Where, exactly, is the line drawn?

I wrote once before about how minors are depicted in our writings and how I had a story refused because I included the line, "It all began when my mother caught me masturbating when I was sixteen." A lot of people responded to this, and their insight provided me with some comfort, but as time rolls on I am still left wondering just how much is and is not acceptable.

Underage sex exists, and has been the crux of storylines on television for many years. I recall Natalie on The Facts of Life telling Tootie that she had lost her virginity (yes, I am THAT old), but more recently, in shows such as Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale, teenage sex is the norm in any given episode.

On PLL, the teens are all having sex with one another, not to mention the statutory sex between the adult Ezra Fitz character and the minor Aria Montgomery character. On Riverdale, teen Archie has sex with the adult Ms. Grundy, not to mention, once again, the teens are having a field day with one another.

In one particular episode of Riverdale, Veronica asks Betty why she didn't answer her phone all night. "I stayed over at Jughead's."

"Are you two …?"

"Yes," Betty answers a bit shyly.

Backtrack to the night before where Betty and Jughead are sitting on the couch, Betty mounts Jughead, removed her shirt, they kiss, and Jughead removes her bra. End of scene. In both cases, is this why the sex is allowed, because it is implied and not directly shown, even though the two may wake up together in the same bed, naked?

In the dialog, Veronica never asks the full question: Are you two having sex? It us just, "Are you two …?", which implies it. In the case of Betty removing her shirt, Jughead removing her bra, and the two waking up next to one another naked, again, is this acceptable because sex is implied but not actually shown?

My reason for asking these questions is that I wonder how much leeway this allows us, as writers, here at lit. Am I able to make the declaration, "I lost my virginity when I was fifteen" so long as I do not go into specifics? Let's take a scenario much like one from PLL or Riverdale:

Jason Voorhees knew, at the age of fifteen, that this would be the greatest year of Summer Camp he had ever experienced. (Yadda-yadda-yadda storyline, until) he approached Counselor Cindy-Lou Who, who was seven years older than him. He said, "Cindy, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," she replied with a kind smile.

Jason moved in quickly and kissed her full on the lips.

Cindy was in momentary shock. She eventually pushed him back and said, "What the hell, Jason?"

Jason, afraid, ran into the woods.

Cindy went after him. An hour later, she found Jason in an old, abandoned hunting shed. When the door opened, he looked up, saw her, and said, "I'm so sorry, Cindy."

Cindy sat next to him, and without a word, removed her shirt. Jason stared, wide-eyed. Cindy moved in and kissed him as she removed her bra, then the two fell to their sides.

Forty-five minutes later, Cindy said, "We really should be getting back," as she began to dress.

Is this acceptable since I did not go into specifics? Let's take it one step further. Since I write mostly incest / taboo, would the same be acceptable if I were talking about a fifteen year old boy and his mother? Boy kisses mom, mom says, "What the hell?" Boy races to his room. Mom enters, assures him it is alright, removes her top, etc., etc.

I ask this because of the strict net of "Eighteen Only" we are forced to write under when most sex, especially incestuous, begins at an early age. If it is implied on one medium, should not all mediums allow it? Am I trying to push the envelope too far? It is my belief that if the underage sex is not graphically depicted, then we should be able to make mention of it.

What say you?

It is very simple so I'll put it in very simple terms. This is Laurel's site and we follow laurel's rules. The number one rule is, No sex of any type under 18. Period. If you have a problem with that, take up with her. We ain't got no say. Period.

I have no firsthand experience yet, but what I read around here is very much fucked up for a lot of stories I would like to tell, especially the rule against even non-sexual underage nudity.

Laurel indeed seems to be extremely harsh on this, I have read about stories rejected for character descriptions that come across as possibly underage for Laurel even if it was explicitly claimed they are of legal age.

So yeah, if working around that breaks the story it's probably better to explore other options for publication.

LupusDei said:

I have no firsthand experience yet, but what I read around here is very much fucked up for a lot of stories I would like to tell, especially the rule against even non-sexual underage nudity.

Laurel indeed seems to be extremely harsh on this, I have read about stories rejected for character descriptions that come across as possibly underage for Laurel even if it was explicitly claimed they are of legal age.

So yeah, if working around that breaks the story it's probably better to explore other options for publication.

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Laurel's ball, bat, and field. Argue it with her.

Post #3 reported.

Films, television, etc all have rules against showing (although they can obviously reference) teenage sex these days.

It's not simply lit erotica. Its largely industry wide.

Wouldn't it be simpler to add two years to your character's age and re-submit the story?

The line is drawn, and could be redrawn hourly depending on her mood, in the mind of the single submissions editor, Laurel, who appears only rarely to read anything on the discussion board. About the only way you can contact her is to use the Private Message system, top right of this page. Her address name is Laurel.

kurrginatorX said:

What say you?

