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It’s a good read, I enjoyed it as an adult. It’s probably appropriate for teens. I could see the book being enlightening and informative for some teens.
It’s my opinion that everyone talking about the book “encouraging” blowjobs likely not has read the book. The explicit sexual content is just a few pages of the entire book and in context is about the author’s journey discovering their gender and sexual identity. It’s not pornographic in any sense. Maybe I’m cynical but I have a feeling that some people may be more upset about the gender content of the book and are using the sexual content as an excuse to try to ban it.
In any case I think it’s inappropriate for a police officer to be doing this.
So a quick note on the controversial comments:
They were reported and popped up on my moderation log.
I chose to leave the comments in place and instead reply to them rather than removing them simply because removing them wouldn’t allow people to see the misinformation and a reasoned response to that misinformation.
It’s clear the poster had no first hand knowledge of the book in question or the intent of placing it in schools (or not placing it in schools as was the case here).
In any regard, they chose to go through and delete all their comments. This was a decision made by the original author and not the moderators.
Bummer that it removes all the responses when they delete the top level comment. This person was a bigot and the comments did a good job rebutting their right wing propaganda.
Exactly why I didn’t remove them. :(
Hey, this is good moderating.
Aww, you’re just saying that because you didn’t have to do it. LOL! ;)
Seriously, I banned someone in another group I moderate and they turned into a full bore stalker, multiple accounts, ban evasion, etc. etc. I had to get the site admins involved and everything.
It’s kind of refreshing when someone sees the arguments and the downvotes and goes off to re-think their life choices.
I like your optimism assuming that’s what happened.
Took me several removals to figure out I was removing a whole tree of comments. Always been a slow learner.
Well, their account is still there, their comments in the modlog show “deleted by user”, and they aren’t banned or anything… sooo…
So they swatted a school. They took a picture of a random, inappropriate book, sent that picture to the cops, and the cops raided the school to show little queer kids that force and violence will meet them if they don’t hide the fact that they’re queer.
Fucking monsters.
Blowjobs are INAPPROPRIATE! I’d MUCH rather they learn how to Rape their Fathers instead! Genesis 33-35
I didn’t know about the book, but this article made me look for an example of what they are talking about. Here’s one: https://alphanews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/genderqueer-1-1.jpg
I think it indeed went too far a middle school book and it could talk about gender without being graphic.
You would actually need to read the book to understand the context of that page and see that it is, in fact, not graphic. The blurring makes it look worse than it actually is. Kind of like when Jimmy Kimmell does “un-necessary censorship” for laughs.
The penis here is not actually a penis. The top blurred panel is captioned “this is the visual I’d been picturing”, and in the 2nd panel it’s clear that the couple is engaging in strap on play, with the caption “But I can’t feel anything. This was much hotter when it was only in my imagination.”
In the end, the book is a touching, 241 page book about what it’s like to struggle with gender identity and some people want to get hung up on mis-representing 2 panels on page 168.
High school/middle school kids who struggle with their gender identity absolutely need exposure to this book.
People who lack empathy for what others are going through need to read it more.
Under what circumstances does a school’s curriculum or materials become the
previewpurview of the cops?I think most cops are MAGA supporters. Probably not too difficult to find one that would make such a thing their job.
purview?
Yes.
When the school’s policies put kids at risk of actual harm (ie the principal pulling down young girls underwear and spanking them as a punitive measure). Anything before that? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Something like this should’ve, at most, been handled by the principal of the school.
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Isn’t middle school like 11-14ish?
Sure, but do schools carry such material even heterosexual? And no, this is not the same as learning anatomy.
Not sure if they do, but I don’t think it would be inappropriate. They (hopefully) already had proper sex-ed at this point and any explicit image showing how consent and sex beyond penetration looks like are in my opinion very welcome.
Also, would you have less problem with it being heterosexual?
The point they are making is there seems to be a bias toward lgb… material when it comes to early sex ed exposure. It seems like some sort of misguided projection form the adults in that community that had a hard childhood. They are (over) correcting for the lack of acceptance they had as young people. In my opinion.
Stephen King’s IT was in my middleschool library, go fuck yourself.
