How far can you go?
Incest and bestiality are illegal, at least in the UK, but the boundaries aren’t clear. Full sex with my brother clearly counts as incest, and fucking a donkey counts as bestiality, but what about heavy petting, for example?
In Ginger, the toothless cat enjoys licking and chewing Gladys’s ‘thingy’. It’s his favourite, and he prefers it even to mashed sardines. Does that count as bestiality? Gladys enjoys it too, but it isn’t actual sex. A cat licking sardines off a finger is obviously okay, but what about the same cat licking fish sauce off an elderly woman’s ‘boobies’? She tries the sauce on her arm first, to see if the cat likes it, and that’s presumably okay. If I had infinite patience, I could write different versions of the story, with the cat licking a different bit of Gladys in each one, and see where on the scale of finger to thingy Amazon decides to ban it.
If I share a bed with my brother, or my sister, and we just sleep, that’s probably fine. If we kiss each other goodnight, that’s probably also fine. Maybe we can have a bit of a cuddle if it’s cold. However, somewhere along that line we reach the point at which Amazon starts banning things.
Am I allowed to wank my brother with my hand? There’s no penetration involved. What about fingering my sister? Is clit play okay, or do I have to limit myself to kissing her boobs? What about kissing my brother’s chest? He hasn’t got boobs, so that’s presumably all fine, and if I can kiss his chest, surely I can kiss my sister’s chest.
In Butcher And Baker, the brother sticks his finger in his sister’s arse, to see if she likes it. She doesn’t, so it presumably doesn’t count as sex, in which case it isn’t incest. If he were a proctologist, he could be checking her out as a favour, and that wouldn’t be incest. If she likes it, though, does it become incest, or do they have to go further than that? Supposing he were only her half brother? Would he be allowed to go that little bit further before it becomes incest, or are the lines in the same place?
In the UK, first cousin marriages are legal, even if the cousins are ‘double cousins’, who share 25% of their genes. If I had a half brother, though, I wouldn’t be allowed to have sex with him, because we would be too closely related, with 25% of our genes in common.
According to Wikipedia, consensual incest is legal between adults in Spain and the Netherlands, and I haven’t noticed society falling apart in either country. Maybe I should just translate Butcher And Baker into Spanish, and put it on amazon.es, where it presumably wouldn’t be banned, since the brother and sister are both in their fifties, and they want to do it, thereby sitting solidly within the law.
In the circumstances, it’s a lucky thing I don’t fancy either my brother or my sister, and I haven’t got a donkey, or even a cat. Life's complicated enough.
Butcher and Baker
Ginger
Post Mortem (UK)
Amazon US
Milk Amazon(UK) and Amazon US
Billy and Rosie; a Tale of Innocence and Taboo is here.
Rose is @rosew007 on Twitter and her blog is http://roseworms.blogspot.co.uk/
I always thought Amazon's standards are pretty arbitrary. In fact, as you point out, our culture seems to have pretty arbitrary understandings as to what counts as "ok" and what doesn't when it comes to sex.
ReplyDeleteAmazon is kind of getting on my nerves lately. I may move all my books to smashwords.
This is a thoughtful post, worth repeating! Laws in various jurisdictions are also arbitrary about what counts as "illegal" sex. The age of sexual consent has changed numerous times in various countries. When my mother was growing up in New York City in the 1930s, she knew a pair of first cousins from a close-knit Jewish family who fell in love and wanted to marry, but they couldn't legally do it in New York State, so they found another state where they could. There was some precedent for that: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, the President and First Lady at that time, were related by blood before they were ever related by marriage. (Eleanor didn't have to change her family name.)
ReplyDeleteI would like to find a British or European royal marriage in which the spouses are NOT even distantly related by blood. However, consanguinity has been used as an excuse (not an honest reason) for ending a marriage. When Henry VIII wanted to get rid of his wife and marry his mistress, he appealed to the Pope for permission (because marriage was one of the sacraments). Henry's excuse was that his wife had formerly been married to his late brother, so he wanted the marriage annulled, as though it had never taken place, because presumably, having sex with your brother's widow was icky and immoral. (Note that this happens in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, when Queen Gertrude marries her late husband's brother, and her son Hamlet Junior essentially accuses her of being a depraved slut.) In various tragedies (going back to Oedipus), characters who discover that they've had sex with a blood relative have to die, or at least suffer a lot, even if they didn't know they were committing incest at the time.
ReplyDeleteAmazon is more than getting on my nerves...a huge Goliath who seems to make up the rules as he goes along. My reviews get rejected if I inadvertently use an expletive, even if I am quoting from a book that is on Amazon's listing. An enthusiastic expletive is regarded as a "profanity".
DeleteBut check out just one book I found on Amazon's listing. Final Therapy by Alison Heather..in the first chapter, the heroine has sex with her horse, her two large dogs and her Grandfather...see what I mean?
AND what about "Big Foot erotica?" What's that if it's not besiality? It's a whole genre in Amazon's listings!
ReplyDelete