We call them Young Adult Romances, but are they really?

87 comments

• 

  I’m working on a tween/YA science fiction novel with a 14-year-old main character where I face this very issue. In earlier drafts of the novel (see article below), I did nothing more than describe their first kiss, but after some discussion with potential readers, I have become somewhat more explicit. Here’s an article I wrote about this:

  http://www.aliciamccalla.com/index.php/113-guest-fest-margaret-fieland-talks-writing-same-sex-sexuality-in-ya-scifi

  • 

    Hi Margaret

    I read your article and I understand the dilemma that authors of YA romances face with underage MCs. However, what I find strange is that they all seem to feel that only the parents’ point of view is important and are more concerned about whether the parents would feel “uncomfortable” with younger MCs sharing more than a kiss. This comes back to the question I asked in the post. Who are these books written for – parents, school libraries, adults who want to think that tweens and 13 – 14 year olds are not having sex? What about the actual young adults who want to read these books written about heroes that they want to relate to, but because they don’t speak to their issues they seek their information elsewhere.

    It never ceases to amaze me that authors believe that excessive violence in these books is perfectly okay, totally disregarding the fact that teens and young adults are being abused every day either physically, mentally or sexually.

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      Jesse, here is the current version of the “first kiss” scene. They do more later. My main “thing” is how much I want to describe

      Beram is the alien. Alan and Martin, the main character, are human (Terrans). Here’s a bit:

      As soon as we returned to our room, Alan crawled up to the top bunk and pulled the covers over his head. I wished him anywhere but here with me and Beram.

      Beram lay down on the bottom bunk and scooted over to the wall. He smiled at me, patting the bed, and I crawled in next to him. For a couple of seconds, the only sound was the swoosh of the air circulators.

      “I’ve never kissed anyone before.” I kept my voice soft in case Alan wasn’t asleep. “Not on the lips.” I continued to stare at the bottom of my bunk, the one above us.

      “Neither have I.” Beram’s hand fluttered down to rest on my arm, and my body melted. Was Alan really asleep? After a moment, I gave a mental shrug and rolled towards Beram and put my arms around him. He smelled of soap, citrus, and musk.

      This time I kissed him first. His lips were the softest, sweetest things I’d ever touched. After a moment, Beram opened his mouth and his tongue darted into my mouth. We spent a long time kissing, but Alan’s presence kept us from going further.

      • 

        Hi Wave!

        There is a weird double standard when it comes to sex and violence in YA. Violence, as you say, is okay, but sex is not. I don’t think this is down to the authors though, as much as it is the publishers. As though writing about kids having sex is somehow advocating it, which of course isn’t the case. And of course a sex scene can always be written without being explicit.

        I think it boils down to the whole sex = porn debate. Sex opens up a whole can of worms that violence doesn’t. If you’re writing a sex scene where the characters are under the age of consent, are you in fact writing child exploitation material? I don’t think you are, if you’re doing it right, but it’s shaky ground and most publishers just won’t go there.

• 

  I live with a young adult at the ripe old age of 17. 🙂 Most of the books she read when she was younger that were “straight” stories, had the teen girls drinking and having sex. I find it is most publishers who don’t want to have books with teens having sex because they are afraid of the child porn label. To be honest, I have no clue as to the sex level of the books she is reading now. She’s not much of a romance reader though and finds sappy HEA endings annoying. She’d rather they all die in a raging serial killer spree. Ah, kids. 🙂

  Based on GR, YA seem to appeal to grown women, unless it’s just a case of younger people don’t have GR accounts. I’m really not sure. Kids definitely have sex and I have no problem reading about sex between kids of similar ages, as a parent, the idea of a 16 year old and a 30 year old would bother me, but I think it simply has to fit the ages of the kids. There are also people who think if they find two 15 year olds having sex hot, then that is far too pervy and makes people uncomfortable. Authors and publishers really can’t afford to target ONLY 15-18 year olds, as the market is small and most don’t have the disposable income that adults do, so they widen the scope which probably waters it down.

  I do hear the rants about “no one would do that in high school” from my daughter. Of course that’s her perspective based on her own experiences, but she finds many of the YA characters unrealistic and I’m sure they are stereotypes created by adult authors, often to fit a trope or theme, but I wonder if my daughter is any example, that many young adults today can’t relate to the characters because they are unrealistic to the world teens live in today, which is much different than the one I grew up in 30 years ago.

  • 

    Hi Tam

    Thanks for commenting.

    Most of the books she read when she was younger that were “straight” stories, had the teen girls drinking and having sex. …

    …..she finds many of the YA characters unrealistic and I’m sure they are stereotypes created by adult authors, often to fit a trope or theme,

    This is the problem that real young adults face when reading YA romances. The books are totally unreal and devoid of activities that they do during their daily lives, so they can’t relate.

    I don’t think many YA authors have made the leap that young adults today live in a totally different world than the ones they grew up in. They want to keep that idealistic version of their world alive in their books. What this does is alienate the very people who should be reading these books for the adventure and yes, the sex.

    As long as authors keep these stories unrealistic, their only audience will continue to be parents and adults who think like them, as well as the school libraries; maybe that’s their intent. Let’s forget about the young adults who are profiled in these books – they are not important, at least that seems to be the thinking.

    As for separate YA books for real life young adults that they can relate to, as long as the authors and publishers target parents, tweens and very young teens, the group (real young adults) who should be reading these books and would like to, unfortunately are the ones who are penalized.

• 

  I agree this is an interesting subject. Had I been a young adult (15-20) reading these books I too would have been disappointed if the sex was faded out every time, it just doesn’t make a believably enough story and I would have switched to adult fiction.

  I began reading fiction for adults when I was 11 and at the age of 15 I read nothing but. It wasn’t just romances, but dramas, historical fiction, criminal/detective stories and horror, but most of them had elements of romance and sex scenes in them,just not as explicit as today’s erotic romance. One exception, I particularly remember Erica Jong’s The adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones, a re-telling of Fanny Hill, that book has some pretty hefty sex scenes, and I can’t remember my parents ever having an opinion on what I was reading (most of the books coming from my parents’ bookshelves). Since this was way before the internet a lot of what I learnt about sex during this period came from fiction.

  I also believe this is very much a cultural difference. It seems to me sex and nakedness, whether in books or in film are looked up on more severely in USA than in my country, Sweden.

  One author of YA, that I like very much is Robin Reardon. In the books I have read so far she has never shied away from the sex, and I think she writes it in a (and this is important in YA books) way that is fitting to the readers and to the characters, both their age and their personality. It’s teenagers being horny and having sex, the way teenagers (the way I remember it at least) would have it.

  I don’t think reading about a little sex as long as it is consensual and non-violent will hurt even a reader as young as 12 or 13. If they are not interested they will put the book away or skip the sex scenes, and if they are interested, maybe even looking for it, then they will find it no matter what, and if it is through well-written YA stories, rather than out right pornography, then it’s so much better.

  • 

    Hi Sara

    Thanks for commenting. I’m really interested in the views of YA writers to understand why their books are full of gore and violence but shy away from sex as if it were evil.

    I don’t think reading about a little sex as long as it is consensual and non-violent will hurt even a reader as young as 12 or 13.

    I agree with you because, regardless of what parents think, their little darling 12 and 13 year olds are having sex, the parents just don’t know about it.

    I also agree that it must be a cultural thing in the US. I live in Canada and while some of our sexual practices are like those in the US, we are quite unique in other ways and we’re not as strict or puritanical about sex as our neighbours to the south.

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  “Young adult” as a publishing category has long meant books targeted at ages 12-17 or thereabouts. The characters may be at the upper end of that range, but those are the target readers.

  At the upper end of the age range, readers might want to read about characters like them, including those who have sex. At the lower end, maybe not.

  “Young adult” in publishing doesn’t mean the same as it does in real life, and I think that’s a problem with the publishing industry, but for the moment that’s the way it is. I write young adult fiction, and as a parent and an author, I am not comfortable including on-screen, explicit sex scenes in my YA. (I save those for the adult romances I write under a different pen name.) I write for a wide audience, but the readers I primarily have in mind are the teens I know personally, including my own daughters. Those teens, including a gay couple ages 17 and 19, tell me they don’t want to read explicit sex in YA books, so I don’t write it. I have characters in my books who do have sex, and I try to make it clear that isn’t a bad thing, but the sex doesn’t happen on the page.

  Other readers–and authors–may have other opinions, but I think in the vast realm of young adult fiction, even young adult romance, there is room for books with on-page graphic sex, and for books where the focus is on the romance and the sex happens off-page.

