Age Statement

An age statement is a positive affirmation by a fan that they are of a certain age (usually eighteen, sometimes twenty-one) so that they may purchase a print zine or access a fan site.
Age statements are sometimes required by zine publishers, or by the moderators of a mailing list, community or archive, as a way of keeping underage viewers from accessing adult content. In other cases, the moderators will simply assume that the viewers are of age until proven otherwise (taking the fact that they’re participating as an indirect age statement), or they simply do not mind if adult content is accessed by people under 18.
In the '80s, the phrase Age Statement Required was used as a rating or category, corresponding more or less to adult, or het + K/S.
==History of Adult Zine Age Disclaimers==
While they didn't use the term "age disclaimer," some early zines practiced the concept. They included statements which alerted fans to "adult concepts," for text rather than images, and were for het content.
An ad for the Star Trek zine, Angry Sunset (1974, reprinted in 1975) in the newsletter STAG #12 was the first UK zine ad with an age statement requirement. An ad for the 1975 reprint The original 1974 printing did not have an age disclaimer. read, "This is an ADULT story, and is available to members over the age of 15 ONLY."
An ad for the Star Trek zine, The Night of the Twin Moons (1976) in the newsletter, A Piece of the Action, was the first US zine ad with an age statement requirement. It read, "Not for sale to persons under the age of sixteen."
Explicit art became an issue in 1977 when at SeKWesterCon, Too in 1977, explicit art (nudes) was included in the art show. There was discussion of explicit stories in the panels, and explicit stories were nominated for Fan Q Awards. A fan wrote a vitriolic LoC to Menagerie #12, which was, of course, satirized in issue #13."Met, how could you? What about the cancer victims? What about the children under 21? What about the horses?, Met? Some of them are only 2 years old! This is disgusting! Dirty! Why, if God meant for us to have sex, we'd have been born naked! I bet Lestwe Fizz is behind this... Mary Sou." -- see Menagerie #13
R&R, the first zine series to actually label itself adult, brought out its first three issues between SeKWesterCon and SeKWesterCon, Too. This was the first time fans had seen this sort of material in fandom, and some fans had very strong reactions. A few month later, Spectrum #35 covered the pornography controversy:
This led to decisions throughout Trek fandom to label any fanzine with explicit sexual material as such, and not to knowingly sell such material to minors by requiring an age statement for purchase. By a decade later, when the Surak Awards debuted, zines nominated were divided into two categories: "general" (which became gen) and "age statement required".
==Two Reasons for the Age Statement (1988)==
A fan expresses the opinion that age statements served two functions—legal and as a gauge of taste. The latter reason is an example of the rise of fans' desire for labeling:
==Age Statements in the 2020s+==
A younger skewing fandom tends to care less about doxxing and occasionally openly shares information on carrd or in their bios, leading to an increasing culture where they may state their age in theirs bio. Minors in Fandom have changed the culture in this regard, and clashes between minors and adults have lead to significant wariness among both sides; both adults and minors may write DNI excluding the other. The trend is exacerbated by Purity Culture in Fandom.
Many private discord servers and zines will require an age statement, particularly if there is any NSFW content and sometimes even if there is none; additionally, works on privatter and the like tend to have a password asking users to confirm they are above the age of 18 before viewing.
==Examples of Age Statements==
===Zines===
Most zine editors require age statements from fans who want to purchase adult-rated zines.Black Jag Publishing, Black Jag Publishing Order Form. Accessed November 28, 2008.Oblique Publications, Oblique Publications would like to announce the availability of a new Clark/Lex Smallville slash zine "An AGE STATEMENT that the purchaser is of legal age and understands the nature of what they are purchasing is absolutely REQUIRED with every order." Accessed November 28, 2008.
An example of Bill Hupe's age statement request from a 1995 catalog:
: "All adult fanzines require an age statement (a signed note stating that you are over legal age) or a copy of ID with birthdate (please cover the ID# though!) will suffice; once is enough as we keep this information in your file."
===Online Newsletters===
* "From the Big Brother is Watching You Dept.: Is everybody reading this at least the age of 18? We sure hope so. The K/S Press is adult material published only for paid subscribers the age of 18 and over. If you don’t qualify, drop this page like a hot Horta! Or, turn off that computer faster than Jim can wink at Spock. By subscribing to this letterzine, you are telling us you are of legal age to receive it." from The K/S Press #18 (1998)
* "Just a reminder that the Censorship Subcommittee of the United Federation of Planets’ Decency in Publications Board has informed us that in order to receive and read this letterzine: YOU MUST BE EIGHTEEN! Over eighteen is also acceptable, although we do not force you to admit to such a harrowing state. But under eighteen is a big no-no, and the Horta’s 27th-great grandmother will eat a hole through your door and give you warts if you persist in reading before you hit the big one-eight." from The K/S Press #27 (1998)
===Awards===
In early fan fiction awards (such as the Surak Awards), the categories were often broken down into General and Age Statement Required (today's adult, or maybe today's het + slash).
