Why is there no oral sex category?

[gunhilltrain]

Other sites have more categories, like threesomes and occupations, which I would find helpful.

We once proposed a category to be called relationships, which would fill a gap between erotic couplings and romance.

 

[SimonDoom]

Other sites have more categories, like threesomes and occupations, which I would find helpful.

We once proposed a category to be called relationships, which would fill a gap between erotic couplings and romance.

If you want to find stories with oral sex you can search via tags. I assume there is no category because there is no discrete readership for these stories.

 

[Wilson Spalding]

Great question.

In-story, it's a point of mechanics, technically, and given that there's an "anal" category, an oral category makes a lotta sense...

Also in a narrative context, there's a huge fetish around delivering and receiving oral.

Problems, though:

• This site has gone without that category for so long that plenty of the old hands (so to speak) would crack.
• It would also crack how the site's vast library is categorized given that there are already so many oral-centric stories in here.

 

[gordo12]

Other sites have more categories, like threesomes and occupations, which I would find helpful.

We once proposed a category to be called relationships, which would fill a gap between erotic couplings and romance.

My first reaction was it's a pitstop on the road to happiness. But then I realized I really like the blowjob section in porn videos. So yeah, it would help. But there are a lot of other categories needed here and it seems little will to add them. Re-categorizing a data base of stories as large as this one is would be a major undertaking.

 

[SimonDoom]

Great question.

In-story, it's a point of mechanics, technically, and given that there's an "anal" category, an oral category makes a lotta sense...

Also in a narrative context, there's a huge fetish around delivering and receiving oral.

Problems, though:

• This site has gone without that category for so long that plenty of the old hands (so to speak) would crack.
• It would also crack how the site's vast library is categorized given that there are already so many oral-centric stories in here.

Oral is not at all like anal. Many people want nothing to do with anal, and many others love it. It's a discrete fetishy kink with a distinct following.

Everybody likes oral, or, at least, almost everybody. Almost nobody who reads erotica is squicked by it. Oral crosses every other category.

You can't multiply categories willy-nilly. If you do so you make it harder for people to figure out where stories should go and you make it harder for people to figure out where the stories are they want to read. There should be a really compelling need to create a new category before doing so.

This is what tags are for.

 

[gunhilltrain]

My first reaction was it's a pitstop on the road to happiness. But then I realized I really like the blowjob section in porn videos. So yeah, it would help. But there are a lot of other categories needed here and it seems little will to add them. Re-categorizing a data base of stories as large as this one is would be a major undertaking.

I meant that new stories would go there; yes, it's almost impossible to reassign the existing stories.

The other site also has steampunk, uniform, quickie sex, college sex, money and various other categories. Don't know if those are useful; I was just observing it. I still think oral sex would be helpful.

 

[NotWise]

I meant that new stories would go there; yes, it's almost impossible to reassign the existing stories.

The other site also has steampunk, uniform, quickie sex, college sex, money and various other categories. Don't know if those are useful; I was just observing it. I still think oral sex would be helpful.

So, you think Lit should emulate a less-successful site?

Oral sex fits pretty easily into most categories, and I see no use for putting up a separate category for oral sex. Why would Lit put up more specialized categories when some of the categories we have now are under-used? I suspect more readers would appreciate subdivisions of LW or I/T than they would a new, more specialized category.

I question the need for the Anal category, but it's there and it's easier to keep it than to lose it. There's probably a lot more anal sex outside the Anal category than there is in it, and the same thing would be true for an Oral category.

If oral sex is what you want to read, then just do your searches with "oral" as a tag. If you're specific about what kind of oral you want, then use "fellatio," "cunnilingus" or "anilingus."


Next, people will want a doggy-style category or a girl-on-top category.

 

[TxRad]

Since the categories were set up back in something like 1999 by a bunch of friends of the site owners, then I guess we have the answer.

This site was set up because Laurel liked to read kinky stories and back then there wasn't many sites for that. Manu set up the site and Laurel invited her friends to post stories. Categories came as they were needed. Broad based categories from what we have now.

Many, many new categories have been suggested since I've been here and none have came about so don't hold your breath.

 

[RejectReality]

An oral sex category here would probably get similar amounts of reader response as Toys & Masturbation. In other words, very little.

I enjoy having the broader base of categories over yonder, but that doesn't mean it's right for Lit. Over there, short work is absolutely dominant. Flash and even Microfiction can get reasonable numbers compared to a short story. Stories that would be a single Lit page are right in the heart of the readership sweet spot over there.

That's the kind of shorter story that Oral, Toys & Masturbation, and similar single-act themes tend to work out to. It works fine over there, because it's right in the sweet spot of the readership. Here, they don't get much traction at all.

An all-oral story will fit just fine into Erotic Couplings, and probably get about the same response as it would in a dedicated category on Lit.

There are some categories that Lit really still needs ( Bisexual, for cryin' out loud ) but I don't think Oral Sex is one of them.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

There have been, I suppose, several sexual revolutions. I have lived through the “Oh, you mean we can actually enjoy this?” revolution brought about by the birth control pill, and I was (and still am) happy to participate in it. Across those many decades, I have watched the attitude towards oral sex progress from “Yuck!” to “Yeah, and what else?” It would not surprise me if, at the time Lit was being established, oral was thought of as a routine aspect of partner sex in general, and not a relative outlier, like anal and fetishes.

IMH(?)O, for a category to be a useful guide to a reader, the stories posted there should have the content of the category as the central point of the story. Would there be that many stories in which an oral sex act is absolutely the most important event?