  • 

    Hi Jo

    I write young adult fiction, and as a parent and an author, I am not comfortable including on-screen, explicit sex scenes in my YA.

    You mention also that the young adults you talk to tell you that they don’t want to read explicit sex in YA books, so you don’t write it.

    While I’m sure that’s what you were told, what these young adults are saying on various websites that cater to young adults is the exact opposite. Many online gay social network sites for youth/teens are hook up sites for sex – go figure. Typically teens/young adults tell adults what they think they want to hear, but when they write me they say something different because they know that I respect their confidence and will not reveal their identities.

    As I said in the post, I’m not advocating explicit sex for all of these books because, like everything else, there’s a range of interest depending on the age of the reader. However the absence of sex from young adult books seems to be a deliberate strategy on the part of the authors, which is strange since we don’t live in a society that’s devoid of sex, especially for young adults, even those as young as 12 – 13 years old.

    • 

      Hi, Wave,
      Thanks for the response. It’s true that kids do tend to tell adults what they want to hear; on the other hand, the kids I’ve spoken to say they do want to read about sex, just not in books written for teenagers. And this is a small sample, so I completely agree that some, maybe even most, teens would disagree. Sex isn’t absent from my books; my characters have sex or at least discuss its existence and their reasons for not having it. I just choose not to have the actual sexual activity take place on the page with graphic details.

  • 

    I wonder if what your sample group means by saying they don’t want explicit sex, is that they don’t want to read books that focus too much on it. I write explicit sex scenes, and much of the mail I get from teenagers has some variation of “I’m glad the book wasn’t pornography, like a lot of gay books are.” While I don’t shy away from describing what happens, the focus of my books is on relationships. I’ve never had a teen reader tell me they wished the sex was less explicit. I also wonder how many teens would feel comfortable telling an adult, especially when asked directly, that they enjoy explicit sex. I know I enjoyed reading explicit sex scenes as early as twelve, but I probably would have lied through my teeth about it until I was twenty. 😀

    • 

      It may be partly discomfort talking to me about it. What I think they mean is erotica-level sex scenes where the focus is on arousing the reader, and which I have seen in some YA books from small presses and self-publishers.

      Then again, with at least two of them, it’s a reference to any sex on the page, but those two have reasons; one is a 17-year-old girl who identifies as bisexual and who was assaulted at age 12; reading any type of sex, even tame scenes, is hugely triggering for her at this point. The other who doesn’t want any sex at all in the books she reads is a 14-year-old girl who identifies as asexual.

    • 

      I haven’t done an exhaustive survey, but I’ve had two teenage boys — one 15 and the other 18 — tell me in the past year that they wouldn’t be interested in a YA novel with explicit sex. That’s not because they don’t look at porn, necessarily (They didn’t communicate that to me.), but because to them explicit sex means they’re reading something sleazy. The novel ceases to be something they’re interested in reading. It’s now, in their view, the teenage equivalent of a “bodice-ripper.”

      • 

        Agree, Jamie. Further to my point that kids WILL self govern. That said, it is up to us, as authors, to write realistic and responsible content and to do so in such a manner that it contributes to the growth and well-being of our youths. 🙂

• 

  The sex issue…it’s illegal in the US to feature explicit sex between characters under the age of consent (18). There are exceptions, but figuring them out is a mine field so most publishers and authors avoid it.

  • 

    Hi James

    So it’s illegal to feature explicit sex if the characters are under 18. What about books written in Europe where the laws are different and in most countries the age of consent ranges from 13 (Spain); 14 (Germany); France (15) etc.? Does that mean that if these books are sold in the US, for example, the authors can be prosecuted? BTW I did some research and although the federal age of consent is 18 most states have different laws. In thirty US States, 16 is the age of consent, nine have set the AOC at 17, and the remainder (twelve) have 18 as their age of consent.

    There are many books written with protagonists who are 18 years old yet there’s still no explicit sex. I read a lot of YA books which is why I noticed this. So is this just a continuation of the same strategy even though the protagonists have reached the age of consent?

    • 

      I don’t know the ramifications of international law on the authors. BUT a DA with a wild hair could, theoretically, prosecute anyone buying the book in the US with possession of child pornography. The publisher or distribute could likewise be taken on.

      There are then issues about the marketing sexually explicit material to minors. Most states prohibit the sale of same to anyone under 21…although, books walk a gray line because my 11 year old could pull any romance (even one with explicit content) off the shelf and buy it since it’s not marked as “erotica.” But the fiction with the YA market is that its marketed solely to the under 18 crowd (when, given the age of the fans of Twilight and Hunger Games, we know that’s not who’s really reading them).

      And then the next layer is gay romance of any stripe (including YA) is still produced almost exclusively by small presses. Simon and Schuster has the legal chops (and funding) to go toe to toe on the “Lolita” standards (literary merit, not meant for titillation, etc.). Most indi-publishers would be sunk by a legal battle that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and several years to litigate. Why set yourself up to be put out of business?

      • 

        Hi James

        I’m not a lawyer but I wonder about those 30 states where the age of consent is 16 and nine where the AOC is 17. Do state laws take precedence over federal law in the US or vice versa? Why would someone sue a small press when they don’t sue movie studios for distributing child porn for those shows with actors under 18 where there’s explicit sex? (This is, of course, a rhetorical question and I don’t really expect you to answer it). 🙂

        I know of one small press (which I won’t name because I don’t want some fool to sue them) that publishes YA romances with explicit sex. Also, with the popularity of self publishing maybe some authors living in states with lower age of consent laws as well as those living in Europe will be able to publish their books themselves and get out from under the publishers’ umbrella. It seems to me that publishing is held to a different standard than movies and television even though they are all forms of entertainment. Amazon sells a lot of books with sexually explicit material that are targeted to YA audiences yet as far as I know, they have not been sued to date.

      • 

        James

        If you’re still monitoring this post, could you explain this to me

        There are then issues about the marketing sexually explicit material to minors. Most states prohibit the sale of same to anyone under 21…

        Why under 21, if the age of consent federally is 18? Is this a double standard?

        • 

          It does seem to be. But you walk into any adult bookstore and the signs say “No one under 21 allowed.” Obviously that’s porn, but sites like JTs Stockroom and The Pleasure Chest have age restriction windows.

    • 

      That’s a really interesting question, Wave, because I was wondering the same. Not only about books set in other cultures like Europe but also historical novels (Marie Antoinette for example was 15 when she was married to the French Dauphin) or novels set in Fantasy or SF worlds where the age of consent either wouldn’t exist or would be different.

      • 

        I have always been puzzled about the different age of consent laws in Europe (e.g. Spain 13 and Germany 14) as well as different states in the US. How would the courts ensure consistency? How could the police charge a publisher with selling books with explicit content to someone 16 years of age in a state where that is legal?

        As you said, Marie Antoinette was just 15, but the AOC law in France is also 15.

        I wonder about someone who is 16 in the US but married because their state’s AOC law is also 16. Would a publisher consider it against the law to write about them having explicit sex?

        • 

          As far as I know written erotica isn’t considered pornographic in Europe. Only visual material is viewed as pornographic. I’ve bought all kinds of eritica books from different vendors and the only times they wanted proof of age was when it involved certain DVDs, i.e. amazon.de wanted proof that I was over 18 so that I could buy the BBC miniseries of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (yes, I was surprised too). Yet play.com (UK-based) and amazon.co.uk didn’t ask for my age when I tried to order the DVDs there.

          I recall that some yaoi managas had stickers on them that said they shoudln’t be sold to anyone under 16 but afaik that wasn’t really enforced and was only considered a guideline.

          I bought Anne Rice’s Beauty-trilogy when I was around 15 and no-one said anything. I wasn’t asked to proof my age. The books were openly available in a normal bookstore. Same with the library. I was around 14 when I got a library card for the adult section and they never said anything about the books I took home with me. They were only interested in my age when it came to overdue fees ;-).

          Now, it is possible to block products/books to be sold to specific countries. For example Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ is banned in Germany and can’t be published or sold in Germany. Only old used copies are allowed. If the shipping (or invoice) address is Germany amazon or B&N won’t sell the book.

      • 

        If I only sell my books in CA then CA law applies. If I send one book via the mail or over the net to another state then the rules of Interstate Commerce applies. At that point federal laws apply.

        Again, Warner Brothers has a fleet of lawyers on staff.

        Look, for me to take an “open invoice” case (basically as simple a commercial dispute as you can get) from filing through trial will cost between $30,000 and $60,000 dollars US. That’s without conducting much discovery, taking no depositions, with no law and motion disputes and a court not a jury trial. I don’t have any small publisher who has that kind of free cash laying around – and $60,000 wouldn’t cover half the legal fees to defend a “obscenity” lawsuit.