I had READ a myriad of descriptions of hererosexual relationships by the time I was entering high school, it’s EVERYWHERE. Couple that with an overabundance of shitty people who think the sexuality of others is their business, and it was a REAL fucking struggle to figure out how/why I don’t fit into every single portrayal of a relationship I’ve ever seen.
Let’s be honest here, most kids at that age have already seen porn. I saw porn as a kid far before I got a proper sex ed.
Not making sex out to be such a shameful thing to be hidden away would be very beneficial. It took me years to properly understand sex the way I do now, and in such a way for it to suit me. Before then I had a lot of weird preconceived notions that were not helpful at all.
Sex is natural and normal, what’s the point of turning it into such a big thing that needs to be hidden away? Especially when most kids at that age start to have sexual feelings. It’s better to provide them a safe and open environment, as well as making sex just be a normal thing, than basically force kids to get their information elsewhere and experiment without knowledge about consent etc.
Yeah, so did pretty much all adults that are working, yet porn is not allowed at most workplaces.
Ever heard of the term “educational setting”? You can also neither use copyrighted works at your workplace, but you can in an educational setting.
There is a big difference between, you know, a space specifically designed to teach kids about all they need to know about the world (including the things you find gross), and a place with an agreed upon environment by the participants to perform a specific task. Not to mention that, yeah, some organizations or places of work do indeed deal with sexual things.
I don’t even know why you bring in the workplace honestly, it’s completely irrelevant, as its a completely different environment. Neither would it be appropriate for most workplaces to hold a seminar about world war 2 now, would it?
It is extremely relevant. Are you saying I’m not allowed to talk about porn at work with other adults, but a teacher can talk about porn in their workplace? … WITH CHILDREN!!! It is not like we already don’t have news about sexual abuse coming from teachers.
What the fuck are you smoking? What kind of mentally deranged mind thinks a blow job needs to be in the curriculum? Even if you think a blow job is important for your child, because “it is a great career choice and a way to climb the ladder”, it is not something one can’t learn on their own. It is not exactly a rocket science.
At least try to make a reasoned out argument instead of an emotional attack.
Demystifying and normalizing sex is not a bad thing. Why should we be ashamed of it and our bodies? Making sex out to be such a shameful thing to be hidden away caused far more damage to me than sex positivity ever did. And it’s not like it stops sexual abuse either, because, well… how does a child knowing less cause there to be less sexual abuse? Abusers thrive on ignorance.
I think they do now. It’s a less shameful time and not really inappropriate. I grew up in the 80s-90s so the library wasn’t the free for all it was decades earlier. People had already started to treat it as a political battleground.
That said, we were given SexEd starting in 4th grade, so a book with mild sexual content (the book isn’t pornagraphy) 3-4 years after that, is very appropriate, since everyone with access to the text would have already have prerequisite knowledge to understand the context of the book.
Honestly, I wish things like this were more common in my youth. Whenever they would ask if people had questions and let us submit them on paper anonymously, there probably would have been more discussion.
Exactly. :)
Any questions any kid has about growing up, certainly including questions about their bodies and sexuality, should be easily answerable from an open shelf at the school library.
Except per the article this book was not at the school
I have been lurking on lemmy for a couple months now. I have to say, I simply don’t understand how people think a prepubescent preteen should be encouraged/exposed to giving blow jobs and sexting. Middle schoolers where I’m from range in age from 10 to 13 on the high end. The age of consent is 17. At 10 years old I was nowhere near the sexual being I was at 17. This seems like it only serves to normalize sexually active childern. Jeffrey Epstein would be so proud. The thing I really don’t understand is how lgbtqia2+ rights and acceptance got tied in with sexualizing children. Adults by all means should be free to be whatever gender/attraction that makes them happy. What does that have to do with children though? It really seems like there is a group trying to shift the Overton Window into cultural acceptance of adding a P on the end of that long string of characters. The question I think we need to ask is, who’s happiness is serve by the world having sexually active prepubescents? Just think about it. As a side note, where I live, sexting images of childern is illegal and is prosecuted; even if the child takes the image of themselves.
Teaching children what consent is sounds pretty important to me. They won’t magically learn it at 17.
