See, I would consider this gen. It's not about a pairing. Yes, John is having sex in it, but there are no pairings. There's no relationships. It's his job. It's not a shipfic, therefore it's gen.

I agree.

I disagree. And thanks to varda's comment below I can explain why.

Gen as defined by Fanlore:
'A fanwork that contains no romantic or sexual content, either het (heterosexual) or slash (homosexual).'

This is what Gen has always meant to me and many others such as me. The comm rule is clearly not explicit enough about this and so has opened the door for something that is not gen. Gen is not the absence of ship, it's the absence of ship and sex.

Fanlore is not the place to go for definitions: it's written by fans, many of whom have different opinions. I could edit that line to something else right now. More interesting is this part: Gen#Genre Boundaries , which lacks a section on background sex scenes but otherwise gives a good overview on the blurriness of the term. Your definition of gen may be popular and wide-spread in certain parts of fandom, but it's not the only one and certainly not the only valid definition.

However, as this comm does not currently use the Fanlore definition, and as some people do define gen in a way different to the Fanlore definition (for example, I do think that there can be sexual content in gen, as well as R and NC17 ratings; I have written and read a number of such stories), it seems the issue at hand is not whether this story ought to be allowed -- as it is currently gen within the scope of the comm rules -- but whether the members of this community wish to change the comm definition for future challenges, which is a discussion that properly should be held with the comm mods, and not in the comments of a submission where the anonymous author cannot speak for themself. It seems that under the current rules, which do allow gen fic with sexual content, the happy medium is to use proper ratings, content notes, and warnings and allow individual readers to choose whether this fic is one which they wish to read.