(CNN) — Police in western Massachusetts apologized Thursday after an officer was sent to a middle school to search for a copy of “Gender Queer: ARead More
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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…
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 retarded most average parents are and yet still think they should be the prime teachers of the next generation? NOT THE TEACHERS?
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.
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.
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. 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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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.
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?
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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.
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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?
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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?
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?
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”
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.
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Oh no, not the parents!
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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 retarded most average parents are and yet still think they should be the prime teachers of the next generation? NOT THE TEACHERS?
Bye felicia
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.
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.
Feel free to return to lurking forever… or, even better, close your account and go back to Facebook.
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.
It’s a good thing I didn’t read Kite Runner as a kid otherwise I’d be at there Raping everyone!
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?