Political Memes

The books aren't pornographic in their whole, but they have pornographic material in them. The two that have gotten major publicity are:

• Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. Where the described strap-on blowing scene is from. It also has explicit sexting scenes where a character describes how hot certain sexual acts would be. I have no problem with coming-of-age stories for queer people, and I have no problem with books with this kind of material being in public libraries. For high schools, you want to talk about/show queer people kissing? Cool. Want them to talk about having sex in general? Cool. But those explicit scenes should probably not be in school libraries. Keep them to general community libraries and let parents decide what's appropriate to read beyond what's school-appropriate.

• Trans Bodies, Trans Selves by Laura Erickson Schroth. While again, I think a lot of good can come from seeing pictures of normal, naked bodies not in a state of arousal, the book goes beyond that in sections, discussing ways in which to search for trans porn, or to make trans porn youself.

“The use of feminist, queer, and sex positive broadens the search for trans women/femmes, trans lesbians, trans fags, gender fuckers, and all trans no/op, pre-op, and post-op folks.”  

“If you find a porn star you really like, hit them up on Twitter or another platform and ask them what they would recommend.”  

“It may surprise you how little people talk about porn or respond to your work face to face,” wrote another contributor, “but if you make something wonderful you could change someone’s life.”   

“Just start filming and get comfortable around the camera,” another contributor wrote. 

And listen, I have no issues with porn. Most of us find it online when we're young anyway. But that doesnt mean it should be offered how to navigate it, or how to start doing it yourself in school, even in high schools. Most people, including most people in the LBGT+ communities agree that there's a line to draw here. Leave it up to individual parents to decide how to manage what their kids come into contact with.

These two books caused a firestorm, and when it was shown what had parents upset, instead of saying: "here are some alternatives that have the same themes with no explicit content" activists said: "fuck you, you're lying" or "fuck you, there's nothing wrong with showing this."

Such a dumb response, because it pushes rational people away who see/hear that response and think: "wtf, why are they denying what I'm seeing with my own eyes?" Or "of course there's something wrong with teenagers in high school reading text about how to make their own porn, these activists are crazy". It literally ensures there's going to be a bigger backlash and they'll start going overboard.

I don't like the source I have, by the way. It's incredibly politically biased and one sided, but it's the only site that lists the explicit parts. I also need to point out that I don't agree with everything that's listed in this writeup as being bad. I think talking about what goes into being a trans person is a good thing, and would 100% be on board with these books in high schools if the sexuality explicit stuff weren't in them. Source.

Like, there have to be queer books out there that are actually age-appropriate, right? Why aren't we pushing those?