something queer going on

So I seem to be writing another fic that is (in part) about queer adolescence. Which means I once again confront the Warnings/Content Notes/Tagging Dilemma.

When the fic is done, I'll post it to AO3, which asks that its "Underage" tag be used "for descriptions or depictions of sexual activity by characters under the age of eighteen." Alternatively, you can "Choose Not to Warn."

In the fic in question, an adolescent boy aged about 12 or 13 experiences sexual pleasure and orgasm in the context of a mystical/supernatural experience. No other human (or any embodied creature) is involved. The sexual content is about six sentences long and fairly euphemistic.

Back in the day I would never have warned for something like that. But fannish norms have changed, often for good reason, and we're in a cultural moment of hyper-alert (not to mention anti-LGBTQIA+ moral panic) about kids and sex.

So take my poll and give me your opinion! Does a scene like this really meet the threshold of "sexual activity?"

NB in practice I will almost certainly go the route of tagging (either "Underage" or "Choose Not to Warn") with content notes, because I think content notes are a much more useful tool than a tag like "Underage" which can cover everything from skeevy (imo) porn to pretty bare acknowledgement that adolescents experience desire and sometimes have sex. But I'm curious about where opinions lie nowadays in these corners of fandom.

Feel free to take the poll whether I know you or not. Please bear in mind that it's about the specific fictional scenario outlined above. It's not a referendum on warnings/notes in general.

ETA: I forgot to add an option for "Tag 'No Archive Warnings Apply' and add content notes." Sorry!

I have a cold and feel icky. But this, from the November 10 2008 episode of Good News Week, cheered me up immensely:

( click to read )

I've finished The Naive and Sentimental Lover and will write up a real post about it when I'm less tired.¹ The book turns out to be vastly more self-aware about its homoeroticism than I had expected, and it also features a good deal of ironic humor. I offer the extract below the cut for your delectation.

( clickety click )

Wow, "spreadsheets" sounds really naughty when put into that kind of context. Which is apparently what it takes to make me learn how to create one. For some years I have diligently avoided acquiring this skill, but then I got the urge to keep track of every queer character in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin novels. After some wailing and gnashing of teeth (because Excel could not be more user-unfriendly unless it started punching the user in the face), I have a multivariable comparison that's confirming some of my theories about queerness in the Aubreyverse. It's not done yet, though (I'm only a little more than halfway through my re-read of all 20 books) so it'll be a while before I post more about it.

But I can say (unrelated to the spreadsheet, which only deals with characters O'Brian identifies as queer) that the re-read is going far to convince me that Stephen Maturin is at least a Kinsey 3, possibly 4 (3 = 50/50 bisexual, 4 = slight preference for the same sex). ( more under the cut )

The New York Times discusses a new poll about repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". When the poll was worded as asking whether "gay men and lesbians" should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, support for repeal was over 10% higher than when the wording was whether "homosexuals" should be allowed to serve.

"Homosexual" has long been a problematic word due to its association with medical discourse that categorized same-sex desire as deviance and sickness.¹ At this point, I think it's become something very like a slur. Anti-gay folks make a point of using the term "homosexual" instead of "lesbian and gay." Some of you may remember a story in which a news service associated with the American Family Association renamed athlete Tyson Gay as "Tyson Homosexual" because the site's filtering software automatically changed the word "gay."

My own least favorite use of "homosexual" has long been as what I've nicknamed the pejorative of specification. As in, "Mary then began a homosexual relationship with Lisa." There's no need for the adjective "homosexual" (it's obvious that the relationship is between two people of the same sex) except to imply that it's not quite the same thing as a real relationship. Just like, say, a "woman doctor" isn't quite a proper doctor.


¹In the first draft of this post I said the word originated in medical discourse, but I had the nagging feeling that was wrong. Double-checking on Wikipedia reminded me that the first known use of "homosexuality" occurred in an 1869 German pamphlet protesting an anti-sodomy law. So it began as a term some LGB people picked for themselves, but was appropriated by medicine and psychiatry for purposes that were often virulently homophobic.

I have a feeling this is going to be all over the internet within hours: a gay author of LGBT-themed books was unable to include the word "gay" in his author profile at Amazon.com. It was flagged as "potentially inappropriate" and he wasn't able to post the profile until he removed it. Click here for his account of the incident.

People are, not surprisingly, outraged.

However, I would bet money, if I had any, that what amazon.com was trying to flag was the use of "gay" as a pejorative (as in "that's so gay"). But whoever did the programming fucked up, which isn't surprising at all because it's damn hard to screen for a word that can be used both positively and pejoratively. Not coincidentally, author profiles are a new feature and thus exactly where horrible glitches are most likely to occur.

I believe this is an accident for one simple reason: Amazon.com isn't affiliated with the Christian right in any way that I know about. (If someone has evidence to the contrary, please link.) Nor have I heard of any pressure campaign by the Christian right against Amazon.com trying to get them to remove LGBT content. Amazon.com has no reason to alienate LGBT customers.

This fuck-up, like the previous delisting of LGBT books, is more easily explained by stupidity than by malice. A probably well-intentioned fuck-up makes more sense than a conspiracy (by a major international corporation serving a customer base that, I imagine, includes more LGBT people than Christian fundamentalists) to secretly make gay books and authors invisible. Especially in the absence of external pressure to do so.

Unless I see convincing evidence to the contrary, I'll continue to think that Amazon.com needs better website maintenance and oversight rather than that it's anti-gay. Especially since Amazon.com is considered a highly progressive company on LGBT employment issues.

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