        It’d be way expensive to prove you’re right.

        • 

          I see your point James. I should have been a lawyer. 😕

          Thanks for the advice. You can send me your bill later and I’ll pay you in cookies. 😆

          What you’re saying basically is that federal AOC laws trump state laws so any on-page explicit sex would have to be between 18 year olds, or the authors run the risk of being sued. I’m still going to check out a few books on amazon where I KNOW the MCs are a lot younger than 18, to see how they get around the federal law when they market these books.

          Most of the authors who self publish currently distribute their books through Amazon so, hopefully, they may be able to use their lawyers if they are sued by some whack job.

        • 

          True, true, and true. Excellent points …causes us to evaluate “nuisance” value of an action. However, authors don’t generally perform this analysis.

• 

  I don’t write YA (yet?) but if I did, I would definitely include sex-scenes. The question is how explicit and how graphic they would be. I probably would make them much tamer than the stories that are obviously targeted at a more mature audience. And I think sometimes just alluding that sex has happened could even be enough. It would depend on the story.

  Omitting sex just seems ridiculous. I mean when you take a look at the tv shows that are theoretically aimed at a YA audience (Buffy, Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf) that characters constantly have sex or the potential of sex happening is alluded to. Why should novels be any different than tv shows.

  But, to be completely honest, it would also depend on the age of the characters. I would have problems with sex-scenes involving 12-14 years olds even though I know that my cousin was 13 when he first had sex with his girlfriend. Over 15 wouldn’t be that problematic for me.

  I also agree with Sara that sex, especially among teenagers, seems to be viewed as far more problematic in the US than for example in Europe. Age of consent in Germany for example is 14. In Sweden it’s 15 if I’m not mistaken. And most other European countries fall into the bracket of 14-16 when it comes to age of consent. Here the violence and the gore would be and is viewed as more problematic than the sex. The US is generally viewed as extremely prude :wink:.

  • 

    Hi Alix

    Omitting sex just seems ridiculous. I mean when you take a look at the tv shows that are theoretically aimed at a YA audience (Buffy, Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf) that characters constantly have sex or the potential of sex happening is alluded to. Why should novels be any different than tv shows.

    This is exactly my point. Why are books different from movies where underage (in the US) protagonists are having sex on screen? Are those audiences more tolerant? what about books where teens are kicked out of their homes because they’re gay and they have to survive on the street by having sex? Will those books fade to black too?

    As I said in the post, any sex should be tasteful and age appropriate. I don’t expect a 12 year old to have on page sex in a young adult book although the movies don’t seem to have any reservations about that.

    Why is it that teen sex in books is viewed differently in the US than in the movies? Is this the publishers and authors self censoring? No one is getting sued for making movies where “underage” protagonists are having sex.

    • 

      It’s a really interesting thing because I remember reading a number of Fantasy novels back in the 80s and 90s that had sex-scene with characters under 18 in them.

      Also a number of gay-coming-of-age novels like the books by Don Sakers have explicit sex-scenes. Don Sakers’ two gay romances are clearly aimed at a teenaged audience and have explicit sex-scenes in them in addition to the very sweet love-story. They were written in the late 80s but are still available on for example Amazon.com.

      The whole tv-show-thing is especially interesting because I don’t recall many people having a problem with the fact that Buffy was 15/16 when she first had sex with Angel who was around 250 at that time. Same with Vampire Diaries. We are supposed to believe that Elena, Bonnie and Co. are 17, Jeremy is 15 or 16. And age of consent in Virginia is actually 18.

      I think a lot is self-censoring and probably also because when it comes to romance the fear of being considering titillating because the boundaries between romance, erotic romance, and erotica aren’t that clear-cut. “Barely legal” is also a huge kink-niche. Amazon is full or erotica with the heading of “barely legal”, so I can understand why writers and publishers shy away from that. On some writing boards romance writers are cautioned to make sure that if the have erotic scenes in their books to make sure that the characters are over 18 and that it is stated somewhere very clearly.

      Another topic are yaoi mangas where again a number of characters are under 18 and the core-target-reader-ship are teenaged girls. And some of those are hardcore explicit.

      I agree with you, done tastefully and age-appropriate it should not be an issue.

• 

  Wave, I applaud you for tackling this topic, and I know it’s one that’s sure to evoke some very strong feelings in those of us who hold firmly to our deep-rooted opinions and entrenched beliefs. There is nothing that is going to raise a parent’s hackles more than an issue that they truly believe might threaten the safety of their children or that might in any way expose their children to harm or inappropriate material. And let’s be honest, that is what this issue is really all about. Parents believe (as they should, in my opinion) that their job is to protect their kids, guide them morally, and make sure they are not exposed to elements (not only in literature, I might add) that in any way might negatively affect their development.

  I do understand this, and no it is not because I have biological children of my own. I did have the honor and privilege of raising my nephew, though, and had physical custody of him while he was in high school. And I appreciate the struggle that parents have with this issue. My Randy was very serious about a girl, and they were a couple nearly the entirety of his high school experience. If you think I did not do my share of worrying about how far they were going, what exactly they were doing, if they were being safe, etc, then you aren’t a parent. It was a huge concern of mine.

  But if you think about it, this issue lends itself very easily to hypocrisy. Don’t our kids see explicit sex all the time, whether we try to censor them or not? What about the movies they watch? What about the sit-coms and soap operas? What about the sites they access on the internet? Have you bothered to listen carefully to the lyrics of their songs?

  Young people ARE sexual. They think about sex a lot. They have sex. They masturbate (especially if they are male). And even if they are not actually having sex, they’re fantasizing about it.

  As a YA author, I have some books which depict explicit sex scenes. I like to believe that I’m very careful with my choice of words, so as not to give the impression that I’m trying to titillate. No, it is not child porn that I’m writing. The goal is not to write scenes that will turn on the dirty old men (or women)readers.

  Not all of my YA stories contain sex, though. My Dumb Jock series has nothing explicit at all. Yet even these stories do contain inferences. The reader understands that sex did happen. I just don’t describe it.

  I have no idea whom exactly the publishers are targeting as an audience, whether it is exclusively readers 12 to 17 as was stated earlier, or if it is a broader range of readers. But I do know that over 55% of all YA books are purchased and read by readers over the age of 18. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young-adult_fiction And I do know that I have always been a fan of YA stories. It’s a genre that as a reader I never outgrew.

  If authors and publishers are concerned about exposing kids at the lower end of their targeted age range, perhaps rather than censoring out all the explicit material, they could simply communicate an age appropriateness via a label. e.g. THIS BOOK IS RECOMMENDED FOR READERS 16+

  When I think about the fact that some of the most popular YA books in existence, The Hunger Games and The Twilight series, are based upon a premise of brutality where many of the central characters are killed off, I wonder why we are so worried about sex? Isn’t the violence far more of a threat to the psyche of our youth than is physical intimacy?

  This is a great article, Wave. And again, I thank you for your post. I’d love to link it to our YA website.

  • 

    Hi Jeff

    Thanks for understanding why I wrote this post and you’re welcome to link it to your new YA site True Colorz:

    http://www.true-colorz.com/

    Parents want to protect their young from books they feel might corrupt them, but they don’t seem to be as concerned about protecting their kids from movies and daytime television that have explicit sex. Where do they draw the line?

    Is this strictly the publishers? If so there’s an easy remedy. Many authors are now self publishing. Recently we reviewed self pubbed YA books but it was the same old, same old – no sex. So obviously it’s not just the publishers but the authors themselves who are self censoring their books.

    Adults, especially parents, are always looking behind the curtain for any explicit sex in books marketed to their young with “underage” protagonists. Do they not know that sex is everywhere and their attitudes are out of date?

    When I think about the fact that some of the most popular YA books in existence, The Hunger Games and The Twilight series, are based upon a premise of brutality where many of the central characters are killed off, I wonder why we are so worried about sex? Isn’t the violence far more of a threat to the psyche of our youth than is physical intimacy?

    I guess explicit violence is more acceptable to parents, going by the popularity of these movies.

    I think your plan of labelling books for different age levels is an excellent one and I hope it catches on.

• 

  As Tam mentioned, the bottleneck here is the publishers. Go check out the guidelines on the web sites of a few publishers in our genre; every one I’ve seen says specifically that they will accept no submissions with under-age characters having sex, period, end of discussion. The subject was brought up on my publisher’s authors’ list and one of the owners made it clear that no under-age character could have sex at all, not even off screen.

