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Oh My Word!

Oh My Word!

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  • Make Morality Mainstream Again (Essay)

    Make Morality Mainstream Again (Essay)
    Dec 30 2025
    Make Morality Mainstream Again The adultification of teen fiction has intentionally Frankensteined books for teens into cesspools of ideological normalization. A while ago, I met a mother and her daughter, the latter of whom I hadn’t seen in several years. On the cusp of turning twelve, she’d obviously grown in the time since, and, her mother proudly informed me, had become quite the reader. Indeed, the girl held quite a thick book in her hand. Which was it? The girl showed me the cover. I turned to the mother. “Do you know what your daughter is reading?” She’d figured telling her eleven-year-old she could read whatever was marked 14+ was a safe enough guardrail for appropriate content. As reading is an experience between book and reader, the mother wouldn’t have seen what her daughter was taking in. She couldn’t either know that her daughter’s book was familiar not because it was something I’d read but because it was something I wouldn’t. Worse, she thought she could trust the institution. THE READING DILEMMA Parents want kids to read, but as most can’t keep up with their reading habits, they don’t fully realize what’s being allowed, even promoted, in books for young readers. As with other once vaunted institutions, the publishing world has morphed in ways many aren’t fully aware of. Over a decade ago, I signed my first contract for Young Adult (YA) fiction. Before and since, I’ve watched the genre boom through the stages of audience demographic to viable business. Throughout, YA has expanded from books for teens to a genre unto itself, attracting talented writers, lucrative contracts, and the golden goose of Hollywood adaptations. YA is officially for readers 14-18 years (and up). However, as it’s after Middle Grade (8-12 years), tweens are frequent readers, plus many eleven-year-olds reading up. There is “lower” and “upper” YA, but they’re unofficial categories for libraries or writers specific about their target audience. Most retailers and publishers categorize all teen books under the general YA umbrella. NA, New Adult, mainly written for college-aged readers into their early twenties, is often sheltered under the YA umbrella too. Alongside the wider publishing industry, YA has changed significantly over the years, reflecting broader shifts in society. What follows isn’t an analysis on talent or quality but content, as something about words in a book makes what’s written more real, valid, romantic, admirable, aspirational. Thus, the intent is to shed light on some of the many topic and imagery that are included in books for young readers. At risk that this won’t earn me any friends in publishing (at best), here’s some of what I’ve seen: DEVOLUTION OF YA FICTION Growth of the YA audience/genre is an objective benefit, logical as it is to increase methods for targeting potential customers. As YA has increased in business and position, its morphing into genre unto itself has attracted many adults readers. As a YA author, I read mainly within my market and see the appeal for adult readers considering how well the genre’s developed. The migration of older readers to YA is certainly one of the many reasons it’s been so adultified. Other factors include the poisonous stranglehold ideological tentacles have on many aspects of culture, entertainment, and education. The shifts adults have finally caught onto in adult fiction and film have infected literature for younger audiences, picture books through YA. A quick example, originally, romantic comedies centered on a man and woman who clashed at the outset, then eventually found their way to each other at the end. The story would build to some romantic declaration, then a kiss. Anyone who’s been watching knows that there’s now a whole lot of touching that happens before any romantic declaration occurs. Longer, more frequent kisses are only second to scenes of the pair sleeping together before deciding how they really feel about each other. All this is becoming commonplace in YA. What was once cutesy stories about a high school girl chasing a crush has now become stories featuring a whole lot of other firsts, even seconds, and then some. The devolution of YA is a result of purposeful normalization and reshaping of societal norms through manipulatively emotional appeals by writers, agents, and editors. On average, books from larger publishing houses take roughly eighteen months to two years to evolve from contract to product on the shelf. To say, story trends are set in motion well before their rise in popularity. Whatever the view on agents as gatekeepers to the larger houses, publishers only publish so many books in a year, an amount significantly less than all the people who want to be published. Hence, agents act as preliminary filters for editors, whittling down potential authors to relatively more manageable numbers. An agent must really believe in a writer and project to nab one of those few ...
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    8 mins
  • Because Could is Not Should, II (Essay)

