I got my most recent RWR in the mail the other day, and since my entire job as a giant pregnant lady is to relax, gain weight, and sit around waiting, I read it cover to cover. Usually I skim it, check out the contest winners, look at the articles and who wrote them, and read a piece here or there. But hey, I sit down now, and I don’t move voluntarily for at least an hour, so bring on the reading material.
And hello, page 4’s Letters to the Editor! I laughed out loud. Did anyone else notice this one?
Madeline Baker, she doesn’t like the cussing:
I continue to be shocked by the language in some romance novels I’m reading. It’s unfortunate that more and more authors feel the need to use the “F word” in their books, but even worse, the word “Motherf…” has cropped up in two of my recent reads. It’s bad enough when language like this is uttered by the villain, but when it comes out of the mouth of the heroine… well, I’m just plain stunned. Surely it’s possible to write a gutsy heroine without having her talk like a gang member.
Here are a few choices of response that pop to mind:
1. Bitch, please.
2. Racist and classist undertones aside, I’m as offended by books titled Cheyenne Surrender as you are by the word “fuck.”
3. Fuck that!
4. Gang members? Only gang members say “fuck?” Seriously?
Perhaps the problem is the reading material she’s choosing, which she addresses in her letter:
Lately I’ve read several books that have ‘paranormal romance’ on the spine. In my opinion, a good number of them haven’t been romances at all, and that includes the one I threw across the room just last night….
Demons and vampires and werewolves, especially the ones that want to kill you, will totally stop if you speak nicely and say, “Please.”
I doubt if it will ever happen, but I’d like to see some kind of rating on books so that I’ll know what I’m getting before it’s too late.
Now that there, THAT is an IDEA. Why did we think of that?! We here at the Smart Bitch HQ, we got us some Photoshop. There need to be warnings on books!
Our advisories, let us show you them:
You can Has more!
Teddy,
Totally disagree there, labels of all sorts provide wonderful ways of dismissing books and not judging content for yourself.
Well, that’s the POINT isn’t it? There are things I don’t WANT to read. You seem to think I have a moral obligation to read everything published in order to have an opinion. No. Reading fiction is merely a hobby. Why should I spend money and time (both of which are precious) on something I don’t want to be exposed to in my leisure time?
If I can chose between a Mystery novel and a Romance novel why can’t I chose between slash and het or books with and without swear words?
Oh my GOD, I haven’t laughed so hard in a while!
I remember one potential blurber elected not to blurb my first book because the heroine—a demon—“dropped the F-bomb” one too many times.
Damned impolite demons…
“short56”—well yes, I am short. But I’m not 56.
Whenever someone is offended by OMG the cusswords, I feel an immediate need to quote Eric Cartman:
“Fuck fuck fuckety fuck. What’s the big fucking deal?”
They’re just collections of letters (in print) or sound (in speech). There’s nothing magical about them. Any offense felt is purely on the part of the reader/listener.
I am so glad that my brain is largely immune to this stuff. It must be very tiring getting all hoppity over things that have nothing whatsoever to do with you.
ladypeyton,
I see your point. I guess in my mind, Ratings and Warning labels go hand in hand. The fact is, the warning labels would be much more generic than, “Warning: Contains M&M buttsecks.” It would be “Warning: explicit sexual content” or “Warning: explicit language” and then parents would start flipping out. And many people who would normally have read the book would say “Oh no! I can’t read this. It’s smut!” Because explicit sexual content could be anywhere from heavy petting (doesn’t that just sound gross) in a teen novel, to M&M buttsecks.
If we have a warning label other than THIS BOOK IS BY CASSIE EDWARDS, how do we determine their wording? Frankly, I think just as many people would be offended by the label “Warning: explicit homosexual content” as they would accidentally picking up a novel that contains material they find offensive.
I dunno. Does that make any sense at all or am I just rambling…still avoiding carpool…
So Ms. Baker takes offense at the cussing but not at the sex scenes? And doesn’t approve of paranormal because there’s a story other than romance going on there, is that correct?
Can anyone find her some old Barbara Cartland books?
“Warning: explicit sexual contentâ€
LULZ! What a useless label for a romance novel! What RN doesn’t have expicit sexual content!
