explore it in his or her turn.

Smashwords, sir, is NO GROVE PRESS.

But of all the hidden insults in your letter, the worst by far is your request for me to take down my own work. Sir, if you wish to censor me, you will have to do so yourself. How dare you tell me you will censor me and then have the gall to demand I save you the trouble by doing it myself. That is akin to forcing an prisoner awaiting execution to dig his own grave and put on his own blindfold.

I will not participate in my own repression. I refuse to act as my own censor.

That, sir, is a refusal to take responsibility for the deeply unethical thing you do. If you have decided that what I write requires censoring, then at least have the courage to wield the axe yourself.

You wrote: "From an imagination perspective, erotica is little different from a literary novel that puts us inside the mind of farm animals (1984)"

Sir, I think you are referring to George Orwell's Animal Farm, not Nineteen Eighty-Four. And considering the compelling philosophical principles both those novels explored and the intellectual freedom that they so passionately and eloquently sought to defend,  the fact that you have mistaken one for the other may go some way to explaining why you thought your letter was appropriate.

Welcome to Oceania, Citizen Coker.

Your Newspeak is exemplary.

There's a place for you in the Party.