Strange inconsistencies with Story rejections

[SlimRhino]

I've had a story rejected for "underage sex" where actually there was none. It is a mom/son incest story where there was no sex between the two before he was eighteen, so the only possible explanation is that I mentioned, that the mother had the son before she was eighteen, but it was merely mentioned, and no details were given.

Now I have two questions about this:

a) Why was my story rejected when I can easily name at least three stories of other authors, who have been accepted and used the same concept?

b) Teenage pregnancies are fact of life. I find it hard to accept that you'd be forced to write a story where a son goes 'oh my gosh my mum is sexy, how haven't I realized it for twenty years and of course she was nineteen when she had me'. It seems to me that the site is completely catering to the warped and utterly inane morales of America and ignores the reality of the entire rest of the world.

 

[Laurel]

I've had a story rejected for "underage sex" where actually there was none. It is a mom/son incest story where there was no sex between the two before he was eighteen, so the only possible explanation is that I mentioned, that the mother had the son before she was eighteen, but it was merely mentioned, and no details were given.

That doesn't sound rejectionable. It's possible that either I was tired and misread, or there's another part of the story that is the issue.

If you believe your story was rejected in error, please open the submission, respond to the rejection in the NOTES field of the submission, and hit SUBMIT. Please do not add the word EDITED to the title, as that denotes someone editing an already approved story.

Since we process all edits after the new stories are posted, adding the word EDITED to a title will cause a delay in the posting of your new story. If you are submitting an edit of a rejected story, simply open the rejected form, make the changes in that form, and hit SUBMIT. Do not start a new submission.

It seems to me that the site is completely catering to the warped and utterly inane morales of America

Yet here you are.

 

[SlimRhino]

That doesn't sound rejectionable. It's possible that either I was tired and misread, or there's another part of the story that is the issue.

If you believe your story was rejected in error, please open the submission, respond to the rejection in the NOTES field of the submission, and hit SUBMIT. Please do not add the word EDITED to the title, as that denotes someone editing an already approved story.

I understand that it is a hard job to slog through all of this. I'm from Europe. Nobody over here freaks out over a female breast being shown on TV, so I might simply fail to see the red flag. Is there any way to add a short description of what was objectionable, because a short note of 'is there any underage sex in your story' is not very helpful when a 30K words chapter has been rejected.

Thanks for your quick answer.

 

[NaokoSmith]

I understand that it is a hard job to slog through all of this. I'm from Europe. Nobody over here freaks out over a female breast being shown on TV, so I might simply fail to see the red flag. Is there any way to add a short description of what was objectionable, because a short note of 'is there any underage sex in your story' is not very helpful when a 30K words chapter has been rejected.

Thanks for your quick answer.

I think Laurel is saying you should put what you said at the start of this thread in the NOTES box, and resubmit explaining that you think your story has been rejected in error. Then she will give it a more careful read and either accept the story or explain in more detail what the problem is.

 

[SlimRhino]

I think Laurel is saying you should put what you said at the start of this thread in the NOTES box, and resubmit explaining that you think your story has been rejected in error. Then she will give it a more careful read and either accept the story or explain in more detail what the problem is.

Ah, thanks for the hint

 

[SlimRhino]

Okay, now the story was rejected again and the reason seriously boggles my mind:

Hi! We don't post stories that involve characters under the age of 18 in sexual situations, such as discussions of nudity in front of children. As this is a site dedicated to erotica, even casual nudity is a sexual situation.

With all due respect, but that can't be meant serious! What year is it? 1850?

Since when is nudity a sexual situation? By that standard I've been in sexual situations with my whole family all my life as we used to go to the nude beach. That's complete hogwash. You can't seriously expect a story where a guy goes on his 18th birthday "Oh look she's sexy, too bad I was too young to be allowed to notice, last week"

 

[elfin_odalisque]

you miss the point entirely, slim rhino.

sure, family nudity situations can involve non_sexual interreactions. They are just not allowed on the site. Just always go for over 18's.

 

[RejectReality]

Laurel has always said that the line had to be drawn somewhere, because she didn't want to host pedo stories. The number decided upon was 18, because it's the standard of legal adulthood in the U.S., where the site is hosted.