I think a more appropriate warning would be “Warning DOESN’T have explicit sexual content. Nope. No reason to be alone in your bunk with THIS one!”
ladypeyton,
The point is you are not asking to know if the book is Mystery or Science Fiction or Romance. You are asking someone else to judge what actions take place in the story between characters and add a label providing this information. That is very different.
In that case I still say… read the blurb the author wrote on the back of the book or just read the damn book.
This conversation reminds me of the 1964 film financed by Charles Keating called Perversion for Profit. Here it is on You Tube…
The movie was a call to arms over Magazines and Paperbacks “new technologies” and “distribution networks” providing porno to our kids.
It was the end of the world in 1964 I tell you.
Kids could “accidentally” be exposed to porno at the local drugstore or bus station magazine rack.
I am sure we have all lived with those scars for years now. How did we survive?
I read one of MB’s books under her other name Amanda Ashley – Whisper of Eternity – hated it. Never seen anything more like a block of wood.
Don’t understand her complaint: she’s reading books geared toward adults which means the characters are going to be doing adult things.
But even without that, isn’t that why we have reviewers? Somebody who can read the book and say this is for people who love reading about the buttsecks on pages 14, 35-55 (Anita Blake)and 102-115; who adore scenes with extreme oral sex (I read that phrase somewhere, it boggles the mind). I mean a decent review would clue a person in about scary stuff. There’s also reading the excerpt on the back or browsing a few pages.
She is entitled to be offended at whatever she wants to be offended by but I resent the fact that she expects other people to takes steps to try to figure out what she gets offended by.
Only gang members say fuck? Where is she hanging out?
Saying “fuck” makes you a gang member?
… wow. Wish someone would’ve told me that earlier. By now, I must be like… all hardcore and shit. ^_^
I so totally have books that need that MOTHERFUCKER advisory label. 😀
Oh yeah? Well I don’t like books where the twenty something heroine dresses up in a silk pantsuit for a hot night on the town and talks like a 60 year old member of the red hat club, but you don’t see me complaining.
As Lucinda mentioned, the Aphro books do have that warning. It’s been the source of many a snicker as friends (not necessarily romance readers) have picked up my books.
Personally I’d like a weenus alert for all those books with lame ass beta type heroes, or if the author has dared to make him less than six feet tall. “Warning: this book contains midget sex.”
I asked a friend to borrow a book from her library for me because mine didn’t carry it. She was happy to do so and when I got hold of it, it had a large, orange warning sticker on the front. I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was something along the lines of “warning, explicit sex”. I was really surprised to see it, but certainly read the book anyway (it was the “Wild Thing” anthology which had stories by Marjorie Liu, Meljean Brook and two other authors I can’t remember). I don’t know how common this is as it isn’t my library system, but I’m rather disturbed by the whole thing.
On a less fundamental matter, it also gave my husband ammunition to make jokes about my reading material. While it was done in a nice way, I could have done without that too.
(For the record, this is in New Zealand.)
You are asking someone else to judge what actions take place in the story between characters and add a label providing this information.
I think you used the word judge when you really should have used the word state. It’s pretty hard to misunderstand when the F-bomb is dropped, or when a guy sticks his dick into another man’s butt, or a man has sex with an unwilling woman. Stating so on the cover harms no one.
Let’s take this back to the rape discussion last week. How many people said they were unable to finish a book after they discovered a rape scene in a Romance novel? How many of those people would have appreciated being able to know before hand that there was a rape scene by reading the cover? Many of them, I’ll hesitate to say.
Would labels affect sales? Hell yes. But again, that’s the point. A label isn’t making a judgement. It helps to prevent nasty surprises and IMO could only increase reader satisfaction because nasty book=frisbee moments could be minimized.
“Whenever someone is offended by OMG the cusswords, I feel an immediate need to quote Eric Cartman:
“Fuck fuck fuckety fuck. What’s the big fucking deal?†“
Awesome! I LOVE Cartman! hahahaha thanks for reminding me about that line!
