This new location

The problem is a “no-sex” tag does not equal a “non-erotic” story. Another detail is the Golden Clitorides are not limited to stories on StoriesOnline.net but open to any freely available work. Many venues do not require a “no-sex” tag or even any tag at all.

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with that being said, how about a practical example: “greenies” by al steiner is typically regarded as a purely science fiction story with “no sex”, however it it would be “eligible” according to the previous paragraph as it does contain *SOME*.. not much, but enough, IMHO, to be considered.

Basically, you’re asking whether we approve of a form of censorship – whether we think that your judgement (or that of a faceless committee) should determine whether stories gain access to these awards.

There are two major questions here.

The first is “what is erotic”? Is it the same as sexy? Is it the same as pornographic? Is a first kiss erotic? What about cuddling or putting on sunscreen lotion? What about a solo description of a young woman shaving her legs, or getting dressed? Well, my opinion is it can all be erotic. In my personal opinion, I’d much rather read those types of stories than ones about sadism, rape, torture and snuff – which I do not find at all arousing, but which are certainly eligible by your classifications. Erotica is not necessarily the same as pornography, and there’s a huge gradation between. Erotica need not be explicit – it can be implicit, and acts other than the sex act can still involve the senses in an erotic manner.

The second point is that many authors write some stores involving sex and some that don’t. Do you want to try to handicap them by banning some of their work from consideration in some areas (best author, best new author, etc.)?

I know I’m stretching terms just a little by using the term “censorship”, but not by much. The erotic literature movement has been asking to be considered equally as valid as mainstream literature. Now you want to introduce reverse discrimination? It’s just as ethically and morally slippery as reverse discrimination in employment, child custody, or any other field.

I say let the readers vote. If an author of a story that could qualify as mainstream literature wins, and is happy to have his or her story bear the “Clitorides” imprimatur, then good could come of it in many ways, and I can think of no harm it would do.

Should there be an award for the non erotic writer? I think there should be. Put that is something that has to be worked on in the future. As for now…

No-Sex stories as desided by the author should not be concidered.

Now that I have put my two cents in I will leave.

John Q

Keep the existing categories – it’s more than enough

Re: Genres

It’s too easy to go overboard and easily leads to countless genres needing representation. If you’ve got an award for best “furry” story, why not best incest story? Threesome story? Group sex story?

Besides, it can be hard enough to know where a given story should be nominated when many stories belong to multiple genres.

Griezz

I think the decision to keep the clitoride awards as awards for erotic literature is best. Let the readers define what is erotic. Jefferson had some good comments as did Autumn Writer and others. A story should only be accepted for nomination in one category. If a story is nominated in more than one category then the author should be given the privilege of deciding which category it should remain in.

I think in future years we as a community might want to tighten up the categories. Wizard made an excellent observation as to there being a “Coming of Age” category. I think some categories that we have are not categories of erotic literature but categories of literature and need to be dropped or combined. But again, these are projects for the future. Maybe Lazeez could form a committee of some past winners to oversee this.