Ten years ago, a friend and colleague of mine suddenly found herself frozen out by her credit card server because she ran a paysite of erotic fiction and photography. All of its sex-positive fiction and nonfiction appeared for free first for three months, only becoming pay material upon archiving. She provided similar access to a portion of her erotic photography, although full albums sat behind the paysite barrier. None of her photography was pornographic; all of it had artistic merit. Yes, some was controversial but not because of any explicit depictions, but because of the social messages some of those photographs conveyed. Her site was the furthest thing from a porn portal you could imagine.
So what happened? Simply put, government pressure aimed at the credit card companies. Ten years ago, Republicans held almost across-the-board control of power. And although online porn had become a cat out of the bag in the 1990s and then gone feral, they donned their animal control caps and went on the hunt. Their best way to limit porn? Make it difficult for providers to conduct business. Use the tools of capitalism against pariah capitalists.
Thus, the origin of outrageous credit card fees for adult business. Ultimately, it didn’t stop Big Porn in its tracks, but it did push out lots of little guys. DIY pretty much died in its tracks. (Anyone remember the “amateur porn” fad of the ’90s? Where’d that go?)
My colleague eventually found an affordable credit card vehicle. Out of Amsterdam. (So much for on-shore, domestic business.) And the process was taxing enough for her that I subscribed to her site for a couple of years, figuring every little cent aided her artistic efforts –and made a modest stand against suppression via capitalism.
Today, we’re facing something similar and likely as insidious. Key on-line bookstores like All Romance eBooks and Bookstrand and DIY vehicles like Smashword have received the equivalent of a cease-and-desist notice from Paypal if they’re carrying “indie erotica” – self-published, self-produced erotica.
See Crackdown Roundup via Dear Author.
But it hasn’t impacted only indie publishing. Pink Flamingo books, a longtime early adopter who began selling erotic fiction on-line seventeen years ago, was the first websites I knew to report pressure to kill titles. If I remember correctly, the key pressure came to bear on their “consensual non-consensual” books, a buzz-work for an advanced BDSM understanding of an immersion consent. Regardless, today, their author guidelines reflect that pressure:
DO NOT INCLUDE: characters under 18 having sex or in sexual situations, (even in flashbacks), bestiality, incest, excrement, snuff and necrophilia. Additional content restrictions include storylines featuring rape, abduction, kidnapping, coercion, breeding females, nonconsensual slave worlds, auctions and prostitution, also drugging, water sports (piss play), diapering and extreme violence.
The chilling arm of suppression has renewed its reach, this time affecting all manner of on-line e-bookstores.
Origin Stories
It reminds me of the late 1960s in an oddly parallel way. And sadly, I suspect a key pioneer for free speech and the erotic word, Barney Rosset, is rolling over in his newly-turned grave. Rosset, owner of Grove Press, fought for the freedom to publish and sell works like Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Tropic of Capricorn, and The Naked Lunch, a fight that repeatedly found him courtrooms across the country, including that Most Supreme. And he won those cases, giving publishers and consumers access to all manner of the erotic word.
And, like now, a slippery slope appeared. For every avant garde work that no longer faced suppression, dozens of clearly erotic titles entered the marketplace. Everything from Victorian/Edwardian literature to nonfiction exposés to erotic sleaze filled bookshelves in five-and-dimes, drugstores, cigar shops, and magazine stands. While many of these businesses had a long history of covertly carrying printed pornography, they felt no compunction about filling their racks with this new material. Nor should they. The law, for once, was on their side.
Then, as now, publishers began to push the limits. Erotic fiction grew ever more explicit and its display more in-your-face. Granted, much of it was on-par with any erotica you’d find in a brick-and-mortar bookstore today, but the American public wasn’t used to such direct contact and visibility. The Victorian Merry Order of St. Bridget was one thing; Wring Neck Daddy or Orgy Lust, another altogether. The line between erotic fiction and outright pornography was blurring.