===Mailing Lists===
To access online content on mailing lists or password protected archives,For example: , the Potter Slash Archive: "The NC-17 stories and art on this site have been passworded to protect younger HP fans from accessing and reading stories with graphic content. The password is available through the livejournal community psa_dungeons. Please read the intro post and leave a statement." fans are asked to email their age statement. This can also be a way to keep trolls or sockpuppets out of community spaces. The ScullySlash adults-only mailing list, for instance, states:
An age statement is required, please send an email .... with your age and that you're aware of the adult content of the list and tell us where you heard about the list (this website, a friend, from another list, etc.) Scully Slash Archive, Accessed November 28, 2008.
===LiveJournal===
On LiveJournal and similar social networking sites, fans have the option to list their birthdate in their LJ profile. This may be required by mods of LJ communities where adult content is locked. For instance, on the profile page of the community Harryslash, for slash about Harry Potter, fans are asked to "comment with your age and year of birth or an age statement" and "verify that your year of birth or age statement is visible on your profile",Harryslash, Accessed November 28, 2008. but these additional statements are not always required and the mods often simply take a look at the user’s profile before granting community membership.
===Archives===
Archives that allow adult content (like Archive of Our Own or AdultFanFiction.Net) or are restricted to adult content only (like the Restricted Section) use different methods to ensure that the adult content is not accessible for minors. To get to the stories on aff.net, you first have to click on “I am 18 years of age or older.“, which leads to a page where you have to enter your birthdate and legal name:
To enter this site, you must certify and affirm, under the penalties of perjury, your actual date of birth in the following Birth Date Verifier™ form:
"I hereby affirm, under the penalties of perjury pursuant to Title 28 U.S.C. §1746, that I was born on the following month, day, and year:"
[…]
"I also agree that this transaction is governed by the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-Sign Act), 15 U.S.C. §7000, et seq"The on aff.net, accessed October 04, 2009.
On the Restricted Section, on the other hand, you have to register in order to have access to the stories, and enter your birthdate as part of the registration process.
Other archives, like the Archive of Our Own, simply remind you again that the story is adult-rated after you click on the link, after which you have to agree that you are willing (or legally allowed) to access the content.
On y!Gallery, staff perform random age verification of users, "especially if there is something suspicious about the date of birth listed on site or if we’ve received a tip that a member is under the age of eighteen", by asking them to submit an image of a government issued ID:
Addresses, bar codes, and any unique identification numbers such as license or passport number can be blacked out or blurred, but your name, photo, and date of birth must remain intact or the ID will be rejected. This is a measure to prevent minors from supplying fake or doctored IDs in order to illegally access our site. All IDs received are immediately deleted after age verification.
If this is not done in a timely manner, or if you are seen being active on the site without verifying your age, your account will be suspended for 18 years until a valid ID is received.
If you are underage, your account will be suspended until your 18th birthday. Once you have turned eighteen you will be welcome back to the site.
==In Other Countries==
===Germany===
Age statements are common in German fandom too, but bigger archives have to deal with some additional requirements. According to German law, it is forbidden to grant minors access to pornographic content and content that is considered obviously harmful to minors. Therefore, all archives explicitly forbid such content, but especially with regard to pornographic material the question what is and what isn't pornographic is the matter of some debate. This has led to an extended downtime of YaoiGermany in 2004/2005, after a father alerted jugendschutz.net (the cross-national organization for the protection of minors on the internet, founded by The Youth Ministries of the German Federal States) to the fact that adult stories (explicit but not pornographic) could be accessed by his daughter by simply clicking through the warnings. Given the fact that a high number of authors who post adult stories to the archive are minors themselves, this called for a creative solution. The archive maintainers discussed a number of methods with the authorities to make it more difficult for minors to read the stories and they decided to make them available only between 9PM and 6AM, since methods used by other archives were not considered sufficient.YaoiGermany Hilfe-Zentrum , in reference to the method used by Animexx, accessed October 04, 2009.
Animexx, on the other hand, used a different method even before this. In order to gain access, the users have to have an account, and they have to verify their age, which they can either do by entering their ID card number (Germany only; every citizen age 16 or older has an ID card), or they can mail the copy of another official document (passport, diver’s license, foreign ID cards).
FanFiktion.de refined this system and combined the two in 2009. They introduced two new ratings (P18-AVL and P18-AVL Slash) and restricted access to those stories to registered users who verified their age (currently only possible for citizens of Germany, Austria and Switzerland) once a month and for unverified (but registered) users between 11PM and 4AM.
It should be noted that it is still against the rules of these archives to post pornographic content (as a precaution PWPs are forbidden), because that would only be possible if the sites were restricted to a verified adult membership in their entirety.
==Lying About Age==
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==Laughing About Age==
From a 2022 age statement by an eBay seller for a Star Trek: TOS zine: 
==Meta/Further Reading==
* , views on erotica and explicit material, and fans under 17: a post at alt.tv.x-files.creative by Laura Hale aka Michela Ecks (April 4, 2001)
* by Drift at Pillowfort (January 2019)
==References==
Category:Fan Activities Category:Glossary
Category:Social Media Feature-Terminology Thursday