TEN Talks: Sex in YA Communities

Part of TENTalks – a series of discussions on ethical and philosophical writerly questions.

Sex is everywhere from ads, to TV, to music but should it be everywhere? In this discussion, we’re asking two questions: should sex be present in books marketed as ‘YA’? And how should a fandom community act when a book marketed to younger readers contains sexual content? To answers these questions, we’ll be looking at the work of Sarah J Maas, an author known for her very explicit books that despite being marketed as New Adult very much still find themselves in the YA section, and the infamous #DickSoap scandal that rocked her fandom and all of Book Twitter back in 2018.

There’s no preparation required other than having your thoughts (or your ears) ready to partake. But if you wish, here’s an article about DickSoap: https://electricliterature.com/young-adult-novel-twitter-is-losing-its-absolute-mind-over-penis-shaped-soap/ and you can choose to read Sarah J Maas novels such as Throne of Glass or ACOTAR (‘argh my eyeballs’ discretion is advised).