It’s pretty hard to misunderstand when the F-bomb is dropped, or when a guy sticks his dick into another man’s butt, or a man has sex with an unwilling woman. Stating so on the cover harms no one.
Wrong wrong wrongety wrong. And still subject to what M-o-D said:
there would be no way to decide which standards to should be used as “the standards†for warnings/censoring the books.
Say we take Ms Baker’s letter as an easy, objective way to determine what’s obscene: put a warning label on any book using the word “fuck”. Easy, right?
But that test wouldn’t label her website obscene—and her website uses a much ruder phrase than most uses of “fuck”. Is Ms Baker aware that “Bite me” means either “Bite my ass” or “Suck my dick”? It’s just as sexual as “fuck”, AND it’s dismissive toward another person. Describing an act as “fucking”? That’s not innately rude; that’s in the eye of the beholder. Saying “fuck you”? That’s on a par with “Bite me”.
Now let’s take your example of labeling teh buttsecks. A label would emphasize that aspect of the story, whether or not it’s a major theme. So, even gay secondary characters get the whole book labeled? And what about a story in which that relationship is a key surprise in the plot, or is important to the characters’ development? That label would define the book too narrowly for a lot of interesting plots. (Though I’m enjoying the idea of more detailed labels… “Minor buttsecks”, “Offstage buttsecks”, “Cover photo implies buttsecks”, “Flagrant buttsecks”, “M/m buttsecks”, “M/f buttsecks”, “Buttsecks with toys”… OK, this is too easy.)
Again, I think if you’re a really picky reader, it’s totally up to you to make those judgment calls.
Myself, I prefer to be a little surprised by where the story goes, so I’m not a fan of “The Australian Shipping Tycoon’s Lover’s Dance Career Ended By Secret Baby With Genetic Disorder [warning: contains references to Buddhist meditation, risky surgery, American politics, Vegemite, Land Rover, unwed motherhood, and a male character who wears pink ties]”.
. . . I just read this new comment:
What RN doesn’t have expicit sexual content!
Oooookay… now I wonder if we’re living on the same planet, or if you’re just enjoying winding us up on this topic.
I was going to say RIGHT ON! to the “This book contains no sex” warning, but I remembered the time I went browsing for “the good parts” in Edith Layton’s The Duke’s Wager and didn’t find any. I almost didn’t read it, but somehow or other I did, and it was awesome! So another argument against labels… sometimes it’s good to get something you weren’t expecting or even thought you didn’t want.
Ladypeyton, there is a warning label on virtually all homoerotica. It’s called the Back Cover Of The Book, where there’s usually a blurb that indicates that men may be getting it on somewhere in the book.
For incidental m/m action (as in LKH’s books) I’m afraid you just have to trust the grapevine. Shocking, I know, but Amazon.com has plot synopses and reader comments for your researching pleasure.
Or perhaps you can resign yourself to the fact that asking other people to wrap you in a protective cocoon is …naive at the least. Shit happens. You will sometimes slip in it. Your delicate sensibilities are a handicap, not a sign of higher refinement.
Personally, I would love it if books had warning labels on the theme of “Book is pretty good but author inexplicably includes a religious rant on page 287.” However, I will content myself with getting to page 287 and chucking the book against the wall in disgust and disappointment.
(wordver: truth19. I swear, the SBs have some clever goblins in the system)
And what about a story in which that relationship is a key surprise in the plot, or is important to the characters’ development?
Why should it matter? If I don’t want to read explicit M/M sex it doesn’t matter if it’s the primary or secondary plot element. And it’s a surprise that I don’t want. Just like people who don’t like rape scenes don’t want that surprise.
OTOH, how often are there explicit love scenes between minor characters in a romance novel?
Oooookay… now I wonder if we’re living on the same planet, or if you’re just enjoying winding us up on this topic.
Hooookay. Now you’re being insulting for no reason.
I think we should all take a moment and ask ourselves What Would Jesus Do?
I have just found that he would…
Play Soccer
http://www.tenacioustoys.com/catalog/item/4843573/4878538.htm
Ride a Harley
http://www.tenacioustoys.com/catalog/item/4843573/4878536.htm
Surf
]http://www.tenacioustoys.com/catalog/item/4843573/4878556.htm]
So I can only guess, but I would say he says “Fuck” a whole bunch too.
