Two weeks ago I submitted one of my published stories to a European site (erotxt.me) that published sexually explicit fiction. I could have chosen any of a few dozen stories, but I chose as my first story the “Teenage Girl Masturbating – Multiorgasmic” which is a kind of lewd Internet fairy tale mystery.
The site owner rejected the story, mainly because the “The title, short description, and story repeatedly describe the sexual subject as a ‘teenage girl’ or ‘teen,’ while her adult age is never clearly established.”
I wrote a long response to this rejection, but rather than send it, I suggested a reasonable compromise: change the story title and summary while leaving intact the story text.
After doing this, I resubmitted the same story, but the same moderator simply reiterated the original note. I quote:
This story still cannot be published in its current form. The story still describes the sexual subject as a “teenage girl,” and her adult age is never clearly established anywhere in the text. It also still uses “childlike” and “little girl” during explicit descriptions of nudity, masturbation, and orgasm. Please revise these terms and clearly establish that Sonia was an adult when the video was recorded; the sandwich-shop detail alone does not confirm this.
Before I post my response, I should mention that the erotxt.me website has a detailed community guidelines policy — perhaps ridiculously detailed. Let me quote the relevant parts:
erotxt is strictly for adults. We do not tolerate any content involving minors or any other illegal content under EU law. We may refuse, edit, or remove content and may suspend or terminate accounts that do not comply with these rules.
….
All characters depicted in any sexual or romantic context must be clearly and unambiguously over 18 years old at the time of the events.
Below is my response to the editor who turned down the submission because of the age ambiguity issue.
Welcome to Planet Blorgon!
Dear Erotxt.me,
The text in the story does not state her age, and unfortunately there is no way to obtain a valid state-approved ID for a literary character to confirm her literary age.
Also, maybe it wasn’t clear, but the story does not depict an actual event or a video. It is a product of the imagination. (I actually had a reader write me once and ask me where was the video mentioned in the story, and I had to laugh at that).
This story is NOT about underage sex, but about the propagation of an Internet myth and the inability to find the “truth” behind a video of unknown provenance. It is also about the Internet underground, exploitation, the diffusion of responsibility and invasion of privacy.
In fact, the title itself “Teenage Girl Masturbating – Multiorgasmic” doesn’t refer to the fictional video itself but to the label that an unknown Internet person used when referring to the fictional video.
Personally it never occurred to me that the female character portrayed would be anything but an adult. But I guess you read it differently.
The suggestion that the story itself should establish clearly Sonia was an adult over 18 when the video was recorded seems wrong-headed. It is like putting a notice at the beginning of the “Wizard of Oz” movie to say “Warning: All the events described in this movie were ONLY A DREAM!” Such an action would puncture the plausibility of the story universe and and imply that an unknowable event is actually knowable.
I understand that story sites have to set standards somewhere, and sometimes that can be difficult to do. Also I understand that different countries and internet service providers have different rules. Perhaps your criticism would be appropriate if the Sonia character were actually the protagonist or a character that the protagonist was trying to seduce. I probably would agree that a story that specifically describes a 15 or 16 year old having a sexual encounter would probably not meet the standard you are trying to uphold. But the story provides no evidence to suggest this is true, and the only problem you pointed out is that the story has not explicitly stated the age of the female character in the first paragraph.
But that is not what this story is actually about. It’s about a fictional video of unknown origin and the world’s response to it.
I wrote the story over a decade ago, so I don’t recall my exact frame of mind when I wrote it. But within the story it mentions dozens of individual responses to the video on web forums, porno channels, fan fiction and blogs (including by women), none of these responses mention anything to the effect that “the girl looks underage” or “are you sure that the girl is over 18?” So that would suggest to me that the story was not trying to flaunt underage sex.
I guess you could argue that my use of the word “girl” in the story implies that she is a minor (and yes, that term can be laden with connotation and subtext). But at that point you are simply acting as language police, and most writers would have a problem with that.
For another sexually explicit story I wrote a while back, I received a question from a reader, “Is the protagonist a man or a woman?” I clearly had intended the protagonist to be a man, but when I reread the story, I realized that I had described actions and events in a way that left ambiguous the gender of the main protagonist. I did not do this on purpose, but when I edited the story later, I toyed around with adding more details to firmly establish that the protagonist was male. Eventually, though, I decided that I liked the effect and left it the way it was. Ambiguity can be purposeful and add layers of meaning.
