Lavinia Collins's Blog, page 15

The “Feminazi Lynch Mob” and Me

So, as I might have predicted, my recent post on the rape of Sansa Stark has attracted some *ahem* interesting comments from the denizens of the internets. This isn’t the first time that I’ve talked about a controversial issue from a very broadly feminist point of view and then gone on to receive a substantial amount of hatemail at my blog.

Thing is, I somewhat understood the barrage of hate I received in response to my Scott Aaronson post (bear with me here) – I took an openly controversial stance against a figure who has the support of a large and somewhat aggressive online community. I was aware that I was poking a sleeping bear. My post was also pretty adversarial in tone. The hatemail was mostly bland variations on the theme of I am stupid, I am a fat slag, I deserve to die/get raped – all the usual. The one upside was that it culminated in a rather thought-provoking piece of epistemologically troubling hate(?) mail that seemed to come from Jaques Derrida himself and simply read “Lavinia Collins is so stupid that I bet she thinks this is hate mail.” That was amusing enough that it made the whole mess seem worth it. So MRAs and dickwadges of the internet take note – if you would like to send me hate mail in response to this post, please try to come up with something creative. Cheers.

Anyway, on to the recent comment from a certain gentleman named ‘jedjones1′. I was surprised, to be honest, that I received such a strong response to a post that I had meant – in the main – to be contemplative, considering the show’s propensity to translate consensual sex into rape, and comparing the online reaction to the Cersei rape with the internet reaction to the Sansa rape.

But nonetheless, somehow I had caused offence. I was informed that this non-consensual sex was not rape (?!) because GOT is – well, the commenter said medieval, but GOT is a C21st fantasy novel that uses medieval-style fantasy tropes. But this is the most interesting part:

I hope this latest feminazi clamour to impose censorship, applying the usual methods of bullying and boycotting, with the usual lynch-mob mentality, meets with the failure it deserves. That’s what you seem to be demanding in your last paragraph: blanket censorship of all fictional representations of rape, whatever the fictional purpose. No exceptions…

If you want to understand the consequences of feminist mob rule, or any form of mob rule, supplanting the rule of law, look no further than the world of Game Of Thrones. That kind of anarchy is the end result. 

There are a couple of issues at play here. 1. The commentor clearly did not read my post, since at no point did I call for censorship or demand that rape never been shown. But whatever – that’s par for the course for kneejerk reactions to women expressing opinions online.

No, I’m more interested in this idea that me expressing my own private opinion on my own personal blog is an example of ‘bullying’ ‘lynch-mob mentality’ and of course the go-to insult of the internet ‘feminazi’ behaviour. It is a well established maxim of the internet that the race to insult is the race to compare the other party with Hitler or the Nazis. Now, I would have said that what I said about Sansa Stark had as little as it is possible to have in common with fascist rule, establishing the Third Reich or inciting a genocide. I only wanted to reflect on that week’s episode and provide my own perspective. But *sigh* apparently expression of an opinion now qualifies one for the ‘feminazi’ label. It has always intrigued me how me expressing my own opinion on my own blog is an affront to free speech when I disagree with what an internet man thinks. This commenter does not see the irony in telling me that I should not express my opinion because I ??? well what? I didn’t ask for GOT to stop being shown. I didn’t threaten the producers! I am at a loss to how at all I challenged anyone’s right to free speech by expressing my own opinion, but apparently me and my ovaries did, so pardon me.

(I would also like to point out that GOT is not an example of ‘mob rule’. It is an example of a feudal-style pseudo-medieval society.)

Of course, it may be that this jedjones1 chap is just some kind of wordpress supertroll. I did click on the link to his own blog, but since his headline was ‘Child porn’ crusaders, consider this’ I must confess ladies and gentlemen that I did not stay to read. Perhaps it was a well-balanced and sensitively written article, but since he had commented on my own blog in a way that suggested he considered the non-consensual sex in Game of Thrones ‘not rape’ because THE PAST, GUYS, I figured I could probably pass. But do you know what I’m not going to do? Leave him a long comment telling him why he shouldn’t be expressing his opinions. I’m not going to rally my sisters in the feminazi mob (sadly not a thing), because there is none. And I think if you can’t take people disagreeing with you without accusing them of being an organised mob of fascists then you, my friend, are the one with the problem.

