Quote Originally Posted by Powerone
I personally think that the word "spit" is gross. I can only imagine the things that are dragged up and "spit" out on our clean sidewalks and beaches. I think "spitting" should be banned everywhere in our society as a filthy repulsive act.

Then for a person to be called "spitman" should be castrated and have his balls hung from the lightpost to serve as a warning to all others.

This is what happens when you start arbitrarily censoring literature because "you" don't happen to like it. Who is to decide what is "right" or "wrong"? A person called "spitman", maybe Adolf Hitler or your neighbor priest (who happens to be molesting your son on Saturday). Or maybe your politician, you know the one, the one that just confessed to taking $4 million in bribes, or bribes from the strip club owners from Las Vegas. or the mayor that was caught smoking crack. All of them upstanding people that are more than willing to tell you what not to read or write.

Powerone
Well, Powerone, I don't think I'll comment on your nick. It is rather more to the point that you criticised mine (not that you understood it), rather than coming up with any sensible argument based on what I actually said. That says more about your belief in your own capacity to dominate, than your ability to focus on what this is really all about. I suggest that you don't give up your day job and go into politics.

I am opposed to irrational censorship based on references to the age of fictional characters in creative work, because it ignores other descriptive terms that give more of a clue to the intentions of the author, but also because it ignores the fact that references to the ages of characters can only be given any interpretation based on their context. If you had bothered to read what I said, that should have been very clear from the argument, which was supported by three good examples.

If a website to which I contribute my own creative work has a policy on the kind of material that is accepted, I see that as a part of my contract with the owners of the website, and I am not being unreasonable if I complain when it appears that this policy has not been implemented, especially if that means that I may be legally in jeopardy by association.

In this case I have not complained. It is the new owner of the site who found that the policy was previously not enforced properly, and intends to rectify this, and I gave my support. External censorship by governments does not come into it. This is a matter of free choice on the part of the website owner, who is not charging for access to the Library, is entitled to choose what kind of material the site will be allowed to contain, and is also entitled to be secured from any legal risk that might arise if the stated policy is not enforced. I think we can have a great deal of freedom on this website, if we don't push our luck.

I was arguing that there might be a case for excluding some material on different grounds from specific references to age, and that if this was done, many authors might actually have more freedom in here. Unfortunately Powerone has 35 stories in the Library, which seem to focus mainly on the rape and torture of unwilling female victims, who are often clearly underage, on the basis of descriptive detail other than the specific mention of age. So if my suggestions were implemented, a lot of his stories might have to go.

As a writer of some pretty extreme fantasy material of my own, I am hardly in a position to argue in favour of the kind of censorship religious zealots would prefer to see. There is a lot of unique creative writing in this library. It covers a spectrum of sexual preferences, fetishes and fantasies, and some of it is very good indeed, in my opinion.

Of course different people vary in their view of what makes a scene the ultimate erotic fantasy. Sexual orientation is far more than a matter of gender identity. But why should so many of us lose what, as adults, we regard as a wonderful erotic resource, just because a few people want to contribute stories about beating up and raping kids!