Say it out loud: it's a crime, it's violence

There's an interesting essay being passed around right now. It's interesting for two reasons. It points out that crimes are regularly committed against women and girls with far greater frequency than numbers reported by law enforcement, and that the crimes and their victims are minimized, swept under the carpet by the label used for these crimes.

But using the label repeatedly reinforces its legitimacy -- that's where the essay goes astray. While the author is a victim herself and is clearly still coming to terms with the crime committed against her, she is locked in the loop forced on her by a culture committing a second crime against her. (Sadly, she even blames herself for crimes against others, even though she may have been but a minor at the time.)

The crime is the denial by our culture that at least one violent act took place against her and others like her deserving our action.

We need to teach our children -- yes, boys, too, as both potential victims and parents/loved ones of victims -- the legal terms for violent criminal acts, and teach them to  use them to effect appropriate action.

If someone touches you against your will, without permission and with intent to threaten or harm, it's battery.

if someone threatens to touch you against your will, without your permission and with intent to harm, it's assault.

If someone forces a sexual act on you against  your will, without permission, it's rape (if intercourse) or sexual assault and quite possibly battery as well.

If someone has a sexual act with a minor, even with the minor's permission, it's rape.

If someone enters your home without permission, especially with force, it's trespassing.

Call it what it is, use the words. Don't give the assailant's and/or rapist's denial any more legitimacy by calling it "not [anything]."

It's particularly important that a community of women who are so very fond of words understand that not only their dreams and aspirations deserve to be enshrined properly in words written and spoken. 

Their nightmares deserve to be called out for what they are, recognized on sight as the monsters they are -- violent acts. 

Tell the truth as it is: these are crimes.

And say it out loud.

[See the work of George Lakoff on framing for a more complete understanding of the nature in which words are used to manipulate behavior.]

Brewing: the sisters are doing it for themselves

I'm still meditating and cogitating over a thesis regarding a quiet revolution in women's emergence. I still can't quite wrap myself around what I want to say and quite possibly have now gathered too much research to make a coherent point.

That said, my thesis' summary could boil down to this:

The sisters are doing it for themselves.

Women are no longer waiting for some prince, either as an individual or as a collective or as some other entity, to address their needs. They are taking matters into their own hands.

No enough romance in your life? Sister, write your own and share it with others.

No enough hot sex in your life? Sister, write about your deepest desires no matter how kinky and share it because you know you are not alone in wanting this. Sex with the men or women who aren't ordinarily in your reach, sex with strangers, sex with multiple partners -- have it all, and safely here in the world of fiction.

Finally, is the man in your life an uncooperative ass? Sister, write about a figurative paper doll of a man you can bend and twist into all the things you want -- and while you're at it, bend him over the couch so another gorgeous well-hung paper doll of a man gives it to him up the backside. Take that, asshole, figuratively speaking.

We are taking care of ourselves and building what we want and need for each other, here in the online world of self-published fiction.

Watch out when we take the next step and fully realize what it is we want.

Brewing: thoughts on paradigmatic shifts in women's emergence

My mental wattage has been preoccupied by some consulting work this week. What little wattage I have left has been kicking around some nebulous thesis about a quiet revolution in women's emergence. I think we are face with a sea change not unlike that between the 1950s and 1960s when birth control and women's rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 dramatically changed women's roles in our western society.

But I can't quite get a handle on what it is I want to say, no doubt for the lack of adequate wattage. I'll just throw these bits out and let them brew for now; perhaps a bit of steeping out in the open will help coalesce my under-powered thinking.

Francis Fukuyama touched on the failure of the impetus behind the 1960s women's movement to fully realize all that women needed to be true equals to male counterparts during the pendulum-like swing of society's expectations liberalizing women's rights. See his work The Great Disruption. While I'm unhappy with the direction that Fukuyama's politics took in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I think  he still makes highly valid points about the swing of movements and opposing reactions.

Article, Look God, No Hands in the most recent issue of Utne Reader hints at an opposing reaction to changes in women's sexuality. One would think that women's masturbatory self-care would be approved by Christian fundamentalists as an alternative to sex out of wedlock, but no -- apparently all sex is supposed to be procreative.