(Un)necessary Rape? The Sansa Rape Scene and TV’s Game of Thrones

So, the time has come around once more when Game of Thrones the TV show has ‘added’ a rape scene that didn’t exist in the books, and once more the internet is on fire. This time, more than anything, because it’s for TV’s beloved younger sister, Sansa Stark.

I’ve been pretty vocal on here before about what I think of the show’s propensity to “translate” consensual sex in the books into rape on screen. Once again, the show seems to jump straight to rape, but I do think that there are some elements of the particular colour of the how could they do this to Sansa? strand of outrage that I find troubling as well.

As I’ve said at length before, the Jamie/Cersei inserted rape was horrifying more than anything because it replaced consensual menstrual sex with rape. Similarly, the Dænerys/Khal Drogo wedding night sex which, in the books, offered not just an interesting subversion of the ingenue prisoner princess married against her will to older warrior scene but also a nuancing of stereotypical masculinity in which the Khal Drogo of the books is sensitive and waits for explicit consent, is then replaced in the TV show with Emilia Clark bent over on her hands and knees sobbing into the camera. It seems that in difficult and nuanced sexual situations, the producers seem disturbingly inclined to jump straight to rape.

So then we come to Sansa’s scene. Now, as you will know if you’ve read the books, the show’s writers have conflated Sansa with Jeyne Poole, who suffers a wedding night rape with an audience at the hands of Ramsey Bolton in the books. There is at least some narrative strain in the books in which this happens. It’s a little disappointing that, when Sansa in the books receives an apprenticeship in scheming under Littlefinger and rules from the Aeyrie that a storyline in which Sansa is given a little more autonomy wasn’t chosen, but decisions like that are made when bringing together many strands of a complex story. More worrying than this single instance is the pattern.

And I, like many internet commentators, was disappointed that it seemed like Sansa’s rape was more about Theon and Theon’s suffering than it was about her and hers. It puts the rape of a main character into the background the same way that women are casually raped in the background of several Game of Thrones war scenes. It’s not edgy, it’s crass and upsetting. Since they had decided to run that scene and that storyline, they might have done it justice. I, and many others, feel they did not.

That said, I also feel that the strength of the internet outrage is somewhat tinted with a strain of ‘Sansa doesn’t deserve this’, as though any woman would deserve to be rape, and as though the scene would be less horrifying if it happened to a character we didn’t like. And it got me thinking of how a lot of the outrage about Cersei’s rape centred not on the fact that she did not deserve to be raped (which she most certainly did not) but that we had begun to think Jamie was a “good guy” and this upset our understanding of his character. Sansa is a pure, innocent virgin, and has spent much of the narrative in a victim role. She is pretty. She is feminine. She is kind. We care about her, and we as citizens of the internet are outraged about her rape. Cersei is a self-interested bitch who murdered her husband and had sex with her own brother. Critique of her rape was dominated by the complaint that it was out of character for the man who had raped her.

I’m not trying to diminish the horror and potential gratuitousness of Sansa’s rape here, only to suggest that the horror does not lie in the fact that one particular woman does not deserve to be raped, but rather that no one does, and to use the rape of women as a plot device, a simplification, a dramatisation or a “turn-on” is always going to be disgusting.

THE EDITING DIARIES PART II

(This post originally appeared as a guest post at chapterhousepublishing.co.uk) 

Book I, Part II: Tell Me What I Know

  

So, the other week I talked about learning less is more when I saw it on my page, there in the black and blue of track changes (every writer’s best friend). Now I’m going to talk about another way a really good editor can help you get the best out of your writing project.

Although this new series The Morgan Trilogy forms a companion piece to Guinevere, it’s rather different in tone. I’ve shifted from fantasy-romance to fantasy, but when I began writing The Witches of Avalon, I still had my mind in the ‘romance’ headspace, and I was preoccupied that this was my ‘thing’. I was afraid to let go of something that I knew worked and that I knew had been well-received by many readers and bloggers. The thing was, these elements weren’t such a prominent part of this new series, but until I settled in to the writing of it, I was still trying to fit them in. I’ve talked before about my inability to delete any of my own work and once again this stunted my own self-editing process. But I did not need to fear; along came the editor who told me what I already knew, to allow those elements to move into the background. Thing is, I would have been nervous removing them myself in case they were the ‘good parts’, but having a good editor you can trust tell you that this is the best thing for the book gives you the freedom to do it in the knowledge that it’s helping.

