Should we think long and hard about [sex]?

Question

(pun in title intended)

There is a question posted about intimate relationship between members of different species: What would be the most comfortable position for mermaids and humans to engage in sexual relationships?

It was closed and also had comments about appropriateness:

I'm not sure if Worldbuilding should take the place of a Kamasutra SE

I’m voting to close this question because questions about sex positions, even fantastic ones, seems to be above the nominal PG13 rating of a stack exchange site

I’m voting to close this question because - while clearly posted in good faith - I worry this skirts too close to the AUP: stackoverflow.com/legal/acceptable-use-policy

This is a bit disturbing to me.Looking at the sex tag we have had well received questions that ask broadly the same thing:

How would interspecies lovers with alien body plans safely engage in physical intimacy? score of +14/-3; no close votes.

How would dragons mate, according to science? score +13/-1; no close votes; was a Hot Network Question

This is here only to show that some questions that are on the same general topic are accepted. This one wasn't. I can guess at the reason - the close question was worded slightly more explicitly than the others. I can see how that can make a difference but also it doesn't make sense that it does.

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However, while looking at the tag, I started to see a slightly deeper problem:

Open questions: 68
Closed questions: 31

Nearly a third of the questions are closed. Some of them are closed for reasons that would not have changed if the tag wasn't there. For example open ended questions which are acceptably worded but just cannot be answered correctly. However, there are questions that thread a line and that seems to have contributed to their closure.

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We have discussed some questions that lead to questionable content before:

Why do we [torture] ourselves with this tag?
A proposal to establish policy regarding the torture and execution tags
We cannot host gruesome depictions of violence, the [torture] tag has it and needs cleaning up
Should the [tag:execution] tag be removed?

It doesn't seem like sex has had too objectionable a content so far but I fear sooner or later it might. Maybe it's time to discuss what is acceptable for that tag and how to keep content in check so we can agree on what shouldn't get closed and how to keep questions from being closed that otherwise seem to have an acceptable core concept in them. I'm picturing the intimate relation questions here but I suspect there would be other cases where we have accepted a post in the past but rejected a newer one mostly based on wording rather than what the query is about.

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To sum it up: should we think long and hard about what we consent in sex?

Answer 1

Same Answer, Different Tag
My answer for this tag is basically the same as for the other tag: sex is simply part life and part of culture (even more so than torture). Every life form that reproduces sexually is oriented towards engaging in the activity with the end goal of making more of its kind. Rational beings also infuse sex with large amounts of additional cultural norms, customs, rituals, and attitudes.

This being a forum where questions about matters of how a fictional world functions, which naturally include physiological, cultural, religious, moral and many other facets, questions of sex, like questions of violence in justice, are what we deal with.

As with the torture tag, I'd recommend the same two-fold approach to the sex tag (or any untagged query involving sex):

1. Self restraint: Querents & respondents alike should keep the physiological descriptions clinical and the narratives clean;
2. Community Policing: Community has the right, and duty, to question questionable questions. We should feel free to edit out unnecessarily graphic or objectionable content. We should also feel free to request in comments that the OP alter the wording to better conform to community norms re point 1. We should also feel free to VTC any sex question that is story based or clearly does not propose an actual worldbuilding problem.

Essentially, we treat questions of sex the same as we do any other question type.

Answer 2

As the person who asked the question I thought it might be worth putting in my two cents on the whole issue.

In general, I tried to keep the question as clinical as possible and about as erotic as a middle school sex ed. presentation, and avoid explicit language whenever possible. I.e., a strictly "just the facts, ma'am" approach. I actually looked at previous questions like the ones cited by OP as a guide to how explicit I should be, and the one on aliens was what made me think it was okay to post this. At least in the U.S., general sex ed. is taught between fifth and seventh grade, which would be between the ages of 11 and 13, so that would be within the < 13 year old window for Stack Exchange policy. By that age people basically know what genitalia are and that one has to be stuck into the other to make a baby. I agree that going into detail would be inappropriate for SE and it wouldn't be necessary to answer the question.