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I'm not an expert on this subject but my understanding is that saying something like "He lost his virginity at 15" and nothing more would be OK under Laurel's standard, but the passage you offered above would not. You cannot narrate a scene of underage sex or sexuality, even if it's nonexplicit. Laurel has a very hardline rule about this.

SimonDoom said:

I'm not an expert on this subject but my understanding is that saying something like "He lost his virginity at 15" and nothing more would be OK under Laurel's standard, but the passage you offered above would not. You cannot narrate a scene of underage sex or sexuality, even if it's nonexplicit. Laurel has a very hardline rule about this.

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In the OP,

"It all began when my mother caught me masturbating when I was sixteen."

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This sentence probably would not have gotten any attention from Laurel if you just deleted " when I was sixteen." The story would also need to avoid any character elements or descriptions that make it obvious the character is underage.

The longer story in the OP would probably be completely permissible without the phrase

, at the age of fifteen,

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which actually adds nothing significant to the narrative.

The guideline is inflexible in some regards, and flexible in others. If you even mention an age under eighteen in association with a sex act, then the story is likely to be rejected. If you don't mention the age, then you have some leeway.

In most cases where I've seen writers complain, the addition of the numeric age is unnecessary to a story and can simply be eliminated. I'm not sure why it's added other than to titillate a reader, and that is probably exactly what Laurel wants to avoid.

Mention of any age lower than 18 is likely to lead to closer examination of the story and possible rejection.

Maybe there is a bot that directs Laurel to any age mention less than 18?

This again? Here are the guidelines:

* Underage sex can be reported but not described in any way. "The young kids taught each other intimacy" or "They were raised as nudists" or "She was a wild child, knocked up at fifteen" will pass. "Mom caught me masturbating at fifteen" will not pass.

* A party is underage if they look like an underage human. No 1000-year-old aliens or mutants who look like budding nubiles. But they can emerge from a four-year coma at age eighteen and still retain the adolescent mentality.

* Sex includes thinking of sex as well as doing it. No having a minor visualize fucking, or an adult visualizing a minor. No underage erotic dreams. No mental statutory rape.

This is a private site run by Laurel's rules. Pretty simple rules, too. No underage sex, as per the guidelines above. No bestiality, except with talking fantasy animals. No snuff, and Laurel dislikes mayhem, too. Rape must eventually be enjoyed, if described. And there's some rule about celebrity sex but I don't go there.

The only other requirement is good orthography (grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.) The OP seems OK there.

Don't write of under-18's fucking or thinking of fucking. That's not difficult.

TxRad said:

It is very simple so I'll put it in very simple terms. This is Laurel's site and we follow laurel's rules. The number one rule is, No sex of any type under 18. Period. If you have a problem with that, take up with her. We ain't got no say. Period.

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I'm using your response since it was the first. I was looking for something more constructive, not something anally contrived. I am well aware of to whom the site belongs. No need in you sucking her ass to prove a point.

It doesn't seem to be entirely on Laurel, though. I have had a couple of stories that were online for a while before they were pulled and rejected for the implication of a minor in sexual situations. In both of those cases, everyone was fine with the way it was handled until one person decided to make an issue of it.

Until those stories were "reported for sex with a minor" they were doing well. They had 50k+ views and 'Hot' ratings. In both cases, I became aware that the stories were no longer on the site because a reader sent me an e-mail asking why I had removed the story and requesting that I send them a copy of it.

So, the line seems to be drawn by someone with nothing better to do than to report stories for anything they deem remotely suggestive of sex with a minor.

kurrginatorX said:

I wrote once before about how minors are depicted in our writings and how I had a story refused because I included the line, "It all began when my mother caught me masturbating when I was sixteen." A lot of people responded to this, and their insight provided me with some comfort, but as time rolls on I am still left wondering just how much is and is not acceptable.

Underage sex exists, and has been the crux of storylines on television for many years. I recall Natalie on The Facts of Life telling Tootie that she had lost her virginity (yes, I am THAT old), but more recently, in shows such as Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale, teenage sex is the norm in any given episode.

.
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I ask this because of the strict net of "Eighteen Only" we are forced to write under when most sex, especially incestuous, begins at an early age. If it is implied on one medium, should not all mediums allow it? Am I trying to push the envelope too far? It is my belief that if the underage sex is not graphically depicted, then we should be able to make mention of it.

What say you?

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I suggest a different envelope to push.
There is no "Wiggle room".

Personally, I suspect that there's a certain amount of "external reaction" involved.
Let me give an example:
There is, or maybe was, a firm in the UK who, it was said/rumoured to be undertaking "vivisection". Naturally, the pro-animal lobby were Not Happy and got up a campaign to stop it; as usual with this sort of thing, there was a great deal of 'misinformation', if not downright untruths, in the media.
It was not long before some twerp had the idea that giving their Bank some bad publicity might cause a certain reaction in the animal-minded
customers of the Bank.
And it did.
The firm had to find another Bank to conduct it's financial stuff.