When I’m teaching students to write academically, I tell them to slice out anything that isn’t relevant. In fact, back through the mists of time when I edited my own academic writing, I was the queen of slashing out irrelevant crap. There I was with my biro crossing out everything that didn’t hit the point. So why do I find it so hard with my fiction writing? Is there something more affective about the process that means you need the stern but gentle guidance of an editor to steer you right? I think so.

The fact is, you always need someone else. I know that less is more. I know that those elements didn’t need to be so prominent in this episode. But I needed someone to tell me so, to point out where those cuts and changes could be made. So far, instead of the gruelling destruction of my self-esteem, I’ve found the process of working with an editor an incredibly empowering and freeing one.

Watch this space for my thoughts on Book II!

Fear and Loathing: Looking Down the Barrel of Five More Years with the Tories

I voted Labour. Apart from a brief flirtation with the Lib Dems after the Iraq War (travesty), I’ve been a pretty loyal Labour voter. I think I’ve been pretty open about my political beliefs on here, and I’d welcome anyone else being open as well, so do feel free to leave (respectful and constructive) contrary remarks in the comments.*

So I didn’t wake up feeling great this morning. I was one of those who heard the exit poll predictions and hoped that Paddy Ashdown��would not have to eat the marzipan hat he promised us all (hilarious though that would be) but spent the rest of the night wide-eyed and refreshing the tab with the election results as I watched us slide sickeningly into a Tory majority. A Tory majority that This Morning on Radio 4 predicted would precipitate a lurch to the right.

I’m afraid. I’m afraid, and I think a lot of us feel that way. Part of this is self-interested. As a working woman whose career (I hope) will be established over the course of the next five years, the prospect of further Arts cuts, further Academisation of schools and the hike in tuition fees promised by the Tories are a very frightening thought. When universities are run like businesses and schools are pushing children like it’s a production line to meet this target and that target then��education suffers. The Arts and Education are my life. Then I get to thinking, what if I want to have a child in the future? Will I be able to get a stable job? Will my right to maternity leave remain protected? What if my partner only gets the most paltry amount of paternity leave? What happens when I have to pay their university tuition fees and I’ve only just finished paying my own loans off?

And then beyond that, there’s cuts to libraries, and a trip back in time for my alma mater, Oxford, where a hike in tuition fees would make sure that it was not the brightest but the wealthiest once more who were able to go there. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Those of us in the middle tighten our belts and hope that we can afford to give any children we might have a decent chance at a decent future.

Then there’s the NHS. “Free at point of use” means “privatised”. That’s what people don’t realise. It’s a euphemism. And sure, it’s “free at point of use” now, but what happens when businesses own it, and start taking steps to charge for healthcare? It’s fundamentally flawed in my eyes to run a health system for profit. It doesn’t work. Lives get lost. I feel sick just thinking about how our health service is being slowly sold out from under us piece by piece with the refrain of “free at point of use”. And under a Tory government, it’s only going to get worse.

I could move to Scotland, I suppose. The SNP wipeout is just a massive fuck you to Westminster, isn’t it? But we didn’t have that option in England.

I really believed that things were going to go Labour’s way. I was full of hope. I think this election has been a huge blow to people like me; people who believe, deeply, in socialism. People who are afraid because the most vulnerable are being squeezed at a time when our economy is still weak.

I don’t know what five years with the Tories is going to hold. I don’t know, but I know I feel awful and afraid. My facebook feed is filled with leftie arts graduates who all voted Labour or Green and who can’t understand how this happened.��I can’t. But there are loads of people out there who believe the Tories are the answer. For my part, I honestly can’t see why.

*I wish I didn’t have to say this, but after the Scott Aaronson debacle I feel I now have to a. warn people I am going to express an opinion and b. ask them not to send me abuse. ��

THE EDITING DIARIES (PART 1)

Reblogged from the Chapterhouse blog

Bestselling author��Lavinia Collins��talks about the process of editing her second trilogy, published with��Not So Noble Books, out now!!��

Book I, Part I: Less is More ��

Monday morning, my email pings. It���s the publisher, telling me he���s looked at the first book of my new series. It���s editing time. He���s had a new editor look at it, he says. I begin to feel nervous. I know that there is a lot of cutting to do. I wrote my first series,��Guinevere, in a manic six weeks, and with half an eye on writing it to a commercially viable length. Encouraged by my erstwhile love and long-time muse, Kay, I sent it off to a publisher before I had time to over-think it, and there I was, just nine months after I had begun writing the thing, watching it go live on Amazon. No time to over-think.