I echo Reject Reality, that Bisexuality (enlarged, I suggest, to include Bicuriosity) would be the most valuable new category addition. We’re now at the stage in this revolution where people increasingly explore and ask questions on this topic, and it can give a writer an opportunity to produce interesting, innovative fiction.

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5116173&page=submissions

 

[bushyTrail]

I think that the thing this site really needs is the capability of putting a story in more than one category, say a couple more maximum. Many of the works here are very hard to categorize as strictly as it is now required. At least, I've had this problem.
Also, it wouldn't be so hard to implement with a hack: it could exploit the same database and just add another story for each secondary category with a special sequence in the body that tells the server to do a redirect to the main one whenever it's requested. Sure, it wouldn't be perfect and possibly wouldn't allow stories to take part in the "hall of fame" competition in the secondary categories, but it would help sooooo much!

 

[SimonDoom]

Help whom and help how?

What would having multiple categories do that tags do not?

The problems with multiplying the number of categories in which a story can be put are several, and they're significant. We have to think about the downside as well as the upside.

One big problem is that it would increase the number of stories that appear at category hubs. This means stories will disappear from those hubs faster, and new stories will get less exposure. There's just too much data with this system.

Much better would be to keep enhancing the tag system, so authors can use them more profitably to describe their stories and readers can use them more profitably to find them. Ultimately the Site could create customizable pages with new story lists that fit tag parameters set up by users, so users see the new stories they want to. I imagine that's a ways off, but it would be a great added value.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I have the perfect answer for you OP...

Start your own site and you can have any amount of categories you want and you can call them anything you want. Okay?

Other wise as suggested earlier, the site is the site and will always be what the site is.

Or you could probably buy it... the latest suggested retail price is about $4,000,000, but Laurel laughed at that price.

Then again you could write your oral stories and put them in... say erotic couplings with the tab 'Oral Sex Only'

Almost every story I write that has sex in it, has oral sex in it as part of the the ritual to achieve the final culmination. Maybe I'll write a story were the participants have oral sex only. Then again, maybe not.

 

[bushyTrail]

Help whom and help how?

What would having multiple categories do that tags do not?

The problems with multiplying the number of categories in which a story can be put are several, and they're significant. We have to think about the downside as well as the upside.

One big problem is that it would increase the number of stories that appear at category hubs. This means stories will disappear from those hubs faster, and new stories will get less exposure. There's just too much data with this system.

Much better would be to keep enhancing the tag system, so authors can use them more profitably to describe their stories and readers can use them more profitably to find them. Ultimately the Site could create customizable pages with new story lists that fit tag parameters set up by users, so users see the new stories they want to. I imagine that's a ways off, but it would be a great added value.

Yeah, you are right, I hadn't thought of that. I guess it all boils down to discoverability. It seems to me that this website has a problem with that, but I'm not sure what the solution should be. Perhaps tags and making the "you might also like" section more visible or more sophisticated. As for now I never found any useful suggestion there. It keeps proposing stories in german!

 

[gunhilltrain]

I have the perfect answer for you OP...

Start your own site and you can have any amount of categories you want and you can call them anything you want. Okay?

Other wise as suggested earlier, the site is the site and will always be what the site is.

Or you could probably buy it... the latest suggested retail price is about $4,000,000, but Laurel laughed at that price.

Then again you could write your oral stories and put them in... say erotic couplings with the tab 'Oral Sex Only'

Almost every story I write that has sex in it, has oral sex in it as part of the the ritual to achieve the final culmination. Maybe I'll write a story were the participants have oral sex only. Then again, maybe not.

Wow, $4 million - and rejected. That's impressive.

It's true, as some people have suggested, that the tags solve most of the issue.

 

[LupusDei]

Wow, $4 million - and rejected. That's impressive.

No, not a real offer. It's evaluation calculated by an algorithm know to inflate perceived value wildly based on unique page views (perhaps geared more to evaluate online stores, as if you could sell something to everyone who looks at any page of any story?), laughed at by the owner.

 

[gordo12]

Wow, $4 million - and rejected. That's impressive.

Maybe. It could also mean 'I wish!'

Four million would need a lot of INCOME for justification. Purchase price shouldn't exceed 3-5 years income. Traffic means nothing. I get hundreds of thousands of hits that do utterly nothing for the bottom line except consume bandwidth.

If there was that kind of income here I'd expect some of the dead areas to disappear and upgrades go a lot more seamlessly. IE staff!

Edit: My personal impression of Lit is a bare bones operation, barely scraping by. I could be wrong.

 

[KeithD]

Wow, $4 million - and rejected. That's impressive.

No, not rejected--laughed at as what she thought she could get for it. Although it was listed lower than that when it came up on the board as a topic--at $1.5 million, I think. I pointed to it as part of a post noting that the authors here are providing the raw materials for free that is supporting a profitable venture for the site owners. Laurel laughed at that, saying she didn't think the site was worth that. (She didn't dispute that she was getting the raw material for her product for free, though. She didn't respond to that at all.) It came up in a "let the authors eat cake" context.

 

[bushyTrail]

Edit: My personal impression of Lit is a bare bones operation, barely scraping by. I could be wrong.

Yeah, exactly my thoughts. Perhaps it is this '90s vibe that the whole site used to give until the new story page was rolled out...

 

[HeyAll]

The problem with too many catagories is that it'll reduce the number of views for stories because everything would be so spread out. That's my opinion anyway.

But personally, in erotica, most of the time I prefer reading the oral sex scenes.