The broader question is not just about positioning but affects how the relationship should be framed and written about in the first place. Even if no intercourse is actually shown and the author fades to black before anything steamy shows up, how the couple actually go about doing things is going to have a huge effect on physical intimacy (i.e., cuddling and other non-sexual romantic gestures), as well as where they would do it. I.e., does the human carry the mermaid to a bed or do they need a special poo? Whether or not the couple can engage in physical intimacy is also a huge factor in determining whether such a relationship could even work in the first place, given that IRL relationships can often live or die based on whether the couple are able to feel emotional connections via physical intimacy.

Some of the question on this site have also been much, much more explicit as far as sex is concerned. Of the two similar questions mentioned by OP, one currently has a photograph of a 4m long whale penis in the top-most voted answer, and the other has an answer that discusses alien sex toys and the question was originally posted with a picture of a human female and a non-humanoid hexapedal alien (a fan reimagining of a Klingon as a nonhumanoid life form) that made me want to grab the eye bleach to erase these mind images immediately. I have also seen pretty explicit questions and answers about sex on this site. Not to mention all the questions/answers involving body horror, torture, rape, and genocide, in which by comparison a moment of mutual affection involving physical intimacy between two consenting adults who love each other comes off as tame by comparison.

The Mermaid Problem (link is from Tv Tropes and is SFW) is also a very well-known and common trope in fiction and shows up in many, many works that are not pornographic in nature, such as L. Sprague de Camp's Nothing In the Rules (also SFW). It's one of the most common tropes when it comes to mermaids, and my thought was if it helps write better mermaid romance stories...

Mass Effect 2 famously had an entire scene which was nothing but discussing inter-species compatibility and the difficulties in making sure both parties were comfortable in an interspecies relationship, but I'm not sure if that would be too mature.

It's worth noting that none of the people who voted to close gave any suggestions as to how to make the question more appropriate for the site, just that the question was bad as a whole.

Really, there doesn't seem to be a clear definition for what is and isn't appropriate with regards to this tag. It feels like a case of "rules for thee but not for me", especially given that I've had at least two previous questions on this site closed despite the fact that both were well within the bounds of what other questions were considered acceptable on this site. The broader issue is even if a question is 100% on topic for Worldbuilding SE, there is nothing to stop five random users from closing the question. Once one user votes to close it's put in the close queue which brings others in like sharks, but once closed questions are rarely, if ever, reopened even if the author makes sweeping improvements to them.

As an analogy, if this were Writing SE and somebody asked about how to write a romance scene for a character who was paraplegic, would that be inappropriate for this venue?

Answer 3

One thing I want to emphasize is that affection need not be within the purview of anything sexual in the first place. While the matter of 'compatibility' and the depths & nuances of inter-species relationships is very interesting, I cannot help but feel there is an overemphasis on sexual displays thereof.

Forming and maintaining bonds, providing comfort, showing your feelings and communicating them is itself worth exposition, and if your work features aliens that are not near human this becomes interesting in its own right. Aliens that are arthropods, tentacled, or simply much larger or smaller than you, for instance - besides communication, how does that color things? Touch is a big part of communication and relationships.

What about when communication itself is vastly different? Deaf aliens that use sign language, for instance, can't call out to each other, but sign, touch, and perhaps pheromones. Proper communication would require having a device to detect and emit the pheromones as much as learning how to sign with your arms, where to touch one that is looking away from you, and what to expect in terms of one touching you.

That said, deep relationships are worth exploring, even if they might regrettably get close to "erotic reading material" to xenophilic readers. Things as innocuous as hugs or hand holding can be perceived very differently across contemporary human cultures; doing the same with near human or very not near human aliens could certainly stimulate xenophiles, whatever the writer's intent is.

The novel I'm writing of the same name as my profile explores cultures meeting as much as individuals of different species, some near human, and others very much not. One thing I want to celebrate is connection, without being vulgar.

I feel like this might warrant another tag entirely, with emphasis on inter-species relations of all forms. Figuring out different gestures, body language, bonding, faux pas, bridging divides, first contact, or making up for one lacking the senses of another have at least as much of a place in world building as the mechanical realities of sexual bonding.

Answer 4

Persons asking and answering questions in that tag should be careful to keep their content as SFW as it is possible to be, but I strongly disagree with any sort of blanket ban guided by petty morality. The suppression of discourse about anything vaguely sexual continues to be one of the most terrible cruelties than humans have ever imposed upon ourselves, and this site shouldn't be party to perpetuating that.