Also, as much as a lot of people don’t like to think about it, kids do have sex. A lot of them will wind up experimenting before they’re 17. Teaching them about things like consent is important. Even if they don’t end up having sex with anyone until high school, or college, demystifying and allowing them to learn about sex in a healthy, structured way as part of a continuing education works a hell of a lot better at making sure they don’t knock up their first girlfriend by accident at 17, or decide “well she owes me for tonight” after prom, or whatever.
If nothing else, the teen pregnancy rate in states with abstinence-only (or no) sexual education programs shows that those programs don’t work. Treating sex as this mysterious beast that only happens behind closed doors, that must never be discussed, doesn’t work.
I am well aware that 17 is not a magic age when everything makes sense. I myself lost my virginity at 14 to date rape, consent is very important to teach. But at 10 years old? As a sex abuse survivor this seems too young even to me. Puberty folks, that is the correct age, 13 give or take a few months and no sooner. As a parent I can’t image my little girl with a cock (rubber or not) in her mouth. She is of the age in question and plays with childrens toys every day. This is crazy. I think I’m done with lemmy. This community is equally toxic as the nutjobs over at truth social, just in a different way.
Jesus Christ, you are the only one sexualizing little kids here buddy. What the actual fuck? I really hope that this is a troll.
It’s definitely a low grade troll.
Girls start puberty as early as 8 my guy, boys as early as 9-11, so what’s this “13 and no earlier” horse shit?
Leave it to the uninformed to have the opinion on the wrong side of history
Im a women, and a 5th grade teather. In rate cases girls do start puberty as early as 8, but i can assure you it is rare. They are outliers.
You are over-reacting a little here. This book is not a great candidate for something actually sexy. The characters try something sexual and find it really doesn’t suit them and they stop. The POV character has massive dysphoria around being touched directly down below and so it’s hardly glammorizing sex acts. Rather the entire thing is framed as a complete disappointment.
A lot of the focus on “well not MY child” is being used to perpetuate this book ban nonsense in public libraries and other spaces where general collections are for all ages. Just as you struggled with the mental health issues around being a sexual assault victim at 14 and likely there wasn’t a lot of materials on offer to help guide you trans kids most often start feeling body based dysphoria at the ages of 11-14. Those kids are left often with a fairly nebulous view of the future where they might not have access to healthy adults who can help understand what they are going through and give insight into what their lives might look like when they grow up. Their fears about ever being able to feel comfortable in their sexuallity is valid when they might be having severe reactions to their own sexual development.
What I find particularly interesting about all this is this book is essentially one where a person with fairly intense dysphoria depicts what a fully complete non-surgical transition looks like where a purely mental coping strategy is employed. I would have thought this book, in a discussion that regularly centers around prevention of surgical transition would highlight this character who finds ways to carry on outside of a medical model… But it doesn’t. Because trans people’s problems and solutions are always treated as taboo and perverse regardless. The answer we overwhelmingly get is just "Well, you are just supposed to be permanently unhappy. " which isn’t exactly a beacon of hope.
Your kid might not need this book but I was desperate for something - anything like this when I was that age… I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s where I had no bloody clue what was happening to me and why everyone else seemed fine while I was having routine anxiety attacks about puberty that made me think I had heart problems and my issues would likely be solved for me by me dying before I ever grew up. Sex ed leaves a lot of pressing trans issues at a critical age unaddressed and while 11-14 may seem young it IS a crucial turning point in puberty which doesn’t exactly go well for a lot of us. Basically by the window of time girls get their first period there’s also young trans kids in complete crisis.
my partner was ten when they were raped repeatedly by a 14 year old, who convinced them that this was all normal. should my partner have known about consent in order to avoid being talked into something uncomfortable or are they a sacrifice you’re willing to make in your moral jihad?
You may want to look up the current average age of puberty starting. Blame chemicals in the environment or whatever you want, but a lot of girls are getting their first period before they turn ten. I started masturbating to a somewhat messy finish before I was ten because it felt good, and I have to think I’m hardly an outlier. There’s a reason we teach kids about their parts early, it’s because changes start sooner than ever and we don’t need little girls terrified like Carrie because their parents never told them what to expect out of embarrassment or religious zealotry.