Eventually, new cases before the Supreme Court settled the matter, especially Miller v. California, codified the avenue for explicit printed pornography.
And, essentially, by codifying community standards, it drove printed pornography into its own space, the adult bookstore. You could still buy non-obscene erotic fiction in a bookstore or via a book club – the latter put Story of O in countless nightstands across American – but if you wanted hardcore, totally taboo stuff? Well, that was pornography – questionably obscene at that – and it was relegated to the adult bookstore.
The 1970s saw an explosion of pornographic books, thanks to that ruling, and hence the rise of the taboo sex book. Then as now, incest titles were exceptionally popular, but, segregated away from the greater public, no one really cared. Out of sight was truly out of mind, and it continued well into the 1990s, until streaming film porn became the consumer norm. (Oddly enough, you can find much of this material on eBay, segregated into its Adults Only category under Everything Else. Hypocritically worse, Paypal will accept your sales transaction. Go figure.)
What Goes Around
Today’s bookstore purges are quite similar to those days. Erotic romance? OK, sure. Erotica? Protected by artistic and literary merit. But taboo pornography entering the on-line bookstore? Well, that’s that blurry line between erotica and pornography from the late 1960s all over again.
When I joined the ranks of professional erotic writers in the late 1990s, we had a list of publisher-mandated taboos to avoid: rape, incest, the under-aged, bestiality. If a print publisher wanted a distributor and a bookstore presence, you didn’t tempt fate by violating those perceived hard limits. In fact, I once wrote a story in which a character recounted the long-ago leering of her now much-older lover when she was eighteen. The publisher asked me to change her age in the backstory to twenty-one. Why? Because the age of consent was twenty-one in their state AND their most major customer might refuse the book if she remained eighteen. Had I written the story of literary fiction, I probably wouldn’t have faced that problem. But in an unabashedly, clearly erotica story? Too much risk.
So where did those taboos originate? To some degree, they’ve always been with us, but I’d place their codification at the feet of the mid-1980s Meese Commission Report on Pornography. Conducted by a Justice Department committee under Edwin Meese during the Reagan administration, its published findings were laughably considered the most pornographic thing produced in 1986. But from it came an extrapolated awareness of what the Reagan administration might well consider obscene and subject to prosecution. Hence, the itemized list of taboos to avoid.
And it worked like a charm. For the most part, it protected print erotica from prosecution. Plus, other newly-emerging factors turned the anti-porn crusader’s attention elsewhere: the VHS explosion of porn-to-video companies, then on-line porn. In fact, if you ask most people to define porn today, they’re far more likely to think film footage. The written word as porn was something your grandpa enjoyed. Like eons years ago.
Paypal’s actions reflect obscenity law’s unfinished business. One can easily argue that what’s currently being suppressed in the marketplace is written porn and not constitutionally-protected erotica. I suspectsmany of its purveyors have marketed their work as porn and not erotica; that is, they not only deal in the taboo, but use the most unmistakably pornographic language in their meta data and lurid cover imagery. Just like pay porn sites.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Except that when you employ these tactics, you’re exposing yourself – and in ways that are, at some point, going to attract trouble.
I’m not sure we can really call the Paypal crackdown censorship. No one’s stopping people from writing this stuff; they’re primarily saying they won’t traffic in its business. In fact, this stuff’s been on the web since the days of Usenet. The difference now? People want to sell the stuff.
We are, however, seeing suppression. And its sweep is wide this time. The late Barney Rosset experienced a similar situation late in his publishing life, after he launched Blue Moon Books in 1987. The American Family Association, fueled by the late Rev. Donald Wildmon, pressured Kmart to rid its shelves of Blue Moon Books under threat of a boycott. The books sold well there, but Kmart caved and removed the books from its shelves. Rosset, speaking to Fresh Air in 1991, said “I never thought any battle has been won. It takes different forms.”
