Let me make two things clear. First, I do not mean sex with children described in graphic detail, and certainly not child porn written for the sole purpose of stimulation, not even works with “redeeming social value” (as if good literature requires redemption!) that doesn’t mind exciting the reader as an added bonus. Second, I am not advocating that our magazine or any other publication change its policy and, inevitably, breathe its last. I am curious, however, to hear what others think about the issue, and if we can get a discussion going, so much the better. That the question is moot makes it no less interesting.

Books that do not contain overtly erotic scenes do squeak through, especially by women authors (Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye and Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, for example), which makes me wonder if men are automatically suspect. We all know that men are horny 24/7 and think with their dicks, don’t we?

What’s more – and this is the height of illogic – Hollywood is more daring than the publishing industry. True, directors do not give us below-the-waist shots of children being abused or even experimenting with each other, but I am not advocating we include such scenes in our stories. If you even include dialog of children talking about sex in a story, you’re walking on thin ice. Hollywood doesn’t bat an eyelash.

And there are so many reasons to write about children in a sexual context! To name a few:

1) It happens, illegally in our society, and it’s a matter of serious concern. Newspapers and TV can tell about it when it does, but fiction? – think again. That fiction can (and does) address social issues in ways that bring them to the readers’ attention and make them think about them, that the fictional pen has time and time again proved mightier than the nonfictional pen, that it has changed the world, makes no difference.

2) It happens and has happened in other ages and other cultures. Until well into the nineteenth century girls barely pubescent could be seduced or violated, but no hint of homosexuality, if you please. How are we to write honestly or authentically about our own past or countries like India and most of Africa and the Middle East, if only grown-ups are allowed to have sex in them?

3) We were all children once, and memories of our dawning awareness of our sexuality provide a wealth of material on which to draw. And the stories will speak to us, to our uncertainties and our experiences, and hit home. These are the best of the stories we will never read and which have little hope of making it beyond an editor’s desk. The combination of sex and children presented in a positive light is the ultimate taboo.

4) The characters in our stories are products of their past experiences. To hide how they got to be the way they are can turn them into one-dimensional people. We can get away with saying in passing that something happened, but God forbid they should have vivid memories!

I’m sure you can come up with other reasons. I know I can, but these will do for now.

I dislike censorship on principle, though I think the line must be drawn somewhere. I also think we draw it too broadly for violence and too narrowly for sex, and that the rules (no sex between adults and anyone under eighteen years old; no sex between minors under fifteen) are arbitrary, nitpicking, unrealistic, and conceived and applied by the letter rather than the spirit without regard to context or what the story is about. You may write about a pregnant twelve-year-old. You may tell who got her pregnant. You may not tell how he got her pregnant. Same-sex sex involving minors is anathema.

So now we come to what really pisses me off. Why are people so unable to distinguish between what is prurient and what is worthwhile that the mere juxtaposition of children and sex makes them imagine anyone who reads is a potentially dangerous criminal wildly beating off with a book in his other hand? No doubt such people exist. On the other hand, it would not surprise me if some pathetic fellow were at this very moment beating off to a poem about old shoes. (Admittedly, there are fewer like him, and it is not so much in the public interest to protect our footwear.)

There can be but one explanation. Society as a whole views sex as something dirty, wicked and unspeakably dangerous. Let Mrs. Grundy swear up and down that sex within the marriage bond is sacred and beautiful. I don’t believe her for a second; she’s mouthing off an empty cliché that’s been drummed into her head. She thinks she’s speaking the truth, but her unconscious mind sees things differently. If she had her way, she’d do away with every erotic story ever written along with all the real life people who resemble the characters in them.

Fortunately, even here in America the rules seem to be relaxing somewhat. More and more sites now allow sex, even same-sex sex, between underage characters provided they aren’t under sixteen, neither is over eighteen, and the sex is vanilla. Make the maximum age for having sex with a sixteen-year-old twenty-one (I mean in fiction), and I can live with that.

The very words “redeeming social value” prove that our sick, repressive society feels that if you write about sex you have to atone for it. And as for community standards, don’t Internet groups such as we who read the stories in Wilde Oats constitute a community, and aren’t we small enough to be self-policing?

And we do self-police, but in doing so we're compelled to follow to standards set by outsiders who wouldn't be caught dead reading our stories.

Stanley Ridge, a native New Yorker, has for over 30 years made his home in the Midwest, where he teaches in a small liberal arts college.  He also works as a literary translator.  His life as a professor and scholar, father of two wayward sons, owner of a large, friendly dog, and for over five years partner of a beautiful man, keep him very very busy.  He devotes much of the little spare time he has to writing and somewhat less of it to his duties on the editorial team of two m2m on-line literary magazines.  He likes to travel and has spent nearly a quarter of his life abroad, mostly in French-speaking countries.

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