I'm trying to hunt down a news article from an Indian news paper that I'd tripped over last week. The article discusses researchers findings with regard to women's appreciation of same-sex smut. It's the first time I've seen mention of a study of this nature, suggesting there is a trend at work here -- a swing of the pendulum, if you will.

If you see something I might find interesting and relevant to this nebulous thesis, feel free to drop me a comment.

Analysis: Fan fiction, declarations of love, happily ever afters and the ultimate zipless fuck

@einfach_mich asked Wednesday morning:

(For the morning crowd) Twitter Poll: Do you have to have declarations of love and HEA in your smut fic? Think hard about what you read.

A little translation here for readers who may find that tweet cryptic: HEA is "Happily Ever After," the happy ending one might find at the end of a work of fiction. "Fic" is short for "fiction" and in this particular case likely refers to fan fiction based on characters based substantively on another popular fictional work.

If I have to explain "smut," I suggest exiting this post.

As a relative newbie to the world of fan fiction, I've had my eyes opened by some of the writing published online. There's an overwhelming demand for fan fiction which is not only well-written, but includes a dose of content focused on sexuality. The most popular content bends and twists characters' emotions and responses to all manner of situations, including relationships of all depths and the sex generated in the course of these relationships. This has been a feature of online fan fiction since it began; the relative anonymity of authors allows writers to submit content that is far more diverse including depth of sexuality than fiction published in print.

Twilight fan fiction is relatively unique in the genre, in terms of interest and demand, and in terms of authors'/readers' gender. The numbers of works posted at FanFiction.net (FFn), the largest and oldest fan fiction publishing platform, under the Twilight saga show an interest level rivaling that of the Harry Potter saga. As of today, FFn shows total Twilight works published to date now number 186,943 while the Harry Potter category -- representing a franchise with more than twice the number of books, manifold number of characters and more than twice the number of released movies compared to the Twilight saga -- now contains 542,689 works published since 1999. That's a rough ratio of 35,000 Twilight fanfics per year to 45,000 Harry Potter fanfics per year.

And the last two movies of the Twilight franchise have yet to be released; one can only wonder at the growth potential for Twilight-based fanfics over the next two years.

According to content posted at FFn, Twilight fan fiction appears to be overwhelmingly female in terms of authors and readers; the Harry Potter constituency, in contrast, appears to be more evenly distributed between males and females. This is based on anecdotal evidence. The exact numbers are not readily available as FFn's site structure does not allow for much in the way of data mining. Other fan fiction publishing sites like Twilighted.net and ADifferentForest.com also appear to support the gender bias weighting toward females in Twilight fan fiction.

These numbers make the prevalence of M-rated mature content under the Twilight category at FFn rather exceptional among fan fiction communities. And yet the numbers confirm the observations made by Asst. Prof. Sharon Cumberland in her paper, Private Uses of Cyberspace: Women, Desire, and Fan Culture (MIT Communications Forum, 1999). Her thesis:

...the paradox of public access and private/anonymous identity has made it possible for women who have access to the internet to create permissive and transgressive spaces which have been, in the past, the traditional reserve of men's magazines and men's clubs.

Cumberland used fan fiction about the 1998 movie Zorro and the actor playing the lead role, Antonio Banderas, to explore this theory. She concluded,

...This pretty much sums up the slash and het genres, and acts as a metaphor for the phenomenon of women's erotica on fansites: high adventure, far-flung or historical settings, improbable sex, all within the safety of a non-judging, sympathetic, indeed, enthusiastic community. While the significance of this paradox of public access and private/anonymous identity will require much more analysis over time, it is clear that women who have access to the internet have created permissive and transgressive spaces which have been, in the past, the traditional reserve of men's magazines and men's clubs. Fan websites have, in effect, become women's clubs, where erotica can be safely explored without damage to the reputation, the career, or the domestic life. 

Which brings us to my first proposition: online smut written by women would be the ultimate in "zipless fucks." By "zipless fuck" I refer to the phrase coined by author Erica Jong in her 1973 work, Fear of Flying, referring to "a sexual encounter with an anonymous stranger that one will never meet again, and nobody one knows will ever know that it happened." (Wikipedia). In Jong's words,

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.

