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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Your analogy isn’t on point, so the prior comment stands. A book in a public school library has the imprimatur of public officials as suitable reading material, unlike your private conversation with your friend.

The School Board needs to insist on some accountability here. [/quote]

Utterly false equivalence.  No one thinks that a library endorses every idea in every book.  I think some books are terrible (*cough* Ulysses *cough*) but I don’t argue against them being in a high school library.  Your stance is akin to the eejits who oppose Harry Potter in school because it promotes witchcraft.  Guess what?  Harry Potter-was not suitable for my kindergartener, nor was Are You There, God? it’s Me, Margaret.  But they were perfectly fine for the 6th graders who had access to them in the same library.  And if my kindergartner happened upon them before I could see they were in his backpack?  No harm, no foul.  A chance for conversation, maybe.

My 3rd grader doesn’t have access to either of these books in his school library.  But what if he had an older sibling who brought one home and he saw the page in question?  Sigh.  It’s not that hard.  I’d explain that the two people are grownups.  I’d explain that, as best I understand it, the main character feels confused in their body and sometimes feels like a woman or sometimes a man or sometimes both or neither, and that they don’t have a penis so they tried one on, kind of like a fake penis on the front of a pear of underwear.  And it was a pretty silly idea for the other one to put the toy penis in their mouth!  But look…it didn’t feel right so the main character asked the other person to do something else and they smiled and felt good, and that’s what people do when they respect each other’s bodies.  If one person doesn’t like what you’re doing, you stop.

When I first read this outrage on Thursday night, I thought WTF?! The quote sounded outrageous.  How could this happen?  And then I read Lawn Boy and there was no pedophilia in it.  Just a young adult reflecting on how erased he felt by a guy with whom he has sexually experimented in 4th grade.  Guess what?  Same thing happened to me with a girl I sort of fooled around with in 6th grade not even knowing what we were doing, who then pretended she didn’t know me in high school.  So I’m not the only one.  It wasn’t even remotely pornographic  and had nothing whatsoever to do with pedophilia.

Then I actually read parts of Gender Queer and it, too, is about as far from pornography as you can get.  There is nothing “graphic” on the page where the MC tries on a strap on.  No middle school or high school kid is going to be shocked by news that something protrudes from Boy underwear or at the concept of blow jobs.  But this isn’t even a blow job!  It’s someone trying on a fake penis and realizing it’s awkward and not fun and then negotiating respectful consent and a change.  But not arousing.  Not meant to arouse.  Awkward and uncommon, sure.  But hardly sexy and certainly not porn.  I can’t imagine my son ever taking it out but if he did, it wouldn’t HARM him.

So, the claim of “pedophilia” is a lie.  Graphic sex scene claim is a lie.  A cartoonish drawing of awkward play with a strap-on is unusual but hardly merits a full scale book burning.[/quote]

Wow. You have some f’d up values. You’d discuss a strap on with a [b]third grader[/b]? And putting a penis in one’s mouth?[/quote]

Where did the person say 3rd grader--these are in secondary school libraries?[/quote]

Np here.  It’s in the pp’s second paragraph.  And frankly, I would say I don’t share pp’s values, and I don’t think it’s a casual thing to be discussing with a third grader.  The lack of boundaries around sexuality and minors exhibited in this thread is just disturbing.  [/quote]

+1[/quote]

Look, you cannot engage in an honest conversation with anyone that see's the images in Gender Queer and asserts that they are not pornographic,  or that they are, but its appropriate pornography for school.  It has depictions of oral sex; plural.  Multiple depictions.

And the fact that it is homosexual oral sex is completely irrelevant.  It would be pornographic and inappropriate if it was heterosexual as well.

You can't defend this.  It's wrong.[/quote]

Correct.  Trying to engage certain folks on the left is a waste of time.  Often, the response is an ad hominem attack or an non sequitur.  But what you can depend on, unfortunately, is the left defining deviancy down. [/quote]

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