Also, teaching consent should be done very, very early, as it enables children to advocate for themselves at a younger age, hopefully even reducing CSA as a children can recognize and report “bad touches” when they’re younger. Surely you want children to advocate for their own safety, to recognize that doing thing that make them uncomfortable isn’t okay.
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They also aren’t going to wait until they’re 17 to do sex stuff, i promise. Not all of them, at least.
Teaching 10, 11 and 12 year olds about consent? Consent to what? Now youve teaching sex ed to people playing with toys in there rooms still. Wtf is wrong with people here. It seems like people dont realize/ remember how young you all were at 11.
It appears you don’t remember what YOU were doing as a young teen. We were still playing with toys but also ourselves at that age
I started teaching consent in age-appropriate ways as soon as they started walking. My 2yo already asks not to touch his body when he feels uncomfortable or overstimulated, and is on his way to acknowledging when others say the same to him.
My 6yo has already recounted uncomfortable advances from boys at school, and how she avoided or ended the encounter- First with her words and then with action. I’m well aware that by the time she’s 10 she’s going to discover adults looking at her in a particular way. There’s no way in hell I’m going to let her out into the world without the awareness of that as well as the tools to protect herself from it.
Nonconsensual sex, being one of the ultimate violations of another person, will be well understood. And we’re building from the nature of our bodies and others. And next into consent and what that entails.
To your last sentence, I remember being an extremely horny 11yo with no idea what was happening to my body and no one to look to for advice. Sex was a taboo subject in both home and school. I learned some dumb shit from other boys with older brothers instead.
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Not sure why you were downvoted so much, but I would say that sex education does not equal encouraging students to give blowjobs. Or did you mean something else?
I going out on a limp here, but I’m guessing alot of people who downvoted me dont have kids, and weren’t sexually abused. In my experience, kids will try everything they are aware of as soon as possible. Maybe its not a direct 1to1 relationship, but most kids push the boundaries of experience if given the slightest opportunity. That’s what being a kid is all about. And that’s why it is so dangerous to teach them about these topics so early.
If they’re educated properly about it then there’s nothing to fear, that’s kinda the point
Proper education and availability of contraceptives means less accidental pregnancies and less likelyhood of STDs spreading
Learning about consent and internalizing it at a young age means SA will be less of a concern as well
As someone who had sex for the first time at 11: who fucking cares so long as it’s properly safe and not forced upon the people doing it, and more importantly: why are you?
SA will be less of a concern
Kids should absolutely have the vocabulary to explicitly describe non consensual sexual acts done to them.
Going to the police and using the words “masturbated” “ejaculated” will get a much more thorough investigation than “rubbed” and “peed”
I going out on a limp here
We all down voted you for your bad opinions, and if you really are a teacher we all feel bad for those poor kids.
You can tell they haven’t actually read this book, or many books at all really.
The state of American education.
Sad, isn’t it?
Education is like the best way to prevent sexual abuse. It’s harder to avoid being sexually abused if you don’t know what sex is or what to look out for.
And you won’t be able to prevent kids from seeking out information, good or bad, in the age of the internet. So at least make sure they get good information first.
To be 100% clear here, at this point in the book the main character is 25 years old and their partner, though age indeterminate, has been married and divorced.
So the actions people are complaining about are happening between two consenting adults, not kids.
Again, something you’d know if you actually read the book…
That’s fine, then don’t buy this book for your kids if you don’t want them to read it.
Oh i won’t, but thats the issue here isn’t it. The schools are bypassing the wishes of the parents.
Oh no, not the parents!
So the schools (government) should have more control over a young persons sexual development then their parents? It is the parents job to protect there childern from the world while they grow, until they are able to be self sufficient. Who did the state do in Uvalde at protecting childern, or any other school shooting. This is much the same. There are sexual predators out there folks, think: Epstein, to catch a predator, Catholic church… Lets stay we were not talking about sex and gender, but violence and war. Should 11 and 12 year olds be able to go fight, Or shown the nature of real voilence. Why not? Thats it! I’m outta here. Enjoy your: extremist liberal mind virus, commy ladden, incel hentai, minor attracted person filled dumpster fire. App uninstalled! Sorry to break the news but leftists and maga are more alike then different, they are just on opposite sides. Extremism is extremism!