Once that was decided, she put a hard line there. She has acknowledged many times that it's unrealistic, and limits authors, but it's what she feels is in the best interest of the site.

You can put references to pre-18 sexual activity in stories, but they have to be extremely brief and sterile. "I lost my virginity at 16," is about the edge of what's allowed. To use your real life example, it would be, "My family has gone to nude beaches all my life."

While the same laws don't apply to the written word, Lit's 18 rule essentially functions under the same level of strictness as the 2257 law for photography.

 

[SlimRhino]

Thanks for explaining that. What it mean though is that I'm not going to publish here, because that's completely unrealistic. The age of consent is as low as fourteen in some states and 16 in most states that call themselves civilized. I'm not going to publish when it requires my stories to be twisted into complete hogwash to adhere to an arbitrary limit. Maybe America thinks an 18 year old virgin is realistic, but the rest of the world are laughing their head off about so much cluelessness.

May sound harsh, but that's how it is. It's completely unrealistic.

 

[RejectReality]

I wouldn't completely surrender the site. This story may not be the right fit for here, but the next one might, and you'll get more eyeballs on your work here than you will on any other erotica site.

I have a handful of stories that aren't posted here because they don't meet content criteria, or wouldn't perform well with the readership. The same applies to the other sites where I post, though. No one place has everything, because every site has different rules and readerships.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

May sound harsh, but that's how it is. It's completely unrealistic.

Erotica is unrealistic. So?

Laurel's rules don't reflect American law or American ethics, it's just where a line got drawn. Everyone gets that by age 18 or so virginity is a minority position (though by many estimates in the US, not by much), and by 22 it gets down to (as far as surveys can tell us) about 20%. But all the stories here are about that 45% or so percent who waited until 18+.

The rule is only onerous in historic fiction and fantasy, so just avoid those here.

If you want to write *realistic* erotica about people under 18 (somewhere else), I'll be looking for descriptions of failed marriages, early pregnancies and poor single moms, etc. Those are hardly unusual outcomes, and they are expensive outcomes for society. There's a reason the age of consent isn't 13 many places in the world anymore, and is wandering between 16 and 21 most everywhere. Socioeconomic forces keep pushing upward on it, and as the planet gets fuller they will push harder. Laurel's actually a visionary.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Thanks for explaining that. What it mean though is that I'm not going to publish here, because that's completely unrealistic. The age of consent is as low as fourteen in some states and 16 in most states that call themselves civilized. I'm not going to publish when it requires my stories to be twisted into complete hogwash to adhere to an arbitrary limit. Maybe America thinks an 18 year old virgin is realistic, but the rest of the world are laughing their head off about so much cluelessness.

May sound harsh, but that's how it is. It's completely unrealistic.

The criteria are not based on "realism". We have an entire sci-fi/fantasy section. Laurel's acknowledged before that yes, lots of people have sex before 18, it's just not something that they choose to host on this site. (At least, not in graphic detail; it's fine to mention it briefly as backstory etc.)

But speaking of what's realistic: you're in Germany? Average age of first sex there, as measured around 2009, was 17.6 (18.0 for the USA). Source So that "completely unrealistic" 18-year-old virgin is actually pretty common.

If you only want to write about 16- and 17-year-olds, then yeah, Literotica's not the place for it. But there's still plenty of room for "realistic" stories here; it's not like everybody stops having sex at 18.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Erotica is unrealistic. So?

Laurel's rules don't reflect American law or American ethics, it's just where a line got drawn. Everyone gets that by age 18 or so virginity is a minority position (though by many estimates in the US, not by much), and by 22 it gets down to (as far as surveys can tell us) about 20%. But all the stories here are about that 45% or so percent who waited until 18+.

Or about things the other 55% did after their 18th birthday.

 

[sr71plt]

it's not like everybody stops having sex at 18.

Love that line. And, for most (the historical theme being the problem I can think of, because in former periods a large percentage of people were dead by 18 and had had families), I don't really think it's so much that sex can actually be had before 18 and frequently is as that there are writers who want to write the image of sex with the very young, those just wakening to it and having it for the first time. Unfortunately, that attracts some pretty scary/twisted folks to the Web site, which, apparently the owners don't want. (Although some of what they do allow attracts some pretty scary/twisted folks too.)

