i have thought a lot about censorship and what is âappropriateâ. not a lot of people know this, but lolita was written to show what we allow on our bookshelves: there being no swear words in it meant it was free from censorship. a book about child molestation was allowed because it didnât explicitly use the word âfuckâ. he wrote it to show we donât really care about protecting children, and it ended up being seen as a romance.
someone once told me - actually, many people have - that lgbt content isnât appropriate for children. any content. not just kissing. iâm drowned in questions: âwonât the parents have to explain it?â âkids shouldnât be thinking about sex at this age, or do you think differently?â âwhat will the kids think?â
at six i saw disney movies. people kiss and get married. i didnât ask âwhat does that mean.â i didnât ask âare those people going to have sex?â i didnât ask anything, because i was six, and no six year old thinks twice about these things. nobody ever âexplainedâ being straight to me, it was a fact, and it existed, and i was fine with that. why would being gay require a thesis, i wonder.
someone once told me that the one of the reasons people hate lgbt individuals is because they canât see us as anything but sexual. weâre not people, so much as sinners. that they donât see love, they see sex. just sex. itâs perversion, not a matter of the heart. only of the body.
i think i was in my early twenties before i saw someone like me.Â
how old were you, though, before you saw violence? before you saw sexual assault on tv? i think something like that is only pg-13, and if itâs implied, they can get away with anything. i remember watching things and learning about blood, but knowing sex - sex was what was really wrong. sex was always rated r. sex was always kind of a bad word. i was told a lot that i wasnât ready.
i had a dream last night that i made a site where people could ask any question they wanted about sex and get answered by a professional. it was shut down in moments because 15 year olds wanted to know if it should hurt, if âdouble-baggingâ was a real thing, if this, if that. we shudder. donât let the children know about that!Â
but at thirteen i had seen enough violence it no longer struck me. i couldnât say âfuckâ but i knew that if you break your femur, you can bleed out internally in under half an hour. in school i wasnât allowed to write about loving girls because what would the administration think - but i could write about wanting to kill myself and people would say how lovely, how blistering.
i have thought a lot about censorship. sometimes people on this site try it with me: donât write this, donât be so nasty. some of it is intrinsic. we know as people with a uterus not to complain about âthat time of the monthâ, we know better than to talk about sexual assault (how shameful), we know that talking about a vagina is somehow scandalous. i can say âdickâ and nobody questions me. some people only refer to the bottom half of me by âpussyâ. they wonât wrap a mouth around âvaginaâ like itâs poison to them. even discussing this, that the language halts, that thereâs an intrinsic desire to say âgirlsâ instead of âwomenâ - feels naughty, illicit. not for children.
the other day someone suggested i make my blog 18+. i said, okay, it deals a lot with depression and other problems that might be for a mature audience. oh no, they said, thatâs not it, i think thatâs helpful. i said, okay. so what is it then. well, youâre gay. you write about loving women. and i said, i donât write about sex often and they said. itâs not about the sex. but wlw isnât for a general audience. teenagers arenât ready.
lolita is recommended for high school and up. i think about that a lot. i know girls who love it, who say it speaks to them on a deep level. itâs beautiful prose, after all. that was the whole point of the novel. something that looked like a rose but was intrinsically awful. i think about how if i was a model theyâd want me to look young, thin, prepubescent. how my body would be sold and how through the mall i walk by images of barely-clothed women while mothers cannot breastfeed in public without fear of retribution.Â
i think about how i can write a novel about violence and it will be pg-13 but if my characters say âfuckâ twice itâs inappropriate. i said fuck three times so far in this post, which makes it only appropriate for adults.Â
i think about that, and how my identity is something that people suggest lines up with a swear word. that people shouldnât talk about it. that itâs a vulgarity. bad for children, harsh, confusing.
fuck. i love women. which one makes this only for those over eighteen.
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