The question in question is well-written, completely topical, and careful to limit its scope to avoid being closed, yet still ended up in that state. If its content is offensive to certain parties, I would suggest that's a problem for them to deal with on their own terms, i.e. not via knee-jerk close votes. We don't want or need thought police here.

Answer 5

Is there any way to add a warning of some sort if a querent tags their question with [sex]? As in, when you enter the tag into the bar, a check box appears that prevents the querent from publishing their question before ticking the box. Next to the check box is a detailed list of what is and isn't allowed on Worldbuilding SE regarding naughty bits. This would at least lower the number of explicit questions asked by naïve querents, or at least if they do post something beyond the scope of WBSE, we warned them beforehand.

There could also be a [sex] queue, or generally a 'risky tag' queue, whereby a given number of WBSE members need to approve the post before it gets posted, or suggest modifications to the querent. However, this would put the burden on the members of WBSE and not on the querent, so perhaps this is not the best solution.

Answer 6

My two cents: talking about sex, anatomy, and reproduction is fine, but going into pornographic detail is not. The words "penis", "vagina", and "penetration" are fine, but describing a sexual position in detail would not be. Making reference to sex and sexual needs would be fine, but describing the mechanics of alien sex would not be ok. Exploring the possible slang of a world and its euphemisms for sex is one thing (e.g. "blowjobs" for oral sex IRL), but going into detail about that world's fetishes and kinks might be a bit much. I'd even say that making passing reference to characters "having wildly intimate and creative sex" is fine as long as you don't explicitly describe the sequence of events that makes it so wild and intimate and creative. Tell, don't show.

We as a society are generally ok with teaching teenagers sex ed. Sex is a part of life and is nothing to be ashamed of. But above all else, this is not a smut site here to get people aroused when people are looking to (ahem) "take care of business".

As for an action item, I would suggest emphasizing the fact that things should be kept clinical and not go into explicit detail in the tag description.

Currently, it says

For questions relating to sexual reproduction and the physical acts of mating that sexual beings engage in.

I would add to it so it says

For questions relating to sexual reproduction and the physical acts of mating that sexual beings engage in. Please keep questions and answers clinical and avoid going into explicit detail.

Or something similar that is less wordy.

Answer 7

Some problems I have with questions I've seen in the sex tag:

• One can basically just go through a list of how humans engage in sex and consider which of those would work. This would firstly be quite explicit and secondly mean the question didn't involve a reasonable amount of research. Yes, this is very much about the question about aliens safely engaging in physical intimacy, but frankly it could also be about the mermaid question.

• Or maybe one can just draw an equivalence from your fictional creature to a real-world animal and then it's just a question of standard biology that doesn't belong here.

• It discusses or requests details that involve describing or visualising sex in a lot of detail (like discussing positions or anatomies for reproduction, which can be much more explicit if it involves humans or humanoids).

• It carries a very high risk of just being trolling. This may not be such a big concern on this site, as essentially all the question here are about made up situations anyway, but crossing the line from "I think this is interesting" to "I'm just posting it for the lolz" is still bad in my opinion and makes the site less about seriously discussing fictional ideas and more just ridiculous.

• As with all questions on this site, none of these questions are actually about solving real-world problems (except maybe for less serious problems around writing or game design or whatever). This is not a problem in itself, but it means we can be a bit more strict when it comes to certain content without really leaving anyone to figure out their serious problem by themselves (unlike what would happen if you do the same on the Workplace site, for example).

A lot of people could argue that such content is totally fine for 13+-year-olds, but the simple fact is that many people also don't believe it is fine for them, especially if we consider other cultures. It may also be considered NSFW, or just objectionable in general, which may risk broader restricting, banning or abandoning of Worldbuilding or even Stack Exchange as a whole. Maybe those aren't risks we need to worry or care too much about, but these additional factors certainly aren't helping to convince me that we should allow these questions.

This is not to say I'm proposing a sweeping ban on any question about sex, but... okay, I guess that might be what I'm proposing, but only until someone can convince me there are certain types of questions about sex where the upside of their existence outweighs downside.