  To the best of my knowledge, written depictions of under-age character having sex are not illegal at the Federal level in the US. (Who knows what each state or county or municipality says — I for one am not going to track them all down.) But although “kiddie porn” is illegal, written sex with no pictures is a very gray area, and it’s well known that law enforcement has little interest in wasting resources going after writers and publishers when there are photographers and movie makers making porn with real, actual children involved.

  My favorite example here is a novel very well known in its day, The Kadin, by Bertrice Small. It was published in the late 70s, and is still in print and available. The protag is 13 when the book opens, and 14 when she first has sex. It’s not really a romance, but rather a historical novel about her life, but it was marketed as a romance, the writer is a well known romance author, and it was shelved in bookstores and supermarkets along with the other romances.

  Despite the on-page sex involving a very-much-under-age young woman, the Pedo Police have neglected to kick in Avon’s doors for all these decades. They don’t seem too worried about it, either. Nor does Amazon, who lists the book for sale, or anyone else who’s heard of the book. My mom had no problem loaning it to me, along with all her other historical romances, which she started doing as soon as I asked permission when I was twelve. No problem. I never really read books written FOR high school kids until I was much older.

  And let’s talk about what’s “under-age.” Even within the US, the age of consent is variable. In Washington State, where I live, it’s 16, a pretty common age. I read somewhere that a minority of states set it as high as 18, and yet that’s still what everyone just assumes it is “in the US.” [sigh]

  And there are plenty of non-romance YA books where the teenage characters have sex. They don’t usually describe every grunt and spurt, but neither do they fade to black every time. It’s the romance publishers who are particularly chary of that age line.

  All that said, I understand where the romance publishers are coming from. Legalities aside, there are definitely whack-jobs out there who’ll raise ridiculous stinks over what they see as immorality involving “children.” (Show me a 17-year-old, or even a 13-year-old, who’ll stand still for being called a “child” and I’ll rub your feet at the end of that long, hard search.) A few years ago, LiveJournal took some ridiculously draconian actions and lost a lot of users in an attempt to purge “kiddie porn” from its site. In their rushed hysteria, they deleted journals and communities belonging to or hosting survivors of child abuse, Loli-style fashionistas, lit fans discussing Nabokov’s Lolita, and a huge swath of fandom. So far as we could tell, picking through the rubble, they’d deleted hundreds of journals and communities, TWO of which (both private journals) had actually belonged to men who advocated sex between grown men and young boys.

  The reason they did this was they got several e-mails from a group (later discovered to be one woman with occasional web assistance from her brother) who insisted that they were hosting pedophiles, and demanding they take action. When LJ, in accordance with their own regs, took no action because she hadn’t complained about a particular journal or post but rather just made general accusations, she started e-mailing companies that advertised on LJ.

  Ahh, THAT got their attention. :/ The next few days were a fiasco of deletions and bannings, scattershot rather than targetted. A lot of people left and never came back. The Strikethrough incident, and the Boldthrough follow-up (named because of how LJ indicates a deleted journal or community) were instrumental in getting Dreamwidth and Archive of our Own going, and sending people to those places from LJ. (Fanlib also contributed, but that’s a different fiasco.)

  But the thing is, this was one person causing all this fuss, causing harm to LiveJournal and its users, causing advertisers to pull their money away from a business. One crazy person.

  I honestly can’t blame the publishers for not wanting that one crazy person, or one like her, to target them. So they hide duck down in their bomb shelters, protected by their No Under-Age Sex Ever Ever Ever!! rules, no matter how ridiculously unrealistic it is. Heck, even on the mainstream het side, you don’t see under-18 characters anymore, even in historicals, which is just stupid, despite the fact that The Kadin and doubtless many other older books like it are still around.

  But genre-YA books still have sex in them. I think the difference is that romance is the redheaded stepchild of the popular genres. A lot of people still lift their noses and smirk, and snark about how romance is just porn for women. The whole “mommyporn” thing with Fifty Shades recently certainly hasn’t helped. Ravenous Romance’s going around in its early days and asserting that romance “is all porn, haha!” — coming from a romance publisher — didn’t help either.

  Romance has two strikes against it in the public’s opinion, while YA, known for focusing on Issues, is more respectable. Maybe that’s why the YA publishers are a bit more adventurous here than the romance publishers. I don’t know, I’m just guessing.

  But so long as the “OMG Pedo!” hysteria is still with us, so long as the whack jobs like the woman who shook up LiveJournal are still out there, I imagine romance publishers will keep rejecting any books where characters under 18 are having sex, no matter how unrealistic or ridiculous that is. It’s self-defense on their part, and I can’t criticize them all that much for it, no matter how frustrated I am by the situation.

  Angie

  • 

    Hi Angie

    As Tam mentioned, the bottleneck here is the publishers…. The subject was brought up on my publisher’s authors’ list and one of the owners made it clear that no under-age character could have sex at all, not even off screen.

    So if the publishers are the moral arbiters the solution is pretty simple. With self publishing becoming more popular these days, what’s to prevent a YA author from self pubbing her/his books and eliminating the middle man, i.e. the publishers.

    In the US, although federal law says that 18 is the age of consent, thirty states have set AOC at 16 while 9 are at 17. The rest, a minority (12) is 18. So if an author lived theoretically in Washington State would it not be okay to write a book there with explicit sex? Or alternatively if a publisher were located in a state where the AOC law is under 16, can they still be sued? I think this is strictly a matter of convenience for the publishers, since movies don’t seem to have any problems and no one sues the studios.

    As for the whack jobs on Livejournal, that’s exactly what they are – whackjobs. It’s a pity that Lj advertisers bowed to basically what is blackmail.

    The Kadin is one of the books I meant when I mentioned to James that Amazon sells books depicting underage sex and no one bothers them. There are many other so called “historical” books with underage sex that are sold everywhere. So where do you draw the line?

    If genre YA books can have explicit sex why is there a difference when these books are published by epublishers. Is it because the whack jobs don’t want to take on publishers like Avon?

    With self publishing, maybe some authors living in states where the age of consent laws are lower than the federal limit of 18 will write real YA books that young adults can relate to.

    • 

      Looking to the indie publishers is a thought, but are they going to be any different? James above mentioned a DA with a hair up his ass — what if our whack-job is such a DA? What if he lives in a conservative state? Maybe he’s thinking of running for Congress next year? He might well sue an indie-published writer (or a small press) even knowing that they’re not doing anything illegal, just for the publicity.

      About whether you can be sued if you’re in a state where something is legal, I can’t swear to now, but I know in the past people have been charge for crimes under those circumstances. About the Amateur Action case:

      Robert and Carleen Thomas operated a private, commercial bulletin board system called Amateur Action, in Milpitas, California, distributing explicitly sexual GIF files and videotapes. A postal inspector in Memphis, Tennessee, joined their BBS, downloaded GIF’s and ordered videotapes. As a result, the Thomases were indicted, tried and convicted in Memphis for having violated local community standards. The indictment involved separate charges for making the GIF’s available and for mailing the tapes. The part of the case pertaining to the GIF files apparently stands for the proposition that, before making anything available in cyberspace, you must make sure it conforms to the laws of Tennessee. The Thomases were sentenced to prison and are presently appealing their convictions.

      The important question raised by the Amateur Action case is whether Tennessee can rule the world.

      The rest is worth a read. It doesn’t say in this write-up, but I remember hearing around the internet years ago that some moralist whack-job decided to go after Amateur Action. They did research on local obscenity laws, and hunted around until they found a locality where the AA material was illegal, and a DA willing to prosecute. They got a local resident to download material from the board specifically for the purpose of prosecuting the Thomases. This is internet hearsay and I can’t swear it’s true, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Again, there are whack-jobs everywhere, and some of them see themselves as crusaders who are willing to put a lot of time and effort into persecuting people they disapprove of.

      And even if you’re in the right, being sued, especially on criminal charges, can be ruinously expensive. Even if you can afford the legal expenses, you might well take a publicity hit that you can’t recover from. A lot of people hear “under-age sex” and think, “OMG child porn!!” and decide right there and then that you’re an evil pervert. Having the public hear about Jane Author being sued for under-age sex (and how many media outlets would CALL it child porn in their headlines or sound bites, just for the publicity value?) could poison Jane’s name as a commercial writer.

      And even with a “normal” whack-job, like the woman who hit LJ, what if she started writing to the vendors who sell your e-books? I don’t know any indie writer who didn’t start out as a household name (like Rowling with Pottermore) who makes any significant money selling e-books off their own site. Everyone wants their books available through the vendors, whether they’re exclusive with Amazon or whether they have books up all over. If Suzy Whack-Job started writing to the vendors, complaining that Jane Author’s books were child porn, how many of them would take Jane’s books down and refuse to carry them anymore? Again, Jane’s career is trashed, or at least seriously mangled.

