Want Me Barefoot and Pregnant, Too? Open Letter To PayPal

Do You Want Me Barefoot and Pregnant, Too? An Open Letter to PayPal   

   To my fellow writers: Be heard. Stand up and scream, use your blog, your social media accounts and your God-given talent to publicize this new form of rape.

     Dear PayPal,

     I’m a nine-year account holder. And I’m angry.

You see, I was an eBay seller for over seven years. I used your service for the convenience of my eBay customers. If you refer to my file, you will see how many times I participated in an arcane process you like to call dispute resolution’.  Your track record there was less than stellar.

However, your questionable policy allowing you to seize my funds—yes, mine, the ones I earned and which you were given permission to MOVE for me -- is not the policy I’m complaining about today.

This one is bigger. More insidious and at least as arrogant.  You see, growing bored with writing eBay auctions, I moved to writing romance novels. My novels depict characters having sex with each other.

Sex happens. If you’re uncomfortable with the topic, I recommend you simply not read my work.

But don’t you dare tell my readers they cannot pay for my novels using their funds in your possession. And don’t try to dictate to me what I may buy, sell and pay for with my funds in your possession, either.

You see, romance novels have always been there red-headed stepchild of the publishing industry. Romances in general and erotic romances in particular are the novels no one will admit to reading, and the ones the Big Publishing won’t market, at least not under their respectable house names. But they do sell.  (link)  In order to satisfy the demand, especially with the advent of electronic reading devices, many small e-publishers have flourished, giving many of who have a knack for writing these stories a new income stream.

And once again, my funds are being moved through your SERVICE. My publishers use your service to collect payments on my behalf, and they deposit my royalties in my PayPal account. I use the term service, because that is all you are. I look upon you as I do the guys who pick up my trash. My trash collector has a right to deny me the right to put certain items in my refuse container. Not because they arbitrarily decide they are offended by, say, dirty diapers and old lampshades, but only if carting off dirty diapers and lamp shades would violate LOCAL, STATE, or FEDERAL LAW.  Otherwise, they take away what I toss out, and in this economy, they’re damn glad I haven’t decided to haul off my own trash.

You do not get to tell me what I can and cannot spend my money on.

Oh, you’re trying.  You have written some arcane new policy you believe allows you to JUDGE what I write, purchase, or promote, and disallow my sales or expenditures based on your idea of what is ‘appropriate’.

Guess what? The last time someone tried that, I was seventeen years old. I’m now fifty-one. I’m more than capable of choosing what I want to write—and read. I don’t need or want you looking over my shoulder in the guise of looking out for my best interests. I may have breasts, but I assure you, I can handle the job.

To further disrupt my small business enterprise, you are now targeting my distribution.

Wait. That is not quite true.  You have not yet affected my works. You have, however, decided in your almighty arrogance, that you may dictate to distributers who also handle my titles, which titles you will authorize payment for.

Here is copy from one distributer’s web site:

FOR CURRENT PUBLISHERS:

1. Content subject to approval.
2. If you upload romance with explicit sexual content, please do not cross over the line regarding pedophilia, sex with a minor, sex with the barely legal, incestuous sexual intercourse with any immediate family member, rape for sexual titillation, non-consensual BDSM, bestiality with a non-sentient being, and necrophilia.
3. No hard-core erotica will be accepted.

"CENSORSHIP" HOT BUTTONS:

• For BDSM, place a note before or after your blurb indicating it is "consensual BDSM."
• If your heroes or heroines are siblings in a ménage/multiple partner romance, the siblings cannot, at any time, be sexually involved with each other and cannot touch each other for titillation. Place a note after your blurb indicating "There is no sexual relationship or touching for titillation between or among siblings" (or similar wording of your own).
• Pseudo incest involving sexual intercourse with non-blood related family members, although legal, is a hot button. If "step" family members are involved with each other, premise of the story cannot be for the sole purpose of titillation.

To recap: I may hear of these situations on the news, or in a television drama or a movie, but I may not read or write about them, if I plan to pay or get paid through your intuition.

Uh huh.  NO. No, PayPal, you do not have the right or the qualifications, to decide what is and is not obscene. You are a company chartered in the United States, and I’ll be damned if I feel you’re smarter than the US Supreme Court. There are days I have issues with the decisions made by these justices, but at least they were vetted by Congress, which is one hell of a lot more than you can claim. They went to law school, served as lower court judges and wrote many a scholarly dissertation and reasoned opinion prior to being nominated for the seat.