While Jong's main character, Isadora Wing, appears to vacillate about her expectations from life and her desires, Wing really wants it all. She doesn't want to be denied any of the choices her male counterparts have -- alone/involved, risk-taking/secure, single/married -- when it comes to relationships or to sex. Some may say character Wing feels guilty about the concept of the "zipless fuck," but choosing one means excluding another choice, cutting off her options and leaving her exposed to a notional loss.

In 1973 it would have been very easy even as a feminist of the time to feel some guilt, some loss through the exercise of choice. Choice then was being newly and quite literally shaped by the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court that year, establishing abortion's legality in the U.S. Choosing a "zipless fuck" was easier than ever in terms of dealing with unwanted pregnancy, but exercising a woman's choice of a "zipless fuck" like choosing abortion at that time would mean going against the body of American culture.

During the twenty-five year span after Fear of Flying's publication and before the emergence of fan fiction, casual sex became even more casual during the remainder of the 1970s and early 1980s. The pendulum swung back and hard as herpes and then HIV/AIDS became prevalent, causing sexually active adults to change their sexual behavior with a greater preference for monogamy and increased condom use to reduce exposure to sexually transmitted diseases. The resurgence of conservatism during the late 1990s also increased the public's sensitivity to abortion while promoting a return to more traditional roles for women. A "zipless fuck" seemed less possible and probable at the turn of the millenium.

Now nearly forty years later, choosing a "zipless fuck" is different phenomenon. While women no longer feel the same kinds of societal pressures they felt in 1973 about random sexual encounters, they also have newer and different avenues to explore their sexuality in privacy previously denied them. This brings me to my second proposition: women can now choose a "zipless fuck" either as a writer or a reader in the form of fan fiction, and a safe, STD-free experience at that. No one will know that you had a little dash of slash (homosexual fan fiction)  this morning before you went to work, rode on the train or before bed, and there will be no repercussions in the form of unwanted pregnancy, clumsy contraception or STD tests. Nor will it interfere with your climb up the corporate or social ladder. Women can even order sex toys for masturbation online, delivered anonymously, to increase our enjoyment of this "zipless fuck" -- no obligations save for the credit card bill.

But this is ultimately about choice; that's the real question about the nature of smut. It's about having options, just as it was in 1973. Women no longer need a declaration of love, commitment and happily ever after to make smut enjoyable. Having the option of a completely uninhibited no-strings-attached sexual encounter or the happily ever after is the real point. It's important that women have the choice. With online fiction women co-create, women ensure that choice.

Self-Publishing: How to market children's books

@DavidGaughran asks on behalf of friend  Silvina De Vita who's recently published her first digital children's book,

I don’t have the first clue about how to market children’s books, and I don’t know many authors who write/illustrate books for young children. I presume you are marketing to the parents, but that’s about all I know.

I would really appreciate it if any of you guys could help give some advice to a self-publisher who is just starting out.

In the most basic terms, marketing is about the "4Ps" -- product, price, placement, promotion. The author in question has already determined the first two and possibly part of the third P; she's decided on a children's book (product) to be sold at a set price, with placement partially determined as Amazon.com. 

I say partially as the author may decide to move to more or different download venues over time. Price, too, may be flexible over time as more copies are sold.

David's question is really about the fourth P -- promotion. Where does one promote a book for children?

Go where the parents are. And go where mothers are as they will make most buying decisions.

But the product is a digital product; outreach to a completely different constituency is necessary as these will be wired women who are comfortable with purchases of digital products over the internet. Where do these parents hang out?

If I were promoting this book, I'd start with immersion in the BlogHer community. I'd go so far as to consider blogging about the process of writing the book, the decision making process about self-publishing and going digital, asking that community for their feedback about the best approach to marketing. Make a commitment to that community by purchasing ad space from the BlogHer site. It's important that the author embraces the opportunity to communicate directly with her target audience; if she opens herself up to feedback, she must acknowledge hearing from her constituency or risk credibility.

I'd also encourage the author to read Pew Internet & American Life Project studies to identify where the digital parents are and how to reach them. Chances are very good that their research will provide insights about families' internet consumption which will shape promotional outreach.

