You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Sex is normal - so why do we shield our teens from it?
You are free to discuss sex with whoever you want, but as a community The Writers' Block has a responsibility to its members old and young, and we take that seriously. However perhaps we should make it clear in our guidelines that we do not critique erotica.
She didn't name y'all. She didn't even say the community was on Steem/Discord. She used her experience to make a point. You and @rhondak are the ones who decided to make this about your group, and in the process have made it clear how unwelcoming, rigid, and downright mean the leading attitudes are.
Good to know, I guess?
Indeed. Certain people are definitely a bad fit for our group and we don’t waste time trying to cater to them. That frees us up to commit maximum resources to the serious-minded writers who are invested in their craft. As a result, we have a very engaged community with almost no drama.
This may be the ugliest comment that I have ever read on Steem, and I have read some pretty low down disgusting trolling before.
Oh, believe me--I can show you some much uglier ones. Aimed at me.
I find it interesting that you think it's okay for someone to falsify information about an encounter (I could care less that she didn't name names--she bloated and exaggerated a situation and presented false information looking to rally a cause.) I also find it interesting that you find a factual statement made about the environment of our community on Steemit to be offensive. I assume this to mean that you take issue with the fact that we don't allow drama and focus on serious writers, whether they are new to the craft or experienced? This is puzzling, and I think you're in the minority, seeing as how our group is jammed packed and stays busy 24/7, is one of the largest writing groups on Discord, partnered with the largest writing group on Discord with zero drama. . . I'm sorry, @carlgnash. I simply don't understand what bothers you about that. Maybe we're supposed to have problems internally and struggle round the clock for you to think we're appropriate?
For reference, I'm posting screenshots of the "unwelcoming" attitude our group had toward Isabelle Lauren when she came into the group. She's the one who didn't give us a chance, not the other way around. So it is very much an affront to see her on Steemit whining about needing a "more supportive community."
Given the welcome she actually did receive, I think folks should be asking themselves exactly why her exploits with other online writing groups "didn't work out."
Shes trying to be nice. And your treatment of her here on the blockchain has only confirmed her fears. Not to mention your attack on @britlib16
Threatening to flag her and calling steemcleaners
🤷♀️
There are nice people in there but you should let ppl know that its not a nurturing atmosphere and that you the leader and gmuxx another strong leader are so insanely opposed to these genres.
Question, what makes you think that isabelle lauren is drama? Because she thought that she would be welcomed and then didnt feel that way and left or that she used a vague reference to highlight her experience ( btw she didn't misquote anyone)
What about isabelle lauren says that shes not a serious-minded writer??
When you say you don't waste time on people it makes them feel insignificant and unimportant.
Your insistance that the way you talk to people is completely rational and welcoming is being supported by the people in your group.
As i have been checked so many times by my team,i encourageyour team to also do so-- if the have the genitals to do so. Sure hope there isnt too much "drama"
When did I ever say I was 'insanely opposed' to these genres? I personally don't mind a little titillation from such 'works'. I even tried reading that 50 Shades guff and gave in after a chapter or two. Why? Badly written one dimensional characters involved in an unrealistic version of the BDSM community. How do I know? Because I have friends who ARE involved in real life BDSM.
Do I want to run a writers group that thrusts such writing in the faces of young teens? No. I personally think the world is already too sexualised for our children. That is my opinion and it is as valid as any screaming banshee's.
What makes me think she's into drama? Why, this post, of course. And the way it was set up to put the focus on the "writing group" who offended her, when that actually had nothing to do with the subject matter she wrote about. I don't believe it was done in innocence at all. It was shoehorned into the opening in true passive aggressive style.
One of the issues Steemcleaners addresses is tag abuse. It is tag abuse when people use inappropriate tags to try and draw more attention to their posts. Also, Steemcleaners has a large stake in users who fail to use the NSFW tag when it's needed. So there were two violations of community guidelines that SC might be interested in.
I suppose that next you'll be inferring that female users who plagiarize other writers deserve to get away with it because they're simply disenfranchised women who need to be cut some slack. sigh
And nurturing? We never painted ourselves as "nurturing" at The Writers' Block. That's some mammary-gland-fueled psychobabble you came up with because it's clearly what you need as a person. We offer guidance and assistance for people looking to improve their writing skills on a professional level. And we're almost always successful when those people aren't too vain or egocentric or insecure to take advantage of it. But one thing remains certain: even though some of our most successful writers do feel nurutured in our community, one thing we do not and never will "nurture" is drama. It's virtually nonexistent there. And that is because we are not afraid to stand up to people who crave attention and throw tantrums when it turns out the world does not revolve around them.