Lit deals with many organisations; if one of them were to be put in a bad light, the reaction could be serious and affect how Lit operates.

Now, for the benefit of of the great majority of users I recommend you write about something other than what might (just) be regarded as "Under-age" sex and put your talents to a more mature age group, ie., OVER 18 years old.
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The reasons are quite obvious, and good ones; 1. Pedophilia is a very harmful and destructive sickness...the mere mention of it can feed that sickness...or trigger emotional stress in someone who has been on the receiving end of it. 2. There is no reason to flirt with the rules when one can write something that doesn't. 3. If I owned this site, there is no way I would risk a scandal, or worse, just so an unnecessary fictional story might be published...and let's face it; all of our stories are unnecessary...but hopefully harmless. 4. If some reference is critical, as has been said; It can be reported/documented. We all know humans discover sexuality before the age 18, so one has to just trust the reader's intelligence sometimes.

Regarding the OP; I don't think the OP intended the reference to be perverted, but I haven't read the whole story...so I don't know the whole story Hopefully, it can just be a lesson learned and move on.

I fully support Lit's guidelines/rules on this issue...and I have no need to pander or "kiss ass". In fact, I wouldn't even participate here if they allowed stories with underage content...or rape...or snuff...

Before I started reading stories on Literotica (this would have been 1999 or thereabouts), there were three other sites that I also frequented for stories. I distinctly recall that those sites had no real restrictions regarding underage sex as long as it was consensual. In some very rare cases, it was useful for developing complex characters. Usually, it was just a nasty sexual free-for-all that wasn't even well written.

All three of those sites have been gone for over a decade. Literotica is still here. Just because I had stories rejected for the implication of underage sex doesn't mean I disagree with Laurel on this one. Like you, I was under the impression that there was more flexibility on this subject than there is. I understand, though, why there isn't.

kurrginatorX said:

Underage sex exists, and has been the crux of storylines on television for many years.

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Comparing TV & movies to writing can be a bit messy. For example, most people playing a 16-year-old in adult situations are 18+ actors and actresses. Things work much differently when cameras are involved. Writing doesn't have as many ways of sneaking around the rules.

kurrginatorX said:

I My reason for asking these questions is that I wonder how much leeway this allows us, as writers, here at lit. Am I able to make the declaration, "I lost my virginity when I was fifteen" so long as I do not go into specifics?

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That sentence would be allowed, any elaboration of the event wouldn't. Sexual content or context (e.g.: a connected mention of Mom) is not allowed.

As others have said, this hard line is the site's policy, it has nothing to do with legal ages of consent, other media, society's mores, or anything else. It's Laurel's site, her rule. It's that simple. Don't push the line.

If you do have an underage character in a story for a legitimate reason, then flag that to Laurel in a Note to the Editor, explain why, and keep any sexual content many, many words away (and make sure the character has left the room, obviously).

kurrginatorX said:

I'm using your response since it was the first. I was looking for something more constructive, not something anally contrived. I am well aware of to whom the site belongs. No need in you sucking her ass to prove a point.

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There is nothing more constructive. Anal contrived? Nope,. You don't understand how this works. If you don't like the rule, you have two choices. 1: Take it up with laurel. 2: take your story elsewhere.

As for me being the first one to point out your options, this is my home and we don't need idiots fucking it up. This discussion has been held many times and guess what, there are not any under 18 stories on the site. The ones that do slip through are taken down when reported by people who do follow the rules.

I don't need to prove a point to anyone. Most of us already know the fine point of the point. Why don't you learn to read. Here, I'll make it bigger for you:

Laurel's site, Laurel's rules.

kurrginatorX said:

I wrote once before about how minors are depicted in our writings and how I had a story refused because I included the line, "It all began when my mother caught me masturbating when I was sixteen." A lot of people responded to this, and their insight provided me with some comfort, but as time rolls on I am still left wondering just how much is and is not acceptable.

Underage sex exists, and has been the crux of storylines on television for many years. I recall Natalie on The Facts of Life telling Tootie that she had lost her virginity (yes, I am THAT old), but more recently, in shows such as Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale, teenage sex is the norm in any given episode.

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What flies on TV isn't terribly relevant to Literotica rules, because Lit operates in a different context.

There are several ways one can handle under-age sexuality in fiction. You can treat it as an element in a broader story, a source of drama or conflict. (See e.g. Juno, which tells the story of a 16-year-old who gets pregnant and has to figure out how to deal with it - or Cruel Intentions, adapted from Dangerous Liaisons, where manipulative high-schoolers use sex as a weapon against one another.) You can make it a cautionary tale, the story of Mary Who Had Sex At Seventeen And Ruined Her Life. Or you can eroticise it: hey, aren't sixteen-year-olds hot, don't you want to fuck one right now?

