Having just read Leaanna 19's blog about sex in stories I read the ensuing comments and thought that Iolanthe Portman's comment very much reflected my own.

When I first started posting material, way, way back, I was still carrying sexuality baggage based upon an emotionally crippled childhood. Sexually speaking, I was truly all over the place as I think, my story entitled 'Snake' on Fiction-mania would almost certainly illustrate. Looking back at it now, I read between the lines and sometimes glimpse the tormented ignoramous who dreamt up such a bizarre story. Sometimes I look at it and feel so ashamed that I should rip it down but then I remember in what sort of frightful place I was during those dark days and leave it there just to remind myself.

What's worse, I can remember lying in my cell at Walton at aged about seven or eight I suppose, and imagining my self to be a wooden saddleback pig being assaulted and broken like a child's doll or toy after one of the older boys had described me as a little piggy. (Yeah! What does that do to a kid?) But I digress.

What amounted to sex in my head during my teens and twenties, would never ever enter my mind these days; or if it did it would probably frighten me and sicken me. I therefore wonder how much a writer's libido and immaturity affects his or her writing and does this then influence his or her readership. Today, my writing tends to concern the societal issues surrounding the persecution and bullying of not just the LGBT community but other vulnerable minorities as well.

This tends to induce a somewhat moralistic perspective to my latter-day material.

"When I go back and risk glancing at my stuff on fiction-mania I am truly disturbed by what I read and I have to stop and realise that 'Did I really write that!!???'

I suppose it's an easy escape to say that if sex adds to the story's impact or value then yes, go ahead and include it, but the truth is it often does and indeed it is sometimes necessary to give the story weight. After all sex is a huge part of the human condition and therefore often a necessary element to validate most stories based on relationships. The degree of delicacy or enforcement has to be the authors choice and not the censors.
The reader should be the one who censors his own material by not buying it if he dislikes the preamble on the fly-leaf.

Should there be censorship limits I ask myself.

Possibly; - probably even; but I for one would not like to be the one who sets them. History can judge harshly. Society moves on and yesterdays profanity is todays most used interlocuter.

One important factor is undoubtedly open to discussion.

My childhood imaginings have long ago been put to bed and never reappear unless they are called upon by the conversation, as this article has done. Even then it is purely as a topical point and not some sort of fantasist aid.
We all move on if we have a healthy mind even if we've had to repair our minds ourselves.

My saying "Gaia" - shoot me, I'm atheist - no wait! - there's places where they do that. Literally.
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Yeah. There is no way to distinguish 'opening' (the Reads count) and 'finishing' (did not abandon) counts.

Oh, and my instantly abandoning a story based on the description alone - it's a read hit, even if I don't put even the first 'story word' on my screen.

And yes, I'm starting to abandon stories for any number of reasons ...

Anybody touching a keyboard here, >should< have noticed that BCTS has a built-in spell checker. And they are >using< it.

Spell checkers can't save us from using a completely wing-wring-Wong-elephant-rung word. Nor save us from homophones, such as the "'trios of dread": to-too-two, or there-they're-their.

Those using speech-to-text, well, they >gotta< proof-read their stuff. Proof-read anyways. Of course.

Those writers whose first language is not English - please let us know.
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I think Grammarly eventually demands their 'pound of ink'.

M-$$$-S Word has a far weaker grammar checker (but a good spell checker) - but it is >Free< as LibreOffice from PortableApps.com. (Install the menu system first, then install apps from the menu. You're welcome.)
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And we can always ask for help. Be careful about asking for 'just' a Proof-reader, or for an Editor (or just a general Beta-reader).

Proof-readers will say "The word you want is 'wrong', not 'elephant'".

Editors will say "Why does the killer use a knife in act 2, and the prosecution presents a gun as evidence in act 3?"

And Beta-readers might say "uhm, just why did the killer 'go off the rails' and start killing - just makes no sense?".
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And please, never the dreaded "wall of text":
LearnHowToPutInBlankLines.

Oh yeah ... sex in stories.

By now, we should know of the 'mechanics' of most of the permutations, and readers and writers can skip directly from "in bed..." to "in the afterglow" and take up the plot. "Mechanics" and porn are as close as y/our next Google search.

Thanks!