I’ve been at a loss for words for days over the whole PayPal debacle, which allegedly prompted BookStrand to finally take a leap they’d been looking for a way to take for months: getting rid of indie publishers and authors. Even as I sit down to write this, I find myself pausing every few words to really think hard about what I want to say.

I’ve said plenty to the people in my real life who actually know what I write, and for the most part, even though the majority of them don’t read erotica regularly, they were all pretty disturbed about the fact that PayPal seems to have so much power.

How can a financial institution weigh in so heavily about the things its users buy and sell? Are they the morality police? Will they contact me the next time I use my PayPal Mastercard at the adult toy store to tell me they froze my account because I used their card to purchase The Sex Files II and a vibrator? At this point, nothing would surprise me.

Of course, they have no objection to my using my PayPal account to buy sex toys from their Parent Company: eBay. And if I had any interest in reading about how a middle-aged man coveted, kidnapped and ruined the life of a girl so young it makes me want to vomit, they have no objection to me picking up a copy of the film adaptation of Lolita or the book by Nabakov, which truly is one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read. Funny that, considering one of PayPal’s issues with indie erotica was “barely legal” erotica, featuring 18 to 19 year old college girls with older men. Note: I said “barely” legal, which is still legal, and far more common in our society than you could possibly imagine.

They are also okay with me purchasing Belore’s erotica (xxx) comic, Lolita, the cover of which is so explicit that my little dog ran from the room yelping when I opened the link. Here, have a look and decide for yourself just how much hypocrisy circulates this issue. Is it okay because the women on the covers of Belore’s Lolita comics are cartoons, therefore so unrealistic that their erotic stories are void from the rules?

So in the end, it all really boils down to hypocrisy. While I’m sympathetic with the erotic romance authors, and the vanilla erotica authors out there whose opportunities were flushed down the drain because of what some of those authors have been calling names like “sick opportunists with no boundaries,” in truth, I have no regrets for writing taboo erotica. I have personally always had a fetish for men much older than I am, so why wouldn’t I write about what turns me on the most?

People are sexual creatures. Some of them have fetishes that would make your head spin, so providing those people with an outlet to explore those fetishes without anyone getting hurt seems like a good idea to me. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t now.

And for those of you who think it’s okay to take away people’s freedoms because you don’t agree with them, perhaps you should pick up the book Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. That book actually disturbed me far more than Nabakov’s Lolita, which is saying a lot. I never want to live in a world where someone else can tell me what I can and cannot read! Do you?

What do you think? Do readers have the right to buy whatever reading material for their eReader they want? The numbers seem to dictate that people enjoy these “forbidden” types of erotic stories. Do you feel like a financial institution has the right to tell businesses what they are and are not allowed to publish or distribute on their shelves? How wrong is it to provide written fantasies for people to read so they can explore a darker side of sexuality within legal boundaries? Please, by all means, share your thoughts in the comment section below. I would love to hear them.