>>when I got hold of it, it had a large, orange warning sticker on the front. I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was something along the lines of “warning, explicit sexâ€. I was really surprised to see it, but certainly read the book anyway (it was the “Wild Thing†anthology <<
Oh, HOLY SHIT!!! I wrote part of a book that got a big-ass warning label!!!! I’m so PROUD!! If you send me a picture of it, I’ll love you forever!!!!
heeheehee. One step closer to writing a banned book . . .
Ladypeyton, there is a warning label on virtually all homoerotica.
I’m not saying that there isn’t.
I’m saying that warning labels can only help readers be more happy with the product they buy. The people who don’t care about the things being warned against will obviously feel free to ignore them while the people for whom those things matter will steer clear of that item and buy something that will make them happy.
Or perhaps you can resign yourself to the fact that asking other people to wrap you in a protective cocoon is …naive at the least.
But you just stated that homoerotica already carries a label. How naive can I be?
Your delicate sensibilities are a handicap, not a sign of higher refinement.
Whoever said I felt I was more refined than others? It’s merely an opinion. My opinion is no better or no worse than yours. JUST like your opinion is no better or worse than mine.
OTOH, being insulting does nothing to forward your argument.
This made me laugh, because recently, a friend of mine critiqued my first Demon ER novel before I sent it to my editor. She was disturbed by my liberal use of the “F-word,” and wanted to know why I felt the need to use it.
Um, well…my heroine grew up on the streets. She fights demons for a living. She’s a hard individual.
The other characters in the book? DEMONS. I didn’t think that “golly gee” would believably work in their dialogue…
Bravo, bee-yotch!
My book just got one of those “she used too many cuss words” reviews. It’s adult women’s fiction, folks. Grow up!
Speaking as an old hippie, I rebelled against being labelled back then, and I’m still rebelling against it now. When books get slapped with big, orange warning stickers, the reader’s likely to get labelled as well. And stigmatized.
Awfukket.
That anyone would genuinely want to be protected from choosing poorly, and then being held responsible for their choices, just shocks me. I continue to be disappointed by general humanity.
Ya pays your money, and ya takes your chances,… just like the rest of the grown-ups.
I’m sorry, Ladypeyton, but your opinion requires that other people should do the work for you. In my book, that makes your opinion a crock of shit.
Is it that damn hard to read the cover of a book? To ask someone else if the book contains something shocking? Or, Crom forbid, tostumble across an offending scene, read the first few sentences, and say, “Crap, this isn’t what I signed on for!” and then put the book down?
Publishers do all that they can to make sure that their books end up in the hands of people who want ‘em. They’re not interested in offending the unsuspecting; they’re interested in finding readers who will come back for the author’s next book. If you can’t tell from the packaging that a particular book might possiblymaybeperhaps contain something that offends you, then you’re not processing data very well.
If you want to be sure you never, ever, ever accidentally stumble across some m/m action, there are many thousands of children’s books for you to choose from.
Surely you don’t live in the land of rainbows and giggles. Take some responsibility for your choices.
OMG, I bow to you, almighty Teddy Pig. I luuuurrve that video! It’s right up there with the Dragnet episodes where pot made people hallucinate and drown their babies.
“inside29” Well, yes, but only until my birthday next month!
TeddyPig: Kids could “accidentally†be exposed to porno at the local drugstore or bus station magazine rack.
I am sure we have all lived with those scars for years now. How did we survive?
Some of us grow up and write erotica.
Is it that damn hard to read the cover of a book?
Are we speaking different languages here? Labeling IS the stuff on the cover of a book no matter what it looks like.
In my book, that makes your opinion a crock of shit.
I don’t have a hell of a lot of respect for yours either. See? Still equal.
read the first few sentences, and say, “Crap, this isn’t what I signed on for!†and then put the book down?
By then I’ve already spent money on something I don’t want which I think it would be better to avoid.
You’ve obviously got a severe lack of debating skills if you can’t rationally state your point and calmly accept that other people will disagree with you. You must be either very young or emotionally stunted (See? I can be a bitch, too. Isn’t the world a better place now that we’ve insulted each other?)