      Or maybe that wouldn’t happen. But this is the US, and we have a lot of whack jobs. I can’t blame any individual writer who doesn’t want to take the chance of being targetted, whether by an ambitious DA or by some lone crusader.

      I think this whole issue is damn stupid, and I bitterly resent having my range of characters circumscribed like this. I’m planning to do some indie publishing starting this year, but I probably won’t buck the trend about character ages, or not much. Young characters who’ve had sex off-screen, and even sex portrayed in the “now” of the story a fade-to-black way, sure, I’ll probably go that far. On-screen sex? Probably not, because I’m not willing to jump into that particular kettle of rabid weasels. :/ And I can’t criticize anyone else who stays away from it either.

      Angie

      • 

        I agree that there are whack-job moralists who will sue or prosecute in order to further their agendas; however, even in the examples provided, the statues that are cited apply to images (i.e. pornography), not literature. If the CPPA were applicable to literary works, it would affect far more than just the YA genre. Many works of literature from decades, even centuries, past would be suddenly categorized as pornographic.

        Even when we’re talking about erotica, there is a lot of material out there that includes sex of minors. Head over to the Nifty archive sometime and check out the high school section. And how many years has this very popular site been in existence?

        I think in order for this imagined legal threat to be real, it would have to be applicable to literary works. I know of no examples where a publisher or author was prosecuted for writing about fictional characters having sex.

        The CPPA, even in the Ashcroft decision, applied very specifically to “images”.

        Regarding the matter of legal defense, this concern is assuming that a prosecutor would even take up a case like this. I would think that part of the decision-making process for a prosecutor would include evaluating whether or not they had a good chance of winning the case.

        • 

          Hi Jeff and Angie

          I’m getting the sense that unless the MCs are 18 years old the majority of authors will not touch on-page explicit sex between the protagonists, because the publishers will not allow them to do so. In the case of indie publishers the same rule probably applies.

          If a book is self pubbed through Amazon the authors can pretty well do what they want but will they if the MCs are under 18?

          Jeff you made an excellent point about Nifty which I have checked out on many occasions, although not recently. How does this site get away with some of the stuff they publish which is smut by another name? Where is the fictional prosecutor who will lay charges as a career advancement move? Nifty would be a wonderful candidate to make his day. ^^

        • 

          You’re right that it’s not incredibly likely. The chances of being ignored and left alone are pretty good. The thing is, you only have to be wrong once — next week, next year, five years from now, whenever it comes up — and that’s it, you’re bankrupt and your reputation is shit.

          Re: Nifty, my guess is that they’re thinking they’re safe the way fannish archives are, in that the worst they’d likely get is a C&D. They could shut down, and either go on to something else, or just hang in there and start up again on a new site under a new name six months or a year later. Fannish archives have done that before, although of course the complaint was intellectual property rather than obscenity or child porn. But the free archives all seem to think in similar ways.

          Also, Nifty is pretty much on the down-low. We know about it, but most people don’t. They don’t advertise the way commercial publishers and writers do. We’re the ones who are standing on stage, trying to catch the spotlight. Places like Nifty are handing out their goods from under a trenchcoat, down beneath the grandstands, as it were.

          I hope this crap passes soon and the pendulum swings back the other way. But I think that if someone’s going to buck the trend, it’s going to be one of the big publishers who have lawyers on staff, not one of the small presses or one of the independent writers. Nobody on our level can afford the court case, even if we end up winning, and it’s just too big a potential loss to be willing to take even a small chance.

          Angie

        • 

          Hey Angie

          Places like Nifty are handing out their goods from under a trenchcoat, down beneath the grandstands, as it were.

          I have this picture of someone representing Nifty at a meeting with an ad agency with their trenchcoat open, maybe they’re naked under the coat and maybe not, “selling” their wares. :whistle:

          I think there’s a need to change the name of the genre or split it into books for tweens and books for real young adults, because as I see it, that’s where the problem arises. You can’t have a genre catering for 12 year olds to 20 or even 34 year olds if you go by the WHO definition of a young adult.

          Yeh the big publishers have deep pockets and maybe they should take on the book police. I still don’t understand the fear that drives everyone when we’re told as long as there are no indecent illustrations in these books there’s nil or very little likelihood of prosecution.

• 

  I think having sex in the plots of YA books is essential and inevitable if you are going to be realistic. That is part of teen life – not every teen is actually having it, but 99% of those who are not, are thinking about it.

  Where I am uncomfortable is when the depiction of sex is intended to arouse, presented in an erotic way. That edges into under-age porn. I’ve read a few books I would be uncomfortable recommending to a teen, and I know some teens would be very uncomfortable coming across such scenes without warning.

  I have teenagers, and they have friends, and not all of them want their books to be explicit. One point of having a YA designation is to have books where readers know they will not hit porn-level sex scenes. Make it real, make it count for the plot, make it messy and complicated and wonderful. But don’t make it so explicit a reader will stop and jerk off to it.

  Someone mentioned Robin Reardon – I love her books and she has sex in them but it is not full-out “hot, slick, wet, gliding. throbbing” sex. It is, I think, appropriate. You know what happens, it is central to the story, but not to where you couldn’t read the book on a public bus without total embarrassment and hiding.

  IMO, there is a genuine reason to keep the sex that is intended to arouse to adult books. Teens who want that will be able to find it, but teens who don’t, who are hesitant about their sexuality or blooming slowly or easily embarrassed or shy or just love romance, should be able to pick up a book labeled YA and not find sex that will make them highly uncomfortable.

  I feel the same about violence, incidentally. It is part of life, and part of YA plots, but if the writer starts glorying in gushing blood, dismemberment and strewn body parts squishing underfoot I feel that shouldn’t be considered YA appropriate either.

  • 

    Hi Kaje

    Thanks for stopping by.

    Where I am uncomfortable is when the depiction of sex is intended to arouse, presented in an erotic way. That edges into under-age porn. … One point of having a YA designation is to have books where readers know they will not hit porn-level sex scenes.

    I don’t equate explicit sex in YA romances with underage porn because I don’t see them in the same light. I’ve watched porn so I know what it looks like, and I’ve read books with young(er) MCs who have sex, and these are two entirely different animals – one is tasteful and the other is not. However if someone automatically equates explicit sex with porn then of course that would be their interpretation of explicit sex in YA romances.

    I don’t consider the majority of M/M romances as approaching porn either, because that would be the next step if explicit sex in YA romances is considered to be porn, although a few M/M books skate pretty close to the line and are more erotica rather than erotic romances.

    IMO, there is a genuine reason to keep the sex that is intended to arouse to adult books.

    Young adults are in a constant state of arousal but parents pretend it’s not happening. It doesn’t take a book with a sex scene or two to get them going – they wake up aroused and go to bed aroused. 🙂

    When my offspring were teens (a long, long time ago before the onset of the pervasive internet and social networks that we have today,) I recognized that they were going to have sex regardless what I said, so at 13 I gave them books that had explicit pictures and condoms so that they would be armed with knowledge and would be protected from STDs, pregnancy etc. They also knew they could talk to me about anything, so that worked and they had a healthy attitude about sex.

    A lack of sex education is part of the reason why teens look to other sources such as books for information about sex, and I guess one of those sources, which is falling down on the job, is Young Adult romances.

    It always amazes me that parents don’t seem to mind their teens watching gory, slasher movies yet those same parents would absolutely forbid them from reading a book with explicit sex.

    I realize that there are different cultural norms in different countries, and my attitude is probably because I live in Canada (although we have our own whack jobs).

    Hopefully if YA MCs are 18 years old authors will no longer use the excuse of underage sex when they are writing sex scenes in their books. But I’m ever the optimist.

    • 

      I think part of the problem with discussing this is a misconception about what “Young Adult Books” are – the actual term Young “Adult” is marketing, pure and simple. As someone pointed out, teens and even preteens love to be considered older so “Young Adult” fiction has more appeal to a 14 year old than “Adolescent” fiction.

      But YA is intended to be an intermediate category between children’s books and adult books. It is aimed at readers who are too old for children’s but who are not mature enough to handle or do not want the level of intensity and subject matter of adult books. The target audience is more toward 12-15 than older teens.

      If you take away the constraints of limited on-page sex and violence, if you allow sex intended to arouse and titillate, then there is little point to having a YA designation. It becomes adult books with younger characters. The point of YA as a category is that it provides a classification of books that is a safe-harbor, reaching toward adult fiction in situations and plots but with less brutality, less intensity and less eroticism.

      The fact that is is often read by older teens, and by more and more adults, is not a reason to do away with the things that make it a distinct genre. There need to be books that can be trusted and depended on to come between “A Secret Garden” and Laurel K Hamilton.

