the no politics/religion rule and forbidden romance

[Kelliezgirl]

This is where the 'Madam, this is a Wendy's' response is appropriate. This community is, by owner's choice, not one where discussing eternal damnation is helpful to fostering the desired community spirit.

Put another way, whether you think they are great literature or not, this site wouldn't publish Lolita, it wouldn't publish The Satanic Verses and it wouldn't publish the Life of Brian.

So, can we admit that Wendy's goal isn't to be "inclusive"?
You are just trying to move the goal posts. No one is saying that Laurel can't run the site any way she wants to, the issue is what constitutes being "inclusive". As I mentioned, Lit was apparently perfectly happy with a thread mocking the Christian Bible, that wouldn't make people feel welcome, ergo it isn't inclusive. At least based on the standard you provided.
And, again, my original statement was that it's laughable to call a site "inclusive" based on a willingness to censor people.
It's yet another case of Schrodinger's Fascism here on Lit.
If someone censors speech you agree with, by golly it's fascism!
But if you want to censor someone else's speech, by golly it's totally necessary, otherwise the fascists will take over!

 

[TheRedChamber]

So, can we admit that Wendy's goal isn't to be "inclusive"?

We don't have Wendy's is Britain but I'm going to guess they would say their goal is for everyone to have a good time at their restaurant. That is inclusivity.

I'm going to ask where this Christian bible thread is. I may well have seen it, but don't remember at the moment.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

We don't have Wendy's is Britain but I'm going to guess they would say their goal is for everyone to have a good time at their restaurant. That is inclusivity.

I'm going to ask where this Christian bible thread is. I may well have seen it, but don't remember at the moment.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/story-pending-for-nearly-550-years.1645510/

 

[Kumquatqueen]

We don't have Wendy's is Britain but I'm going to guess they would say their goal is for everyone to have a good time at their restaurant. That is inclusivity.

We've got a couple dozen Wendy's in the UK, though the iconic one next to Kings Cross station closed in the early 2000s. That was a fascinating place. Let's say they were inclusive of everyone who wasn't violent in the shop, didn't visibly use illegal substances, didn't vomit, and didn't carry out sexual services on the premises.

Security was generally conducting people out of the building in a continuous loop, after 11pm.

So you could say it wasn't inclusive of half the people who wanted to be in there, or alternatively, that its behaviour standards made it inclusive to anyone who met them.

Great place to hang out for a couple hours, share chips and neck from a bottle of booze, while chatting to hookers and homeless people, anyone who had missed a train, and a pile of queers and kinksters and general reprobates en route to clubs or home.

 

[TheRedChamber]

We've got a couple dozen Wendy's in the UK

I stand corrected. Some rather odd locations and quite a few places I havent been in a while.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/story-pending-for-nearly-550-years.1645510/

Maybe I'm very Anglican in my outlook, but I feel like most vicars I know would shrug and say 'well, yes that is in the bible' (before having a worse time explaining their presense on a smut site.)I dont think it was mean spirited for the most part, but I certainly wouldnt have that conversation if I wanted to be inclusive of other people I know and in different contexts. While the site aims to be inclusive generally there's not too much we can do about the prudish. The overlap of the highly religious and smut writers is also a headscratcher.

One of the points about inclusivity is being able to speak up when uncomfortable. That didnt happen in that thread and in fairness would have probably been ignored or mocked.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I stand corrected. Some rather odd locations and quite a few places I havent been in a while.


Maybe I'm very Anglican in my outlook, but I feel like most vicars I know would shrug and say 'well, yes that is in the bible' (before having a worse time explaining their presense on a smut site.)I dont think it was mean spirited for the most part, but I certainly wouldnt have that conversation if I wanted to be inclusive of other people I know and in different contexts. While the site aims to be inclusive generally there's not too much we can do about the prudish. The overlap of the highly religious and smut writers is also a headscratcher.

One of the points about inclusivity is being able to speak up when uncomfortable. That didnt happen in that thread and in fairness would have probably been ignored or mocked.

Yes, speak up to know you will be ignored or mocked, which is a hallmark of inclusivity... So again, the Lit double standard... "Our censorship is inclusive, your censorship is fascism."

 

[Purechicanery]

Frankly a lot of that reads like jokes actual Christians would make about the Bible.

 

[OralAllOver]

I'm just curious about how the no politics/religion rule would be applied to a story I'm thinking up. I'd like it to be a forbidden romance and I want it to be forbidden in all of the ways - class difference, age gap, HR rules, their families' opposition to interracial marriage, they are already in relationships when they initially meet, and more if I can think of them.

Two obvious ones, given that he's rich and that she's poor, would be that he's politically conservative and she's a hardcore commie or union organizer or something; another would be that they are different religions (IDK which ones yet). I'm not interested in figuring out who's political and religious views are correct - the two are going to bang because they can't resist each other in spite of all these things, not because they resolve their differences - so I won't have them in long discussions about who's right, maybe they'll tease each other about it (aka wow commies give great head etc) but not having arguments or anything.

Is this story going to get rejected? Or do I have to simply omit these barriers? Also, if it's possible to do this, are there any advices as to how to do so without triggering the rule?

If anyone helps me with this, thanks in advance!

carnivorous and vegans?

 

[Purechicanery]

And, again, my original statement was that it's laughable to call a site "inclusive" based on a willingness to censor people.