Parents increasingly use social media to find content they want, and to filter out content they don't want. It's a time saver. What social media do wired parents use? The most obvious resources are Facebook and Twitter. The author should ensure that her book has a dedicated Facebook page, that she has one as an author, and that both the book and the author have Twitter accounts. The author should commit to sending out at least one update a day via each of the social media outlets she chooses, and make a point of connecting with people who are connectors in the target demographic. Is there a parent in the BlogHer community who blogs about children's books? Find them, friend them and follow them and be sure to engage authentically with them.

This is a lot to tackle all at once, but this is an essential difference between the traditional brick-and-mortar print publication process and digital self-publishing. The author will do a lot of work themselves, but they will have more control of their product and personal brand, and they will have a more authentic relationship with their audience.

Caveat here: I'm not a published author. I am, however, familiar with using social media to promote online content -- and I'm a mom who's bought a small fortune in books over more than 25 years.

Good luck! Buena Suerte!

Poll: What are the top 2 things you love/hate about fan fiction?

@einfach_mich takes a Twitter poll tonight, asking:

Tell me the TOP 2 things you HATE about Fan Fic & the TOP 2 things you LOVE about Fan Fic.

Fan fiction as a form of self-published online creative writing has been around for more than a decade; I first read about it at Salon.com magazine in an article discussing the fan fiction following of Star Trek and the creation of slash themes that extended the original characters. It amused me but didn't capture my interest at the time.

I used to be a hardcore X-Files fan; I'd even hosted view-along chats on AOL as a community host back in the day. But for some reason it never dawned on me that X-Files might have been a relatively solid base for fan fiction.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has become the largest fan fiction franchise so far, but nothing about HP compelled me to participate.

It wasn't until I read Stephenie Meyers' entire Twilight saga this spring that something clicked; there was something far more compelling about these characters, the archetypal paper dolls that could be twisted into many shapes and positions. After years of nonfiction writing focused primarily on politics and technology, I've finally given free reign to my urge to write creatively by way of Twilight fan fiction.

Give my relatively recent move to fan fiction, here's my answer to the poll --

With regard to fan fiction as a whole:

I hate that the fan fiction community as a whole has not received the amount of credit it deserves for fostering creative writing as a hobby;

I hate that specific fan fiction communities like Harry Potter are spread so thin due to the massive popularity and fail to support their best writers for this reason.

I love that the public has learned to grab a new outlet for creativity and run with it so openly;

I love that the internet has been the catalyst for this phenomenon's rise.

With regard to Twilight fan fiction (TwiFic) specifically:

I hate that the TwiFic community can be so insular, tightly bounding itself around a Dunbar's number of tightly connected contributors;

I hate that so many contributors confuse their contributions with the kind of communications better suited to platforms like blogging;

I love that the TwiFic community is shameless, passionate and widely tolerant in its support of TwiFic contributions of all kinds;

I love that the TwiFic community is conscious of the need for better writing contributions and improved promotion, developing platforms of editors and promotion to support the community.

What about you? Did you take the poll?.

Take Down Notice: when your content has been plagiarized or reprinted without permission

As a website owner and online editor for several state and national sites, I've had to deal with plagiarism and unauthorized appropriation of content.

It's theft of intellectual property (IP), plain and simple, when someone uses your copyrighted original works without asking in advance for permission. (This includes unauthorized reprinting of translated versions of your content.)

Laws here in the U.S. protect your works; the first and most effective step in deal with such IP theft is asking the offender to take the content down. If they don't, then ask the service hosting them to do so.

Important caveat at this point: I am not a lawyer; in no way am I giving you legal advice. You should definitely consult an attorney if the IP theft is costing you money or cutting into your livelihood and hurting your personal or business brand. 

I am providing here, though, typical examples of Take Down Notices I have used in the past to successfully curtail IP thievery. Feel free to cut and paste for your personal use, consulting attorneys who specialized in IP theft as appropriate for your situation. (Examples after the jump, click on article title for more.)

One more important point: always indicate in your works that your content is copyrighted. It's just good practice.