      • 

        The term Young Adult is what seems to be causing the issue with real young adults. If these books are aimed at adolescents who want to read books that are not “kiddie” books, then perhaps they should be categorized differently with different names. One category that is suitable for adolescents and one that is aimed toward real young adults 16 and over according to state laws in the US.

        Jeff Erno’s YA group has a great idea of setting up two different categories of YA books so that parents and tweens would know what they’re getting, as well as the real young adults.

        The reason these books are now read by older teens, apparently a more recent phenomenon, is because of the name of the genre. If they were called Young Adolescent romances I doubt there would be an issue, because much older teens 16 and over, wouldn’t bother to buy the books. Once you buy a book you can’t return regardless if it didn’t deliver what you thought you were getting.

        I agree that there should be different books catering to different age groups, which is why I asked the question in the beginning of the post. If your target group is tweens, 13 and 14 year olds, their parents and the school libraries, then it makes sense to have a no sex rule. However if you call these books Young Adult Romances, real young adults get confused about the content and target ages.

        You said it is a marketing strategy to call these books Young Adult Romances. Well I would suggest that there should be Truth in Advertising!

        • 

          How hard would it be for all of us to propose a scale as with the film industry? This is being bandied about in government anyway, so why not?

          8-12 tweens: define allowable content
          13-17 teens: define allowable content
          18 and up young adults: define allowable content.

        • 

          Rather: 18-21 young adults: define allowable content.

        • 

          The twist, of course, is that the age of 18 is the cutoff with respect to pornography and X rated film/content.

• 

  The relevant court case here in the US is Ashcroft vs. the Free Speech Coalition.

  The Child Pornopgraphy Prevention Act of 1996 prohibited “any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture” that “is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct” and “any sexually explicit image that was advertised, promoted, presented, described, or distributed in such a manner that conveys the impression it depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”

  It came under fire because the previous standard, the Ferber case of 1982, required there be an actual child to be harmed while the CPPA did not. The Supreme Court overturned the CPPA, but there were dissenters.

  We in the erotica world tend to take our standard from pornography, not literature. Small publishers won’t touch stories with underage sex (defined as 18), and a lot of them aren’t even interested in characters that have sex before their mid-twenties.

  Speaking as a parent, I have always held that if a book can hold my kid’s attention, they are welcome to read it. Sex and violence don’t bother me, because I remember reading books with group sex scenes when I was 10 and 11. (Logan’s Run, if you want to know.)

  I don’t write YA and have no plans to.

  • 

    Hi Angel

    I’m constantly amazed at the knowledge I acquire whenever there’s a post about different topics on the site. 🙂

    We in the erotica world tend to take our standard from pornography, not literature.

    Who determined that? The courts or the publishers? If it were literature that would give publishers so much more flexibility but I guess they don’t want it. It’s better to have everything either in black or white.

    BTW I saw Logan’s Run a long time ago and I never did equate the story with underage sex since the characters died at 29. Maybe the book was different. 🙂 I must get it.

    • 

      I have no idea who determined it, but I’ve chafed under it more than once.

      The thing is, I’m not writing Romeo and Juliet or Gone with the Wind or It. I am writing smut. I may put a lot of plot in it, but at the end of the day, people have sex, a lot of sex, in my books, and they do so in a way designed to arouse the reader. The seven twelve year olds having sex in _It_ are not presented in a titilating fashion. Sixteen year old Scarlett’s love life is frankly awful, with fumbling and fear and pregnancy. My boys? They’re enjoying themselves, which is a cardinal sin.

      And in the book of Logan’s Run, they all died at 21. Characters were considered an adult at 14. (the movie also left out the bit with the sky-gypsies)

      • 

        Angel

        In the movie Logan’s Run everyone who turns 30 must submit to Carousel, a euphemism for death, and be reborn. 🙂 I guess the movie differs a lot from the book.

        Well, you may be writing smut but not everyone will say they are writing smut .. other authors may disagree and say they are writing literature.

  • 

    We in the erotica world tend to take our standard from pornography, not literature.

    That’s news to me. Or at least I don’t orient myself all that much on visual porn, although I occasionally watch it. Maybe because I have my roots in fandom and my first contact with erotica even before I read slash were writers like Henry Miller (okay, maybe not really erotica) and then later writers like Anne Rice (both her vampire but also her erotic books), John Preston, Pat Califia, Steven Sailor, Larry Townsend, or Cecilia Tan among others (I read a of anthologies).

• 

  Super interesting topic. I really think this is one content area where erring on the side of caution may be worth it. The problem is the relatively wide age range for this genre: 12 – 18 in and of itself doesn’t sound so bad, but consider the maturity of a 12-year-old and juxtapose that with an 18-year-old. HUGE HUGE difference. And then there are the advanced Middle Grade readers, the 9-12 crowd, that graduate to YA early.

  I’m with Kaje Harper on this. Teens can read whatever they want. They are not prohibited from reading sex. If they want to read something more explicit, they can go for that. But the genre itself should be a save haven, for a lack of a better word, for all reading tweens and teens where they know what to expect and maybe more importantly what NOT to expect.

  Nadja

  • 

    Hi Nadja

    Thanks for commenting.

    My point is that the genre should not be called Young Adult if the content is not adult. Someone still has to tell me who is the target group for these books. Is it tweens, 13 – 14 year olds, their parents, or real young adults?

    If it’s clear that the target is tweens, 13 – 14 year olds, parents and the school library then what you said makes absolute sense. However if the books are really for young “adults,” (and I gave several examples of what a young adult is,) some of whom are married with children, some go to war and die there etc., then the name of the genre should be changed.

    I’m all for people knowing what to expect when they pick up a book to the extent that’s possible, but I think this whole problem is because of a misnomer of the genre.

    If Young Adult books are targeted at the 18 and over crowd (real young adults) this problem wouldn’t arise. How is a tween a young adult?

    • 

      Consider it a euphemism. It’s not for college-aged people at all. They’re presumed to be reading the adult books.

      YA for the kids who are too old for the juvenile section and too young for the adult.

      They’ve outgrown Nancy Drew and they aren’t ready for Anita Blake.

      • 

        True, Angelia. They’re “tweens.”

        • 

          But aren’t real “tweens” 12 year olds?

        • 

          In the U.S. tweens are defined as 8-12 years old. The “social reasoning” (I use that term loosely) behind it is that the “age of reasoning” dawns on a child +/-8 years of age…

          As Kaje mentions below: marketing, marketing, marketing.

• 

  The target market are 12- to 18-year-olds and school libraries, Wave.

  Hunger Games. Harry Potter. The Mortal Instruments. All the books by Rick Riordan. Sure they can be read and enjoyed by actual adults, but the target audience is the Middle School and High School crowd.

  Nadja

  • 

    If these books are written for the 12 – 18 range, that’s too wide a range for anyone to target correctly. 12 year olds are still playing with dolls and dump trucks and 18 year olds are playing with themselves. 😆

    Calling these books Young Adult romances is where the problem arises. Real young adults will expect the subject matter to be more adult and will find the content lacking. 16 – 18 year olds like the adventure, the friendships, the romance, high fantasy etc. of YA romances, but the lack of sex makes them feel that the books are targeted to kids. You have basically confirmed that the primary target groups are really adolescents, their parents and the school libraries, not young adults. The name of the genre is really a misnomer and will continue to confuse the hell out of everyone.

    A genre with such a wide age range won’t satisfy a lot of the people who read these books, because inevitably one group will expect something quite different.

    This is where Jeff Erno’s group’s (True Colorz) idea of labelling some books for 16+ and over sounds better every minute.

    PS Have you seen The Hunger Games? Well made movie but WAY too violent for me.

• 

  Young People Should Read About Life As It Is Lived

  There are many important issues raised in Jesse Wave’s Post and Jay Bell http://www.jaybellbooks.com/ suggested that I weigh in with my comments. After reading the post and most of the attendant comments, I began writing my comments… hours ago. There should be a law against indiscriminate propagation of words. My comments evolved into a four-part micro-webinar. I didn’t feel it fair to post my epic tour-de-Sex in YA Lit here, nor did I feel it appropriate for my YA blog, so it’s here on my adult blog: http://aislingmancy.blogspot.com/2013/01/young-people-should-read-about-life-as.html?zx=9ba3df11d3a01f0f

  I have a wee mental sphere and can process only one idea at a time. As such, I separated this wieldy controversy into four categories. I welcome comments and would appreciate it if you would add to this list in the event I missed or misstated something.

