One reporter reacts to JKR's revelations

[Carol]

> Magpie:
> If you want books to have ratings okay--I don't. But it's not "so-
> called" YA literature depicting explicit sex, it's actual YA books. 

Carol responds:

I'm not saying that sex isn't being depicted in "YA" books (although i
think that's disturbing). I'm objecting to the term "young adult
literature" for readers who are actually children or younger
teenagers. They're not young adults. The term is a euphemism, as if
"adolescent" or "pre-teen" or "teenage" were somehow insulting terms.

I remember an old cartoon (ca. 1990) when political correctness was
first being recognized and given a label (at a time when
ultrafeminists were objecting to the word "women" because it had "men"
in it and spelling it "womyn" though they never seemed to realize that
"woman" had "man" in it and object to that spelling as well). In the
cartoon, little girls were labeled "prewomen" because "girls" was
supposedly offensive. Thank goodness the extreme views of the early
90s have disappeared, but the fondness for euphemisms is still
prevalent. And, IMO, "young adult" for readers who are actually
children is both euphemistic and misleading. They're not adults and
they're not ready for adult content in their books. If we have NC17 as
a category for movies, surely we ought to have something comparable
for books. (Even in the WW, where kids come of age at seventeen, a
sixteen-year-old is considered a child.)

IMO, a young adult is between about twenty and thirty-five. Eighteen
and thirty if you must. But "young adult" for fourteen-year-olds? Not
in my experience.

Carol, just clarifying her use of "so-called" and noting that "YA"
literature is not an accepted literary genre but a category used by
bookstores to classify their books