I'm liking how Chippewa does it, yeah :D And I agree with Dusk, you do need to make sure people know what they're getting, and I think that something saying it's MM or FF is enough. For me, the thing that bothers me about sticking all GLBT stories in the Alternative Lifestyle category, is the implication that it's something you choose to be, rather than something you are. A lifestyle is a way you choose to live. BSDM, for example, is a lifestyle. I have never once heard anyone say that they chose their sexual orientation.

Amen sister. :)

"BSDM, for example, is a lifestyle. I have never once heard anyone say that they chose their sexual orientation." Some people think that being a sadist, masochist, dom, sub, etc., is an orientation too. And there have been some gay people in the current day who don't think much of the idea of orientation - Foucault, for example. I think the whole orientation vs. lifestyle debate gets a bit tricky, because different people hold different attitudes toward their sexuality, and they resent a label being placed on their sexuality that doesn't represent their particular way of viewing their sexuality. That's why "Alternative Lifestyles" isn't a particularly good choice. I also think that lumping together GLBT, BDSM, etc., as though they had some inherent relation to one another is misleading. The only honest way to do this, in my opinion, is to pick a label that indicates in some way, "This is sensitive subject matter that is more likely than our other stories to offend some of our readers, and that other of our readers will plunge joyfully into." I'd be in favor of a label that said, simply, "Hot!" :)

In general I think more matter of fact labels are best. 'Homosexual' or 'gay/lesbian' seems direct and to the point.

Hot extreme bondage leather cops slapping each other with fish inside!!! Seriously, though, I agree with Em.

Although that story is starting to sound strangely interesting...

(Checks to see that I slapped a smiley face onto that last post. Yes, I know I did; I checked it three times before I posted it.) "Hot extreme bondage leather cops slapping each other with fish inside!!!" Now we're talking. Fish sex *with* leather and cops. Show me to the publisher who has that.

Could you add some vampires?

Could this be a ... Challenge ..... ?????

Oh, good Lord. *head.desk*

Sorry. I can't help it, you know.

She has the tuna and she's not afraid to use it. :shock:

Phew! Lucky escape there - she's thrown it into a den of "morality" campaigners. Anyway ... it wasn't *that* bad an idea for a challenge. Em said it was strangely interesting. Dusk liked it ...

as a reader...
I look for the different "labels". Sometimes I'm looking for BDSM and sometimes I want m/m, just as sometimes I'm just looking for a good read. I'd also like to know how involved the sex is. Having a listing for Gay/Lesbian that's separate from the Erotica list is a good heads up. I recently purchased a ebook, the main character imagined some light stuff with the second main character (He did actually do stuff with other characters) but in the end, they only kissed. Not what I was expecting at all! I don't know how they could have warned me on this one, and while it was a nice story, it wasn't what I was looking for at that time. I purchased another book based on the previous book in the series and the cover. That was a HUGE disappointment. I swear the two on the cover looked like men, there was a m/m warning and the first book was heavy with the m/m scenes. The second book's m/m scenes were the characters from the first book and one of the people on the cover was supposed to be female. I just don't know how it's supposed to be, I only know that alternative lifestyle is waaaay to broad a term, even if it was pc to use it.

It's ridiculous that we have to be euphemistic at all. It's erotic romance. We have elf princes and the dragons who love them, we have Poser mannequins doing things on the covers that would get movies an R rating, we have anthologies of centaur sex. If anyone can open a publisher's site and not get the vapors from the covers alone, they can survive a few non-euphemistic labels for same-sex sexual behaviors.