  1. Law and Age
  2. Minors’ Rights
  3. Popular? Opinion, and
  4. Publishers and Authorship

  With respect to Angela Sparrow’s erudite post above, the key word is “explicit,” the definition of which remains loosely defined by the Supreme Court to this day, and left to be interpreted via two rather dated cases and a Supreme Court Justice’s statement: “I know it when I see it.” Further, the topic that we banter about here is subject to a four-pronged legal test concerning “what constitutes content harmful to minors.” I have read the test a thousand times and it raises more questions than it answers for me. That said, I agree and am in synch with Angela. I was reading explicit adult content at ten years of age. No horns or tail sprouted on contact.

  Happy reading!

  Cody~

  • 

    Hi Cody

    Thank you for commenting and writing such an extensive post about this matter. I did read it and left a comment even though the legal ramifications of some of your conclusions escape me as I’m not a lawyer. 🙂

    • 

      Fair, Jesse. They escape me half of he time. 😮

• 

  I think they originally called it Adolescent Fiction. Young Adult clearly has undergone a change. I did a quick online search and found a number of articles that suggested as much as 50% of traditionally Young Adult is now purchased by bona fide adults, but that’s a fairly new and recent trend. YA has been around the block, so to speak.

  Nadja

  • 

    The name Adolescent Fiction is very clear but calling these books Young Adult romances raises expectations in real young adults’ minds about what’s between the covers. Among the 50% who purchase these books are young adults, some of whom are disappointed about the content.

    The reason I wrote this post is that I kept getting emails from real young adults.

• 

  The teens in the YA book I’m writing have sex and are obviously sexual beings but it’s not explicit for a couple reasons.

  The first being I wouldn’t be able to get a publisher to touch it with a ten foot pole. Every LGBT publisher I’m aware of has a rule against publishing underaged sex.

  Then there is the fact Amazon reserves the right to refuse to sell your book if you put underaged sex in it.

  So if I “laid it all out” I’d have a book I couldn’t get published and couldn’t even self-publish if someone read it and complained to Amazon. It’s not worth it just so teens can hear the mechanics, they’ll just have to take my word for it, the heroes did it and it was awesome.

  • 

    Hi Kayci

    Every LGBT publisher I’m aware of has a rule against publishing underaged sex.

    “Underaged” I suppose would depend on the State in which you live since they all have different “ages of consent” starting at 16.

    There is one publisher that does publish YA romances with on-page sex, but I can’t divulge the name because I don’t want the religious nuts going after them.

    they’ll just have to take my word for it, the heroes did it and it was awesome.

    I’ll tell the guys who keep writing me that they’ll just have to take your word for it. 😮

• 

  As long as the U.S. is unwilling to break free of its Puritan roots, which are clearly much deeper in some states than others, the classification system has to change. It’s idiotic for the term young adult to cover all fiction featuring protagonists under the age of 21.

  What I find particularly ironic, and maddening, is that “pageant moms” (ever watch the very disturbing Toddlers and Tiaras?) would be among the first to scream bloody murder over stories with even the most oblique mention of sex between young people.

  We have double standards aplenty going on. Don’t even get me started on video games, movies, TV shows, commercials, comic books, popular music, and other forms of entertainment that are much more sexually explicit — and, IMO, intellectually and morally corrosive — than well-written books.

  • 

    Go KZ! The double-standard factor is not only maddening but, in some respects, illegal.

    • 

      It sure seems that way, Cody.

  • 

    Hey KZ

    It’s idiotic for the term young adult to cover all fiction featuring protagonists under the age of 21.

    I agree one thousand percent.

    We have double standards aplenty going on.

    I thought our laws were at times cumbersome but you have us beat by several miles. Since US citizens have lived with these laws for hundreds of years I guess you just shrug and move on. Understanding your laws if you’re an outsider like me takes a whole lot of time and effort just to skim the surface.

    I watch movies made in the US and I think you’re a fairly progressive country, then I read about the laws governing under aged sex as outlined by James, and I’m appalled.

    • 

      Wave, in terms of enlightenment, Canada (and every other country in the so-called Western world) has the U.S. beat by light years, not just miles.

      Great post, kiddo.

      • 

        Thanks KZ

        One would think that law enforcement in the US would spend its time pursuing real crime rather than going after authors and publishers for books with on-page sex between people they view as minors, despite the fact that 16 year olds are adults in 30 of your states.

        Aren’t there better ways to spend taxpayers’ money?

• 

  Until I read this article I didn’t know that YA books don’t contain explicit sex. I assumed that they did – otherwise, why would they be called that? As you say, readers who could be called “young adults” will have sex on their minds most of the time, and it is ridiculous to deny that. I had assumed that YA books were showing that sex can be linked to love, and how that can be marvellous.

  Not only is it silly to exclude sex from YA books, it is also wrong because it implies that sex is wrong, reinforcing the guilty feelings many teenagers already have. It suggests that guilt and furtiveness should accompany sex, and it can take years for those feelings to be dispelled.

  Further, as you say, it pushes them into the arms of the porn merchants, thus suggesting even more strongly that sex has little to do with love and feelings for the other person.

  I don’t read YA because I don’t like fantasy, vampires, and the paranormal, and these seem to be constant themes. I do read and enjoy Jay Bell’s books.

  Parent and other adults do their YA offspring and charges absolutely no favours at all if it is they who are responsible for the exclusion of sex from YA books.

  • 

    Hi HJ

    Thank you for dropping by.

    Parent and other adults do their YA offspring and charges absolutely no favours at all if it is they who are responsible for the exclusion of sex from YA books.

    The law is on their side because even though the age of consent starts at 16 in most US states, apparently the publishers and authors can still be prosecuted for “corrupting” a minor with the written word.

    Not only is the excessive violence in these books and movies “justified” apparently by everyone in the business, but the movies are all blockbusters. The latest, The Hunger Games, made over $400 million just in the US alone.

    You’re absolutely right that the emphasis on violence in this genre does push teens into the arms of the porn merchants because that’s an easy option and its free. Rather than teaching young adults that sex is part of love, they get the unadulterated unabridged version of what sex should NOT be. But who cares? Certainly not a lot of the authors because violence sells a lot more books than the kind of sex that should be portrayed in YA.

    I think there should: EITHER be a name change to more accurately reflect that these books are targeted at adolescents and tweens, their parents and the school libraries. OR there should be two different levels of YA books – with one written for older teens who are frustrated because the books do not reflect the needs of real young adults.

    As I said to Kaje – Truth in Advertising!

• 

  Your comment about violence being OK while sex is not struck home with me – I’ve been thinking and saying this about films and TV programmes for years. To me, it is violence which should be censored as fervently as sex is, while sex should be governed much more loosely. I literally cannot understand the mentality which considers that it is not only acceptable but somehow normal to show people doing unspeakable things to other people, while at the same time believing that showing normal, happy sex will corrupt someone. If they believe that the moving image has the power to corrupt, then why will the violence not also corrupt? Or is is alright for teenagers to torture one another as long as they don’t have sex which each other? One has to assume that that is what they think – WHY?? 😕

• 

  Just a bit of research: “Young adult” as a designation for ages 14-21 or so has existed since the 1800s. It’s existed as a publishing industry designation for books for kids in that age range (or a bit younger, the 12-18 range we’ve mentioned) since at least the 1950s, with it really coming into vogue in the 1970s-1980s.

  While I agree that the age range is too wide and there should be some changes to the designations in the publishing industry, that industry tends to be quite glacial when it comes to change, and given how long the term has been used for 12-18 year olds (or the fiction written for them) I don’t see it changing any time soon.

  The “New Adult” category, which showed up around 2009 or so and has become more prevalent among e-publishers and small presses, is an attempt to address the need for fiction for ages 18-25 (or 16-25, according to some), with books in that category featuring characters in the age range and plots that revolve around coping with being a “new adult”, as in being new to being considered adult, including in some cases the graphic sex scenes you say people in that age range are looking for.

  • 

    Hi Jo

    Thanks for this information.

    I think that with the rapid changes in technology and the way we get books and other kinds of information now, it would seem that some changes are necessary in order for YA to just keep up.

    This New Adult category may be a possibility. Obviously others felt that there was a need to move beyond the YA designation
    which was not serving the needs of real young adults 16 years and older who didn’t want to move up to adult books quite yet but wanted to read stories that were more age appropriate.

    Do you happen to know offhand anything about the status of the New Adult category. Are books actually listed today as New Adult? I’ll try to do some research also to see if I can come up with anything.

    Thanks again.