Surely you don’t live in the land of rainbows and giggles. Take some responsibility for your choices.
What an irrelevant comment. I would prefer not to shell out money on books I won’t like. I happen to think as much information on the cover as possible, no matter HOW it is provided, is the best way for that to happen. I am not easily offended. I stated on the OUTSET that M/M doesn’t offend me, I just don’t like it. I’m not a right wing religious zealot trying to ruin your day and I’ve never once advocated governmental regulation which it seems many people think I am doing.
I just want as much info on the cover as possible to guarantee that my hard earned dollar doesn’t end up unread and wasted.
How that got under YOUR shorts and bit you on the ass I’ll never know.
Alyssa,
First, sorry I forgot your name as one of the authors.
Second, I’ll work on getting the cover scanned for you and send it to you when I have it.
Right, back to the discussion.
Kerry
No, Scotsie, mine was at IUPUI.
Ladypeton, I guess I didn’t make this clear: the professor wasn’t teaching that labels=censorship: I wrote my final paper on the position that labels=a mild form of censorhip, preferable to not carrying the book but still better avoided unless those are your only two options. That’s also the official position of the American Library Association, though I’m not entirely sure they’ve spelled out the part where it could be the lesser of two evils in some cases.
Say you put a warning label on a book that says “Offensive language,” and somebody sees that for whom offensive language = f*ck, but the offensive language the book was tagged for is frequent use of the word bitch. That person can now dismiss that book without knowing that the actual contents won’t offend her. On the other hand, if the only word that gets the book tagged with an offensive language warning is f*ck, then people who find the word bitch offensive are going to get up in arms about how that label needs to go on more books.
If it were possible to state factually all the actions in the book that somebody might find offensive without that being the entire book, it would be great (except that presumably all the endings would be spoiled, because somebody might find them offensive and there would be labels like WARNING: BAD GUY GETS AWAY WITH IT). The censorship issue is in deciding that certain content needs a warning at a certain level. There’s plenty to suggest what the language in a book might be like or the likely level of sexual content from the cover copy, knowing the author, flipping through it a bit, where it is in the bookstore, et cetera without having some anonymous arbitrator write “Adult Language” on the cover, announcing to the world that by their standards, the book has enough of it to merit the warning, and thereby imposing those standards as The Standard for such decisions.
Warning labels inherently stigmatize what they’re warning against. I agree absolutely that the cover should give you a good sense of what you’re getting in a particular book, but to me a big “Warning: Buttsecks” sticker couldn’t help but have a subtext of “And there’s something wrong with that.”
If you’re surprised by what you find in a book, take it up with the marketing department at a publisher’s. It’s their job to make sure that you’re not unhappily surprised, and in my experience they do a pretty good job of accomplishing just that in a manner that doesn’t reinforce hoary old prejudices.
Please understand – I’m not saying that not wanting to read something means you’re prejudiced against it. What you find entertaining for your leisure reading is entirely your own preference.
Ah, I love those warning labels. I really do. I wish I could use them in some way. I think they’d make fantastic stickers. Or pins. I’d put them all over my bag.
Anywho, cussing doesn’t bother me. If anything it specifically attracts my attention if A) used sparingly and when invoking strong emotions or B) the character simply swears a lot. It amuses me.
I’ve never found swearing to be offensive. I’m more likely to get riled up over the term ‘bad words’ and get all up in a tiff in my adamant claim that such a classification is stupid.
““Fuck fuck fuckety fuck. What’s the big fucking deal?â€
They’re just collections of letters (in print) or sound (in speech). There’s nothing magical about them. Any offense felt is purely on the part of the reader/listener. “
What?
Truly – how can you argue that? Aren’t some words unacceptable?
Well, Marianne, it depends, doesn’t it. Let’s leave aside fuck and go with cunt. I’ll say fuck in my college classroom, but when I want to say cunt to make a point, I’ll say “the c word,” so for me, it’s a much more potentially offensive word. The thing is, *I* like it. I like the sound of it, I like what it originally meant (not a bad word), and I like it used in sex talk. If someone calls me a cunt in a manner intended to offend, I get offended, but if my partner talks about my cunt, I think he’s being very romantic. So I certainly wouldn’t mind it used in romances—as long as it’s the “right” use.