Now, though, I was about to receive back a series I had had more than a year to read, re-read, re-edit and ruminate on. Somehow the draft of this one had ended up almost twice as long as��Guinevere. And I knew it needed to be cut. Still, I wasn���t looking forward to a file full of instructions to excise parts of my beloved book. Written in self-indulgence, perhaps, but nonetheless dear to my sweet old artistic soul. I girded my loins (and boy did those loins need to be girded) and I dived in.

I was surprised by what I found. I should probably explain my own editing process. It is the worst editing process in the world. I just��add. Add add add. And it���s because I love writing so much. It���s what I do to keep myself sane after a long day of work. So, if I like something I have written, I try to re-live the enjoyable process by��writing more. Error error error. This is why writers make such bad editors of their own work. It���s hard to do less of something you enjoy. It���s hard to make yourself cut something that you love.

So there I was expecting to read something that pummelled my self-esteem by demanding I cut beloved scenes from my magnificent octopus. (If you���re too young to get a Blackadder joke, surely you���re too young to be unsupervised on the internet?) That wasn���t what I found at all. My beloved book hadn���t been put into the hands of some crazed woodsman hacking down healthy growth left, right and centre. It had been put into the hands of a skilled tree surgeon (if you forgive the extended analogy), trimming out what was stopping the existing healthy plant from showing to its best. Paring away unnecessary additions to dialogue (MAN I need to chill on adverbs) ��� which I was sure I had only added in later self-edits ��� cutting unnecessary description which again was the product of my own puppyish over-exuberance and removing things that��I had added myself��which second-guessed what a reader would already know. It really opened my eyes to my own writing process, and my own self-editing process. I saw, clearly, what I had been doing wrong. A writer (like me) editing their own work is their own worst enemy, but a good editor can be your book���s best friend. I looked at the edits, and I saw how much they improved what I had written, how they made it clearer, how they made it the way it would have been��if I��hadn���t��mucked about with it so much myself. Only more so.

It has made me think about the great editors, like Ezra Pound and��Raymond Carver���s editor. They���re not famous for adding things.��Less is more��is something I firmly believe in, but a mantra I find it depressingly impossible to follow as a writer. It just goes to show what another pair of eyes can achieve ��� and how wonderful it feels to read your work through the eyes of someone who seems to really��get��it. Both what you���re trying to say, and how to make that shine through work that you might have muddled in your own excitement.

NEWS: New Release!

THE WITCHES OF AVALON,��the first instalment of my new series is out now for your kindle! Find it here!

9 5* reviews already!

“Fantastic sequel to the Guinevere books”

“it really spoke to me and took me to another world”

“Such a fantasy fan and this is sooooo good. Love the reworking of the tales- really gripping”

��

Politics and the Fangirl: Why We Should Take the #Milifandom Seriously

There’s a *ahem* interesting new trend online: the rise of the #milifan. Teenage girls who love (or pretend to love) Ed Miliband with the same ardour as fandom once turned on One Direction and Twilight. Yes, ha ha ha it’s very silly. Aren’t young girls silly, not taking politics seriously and pretending to fancy Ed Miliband who is (despite the media’s insistence on his background as a heartbreaker), not your typical heartthrob.

But the thing is, it’s easy to dismiss the #milifandom as teenage girls being silly, but it’s more. It’s young people harnessing the power of humour and the viral media (buzzfeed, vine, memes) in order to spread engagement with a politician who, if they don’t believe in him per se with whom they are at least less disillusioned than with the rest.

And it seems to be having some political impact. The founder of the #milifandom has already convinced their parents to vote Labour instead of Tory.

Thing is, it’s easy to dismiss because it’s driven by young girls, but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of fandom. It’s fandom alone that made��Fifty Shades of Grey such a meteoric success. It’s fan hysteria that seems to have made (and unmade) One Direction. What if the power of internet social media could also be turned to shape the political world, to make sure that the young generation had its own voice? Sure, Milifandom is a joke, but it’s also powerful.

I’ll be interested to see how it plays out in the polls of May 7th. If more young people vote, it can only be a good thing.