    • 

      Some publishers do have New Adult categories now that are called such. The term started with St. Martin’s Press; I’m not sure how much if anything they have in that category, though. I think Entangled is doing books for/about that age range, and Carina Press recently had a call for New Adult manuscripts. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but I know there are others… Riptide has an open call right now for stories about people of college age, which fits this range, but I don’t think they’re calling those “New Adult”. Some self-publishers are also doing books they’re calling New Adult.

      • 

        That’s great news Jo. You’re a wealth of information. 🙂

        • 

          I have my moments. LOL

      • 

        Jo

        Based on the responses, it seems that many authors want to include on-page explicit sex in their YA books but are afraid of the legal implications and the parents. I wonder why there are no similar legal implications about feeding tweens and younger teens all of the gory violence in these books?

        Guess our society has twisted morality standards if this type of violence is okay but not sex, even though everyone knows that teens have sex, even tweens.

        Apparently Society (parents and those who are on a similar mission) MUST protect its young at all costs from sex, but violence is a slam dunk.

        I think one way around these ridiculous US laws is to write stories where the heroes are 18 and they are the only ones having on-page explicit sex. The supporting characters in the book could be younger but they just can’t be in the room when the MCs are having sex, the same as any other book with on-page explicit sex. Obviously these books won’t be on the “recommended read” list in the school libraries and the parents may ban their teens from reading them (good luck with that), just don’t expect your books to be shelved with the Goodreads YA list of recommended books regardless of how tastefully the sex scenes are written, or if the books get 5 stars from different reviewers. But there is an upside: more people will buy your books. Selling them should not be a problem since these books are purchased online and the buyers must have a valid credit card in order to do so, therefore the assumption is that they are of legal age. Of course the seller i.e. publisher and author must indicate that the books are only sold to those of legal age, and “legal age” could mean 16 and up depending on the state.

        There is at least one publisher that releases YA books with younger MCs who have on-page explicit sex, but authors will have to do their own research since I’m not going to publish the name and have the sex police go after them.

        The New Adult genre is another possibility to supplement the stupid rules and laws that govern YA. Those authors who want to get away from the fake morality of YA can find publishers who release New Adult books and submit their manuscripts to them – Carina and Entangled apparently already do.

        I find this whole issue about on-page explicit sex in YA romances so hypocritical. To the best of my knowledge no prosecutor has ever pursued any author or epublisher so far to charge them with breaking the “morality” law. The case cited on the site involved illustrations. However, everyone is scared they may be the one that some prosecutor with time on his hands will try to make an example of. Yet all of the books that feature sex with minors which are currently sold by re-sellers like Amazon and in the bookstores seem to have escaped the attentions of the law – I wonder how they do that? Must be a legal loophole somewhere. 🙂

        If I didn’t like the adventures and high fantasy in some YA books I would stop reading them altogether because of this hypocrisy that riddles the genre. On the one hand some people (including a few authors) are protecting the “kids” – those same kids who are having sex whenever they are out of the house. Heaven forbid they should sully their pure minds and read about sex because they may learn something new. However these teens and tweens can access the internet 24/7 and learn all about sex from the porn merchants who peddle their fare at no cost. What is wrong with this picture?

        My concern is that GLBT kids have no role models the way straight kids do and the only form of sex education they have is books or the internet. If the internet is the way parents of GLBT kids want their children to be educated about sex, good luck to them.

        If I sound angry it’s because I am. I happen to like YA but don’t like the way readers and some authors are being manipulated by those who want to keep the status quo the way it was 200 years ago. The world has moved on people, but we are still stuck in the 19th century where sex is behind closed doors with the lights off.

        All of those young adults who fight for their country and die in wars as well as those who are married and have sex just can’t read about it in YA books because this genre is still stuck in a world in which their great grandparents lived.

        For those authors who write YA and want to include on page sex I have made a few suggestions here but it’s up to you to do the research before you pursue them. I hope you find a way out of this stupid dilemma. Maybe we need more epubs outside the US because the US seems to love violence in the movies, books and elsewhere but heaven forbid if a book has any on-page explicit sex.

        Maybe in the future more enlightened authors and readers could either move on from the genre altogether, update it, or leave it to those who want to keep it the way it is currently, all safe and pure like in the 19th century, except for the gore and blood which does not seem to be a problem.

        • 

          I tried to reply to this and my computer kept freezing… Wave, I don’t know what the answer is to that. Personally, I feel the same way about graphic violence as I do about graphic sex. I prefer not to have it in my books.

          As for the young adults you’ve mentioned who fight for our country and may be married, again, they aren’t the target audience for the publishing industry’s “young adult” category. Those real-life “young adults” are in their late teens and early twenties, while the target age for reading young adult is 12-18. The publishing industry assumes–possibly wrongly–that 18-25-year-olds are reading adult books, not young adult.

        • 

          Hey Jo,

          Thanks for responding.

          I think these RL young adults feel cheated because they don’t want to read M/M where the sex is too “adult” and graphic for them, as well as the books assume that they already know what to do. In addition, the focus is not what they are looking for. I don’t think they are looking for page after page of graphic sex, just explicit enough as well as tasteful and more suitable to their age (16 – 18).

          Unfortunately there’s no in between in terms of the sex in M/M and YA. Most of these young adults are in the throes of first love and want to know what to do, how to deal with their fears, rejection, non performance, whether a new lover will rate them and find them wanting, etc. They don’t want “graphic” sex – they feel that “explicit” is not the same as graphic.

          I receive emails mostly from 16 – 18 year olds who are looking for books that have the high adventure, friendships and fun that’s are YA but with the added explicit sex. Most of these young men are still at school and therefore they don’t want to read about the typical characters in M/M who are already in the workforce as they would have different issues, although a few of them are working.

          Anyway I made the same suggestions to them as I did to those authors who write explicit (not graphic) sex in their YA books, and maybe they will have their much needed bridge, since the kind of sex education in the schools, what they are looking for, is not targeted to gay young adults.

          Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts Jo and maybe I’ll write another post some day that will pique your interest.:)

          Enjoy the rest of your day.

• 

  UPDATE After going through a very jammed inbox for a couple hours, the question that’s asked most frequently by the young gay men who have written me is: How do the authors expect them to get information about sex if they can’t get it from YA books. They don’t want to go to porn sites but that seems to be their only option.

  Their most frequent comment is that being young and gay is not just about bullying and other high profile issues such as teen suicide. They feel that everyone has overlooked self esteem and other body image issues around dating that only another teen could relate to, even if its only fiction. They also believe that YA authors are missing out on a huge opportunity to help them in their transition to adulthood, because unlike straight teens they have very few role models and YA books are written for much younger teens and tweens who won’t face these problems until much later, while they need help right now.

  There was a lot more but it doesn’t really matter what they said because not many people seem to be listening.

• 

  Excellent post, Wave.

  The interview of me on Boys on the Brink addresses the exact issues you raise above wherein I indicate that the sex contained in SAFE is propaedeutic (instructive) for that very reason. I followed the “Abstinence Plus” sex ed (advocates intercrural sex in lieu of intercourse) taught in our schools and adapted it to a m/m relationship (no LGBTQIA sex ed in schools) http://www.blog.boysonthebrink.com/qa-with-c-kennedy-author-of-safe.html

  Further, my upcoming novels “Omorphi” and “Slaying Isidore’s Dragons” deal with exactly the issues you raise above as well as tough, tough issues authors generally steer away from (m/m sexual abuse, etc.). I wasn’t interested in writing the usual.
  http://www.ckennedyauthor.blogspot.com/p/upcoming-releases.html

  Lastly, you’re right. Not too many people were listening as much as posting. I’m considering writing an addendum post to my post “Young People Should Read About Life as it is Lived”
  http://www.aislingmancy.blogspot.com/2013/01/young-people-should-read-about-life-as.html
  The addendum to address issues such as: How do you determine when a youth is ready to read/see explicit content? What is too explicit? If MC’s are 18, is the YA label moot?

  Let me know if you’d like to participate. Again, great post. 😎

  • 

    Hi Cody

    Thanks for coming back and for inviting me to participate in your next post.

    Right now I have over 200 emails in my inbox from young adults who wrote me about this post. Since I have to respond to their emails my time is severely limited. However, I do appreciate your kind offer but there are only so many hours in my day.

    I’m sure you’ll do fine on your own. 😀

• 

  This is an excellent wrap-up to this post. Many of the comments here indicate that it’s illegal to publish books with under-age sex. Here’s an extensive listing of mainstream fiction that contains so called illegal sexual activity, and many of the books contain “underage” sex. So where are the morality police who supposedly will hound YA authors for writing similar material in their books? These books listed in this linked post have been around for a some time and the list is readily available on Livejournal. Please note that these books are sold on Amazon and in bookstores. Enjoy!!
  http://kitsune13.livejournal.com/144909.html

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