 

[rjordan]

It seems to me that the site is completely catering to the warped and utterly inane morales of America and ignores the reality of the entire rest of the world.

What are you talking about. There is no reality beyond our borders. American Exceptionalism, you know.

rj

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Unfortunately, that attracts some pretty scary/twisted folks to the Web site, which, apparently the owners don't want. (Although some of what they do allow attracts some pretty scary/twisted folks too.)

Incest is a huge category here. Pardon me for showing my personal biases, but sick and twisted doesn't begin to cover what actual incest is like. In the real world, incest is generally imposed on people under 18 (it generally starts before age 12) and it is almost exclusively coercive in nature, effectively combining rape or at a minimum abuse of authority, and pedophilia, in a single act. Real incest is universally reviled.

A 16 year old willingly being boinked by a 17 year old is utterly tame and harmless in comparison. But incest is ok here (as long as we laughably pretend the characters are 18), but the true and rather vanilla life stories of many folk here are not. The criteria for exclusion is NOT what is sick and twisted. Laurel's made in plain in some FAQ somewhere that writing about something is not equivalent to doing it and hence she no public ethical objection to written works. By extension there'd be no ethical objection to 17 year old characters either.

So I think we can infer that the 18 rule isn't based on ethics, American or otherwise, and I doubt it has much to do with the sort of audience the site gets. There are already seriously creepy people here and I have the blocked email addresses to prove it.

If I had to guess, it's a matter of reputation. Underage readers come here; they can't be kept out. Imagine some mom catching her 16 year old daughter in the act of reading here and **finding out the story was about a 16 year old girl.** There'd be instant accusations that the site openly encouraged underage sex, and it would be a matter of milliseconds before someone incorrectly applied the pedophilia label and contacted their congressman. Guess how that could end. I think what we have here is a solid business decision, not an exercise in overly rigid moralism.

It's still a bummer we can't write accurate historical fiction. But there are accounts of people trying to get Romeo and Juliet out of school libraries; so maybe it's ultimately for the best.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Thanks for explaining that. What it mean though is that I'm not going to publish here, because that's completely unrealistic. The age of consent is as low as fourteen in some states and 16 in most states that call themselves civilized. I'm not going to publish when it requires my stories to be twisted into complete hogwash to adhere to an arbitrary limit. Maybe America thinks an 18 year old virgin is realistic, but the rest of the world are laughing their head off about so much cluelessness.

May sound harsh, but that's how it is. It's completely unrealistic.

Baby! Can't follow the rules, go start your own site. Or just suck your thumb and hold your breath until you turn blue or pass out.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's Laurel's site, it's her rule, OK

Okay, now the story was rejected again and the reason seriously boggles my mind:

With all due respect, but that can't be meant serious! What year is it? 1850?
"

It's in the small print, it's in the large print, and it's carved in stone; and it's very simple:

It's Laurel's site, and she has chosen a simple legal line in the sand to keep the site, herself, and its users at a well defined legally safe place. It's got to nothing to do with community standards or any moral position. It's a legal line, and it's there for a valid reason.

I think most writers get that. And if we don't we should - until such time as we put up our own sites and set our own rules - and then sit wondering if someone might come knocking on the door one night.

Laurel's the host, it's her party, it's her rule. You wouldn't spit in her drink, would you? Especially if she asked you not to?

There are worse rules - just consider ISIS today and whether you might want to live with some of their ideas; and please don't ever forget, 1933 was only 82 years ago. That was within my mother's life time.

That's not very long ago, really. Don't ever forget, there are far worse rules you could live under.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Baby! Can't follow the rules, go start your own site. Or just suck your thumb and hold your breath until you turn blue or pass out.

Can we see a little less snark at people asking a fundamentally reasonable question? Europe does in fact think sex starts at 16; historically a lot of people thought it started at 13. 18 is not an obvious decision point and you have to dig around on this site a good bit to even find the rule, which in turn is stated in a soft form which is very little like Laurel's often vigorous "if it even smells like it" implementation. I don't blame people for getting annoyed when they run into it; I know I wasn't happy when a 6,000 year old character in a fantasy story got bounced because she looked and acted young. And to a lot of snooty ultraliberal europeans the rule looks like nasty Christian American MORALISM, heaven forfend, and the poor dears do get a wee bit bent out of shape by that. But that's not a good reason to snark back.