Thanks but No Thanks: Mansplaining and Me

I still remember the first time I realised I was being mansplained at. Back then I was but a child and it was a long time until I learned the word ‘mansplain’ for what was happening to me (I eventually learned the term from Jezebel.com a couple of years ago). I was eighteen, and it was my first term at Oxford. My bike had got a flat tire for the second time that term, and I had it out in the quad on a chilly early November day upside down and – my sleeve rolled up and my toolkit out – I was sorting myself out and proud of it. No one had ever doubted my ability to do things before. I’d been raised by a father who expected me to be practical and had taught me things like this patiently and carefully, and then left me to practice I wasn’t used to men assuming I was incompetent. But I did know, if someone offers to help you then they are being nice. And I did know to be polite, at all times to be accommodating and respectful. So there I was, feeling pleased with myself for fixing my bike on my own and along came one of the groundskeepers of the college and seeing me — young lass that I am — knelt before my bike and working hard he came along, took the tools out of my hand��and proceeded to tell me everything I already knew about fixing my bike while doing it for��me without any invitation from me. Not even a look.

Now, I do not doubt that this was kindly meant. I do not for one moment think that this man decided he was going to undermine my sense of self or “put me in my place.” He thought he was being chivalrous, but as Emma Watson so wisely put it, ‘chivalry should be consensual.’

As an undergraduate trying to teach myself to survive on my own, it was an indignity and an irritation, but no harm. The worst bit was, though, I thanked hm profusely afterwards because I knew I should. I didn’t assert myself. I didn’t say “no thank you” when he came to help. I had just wanted to be left to it, but someone who thought they knew better shoved in and I had to silence my irritation, smile and play nice.

I realised recently after a spate of mansplaining and patronising, paternalistic comments (some of them just plain old insults thinly veiled as ‘advice’) on my various social media feeds that this is what I have been doing all my life. You may know me from here as outspoken and assertive, but it’s harder in real life. It’s harder��in interaction than online. (Just take a look at the online contretemps I got myself into with��Scott Aaronson and the ensuing wrath of the Internet MRAs that rained down on me). Someone shoves in, demands I take their advice, often in a condescending or outright offensive manner and I say, “thank you very much.” Because I know I should.

One of my good friends recently did it to me on faceboo. I made some comment about thinking that there was a self-destruct in some of my electronics because he kept breaking and he made sure to comment, “actually, there is. It’s called planned obsolescence.” Now what I felt like doing was writing “yeah thanks I actually know what planned owcolescence is you mansplaining git”, but instead I wrote “ahhh! I see.” Appease appease appease. But the tuing is, he and the othes I’ve had clogging up my feeds recently, aren’t doing it to help me. They’re doing it so everyone else knows how clever they are. Or to put me down publicly under the seemly veil of advice.

For the mansplainers, it’s about publicly appearing superior in knowledge and its invariably directed against women. So I looked at the latest in this spate of mansplainers and I showed them to my current squeeze (yes, miraculously the same one from the most awkward date opener) because I thought I was being paranoid and touchy thinking they were offensive. The offers of ‘help’ I thought I should politely than and move on. You know what they said? Block ’em. And I did, and it felt so good.

I witnessed my second instance of mansplaining just a few weeks after the first. I was on a date, and there was another date going on on th table next to ours. On the other date, a man was explaining to a woman about Marxism. She looked about twenty, so she probably knew what Marxism was, but he was explaining it nicely and slowly so that she could understand. He was so annoying that my��eyes kept wandering in their direction, until I caught her eye and she rolled her eyes.��I don’t think he got a second date. But you know what’s? We shouldn’t have to sit through it, or feel��like we should or say thank you. We should be able to – politely – tell these rude people no thanks, I know what I am doing. I don’t require your unsolicited help. Why is that considered rude, but not the mansplaining in the first place?

To be or not to be: Are you a ‘girly girl’?

“You’re being very��girly.”

A dear friend of mine said this to me somewhat accusingly not that long ago. Naturally, I instantly took offence. I am��not girly. That is what I always say whenever anyone ‘accuses’ me of being��girly.