    Because Could is Not Should, II (Essay)
    Nov 11 2025
    BECAUSE COULD IS NOT SHOULD, II Legally could is not morally should, and untangling the two dooms the latter. In the 1960s, Ralph Ginzburg’s conviction for promoting obscenity through his magazine of “literate eroticism” was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. He lost the case, but NPR isn’t the only one to have dubbed him a “free speech icon” in the historical record. Debatable if what he fought for is considered free speech, but he certainly shouldn’t be elevated as an icon for publishing obscene and erotic materials. The fight may seem silly to the generation of today, as there remain almost no limits on what can be published or filmed anymore. Worse, such materials no longer garner notice through delivery in the mail or ducking behind a curtain to a secluded section of a store, as all of it comes directly to a private handheld screen, or in an innocuous cardboard box, without anyone the wiser. A win for free speech, absolutists and liberally-minded say. In a strictly legal sense, perhaps, but standing upon the wreckage of society wrought by that supposed victory, debate is smithereened by the undeniable wrongness of the cost. That battle was a harbinger for the fate of the morality war, a war long since clouded by terms and rationalizations around unfettered freedoms and absolute legalities. Thus, the battles rage, but clarity, and thereby the war, can only be won with unyielding, unassailable adherence to the conviction that legally could is not morally should. Recent studies show that Gen Z wants to see less obscene material in books and entertainment, and though some may profess puzzlement at these results, they’re entirely logical. As they came to shelter under the aegis of free speech, travesties like obscenity, pornography, erotism began appearing everywhere, from big-budget Hollywood films to books for young readers. The current generation has been so inundated by the never-ending ticker tape parade celebrating the mainstreaming of immorality seeing it is no longer edgy but numbing and meaningless. Proliferation led to oversaturation, so much became too much. Then again, Gen Z’s preferences may not be anchored in morality, but rather in eventually rejecting something they saw everywhere, through easy, ready, and constant access. The mind may eventually forget, but the eyes cannot unsee. Thus, the role of the reliable moral guardrail, the knowing that could is not should. Consider the rebranding unrepentant individuals have welded upon the porn industry. Despite the absurdly high rate of suicides by women, and men, reports act surprised at such inevitabilities, describing several in a row as having shaken the industry to its core. They’ll speak about terrible treatment from an industry insensitive to costs of healthcare, mental health, abuse, harassment, exploitation, drug and alcohol use, and more, in addition to the self-destroying doubt that comes between signing one job and wondering when the next will knock. Never mind the unspoken truth that shame has a way of creeping in unrelenting when the day is quiet and the mind is unoccupied. As the average lifespan for a female so-called adult film entertainer is below forty, anyone with a functioning mind and intact moral compass knows that the fault is not in the treatment, but the industry’s very existence. And for those about to wail about free speech, expression, association, and the like, think very, very carefully about what it means that a woman might commit suicide after a career spanning about three years and two hundred films. Two hundred films. That’s, at minimum, two hundred partners in three years. You call this freedom, expression? You call this entertainment? You’re shaken by a rash of suicides? You think a soul dies just because the body no longer listens? No, you’ve fallen prey to thinking that legally could may as well be should. If absolutists and activists are so psychotic as to still support the allowance of this industry, if other nut jobs are adamant about rebranding so everyone can hide behind a false, brittle shield of self-worth, then society itself must make it unimaginable for the existence of such “entertainment” resulting in a multi-billion-dollar industry, let alone anyone willingly admitting to being part of it. Laws should make it impossible to profit, society should make it impossible to allow without honest, devastating shame. So brazen, so lost has the distinction become that the industry has award ceremonies. The industry has a hall of fame. The industry calls popular and “high performers” stars. Some are even married, which means their spouses allow them to participate in this so-called “work.” As if there never was a case in the history of man of a job negatively impacting a worker. Mainstream film isn’t much better, which could be why Gen Z is rejecting its excess entirely. Mainstream film also features nudity and eroticism and essentially pornography by ...
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    8 mins
  • Because Could is Not Should, I (Essay)

