Underage readers?

[nialla42]

Dear Prudence: Help! My 13-Year-Old Daughter Has Been Reading Pornographic Fan Fiction.

(I've also posted this on Tumblr)

Q. 13-Year-Old Daughter Reading Porn Disguised as Fan Fiction: I discovered my 13-year-old daughter has been reading fan fiction for a very popular all boy band which describes in explicit detail sex acts between the male band

Comments

[green_grrl]

Ha ha! Yes, my first reaction was, "why back in my day, we had to get our underage porn reading from V.C. Andrews and Judith Kranz and our dad's Playboys!" *shakes cane*

I think parents just don't like to think of their little babies as sexual creatures, and it was particularly jarring that it was something new to the mom, not something relatable like paperbacks with spines creased in certain places. Someone disturbed specifically by the gay aspect would probably not be a Prudence reader.

[nialla42]

"Kids, get offa my lawn

[khek]

I have to laugh at the V.C. Anderews repackaging. A mom came up to me recently and asked if I thought her ten year old would enjoy them, because she'd loved them so much in high school. I asked her if she remembered them well, because the week before she hadn't wanted her daughter to read something that was fairly mild on the relationship scale because she believed it was "too explicit". She started paging through the book, and her eyes got wide and she decided to "wait a couple more years."

[nialla42]

I can't tell you how many books I read when I was younger, then read even just a few years later and went, "Wait, what? That was in there?"

I've often said that if a kid picks up a book that's too "advanced" for them in any way, they're either going to figure it out anyway (in which case they already had an awareness), or it's just going to zoom over their heads. Apparently that's what happened with me, with lots of things going over my head until I was old enough to have figured them out.

[green_grrl]

Oh, yeah, my mom knows I watch shows/movies and say, "Those two guys are totally doing it," and she'll even agree. And she knows that I go to cons and have writer friends on the Internet. But she doesn't know I'm reading/writing explicit m/m erotica!

[nialla42]

I know a lot of people who'll joke about two male characters being "married" or having a bromance (don't particularly care for that one), yet have no idea what's out there in fandom.

The funniest fanfic thing that's ever happened to me was one of my con buddies that I met back in the 90s was my mother's age. Turns out I accidentally dragged her down the fanfic rabbit hole when I wrote for some zines. Then she found slash for her fave fandom (The Professionals) and she'd found her home. But she didn't tell me about it, and I didn't tell her I was a slasher either.

We were getting ready to meet up at a con years ago, and in our back and forth emails, we started trying to subtly broach the "Do you read slash or at least won't hate it that I do?" subject. Once our big secret was out, cons got a lot more fun. ;)