Neil said:
There are children in fandom, and that must be taken into account. The Horizon Newsletter (for those old enough to remember what they used to be) started to feature a 'Children of Auron' page for younger members, where for no additional fee whatsoever you could have your kids patronised by Diane
Gies. It seems like a rather tactless title, since it implies that for no additional fee whatsoever you can have your children vaporized by Servalan.
I suppose it might, but my (admittedly limited) experience of young
children
suggests that they're happy to lap up any amount of violence. [....] But I don't somehow think it was the readers who were complaining.
The trope of "protecting" children from pornography doesn't deal with the fact that generally speaking minors who encounter pornography do so by going and looking for it, so they're not complaining either.
I have to disagree. Adult material polarises fans too much (as recent discussion on this list clearly illustrates). The real problem with 'gen' is that it has come to mean anything that isn't 'adult', but that leaves a lot of things that still qualify as gen but are not necessarily suitable
for
younger readers. Violence, possibly, or strong language.
Debate about ambiguous moral issues, or stories with a lot of scientific or technical content, would also be "adult" without being sexual.
The only B7 story I know to feature the word 'cunt' is one of mine, though I
presume
there are others.
I wrote one where that's what Tarrant calls Avon and Dayna for misappropriating his hot water ration and expensive shampoo.
-(Y)