Today, the form has assumed yet another shape. And as long as the Meese Commission-inspired taboos guide corporate risk aversion, this form of suppression will stand. Because nothing stands in its way to otherwise challenge it – and possibly overcome it.
Paypal v. Porn: The New Suppression
Ten years ago, a friend and colleague of mine suddenly found herself frozen out by her credit card server because she ran a paysite of erotic fiction and photography. All of its sex-positive fiction and nonfiction appeared for free first for three months, only becoming pay material upon archiving. She provided similar access to a portion of her erotic photography, although full albums sat behind the paysite barrier. None of her photography was pornographic; all of it had artistic merit. Yes, some was controversial but not because of any explicit depictions, but because of the social messages some of those photographs conveyed. Her site was the furthest thing from a porn portal you could imagine.
So what happened? Simply put, government pressure aimed at the credit card companies. Ten years ago, Republicans held almost across-the-board control of power. And although online porn had become a cat out of the bag in the 1990s and then gone feral, they donned their animal control caps and went on the hunt. Their best way to limit porn? Make it difficult for providers to conduct business. Use the tools of capitalism against pariah capitalists.
Thus, the origin of outrageous credit card fees for adult business. Ultimately, it didn’t stop Big Porn in its tracks, but it did push out lots of little guys. DIY pretty much died in its tracks. (Anyone remember the “amateur porn” fad of the ’90s? Where’d that go?)
My colleague eventually found an affordable credit card vehicle. Out of Amsterdam. (So much for on-shore, domestic business.) And the process was taxing enough for her that I subscribed to her site for a couple of years, figuring every little cent aided her artistic efforts –and made a modest stand against suppression via capitalism.
Today, we’re facing something similar and likely as insidious. Key on-line bookstores like All Romance eBooks and Bookstrand and DIY vehicles like Smashword have received the equivalent of a cease-and-desist notice from Paypal if they’re carrying “indie erotica” – self-published, self-produced erotica.
But it hasn’t impacted only indie publishing. Pink Flamingo books, a longtime early adopter who began selling erotic fiction on-line seventeen years ago, was the first websites I knew to report pressure to kill titles. If I remember correctly, the key pressure came to bear on their “consensual non-consensual” books, a buzz-work for an advanced BDSM understanding of an immersion consent. Regardless, today, their author guidelines reflect that pressure:
The chilling arm of suppression has renewed its reach, this time affecting all manner of on-line e-bookstores.
Origin Stories
It reminds me of the late 1960s in an oddly parallel way. And sadly, I suspect a key pioneer for free speech and the erotic word, Barney Rosset, is rolling over in his newly-turned grave. Rosset, owner of Grove Press, fought for the freedom to publish and sell works like Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Tropic of Capricorn, and The Naked Lunch, a fight that repeatedly found him courtrooms across the country, including that Most Supreme. And he won those cases, giving publishers and consumers access to all manner of the erotic word.
And, like now, a slippery slope appeared. For every avant garde work that no longer faced suppression, dozens of clearly erotic titles entered the marketplace. Everything from Victorian/Edwardian literature to nonfiction exposés to erotic sleaze filled bookshelves in five-and-dimes, drugstores, cigar shops, and magazine stands. While many of these businesses had a long history of covertly carrying printed pornography, they felt no compunction about filling their racks with this new material. Nor should they. The law, for once, was on their side.
Then, as now, publishers began to push the limits. Erotic fiction grew ever more explicit and its display more in-your-face. Granted, much of it was on-par with any erotica you’d find in a brick-and-mortar bookstore today, but the American public wasn’t used to such direct contact and visibility. The Victorian Merry Order of St. Bridget was one thing; Wring Neck Daddy or Orgy Lust, another altogether. The line between erotic fiction and outright pornography was blurring.
Eventually, new cases before the Supreme Court settled the matter, especially Miller v. California, codified the avenue for explicit printed pornography.