    Because Could is Not Should, I (Essay)
    Sep 17 2025
    BECAUSE COULD IS NOT SHOULD A man knows the difference between when women could and when women should. Recently, I had a conversation with someone about women serving in the army. The contention was that if a female can, then why shouldn’t she? Say the fitness tests didn’t have lower standards for women, say all qualifications were the same, if a woman passes them all, if a woman proves her strength and ability and agility to be on par with men, then let her serve. After all, she could. Women could serve in the army, perhaps, but not in combat. In general, they don’t actually have the physical fitness to meet the same standards as men. They don’t actually have the same all-around military skillset as men. They don’t have the strength to drag a wounded man to safety. They don’t have the stamina to hike miles and miles and miles with dozens and dozens of pounds of equipment on their backs. They don’t have the same sort of tactical minds and strategic ways of thinking. Perhaps some of this could be taught, but the mindsets are fundamentally different at their core. But what if there was a woman who could? If a kid was hurt, a woman could carry him miles and miles on her back. Even pregnant, if needed. Women could, and if they want to, they should. No. No. Could is not should. While it’s true there are some very strong women, and while it’s true that women have accomplished great feats of strength, these are anomalies most often occurring in heightened or extreme circumstances, where there’s a danger to life or a focused determination arising from a very specific need to get something very vital done. It’s not proof of enduring, reliable strength. It’s not proof of consistency. It’s certainly not proof that women should serve in combat, and everything else that entails, no matter their physical fitness. Follow this argument long enough and someone will inevitably bring up the female sharpshooters who served in the Russian army during World War II. True, women can often shoot equal to, even better than, men, but that does not mean women should serve as snipers in war. A job which requires endless hours of stillness, ducking bullets, and relieving yourself in the woods or plastic bottles. Is this what we envision for women? Is this the greatest they can achieve? Becoming predatory, patient, precise, hardened killers? Considering how men struggle with PTSD, why would we willingly subject women to it? Oh, and as for those roughly two thousand female snipers that Russia sent to war, only about five hundred made it back. In body, at least. Men have one job, one primary job, and that is to ensure women are nowhere near where bullets are flying. Unfortunately, women get caught in warzones, women get caught in terrible situations, but to deliberately send them out to serve in combat, to feed the beast of war, the thought should be too abhorrent to contemplate past its formation. Because could is not should. Recently, I was helping to clean up after a social event. I was carrying a bag of garbage in a box out to the front of the house. It wasn’t heavy, and I carried it just fine. I passed from the kitchen through the living room, where a few young men sat on the couch. “Don’t worry,” I joked to the sitting men, “I got it.” They glanced up, saw that indeed the box was no issue, then went back to whatever they were doing. And why not? I was older, competent, a woman carrying out the garbage, but a woman who could carry it after all. Obviously, they were not needed. A couple passed by, herding their two young kids to the car. The wife walked past first, saw what I was carrying, then turned to her husband and told him to take the box. He did so willingly, not because I couldn’t, but because I shouldn’t. So even though it wasn’t heavy, and even though I could carry it, I didn’t argue. I let him take it from me because he should, and if I would fight it, I would mold another man for that line on the couch. A while ago, I was carrying bags into a local center. A man who knew me since birth was coming down the stairs. I wasn’t struggling, they weren’t that heavy. He was several decades older, but he took them out of my hands, because “a lady doesn’t carry bags.” Maybe it’s because he grew up in the Midwest. Maybe it’s because he grew up right. Maybe it’s because he grew up before the hammerings of women and society effectively obliterated the distinction between could and should. For we’ve lost the ability to discern the difference and with it we’ve lost something vital in how men treat women. Because men have incessantly been harangued for holding doors open because women are also strong, because men have been told not to be heroes because women do not need saving, because men have been yelled into accepting that women can do it themselves for we are just as competent as any man, if not more. Truth is, even where the data clearly states the facts to be ...
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    8 mins
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