The way to head this off is to write a very clear paragraph declaiming that any descriptive scene involving nudity, suggestive action or sexuality of a character before its 18th birthday is instant grounds for a big red No. And then put it on a page you have to get past before you can post a story. In bold letters. Until the site does that, I think we owe newcomers a little kindness, especially after they've spent hours on a story only to find out the rules are not what they expected.

(The irony of it looking like religious moralism is not lost on me. One of the cultural forces pushing for a *younger* age of consent is a small minority of Christian fundamentalists, who see marriage as an exalted state and way, way better than the currently popular alternative of fornication.)

 

[sr71plt]

:

It's Laurel's site, and she has chosen a simple legal line in the sand to keep the site, herself, and its users at a well defined legally safe place. It's got to nothing to do with community standards or any moral position. It's a legal line, and it's there for a valid reason.

Well, no, it's not a legal line. There's nothing illegal about writing underage sex. The mainstream has a lot of it. It's not even illegal to depict it in TV shows. Mainline TV stations run it. Yes, it's illegal to actually do it and to photograph actual underage.

So, that's not the reason. I do think it's a bit community--erotica community--standards (but this Web site doesn't follow erotica community standards on incest, so it couldn't be much that). I don't think it's moral positions being taken. I think it's the tastes for the site owners, within their privilege, and it may be a concern for the type of reader and outside scrutiny it would draw. It could also be gauged to the policies of the Web server host.

It's not a legal issue though.

 

[sr71plt]

Baby! Can't follow the rules, go start your own site. Or just suck your thumb and hold your breath until you turn blue or pass out.

What, no one's been by to tell you you're snotty? Guess you're special.

 

[RejectReality]

Way back in the mists of Lit time, there were concerns about potential legal issues arising, though. Laurel mentioned some troubling precedents in ancient posts. Everyone in the adult business was also freaking out, wondering what would happen as the 2257 regulations were being hashed out, and Lit was no exception, I'm sure.

While nothing new has arisen to hint that written depictions of pre-18 sex are in any danger of being regulated, you never know what's going to happen.

If I was Laurel, my line of thought would be:

The rule has been in place all this time, and it hasn't hurt our traffic or the growth of the story file whatsoever. Pushing the age back isn't going to stop the complaining, because there's always going to be people who want it pushed back even more.

Moving the bar at this point is only going to encourage people to think that enough complaining will get them what they want. I have limits of what I want to host, so I'm going to leave things as they are for simplicity's sake.

 

[sr71plt]

Still, it isn't illegal to write it and never has been in the States, the home of this Web site. Which, as others point out, doesn't make it a bit more actionable or touchy than Incest, which is the biggest business here. I don't know why folks can't just be good with this is a private Web site, free to set it's own limits for whatever reason it wants to.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Can we see a little less snark at people asking a fundamentally reasonable question? Europe does in fact think sex starts at 16; historically a lot of people thought it started at 13. 18 is not an obvious decision point and you have to dig around on this site a good bit to even find the rule, which in turn is stated in a soft form which is very little like Laurel's often vigorous "if it even smells like it" implementation. I don't blame people for getting annoyed when they run into it; I know I wasn't happy when a 6,000 year old character in a fantasy story got bounced because she looked and acted young. And to a lot of snooty ultraliberal europeans the rule looks like nasty Christian American MORALISM, heaven forfend, and the poor dears do get a wee bit bent out of shape by that. But that's not a good reason to snark back.

The way to head this off is to write a very clear paragraph declaiming that any descriptive scene involving nudity, suggestive action or sexuality of a character before its 18th birthday is instant grounds for a big red No. And then put it on a page you have to get past before you can post a story. In bold letters. Until the site does that, I think we owe newcomers a little kindness, especially after they've spent hours on a story only to find out the rules are not what they expected.

(The irony of it looking like religious moralism is not lost on me. One of the cultural forces pushing for a *younger* age of consent is a small minority of Christian fundamentalists, who see marriage as an exalted state and way, way better than the currently popular alternative of fornication.)

Give me a break...he was told what the rules were and started to argue and complain, just like a little baby. He should be spanked and put to bed without dinner.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

This message is hidden because sr71plt is on your ignore list.