Maybe best to include it in your guidelines yes. You are of course free to censor whatever you want in your own writing group. I am just surprised that you are fine with "any other genre" except for erotic romance. So all the many many genres involving violence are fine for your young readers? Horror, crime, thrillers? I fully understand you wanting to censor content due to your young readers, but why just sex? That is what I try to address in my blog post.
Censor is the wrong term here. Would you expect us to force our editors to critique erotica, even though they explicitly refuse to? To what end? Satisfy one or two erotica writers?
You were saying you don't allow erotica because of your readers. I am asking why are you allowing horror, thrillers, crime novels for your young readers, but not novels involving sex. I never said anyone should be forced to critique erotica and your main argument was young readers, not unwillingness of members to critique erotica.
Yes, there are two reasons we don't critique erotica. I'm not going to argue with you, just stating that this is our stance. We also don't critique gratuitous violence. Are we wrong there too?
We don't allow gratuitous anything in our group. Mainly because it reads like ass anyway and none of our editors want to waste their time on anything that isn't decent quality.
Sorry to barge in, but honestly i think @rhondak's replies are too confrontational. seriously. she didn't even mention you guys. you could have just ignored.
Sure we could have. Because that's what all the snowflakes expect everyone to do--either give in to them or ignore them. Surprise! This is the real world. Post passive aggressive stuff to the blockchain, you might just get a response that doesn't pander to you.
An excellent response rhondak, and I agree completely. Well said.
Absolutely this should be in y our guidelines, if it is a guideline. If this is something that you would tell a writer - this is not an allowed genre - that is 100% the kind of thing that guidelines are intended to cover. That is in fact, why you have guidelines, is it not? This is pretty amazing to me. I personally feel the guideline is incredibly misguided. What is wrong with America in particular and the western world in general that sex is such a taboo topic? I could not agree with the sentiment behind the parent post more. I absolutely think that healthy and positive examples of sex and sexuality are not something to be ashamed of. The Writers' Block is going to be missing out on a pretty amazing writer and thinker, I have been very impressed with @isabellelauren's posting since I found a post of hers to nominate for a @curie some short time ago. Your loss.
Well, I wasn't impressed. I did read some of her stuff. She could definitely use a good editor. So. . .everyone has an opinion, I guess.
You seem to be inferring I made it up. It's been in our submission form for a while. Now, thanks to this post, it's front and center, just so there is no misunderstanding going forward.
I find it astounding that the author of this post should be allowed to post what she wants where she wants, but we as a community cannot choose to accept it in our workflow. Our editors don't want to touch erotica. Should we have to force them? Do they not have a choice? Do the parents of teens who use our community not have the choice what their children see, or should we force their kids to see it? As a parent to 4 children, I know which I'd prefer.
It's definitely all one-sided with people like this. Rights of others don't matter. Only their rights to throw tantrums and tell tales and harm other people. This is the opposite of feminism. True feminists (and a few have seen this post and these comments) are appalled by the attitudes here that feel quite like a reverse misogyny. I predict a very short, troubled run for this little sect of psychological terrorists.
I was certainly not inferring that you made it up. I was just saying, yes, absolutely, this should have been in your guidelines the whole time. I personally do think it is very strange that parents are fine with kids being exposed to violence and not sex. But yes, everyone can make up their own mind about this issue and as a writing community of course you are welcome to set guidelines. Note the word "guidelines" :) No offense intended @gmuxx and I don't see that you are being offensive here. I cannot say the same for @rhondak. I would urge an internal discussion among Writer's Block members on if you truly want to associate with someone who very obviously cannot comport herself in a manner befitting a public representative of an organization.
Guess who founded The Writers' Block, @carlgnash? And guess whose leadership grew it into the success that it is? LOL! My take-no-shit approach to keeping troublemakers OUT of our community and keeping it safe for all our hard-working members is exactly why it's as close-knit and productive as it is. And by the way--if you read carefully, you'll see that GMuxx clearly said that our stance on erotica has always been in our guidelines. And it has. We just moved it closer to the beginning of the document so that people who have a challenge reading can see it before they TLDR.
Furthermore, nobody ever said we don't deal with sex in novels we submit to the queue. Some of us can write some pretty racy stuff. But there's a difference between sex that moves the plot forward and sex that is the entire plot. We don't deal with erotica as a genre because for the most part, our folks don't like it. Our editors don't like working with it because in order to bring it up to the standards we can get behind, a story needs an arc and character development, not just pages of word porn. If your problem is that you think we're censoring it, you might ought to take up a complaint with Steemit because the community guidelines call for such writing, photos, and videos to be labeled NSFW. I'm surprised the arrows haven't started flying toward that concession to propriety as well.