And, essentially, by codifying community standards, it drove printed pornography into its own space, the adult bookstore. You could still buy non-obscene erotic fiction in a bookstore or via a book club – the latter put Story of O in countless nightstands across American – but if you wanted hardcore, totally taboo stuff? Well, that was pornography – questionably obscene at that – and it was relegated to the adult bookstore.
The 1970s saw an explosion of pornographic books, thanks to that ruling, and hence the rise of the taboo sex book. Then as now, incest titles were exceptionally popular, but, segregated away from the greater public, no one really cared. Out of sight was truly out of mind, and it continued well into the 1990s, until streaming film porn became the consumer norm. (Oddly enough, you can find much of this material on eBay, segregated into its Adults Only category under Everything Else. Hypocritically worse, Paypal will accept your sales transaction. Go figure.)
What Goes Around
Today’s bookstore purges are quite similar to those days. Erotic romance? OK, sure. Erotica? Protected by artistic and literary merit. But taboo pornography entering the on-line bookstore? Well, that’s that blurry line between erotica and pornography from the late 1960s all over again.
When I joined the ranks of professional erotic writers in the late 1990s, we had a list of publisher-mandated taboos to avoid: rape, incest, the under-aged, bestiality. If a print publisher wanted a distributor and a bookstore presence, you didn’t tempt fate by violating those perceived hard limits. In fact, I once wrote a story in which a character recounted the long-ago leering of her now much-older lover when she was eighteen. The publisher asked me to change her age in the backstory to twenty-one. Why? Because the age of consent was twenty-one in their state AND their most major customer might refuse the book if she remained eighteen. Had I written the story of literary fiction, I probably wouldn’t have faced that problem. But in an unabashedly, clearly erotica story? Too much risk.
So where did those taboos originate? To some degree, they’ve always been with us, but I’d place their codification at the feet of the mid-1980s Meese Commission Report on Pornography. Conducted by a Justice Department committee under Edwin Meese during the Reagan administration, its published findings were laughably considered the most pornographic thing produced in 1986. But from it came an extrapolated awareness of what the Reagan administration might well consider obscene and subject to prosecution. Hence, the itemized list of taboos to avoid.
And it worked like a charm. For the most part, it protected print erotica from prosecution. Plus, other newly-emerging factors turned the anti-porn crusader’s attention elsewhere: the VHS explosion of porn-to-video companies, then on-line porn. In fact, if you ask most people to define porn today, they’re far more likely to think film footage. The written word as porn was something your grandpa enjoyed. Like eons years ago.
Paypal’s actions reflect obscenity law’s unfinished business. One can easily argue that what’s currently being suppressed in the marketplace is written porn and not constitutionally-protected erotica. I suspectsmany of its purveyors have marketed their work as porn and not erotica; that is, they not only deal in the taboo, but use the most unmistakably pornographic language in their meta data and lurid cover imagery. Just like pay porn sites.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Except that when you employ these tactics, you’re exposing yourself – and in ways that are, at some point, going to attract trouble.
I’m not sure we can really call the Paypal crackdown censorship. No one’s stopping people from writing this stuff; they’re primarily saying they won’t traffic in its business. In fact, this stuff’s been on the web since the days of Usenet. The difference now? People want to sell the stuff.
We are, however, seeing suppression. And its sweep is wide this time. The late Barney Rosset experienced a similar situation late in his publishing life, after he launched Blue Moon Books in 1987. The American Family Association, fueled by the late Rev. Donald Wildmon, pressured Kmart to rid its shelves of Blue Moon Books under threat of a boycott. The books sold well there, but Kmart caved and removed the books from its shelves. Rosset, speaking to Fresh Air in 1991, said “I never thought any battle has been won. It takes different forms.”
Today, the form has assumed yet another shape. And as long as the Meese Commission-inspired taboos guide corporate risk aversion, this form of suppression will stand. Because nothing stands in its way to otherwise challenge it – and possibly overcome it.