As a sweeping generalisation, society accepts that the first two of those can be legitimate subjects for fiction, but is not so accepting of the third. For adults to fixate on the sexual desirability of under-age teenagers is widely seen as creepy, predatory behaviour.

Of course, it's not always easy to categorise such things. I mentioned Cruel Intentions/Dangerous Liaisons as an example of where sex with teenagers is used as part of a broader drama, but plenty of folk do find those scenes erotic. Did the creators intend that? I suspect they probably did, but there's enough wiggle room to say "this is a story about how people treat one another, and the sex is just there to serve that story". Not terribly convincing, perhaps, but they have a fig-leaf of deniability.

BUT... Literotica is unabashedly an erotica site. It's right there in the name. When we describe sexual activity, there is a presumption that we are trying to eroticise them. We don't get the same benefit of the doubt that I'd get with the exact same story in a more mainstream medium.

tl;dr because this place is seen as a sex site, it's judged by a different standard and so it needs to be more careful about how it handles sexual themes.

My rule of thumb for discussing under-age sex here is "don't write anything that an anti-porn campaigner could interpret as an attempt to eroticise it", which seems to be roughly consistent with how Laurel moderates it. (Give or take some glitches that appear to be due to skim-reading.)

My reason for asking these questions is that I wonder how much leeway this allows us, as writers, here at lit. Am I able to make the declaration, "I lost my virginity when I was fifteen" so long as I do not go into specifics?

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Yep. I've included similar material in my stories and never had any trouble over it.

Let's take a scenario much like one from PLL or Riverdale:

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Nope. Even with the fade-to-black, this still comes across as eroticisation.

I ask this because of the strict net of "Eighteen Only" we are forced to write under when most sex, especially incestuous, begins at an early age.

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Every author picks and chooses which parts of "realism" they want to include in their story and which they want to exclude. We focus on the sexy bits and downplay the icky/boring ones (STIs, menstruation, suddenly having to get up and take a dump in the middle of sex, most under-age incest being part of horrific abusive situations). Nobody actually wants their stories to be 100% realistic, so "but a lot of sex is underage IRL" isn't much of an argument for how this site should be.

If it is implied on one medium, should not all mediums allow it?

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No. Different media are subject to different standards, funded by different business models, enjoy different levels of popular support, and are run by different people who get to make their own choices about what they want in their domain.

LupusDei said:

Laurel indeed seems to be extremely harsh on this, I have read about stories rejected for character descriptions that come across as possibly underage for Laurel even if it was explicitly claimed they are of legal age.

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I have seen authors explicitly admit that they wrote stories as under-age and then added the "all characters over 18" disclaimer as an attempt to get it through this site's moderation, and I've seen stories where this was obviously what had happened - I remember one story that began with the "over-18" disclaimer and then kept mentioning that the "18-year-old" had "pre-pubescent breasts". Ick.

So, yeah, Laurel can't take those disclaimers at face value.

I am not an author here on lit but have been a grateful user of the site. I have posted once before on the same subject. The subject I am talking about is when someone challenges the powers that be on a site that is completely free. I could understand if we paid to he here then perhaps we would have some pull. But instead we don't pay to be here. It is all given to us by Laurel and Manu. Let's just be grateful so as not to anger them, and they simply pull the plug on the server. That would really suck.

kurrginatorX said:

Underage sex exists,

What say you?

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Not here it doesn't.


Do NOT mention it. Period.

kurrginatorX said:

I'm using your response since it was the first. I was looking for something more constructive, not something anally contrived. I am well aware of to whom the site belongs. No need in you sucking her ass to prove a point.

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You should make allowances for the frustration many of us feel when this topic is raised again, and again and again...

The no-sex before age 18 is one of the few rules enforced on Literotica. Some stories might slip through but should be reported.

If you want to write about people having, or thinking about, sex before age 18 please don't try to post it on Literotica.

I had to alter some of my stories written before I joined Literotica because consensual sex between 16-year-olds, and even marriage with parental consent, is legal in the UK. It wasn't a big deal to edit the stories to comply.

kurrginatorX said:

I'm using your response since it was the first. I was looking for something more constructive, not something anally contrived. I am well aware of to whom the site belongs. No need in you sucking her ass to prove a point.

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Cute.

TxRad is correct. Don’t be butthurt just because you don’t like his answer.

Know what? Why waste time here speculating? Write it like you wish to, submit it, and see for yourself what Laurel does.

oggbashan said:

I had to alter some of my stories written before I joined Literotica because consensual sex between 16-year-olds, and even marriage with parental consent, is legal in the UK. It wasn't a big deal to edit the stories to comply.

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It's legal in a lot of US states too, or was. Things may be changing now. At one time, not too long ago, some states allowed it down to 14.