Obscenity laws are disgusting.
In fact, over all, just the judgemental nature of other people disgusts me. Even in the fetish communities, or erotica publishers, or places where people with kinks congregate, you will always stumble upon someone who will be absolutely disgusted at your kink or fetish or erotica and wish to publicly and loudly deride it.
There is no connection to them in defending certain kinks while persecuting others. They do not see the irony or hypocrisy in their actions. It’s something I have to deal with daily when thinking about writing.
There are what is called the B5 – the Big Five. The five things that most erotica publishers will not accept are Incest, Rape, Bestiality, Pedophilia and Scat/Watersports. They are the hard limits for 99% of the erotica publishers out there, and are often accompanied by certain judgments. The other day I saw next to scat “eeeew!”
Nothing about scat or watersports is illegal. To practice it in real life, there is no law stopping you or preventing you from doing it. The others are illegal – in real life. They should be protected free speech to write about, though. It is, after all, fiction and plenty of illegal actions are protected – murder and torture, of course, being one of them. In fact, all of the topics are fine to write about so long as there is not ‘the intent to arouse’.
It’s a problem I’ve had for quite some time – the intent to arouse. What does that mean? Who can speak to the author’s intent? I’ve read a lot of books that feature rape and torture and murder where the descriptions definitely seem titillating. One book I read recently, The Woman, featured some very graphic rape scenes including one where a young boy masturbated to his father raping a bound and tortured woman. It certainly seemed intent to titillate to me, but to someone else perhaps the details provided were intended to disgust. Who is to say?
When talking about the Big Five, though, you get plenty of opinions, usually with very little to back it up. We ban them because of eeew. We ban them because no one should be turned on by that. We ban them because we don’t think people want it.
The younger generation, however? It most certainly does. There is a huge group of people that are now 15 – 35 who grew up on the internet. On some forums I’ve gone to that features predominantly fanfiction, Rape, Incest, Bestiality, etc. are pretty much the only stories that get read. Another hugely popular fad is futanari (women with penises).
These won’t even be touched by traditional publishers, but there are people out there who don’t think ‘eeew’ when reading about this stuff. There are a huge amount of people who want and desire to read about these fantasies, and they’re not any more of a danger to society than people who enjoy reading murder mysteries or watching Dexter. Most individuals are fully capable of differentiating reality from fantasy, and we needn’t protect people from the ‘obscene’.
Obscenity laws are themselves obscene.
But seriously, we are all disgusted by various things. That does not mean to write about them should be illegal. We should realize that one persons obscenity is another persons no-big-deal. It’s arbitrary and hurts nobody.
And outside the legal sphere it’d just be nice if people could acknowledge the arbitrary nature of it, and how hypocritical it is to decry rape erotica while writing bestiality or snuff. It’s all silly, arbitrary line-in-the-sand drawing.
Frankly, I try to reserve my disgust for real things. What’s obscene to me is the murder and horrible treatment of my fellow human beings being carried out routinely and methodically across the very real world at any given time.