Now that’s a whole pile of crap right there, isn’t it? I’m always on this blog writing about women’s voices, advocating for women’s writing, for chick-lit, for female-authored books, and for the power of literature constantly dismissed and sidelined as ‘girly’.��Yet, as soon as someone calls me ‘girly’, they get a whole load of ‘excuse me, but��no.’��

At least part of this is all tied up with the way I see myself; I remember being specifically identified as��not girly all of the time I was at primary school. I was the one with torn clothes and mud all over me charging around playing tag rugby and breaking things (including myself). But it’s probably about twenty years since I grew out of that. I started wearing makeup, being interested in pretty dresses and ‘doing’ my hair more than just in a ponytail. And you know what? There’s this narrative wriggling through society (and bothering me) that somehow I must have become more shallow, more silly and more superficial to care about those sorts of things.

I remember coming home from my first term at Oxford. It wasn’t too cool there to care about how you looked. The truly dedicated to study wouldn’t have had time to care about such silly things. I, wanting to be one of them, had adopted the quintessential uniform of college hoody (NEVER the University hoody – that one was for the despicable tourists) and baggy old jeans. I went to visit one of my friends, the glamorous Lily (now of Lily’s Vintage Salon fame) who was, as usual, dressed in something unspeakably fabulous with her hair done and a full face of makeup (even at 18). I felt drab and entirely unlike myself.

It has taken me a long time to find a place where I am comfortable in the middle; some days I wear my old jeans and a jumper and don’t do anything with myself. Some days I get dressed up in something nice and do hair and makeup. I still run about and break stuff (sometimes) but I also don’t stress too much if I want to sit in front of the telly and paint my nails, or go for a spa day. If someone things I’m stupid for doing that, more fool them. This wouldn’t be the first time someone had thought I was stupid for doing something girly, and it wouldn’t be the first time they had been wrong.

So what I should have said was “excuse me, but so what? You say that like that’s a bad thing.” Telling someone that they’re being “manly” is always good. “Boyish” is even quite a compliment. I’m going to make an effort to take back “girly” and next time someone tells me that me talking about something is too “girly” I’m going to tell them to STFU, and yes I can talk like that and still be girly, thank you very much.

Why Clean Reader Can Fuck Off

So I’ve been reading about Clean Reader, the miracle app that will protect your precious, precious eyes from tiny black and white ebook devils that want to crawl in through your pupils and infect you and your child’s brain with sin. That’s right, naughty words.

Too long have your dear sweet eyes been besmirched with profanity! Too long has the unnecessary naughty talk in ebooks been the scourge of society. Thank fuck that we will all be safe at last. Ah shit, I didn’t mean to swear then. Cocks. Fuck. This isn’t going well.

But I mean��come on. Seriously?��This is what the reading world demands? No more swears? Thankfully everyone normal ��� including the lovely Joanne Harris whose books aren’t even rude (or perhaps my rudeness threshold is diminished by what a dirtbag��I am) ��� seems to think Clean Reader is the��worst idea ever.��

I mean, of all the things that offend the eye and technology can save you from, this seems particularly prissy, irritating and pointless. I was 100% behind UKITTEN, the Chrome App that automatically replaces any images of Nigel Farage’s face with an image of kittens, in order to soothe the angry liberal when casually browsing the internet. I still use it. That��benefits me.

But on a serious note, what really irritates me about Clean Reader is this idea that somehow swear words or anatomical words (which Clean Reader makes a real pig’s ear of, replacing ‘vagina’ and ‘clitoris’ with ‘bottom’ which is frankly worse than misleading) are the worst thing that a child or a sensitive adult can come across in a book. What about violence? What about grief? What about loss? What about emotional abuse? It’s prissy and stupid to think that swear words are damaging, but it’s also prissy and stupid fear books and the things they say. There are many people – myself included – that find that experiencing something potentially damaging through fiction before one experiences it in life works something like an inoculation. It’s comforting.

What, then, about swear words and sex? These aren’t damaging, frightening or upsetting. Why do we keep them from children? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that we all let our under-tens read��Fifty Shades of Grey, but I am saying that it’s going to mess up a child worse to hear that Christian Grey spent ten minutes expertly licking Ana’s bottom until her inner goddess said oh heck golly gosh jee whizzz because Clean Reader had left its surreal squeaky-clean detergent smears��all over the dirty prose. Just imagine what bizarre expectations that could lead to.

And the core of it is censorship. It’s no longer, if you don’t like something stop reading it. It’s change the author’s words to make them acceptable. Someone somewhere has decided sex and swearing are bad. And is Clean Reader going to remove domestic abuse? Violence? Casual misogyny? Nope. Only dirty grubby sex.��Unless the sex you like involves only bottoms.