Let's use a somewhat extreme example. If there were a lot of racial slurs, let's say, use of the 'n' word with the hard 'r', or say, stories that celebrated murdering black people... do you think black people might not feel like this was a place they'd like to hang out? Do you think there might, at a bare minimum, be value in preventing THAT kind of speech?

 

[Bramblethorn]

I stand corrected. Some rather odd locations and quite a few places I havent been in a while.


Maybe I'm very Anglican in my outlook, but I feel like most vicars I know would shrug and say 'well, yes that is in the bible' (before having a worse time explaining their presense on a smut site.)

We did have at least one minister on the forums (some variety of US Protestant, I think?), though I think he was more on the BDSM board than over here. IIRC he didn't consider that being here conflicted with his beliefs.

I dont think it was mean spirited for the most part, but I certainly wouldnt have that conversation if I wanted to be inclusive of other people I know and in different contexts.

[note: I am currently on heavy-duty painkillers, apologies in advance if this comes out garbled]

Intent isn't everything, but FWIW it absolutely wasn't intended to be mean-spirited on my part. I have strong opinions about a lot of things but "religion sucks" isn't one of those opinions. While I'm not religious myself, some of the best people I know are (or were; one is sadly no longer with us) and I have no interest in mocking them or their memory.

While the site aims to be inclusive generally there's not too much we can do about the prudish. The overlap of the highly religious and smut writers is also a headscratcher.

I'd argue for a distinction between "highly religious" and puritanical here.

For instance, my sorely-missed friend was very religious indeed, just in more of a Matthew 7:3-5 kind of way. The religious imperative she lived by was one that concentrated on feeding the hungry, comforting the afflicted, and so forth, and she was regularly exasperated by the puritans' attempts to claim a monopoly on religion.

As @Purechicanery suggests, she would very likely have been contributing enthusiastically to that thread, and I have her book recommendations to thank for introducing me to some excellent novels which happen to include Literotica-level spice.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Let's use a somewhat extreme example. If there were a lot of racial slurs, let's say, use of the 'n' word with the hard 'r', or say, stories that celebrated murdering black people... do you think black people might not feel like this was a place they'd like to hang out? Do you think there might, at a bare minimum, be value in preventing THAT kind of speech?

There is a term in the legal field, bad cases make bad law.
Pointing out an extreme example and then saying, "What about that?" when it's clearly beyond the scope of the issue at hand is meaningless.

But to answer your question, who knows, and frankly, who cares. Plenty of rap songs celebrate murdering other people. Lots of black people seem to like them...and they use the N word quite frequently too... so maybe that isn't the slam dunk for "inclusivity" that you think it is. I suspect if someone pushed for banning or censoring those rap songs it would be labeled "racist, fascist, not inclusive..." and so forth.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Frankly a lot of that reads like jokes actual Christians would make about the Bible.

And I know plenty of gay people who make jokes about themselves and their friends that would get them banned from Lit. So is that the standard we should use for determining what is offensive?

 

[Britva415]

A quirky rule. "Prosperity Gospel," preached in a number of mega-churches is deeply obscene

without being erotic

 

[Purechicanery]

There is a term in the legal field, bad cases make bad law.
Pointing out an extreme example and then saying, "What about that?" when it's clearly beyond the scope of the issue at hand is meaningless.

But to answer your question, who knows, and frankly, who cares. Plenty of rap songs celebrate murdering other people. Lots of black people seem to like them...and they use the N word quite frequently too... so maybe that isn't the slam dunk for "inclusivity" that you think it is. I suspect if someone pushed for banning or censoring those rap songs it would be labeled "racist, fascist, not inclusive..." and so forth.

Your point seemed to be that you don't believe limiting speech can possibly make a place more inclusive. If there are examples that do, this demonstrates that in fact they can, it's simply a matter of finding out where that line lies. You're obviously not obliged to engage with the question and can instead choose to engage in these comparisons if you so choose. I don't find these comparisons to be intellectually honest, because I think there are obvious usage differences between the examples. However, the main reason I don't believe that you actually think there is no way that limiting speech can make a space more inclusive, is that you seem to be arguing against it elsewhere.

And I know plenty of gay people who make jokes about themselves and their friends that would get them banned from Lit. So is that the standard we should use for determining what is offensive?

You have taken great pains to take offense, either as a Christian, or on behalf of Christians, to the thread you recently linked, and talked about how Christians might not feel welcome because of it. The most obvious reason, to me, that this is not a good comparison, is that the jokes in the linked thread are not directly about Christians. If people were to make 'jokes' like 'yeah Christians like to pray to homophobic skydaddy' or any number of other tiresome, dismissive internet atheist bullshit I have seen in the past, then honestly I agree that it would probably fall into a similar category as your 'gay people' example, although not quite the same, as queer people have been a marginalised and hate crimed minority in most English speaking countries in the last few years in a way that Christians simply have not. (And also, depending what the jokes are that you've heard gay people make, I suppose.)

However, that's not what was happening in the thread - for the most part it was people directly referencing barely edited passages of the Bible. I suppose you could try to claim that anyone connecting any of the stories in the bible to sexuality is being offensive to all Christians, but many of them are already about sex, so it feels like a stretch to find that offensive except by puritanical standards. We could get into a conversation about endorsement vs depiction I suppose, but since no one in that thread seemed to be saying the Bible depicts x and therefore endorses it, when I see someone taking offense at that thread but then seemingly going out of their way to try to excuse racism, I start to find it hard to take seriously or care about their point of view.