I tried writing an “Age Play” novella called Flight Plan. The premise was a young adult (18) looked much younger, and attracted a fellow who likes them young. It crossed an invisible line that triggers a knee-jerk reaction. I wrote about this in my previous blog post, but now I have the chops to prove it. My 16th book is banned, despite the fact that I ticked the Age-Play box before I published it. This was on a platform that allows quite a bit more leeway than that monster with a South American name and very North American puritan values.
It doesn’t matter that I spent hours creating these books, designing covers, plotting, and planning. It all goes up in a puff of smoke if that trigger is pulled.
Here’s the rub – I have seen heterosexual versions of the various banned books I wrote. If an eighteen year-old girl gets “knocked up by daddy,” then it’s within the limits of acceptable erotica. But if an eighteen year old boy gets pregnant by his father, the book, a series starter, comes under fire and is banished to the ether. If a young woman looks like a preteen, and is pursued by a hot guy, it’s fine. If a young man has that twelve-year-old body and shares it with a man, then it’s out the door.
This double standard in the First Amendment-defying world of book censorship is homophobia, plain and simple. I wrote a paperback book called Blue Collar Buds. It had none of the traditional themes that get banned (incest, age play). It was just good old fashioned gay smut. When I changed the cover by REMOVING an illustration, Amazon banned it.
Here’s what really gets me: These books are an art project. I’m writing them to re-create the smut of yore. I give them classic covers in the style of the books that I used to read as a teenager coming out and discovering what it means to be gay. But I’m an unknown, a would-be publisher relying on print-on-demand (POD) to realize my vision. Is there a POD service in Denmark? Grrrr!
We are living in strange times. Liberal values have gone so far to the left that now the very freedoms we once protected are being attacked because they might offend a more vanilla sensibility. We have to “protect” people from offensive speech. God forbid I write the word “fag” in a book, even though assholes called me that for a quarter century or more and now I need to use it in my art. Anything exploring the boundaries of good taste is no longer acceptable.
That jungle of a bookseller operates under a double standard. One book got banned because I had a drawing of a penis. And yet they print Tom of Finland’s work because it has achieved the status of an artwork.