Yes. We literally invented schools to teach kids. What a fucking dumb question. You should be disappointed in yourself if you’re a fucking teacher. You must realize how removed most average parents are and yet still think they should be the prime teachers of the next generation? NOT THE TEACHERS?
Bye felicia
So the schools (government) should have more control over a young persons sexual development then their parents?
Unfortunately, when it comes to LGBTQ+ students, parents are quite often the problem, not the solution.
I’d love to live in a world where gay kids could feel safe coming out to their own families, but unfortunately that isn’t reality for entirely too many kids.
So it falls on the larger society to support them and explain that what they are feeling is part of a larger spectrum and they shouldn’t feel ashamed of who they are.
Maybe when we reach that day, they won’t be 4x more likely to attempt suicide than their heteronormative peers.
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/facts-about-lgbtq-youth-suicide/
Yes, most people are idiots, including parents. My desire as a parent is that such idiots have no say in my child’s education. This is a perfect example of why.
But please, do continue standing on the corner yelling at random strangers about pedophiles. It really helps the rest of the sane world know who to keep their kids away from.
So the schools (government) should have more control over a young persons sexual development then their parents?
Yeah that’s how having a curriculum works… Racist parents don’t get to exclude their children from world history, young earth creationist parents don’t get to exclude their children from cosmology and geology, and sexually repressed and sexually traumatized parents don’t get to exclude their children from being educated about their bodies.
That seems to be the crux of it to me that people don’t want to acknowledge because, yes, it sounds bad and people can claim you’re homophobic for banning it from school libraries.
Honestly, considering pg 168 of this GN alone it would get banned in my past schools even if the blowjob depicted was between a straight couple. It is rated 16+, not Mature, but also not “all ages.” I could see it being in a highschool library just because it is about gay stuff, straight it would likely still be banned because it just always has been, and ime we didn’t have graphic novels in school at all, I had to buy them myself at the barnes & noble with allowance money until I got a job (15 mi in the snow both ways yadda yadda I’m old). Thankfully my parents are cool and let me (mostly) read whatever I wanted shy of actual pornography but even when they didn’t I just circumvented the blocks or downloaded it illegally. This isn’t out of the norm tbh, part of being a kid ime. At least y’all have internet archive now, I found the book in full in .2sec and so can anyone else.
To be clear, the blowjob isn’t REALLY a blowjob, it’s strap on play, and both characters at that stage are consenting adults, the main character states a few pages before that they are 25 and their partner has been married and divorced.
Ehhh yeah but schools usually ban strap on play too, so it’s still on brand for “normal school behavior” and I’m hesitant to say it is only because of the lgbt angle, since again, straight strap on play between two consenting adults drawn or otherwise is similarly “banned” from most elementary and middle school libraries, if not high school as well.
I’m not here to pass judgement on the characters for their actions or age difference or anything, I’m just saying “I’m not surprised and I don’t think it’s homophobia.” We could have the discussion on whether or not America’s puritanical views on sex are bad or not, sure, but strap on play being banned from schools is par for the course in my experience in school back in the day.
I grew up in a small town where church leaders fought hard against sex ed and they got their way.
There was a guy out of highschool that got half a dozen middle school children pregnant over the course of 5 or 6 years. The authorities in the town did nothing to protect my classmates against this predator. Really disgusting stuff.
Books don’t create predators, but apathy and ignorance certainly enables them. Put your energy to better use bud.
I have been lurking on lemmy for a couple months now.
Feel free to return to lurking forever… or, even better, close your account and go back to Facebook.
I have been lurking on lemmy for a couple months now. I have to say, I simply don’t understand how people think a prepubescent preteen should be encouraged/exposed to giving blow jobs and sexting.
That’s not what is happening in the book. You might want to consider actually reading it before forming an opinion as to what it is or is not doing.
It’s a memoir, and it’s a really good read about accepting who you are as a person.
I read 1984 in highschool, there’s a decent amount of discussion of sex in that book. Do you think 1984 should be banned from schools?
It’s a good thing I didn’t read Kite Runner as a kid otherwise I’d be at there Raping everyone!
