Navigating “Community Guidelines” When Self-Publishing Erotica

I’m a rule-follower. Always have been. I go where I’m supposed to go, do what I’m supposed to do. Okay, maybe sometimes I go 70 or 75 on the freeway, but you know what I mean. I generally stay within the lines and play by the rules.

So when I started writing erotica, I was very careful to examine the guidelines about what a given platform allows. I started out my erotica-publishing career on Literotica, which has pretty loose guidelines, since it exists solely for the purpose of publishing user-submitted erotica. They’re quite permissive, drawing the line at snuff, depicting sex with minors, and bestiality. Just about everything else is fair game, including stories involving incest or nonconsensual sex. They make their rules reasonably clear, and every story is at least eyeballed by an admin before it goes live.

After successfully posting a few stories on Literotica, I submitted the first quarter of a novella I was working on, planning to publish it in four parts over the course of a few weeks. My submission was rejected, and the reason given was that it portrayed nonconsensual sexual activity. The general rule of thumb for when a noncon story is acceptable, the message explained, is that if the victim has an orgasm or otherwise enjoys the experience, then they’ll allow it.

It’s okay to write rape stories as long as the victim enjoys it in the end. Anyone else having trouble with this?