What the hell did you do? You merely typed a new clause into your customer agreement, and you think you’re gonna shove it down my throat. Honey, I know fiction when I see it. That’s what your policy regarding obscene material is, fiction. I seriously doubt you can back it up in court. I seriously doubt you can back it up using my money.

Based on my experience with your dispute resolution mumbo-jumbo, I know you’ll try.

For the edification of those who haven’t seen it, this is how your company is making their end-run around the Constitution, as related by an online retailer of erotica and erotic romance:

On Saturday, February 18, PayPal’s enforcement division contacted XYZ Online Book Retailer (name withheld)
with an ultimatum. As with the other ebook retailers affected by this enforcement,
PayPal gave us only a few days to achieve compliance otherwise they threatened
to deactivate our PayPal services. I've had multiple conversations with PayPal
over the last several days to better understand their requirements. Their team
has been helpful, forthcoming and supportive of the XYZ Online Book Retailer mission. I appreciate
their willingness to engage in dialogue. Although they have tried their best
to delineate their policies, gray areas remain.

Their hot buttons are bestiality, rape-for-titillation, incest and underage erotica. (sic)

But, Eden, you say, you’re a fifty-one year old female, living on the buckle of the Bible Belt. You can’t possibly support novels with rape scenes, incest scenes, and for God’s sake, surely not donkey-sex involving minors!

Oh, yes I can. Here are three reasons why:

1. When you clean the shelves of the above list of ‘objectionable material’, will that satisfy you? Or, fresh from your success of leveraging MY MONEY against me and my chosen profession, will you come after something I actually write? 

2. Many of us who write in this genre do so for therapeutic as well as financial reasons. Oh yeah. So, if at some point in my past, I was traumatized by the swinging dong of a donkey, owned by my cousin who also raped me (fictional example though this may be) do you think you can deny me the chance to write this and make it commercially available to someone else on this planet that might also have experienced similar trauma? I’m going to say you are not qualified to make that judgment call, much less have the right to make it.

3. It’s fiction, yo. That means it’s not REAL. It’s fantasy, it’s emotional exploration in the safest possible manner, in the privacy of one’s own home. You absolutely do not have the right to dictate what I may or may not read, explore or fantasize about by virtue of the fact I PAY YOU TO MOVE MY FUNDS ABOUT ON MY BEHALF. Again, I say you’re not qualified to determine what is and is not obscene. You move money, and there are times you do a piss-poor job of that. To give you this kind of control without a fight makes as much sense as asking my dentist to deliver my baby, or my house painter to choose my cancer treatment facility. 

You can’t follow the federal regulations you’re required by law to obey, based on lawsuits which are a matter of public record, yet you seek to set a precedence of this caliber and dictate to me what I may write and sell, or read, by squeezing me where it hurts, in my purse?

Clean up your own house before you come to sweep out the dirt in mine. There’s every chance that will keep you plenty busy.

Perhaps you don’t realize I’ve been discriminated against before; had my human rights violated by being passed over for a in favor of a male with lesser qualifications,  offered lower pay for equal work, been fired for getting pregnant, and a few other tidbits I’m too angry to recall.

I suppose you think because my daughter has taken all my generation’s progress in this arena for granted, and paid her money and mine for rap music denigrating women as ‘bitches and hos’, I must have gone senile, and won’t notice you’re trying to screw me, no dinner, no kiss and no lube?

Think again. Effective immediately, I’ll be withdrawing my funds from your possession. Until my publishers find a new way to pay me, I will discontinue use of your bit of plastic, and have you send me a check through the mail, this depriving you of additional fees my card activity gives you.

I’m only one woman, I admit that. However, you’re the one implying my words and the words of my fellow erotica writers have so much power we must be controlled, at the expense of the US Constitution. That makes me think you might have a fight on your hands.

And I’ll be waiting for that enterprising class-action attorney who sees this situation for what it is, an opportunity to right a wrong, while lining his pockets. That’s the American way, after all. But he or she will use the law to do that, while you have nothing to stand on, in my humble opinion, except your arrogance and your erroneous belief I’ll bend over and take this like a good little girl.

Good little girls are fiction too. I’m a woman, I write erotica, and I’m not bending one more inch. You show me the power of money, and I’ll show you the power of the pen.


My post looks at the issue from the consumer's angle. This one calls out one of the online booksellers who's given up without any sign of a fight: http://remittancegirl.com/discussions/two-legs-bad-an-open-letter-to-mark-coker-smashwords-censorship-erotica/

Raymond Frazee's post is hard hitting, and references many works which fit these literal definitions Paypal is forcing on us, and yet which would never be banned. http://wideawakebutdreaming.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/playthings-in-the-hands-of-the-arbiters-of-decency/