But some people (most?) find it more offensive than fuck, mainly because it’s used so much less. Neither word are “appropriate” to use in formal situations, but neither of them are truly “unacceptable” in that they are words whose sound should never be heard.
Even the “N word,” is a word whose history needs to be known so that it can’t/won’t be repeated. And I’ve used it in my college classroom (at an African-American college) as a way to make a point.
What do you mean by unacceptable? Ever? In some situations? When talking to some people? When spoken by particular people? Who defines the unacceptability? For me, these censorship issues always come back to that: who defines the censorship? I sure don’t want anyone less liberal than I am defining my entertainment options. Do you?
People too stupid to think you can kill the undead without yelling “fuck” a few times should really have their library cards taken away.
And they should have their Barnes and Noble cards taken away.
And their Borders cards.
And their car keys.
And sharp objects.
And then they need to go put their heads down on their desks. I’ll see if I can find some juice and crackers.
Fuckin’ idiots…
submit word: local25 (union of smartarse beeyotches)
Yes, I love it when I read a book with a cop hero and no one ever cusses. Have these authors ever MET a real police officer?!?
And I don’t feel okay with calling Ms. Hunter names, but aside from that, she sent the letter to the RWR. She clearly wants this to be a public discussion. That involves disagreement, sometimes STRONG disagreement.
As for labels… If I picked up a book that said, “Warning! Extreme language!”… Well, extreme to me includes racial slurs, etc. so my first impression would be “Ugh. I don’t want to read this book.” You see? “Fuck” isn’t extreme to me, so that wouldn’t even occur to me. I’d think it was something much, much worse. Is that fair to the author? Every persons extreme or explicit or deliciously shocking is different.
Is shit extreme? What about damn? What about spurting and weeping? Ew, hell yeah, it is. How about a sticker for that then?
Bwah! Smart Bitches, You Must Make teh Stickers!. Rly. You could donate the proceeds to a free speech charity, or keep ‘em for your own bad selves. Point is, they’d sell like motherfuckin’ hotcakes. I know I’d buy.
I write in two genres, historical and paranormals. Some books end up full of fucks (literally and in speech), others don’t.
It depends on the characters. I’ve found the historicals come in less, just because that’s the nature of the story, and people just didn’t use those words in the same way then. In the 18th century the worst thing you could call a woman wasn’t “cunt,” it was “bitch.” It just doesn’t have the same impact for the modern reader! And “fuck” was used as a vulgar (ie crude) word for the sex act, not as a general swear word.
Read something like the poetry of Rochester for the ways they used the words then (and for a good laugh – they’re fantastic).
So the contemps relate the way we use words today. And the characters saying them. The heroine of “Jewel of the Dragon” had a sheltered upbringing, but the hero hadn’t. But she didn’t go around with her head in a paper bag, so although she didn’t curse much, it didn’t shock her silly to hear it, or turn her off in the bedroom.
It’s all in the character.
And when one of my Samhain books gets the warning “Contains explicit sex,” it’s like a badge of approval! Well, it works for me, anyway.
I made a list of 100 favourite books for a site a few years back (I think it was AAR when they did a poll) and I was surprised to see it ranged from no sex (Georgette Heyer) to all-out buttsex (Robin Schone). The quality of the book, the intensity of the romance all comes before how many f or c words the author can cram in to one page. I couldn’t care less if the story’s well told.
Psyche,
Warning labels inherently stigmatize what they’re warning against.
Does it really, though? Movies in the US start out with “Warning: this movie contains adult language, M/M, monkey feces, ghod knows because by now I’ve tuned out,” all the time and does anyone in mainstream America even LISTEN to that warning anymore?
I know I don’t. I couldn’t even come up with an example beyond “adult language” because that’s usually the first one and I haven’t managed to tune it out yet.
And why does the word “warning” even need to be there? A simple small “Adult language” in the corner of the back cover could suffice. That way a person can’t say they weren’t warned and the word objectionable isn’t even used.