Possible Fixes
After you posted your complaint, I toyed around with several ways to address your concern — some genuine and some not-so-serious.
One solution (the one I like the best ) would be for your website to include a machine-readable (but not human readable) html meta tag that clearly states that this story involves only characters who are 18 years of old. This meta tag should be embedded in the html code and visible only to search engines and AI bots, but not to actual human readers.
Second, I toyed around with the idea of turning the final word of the story into a link, which would go to an AI-generated image of a semi-official looking fake death notice, which clearly states that the person in question was 24 years old when she died (or 25 or 26 or 27). This seemed gratuitous and actually makes a mockery of the seriousness of the actual ending.
Third, I could add an extra line about some online commenters wondering what the age of the unknown female was, and the consensus being that the probable age of the person to be in her mid-20s. But then again, this is already implied in the story, and even if it wasn’t, this would only be speculation anyway. By definition, if the primary focus of the story is devoted to speculation about the personal details of this mysterious girl, and then the story declares “Oh, yes, everything about the girl’s background in the video is a mystery, but thank god we can say with metaphysical certainty that she is 23 years old!” that raises a dozen new questions and ruins the mystery altogether.
Fourth, I toyed with the idea of the girl holding up a sign at the beginning of the story which says “Don’t worry everybody. I’m really 22 years old!” or maybe wearing wearing some university T-shirt at the beginning of the story. But the truth is, people of all ages wear shirts from various sports teams and universities. And such a ludicrous sign would have a single purpose to appease one person — you!
Fifth, I guess it’s hypothetically possible to start with a story frame device that says, “The police department found this video where the girl in it appears to be about 25 years old and from Venezuela.” But that would ruin the suspense element and the final surprise. Also, it would distance the reader from the action.
Sixth, I suppose I could provide a signed letter to you attesting that all the characters in the story are 18 years old or older. But I write under a pseudonym and would sign as the pseudonym, so I am not sure that it would be legally binding.
Seventh, I could add an Author’s Note at the beginning of the story that declares:
“This story takes place entirely on Planet Blorgon, where any creature younger than 18 years exists only as a puddle of water until its 18th birthday. Therefore it is physically impossible for any human being depicted on Planet Zorgon to be younger than 18 years old. “
That might solve one problem but raise other distracting plot and plausibility issues.
In the end, none of these solutions would really fix the labeling problem but would ruin the story in the process.
A quick check on chat gpt indicates that in EU countries (like Germany, UK, Spain, France, Italy), text-only fiction depicting characters under 18 years old are not covered by standard child pornography laws. In USA, it is basically the same. So even if your claim was true that the Sophia character was underage, it’s unlikely that EU laws or US laws would prohibit that short story unless it were accompanied by some visual depiction.
The Benefits of Literary Ambiguity
In some areas, ambiguity can be harmful. For example, if a software team does not have business requirements fully described in an unambiguous way, they might build something contrary to what the customer or user wants. Similarly if a business contract does not clearly and unambigously the rights and responsibilities of the parties, that creates conflict.
But in literary pursuits, rather than being viewed as a problem to be solved, ambiguity is usually a positive value to be cherished. Most of the time I spend writing is devoted precisely to uncovering multiplicity of meaning and interpretation (even though honestly, the idea that the female character was underage was something which had never occurred to me until you pointed it out). I realize that as site manager/approver, you may not have the time to read every story very carefully and you have to be responsible for legal ompliance. But you are applying a standard which is absurd, naive and antithetical to the nature of storytelling.
I guess it’s unnecessary to point out that many classics of literature have depicted characters under 18 falling in love, getting married, having consensual sex and even killing people. Tale of Genji, Romeo and Juliet, Lord of the Flies, Dream of a Red Chamber, Pamela and Tom Jones are esteemed literary classics with adolescent characters doing adult things. Even the Katniss Everdeen character was only 16-17 years old when she kills at least 5 people in the Hunger Games book series. Sometimes their ages are specified; sometimes they are hinted at or implied. In none of these cases has it prevented critics and scholars from lauding them as classics.
Hey, I get it. Explicit fiction can sometimes be hard to judge or moderate. And I generally have no problem with an editor who says, “I didn’t like the story” or “I find the story too creepy” or “This story doesn’t fit in with the site’s overall vibe.” These are examples of applying an aesthetic standard. But pointing to a rule requiring that a character specifically mention that person’s age is legally unnecessary, ridiculous and heavy-handed.
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