There is an interesting discussion going on over at the TG Fiction Yahoo! Group. One of the people running Crystal’s Story Site , Ave, took down a server serving new stories. Apparently she did so after several authors asked her to have their stories removed.
They had found stories containing under aged having sex, and would not like to be associated with that kind of literature. At least one of the protesters have had experiences of being molested as a child.
It seems most of the discussants agree that the stories in question are of no literary value. However, many of them fear that if you start to remove one type of stories, it will become hard to stop further demand for censorship.
Over at Crystal’s Story Site, Crystal has posted a longer post where she defends the policy of allowing a wide scope of stories:
“These people find something ‘morally objectionable’ and have to ‘take action’ to ‘correct’ the situation, never realizing that all they’re doing is making the situation worse. The self-righteous moralists will get you every time. Instead of just ignoring a small story, and letting it fade into the background, they jump up on their soapboxes and sow discord and discontent. This was just a story, folks, a fictional event played out in the mind of one individual who transcribed it to hard copy. No child was damaged in any way. (…)
“Finally- To the people who stated and fueled all the controversy, and you know who you are, you’ve threatened to go elsewhere. So please do. We don’t need or want you here. If you are an author who has requested that your stories be removed, they will be when I reach a point where I can do so. In this way you won’t be ‘tainted’ by one author among the thousands who have stories on this site.”
One of the writers who have asked to have her stories removed, gave the following comment over at TG Fiction:
“I now feel fully at ease with the idea of pulling my stories from that site. Crystal, like so many others, has read a threat and blackmail into authors wanting to pull their stories. They, if they are like me, simply don’t feel the site is a good fit any longer.
“Don’t change a thing (except by respecting the wishes of those wishing to remove their presence). I make no demands that either site remove any one else’s stories other than my own. Was Ave threatened if Ave didn’t pull the stories? We’ll never know, that Admin has taken the ball and gone home. I trust Crystals word on taking the requested stories down eventually. Once again, no threats and no demands of policy change.”
When I visited the site today, the new stories section seem to be up again, although there have been no new stories posted since February 2.
On the other side of the TG web Fictionmania.tv, the largest transgender fiction site on the planet, has been taken down by the host.
A representative for the Fictionmania task force says today (February 10):
“…since this afternoon (CET) FM was disconnected by the current provider. The notification note was sent a minute before end of the providers office hours and so far no one has responded on the question for the reason and the request of reconnection.
I hope this issue is solved as soon as possible. Since this is a controlled disconnect of the server nothing could be done until the provider returns access to it.”
It is unclear whether this has anything to do with the censorship-discussion going on the two sites.
Transgender Fiction, Captions and Comics 