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So I have actually looked at the images in Gender Queer. I would not call them "erotica." It's supposed to be a coming-of-age novel about a queer kid experimenting with sex acts that she ultimately finds unappealing.
Would I want my pre-teen kids to read it? No. It definitely should be age-restricted. But "This shouldn't even exist in a public library" seems a bit much.
Influencing my opinion is the fact that I distinctly remember books like Flowers in the Attic and the John Norman Gor series existing in my school library when I was a kid. Now maybe you can make a case that text is less harmful/dangerous than images, but I would contest that. Those books had some fucked up themes and scenes, and the sex scenes weren't even explicit.
I extend to people the presumption that if they are engaging in the discussion, they have at least looked at the most salient examples of the topic, and so stating that I have “actually looked” at the examples could only be read as a veiled accusation that the other person hasn’t.
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It’s a blowjob, dude. It’s erotica by its very nature. It shouldn’t be in the public library. Again I stand on the null hypothesis that until very recently, essentially every library in America agreed with me, and it is the change that has to be justified.
That being said, you bring up a good point. Flowers in the Attic and Gor shouldn’t have been in your school library. It shouldn’t have been in mine.
The sewage was already lapping around our ankles when we were kids, but that’s no excuse for letting things get worse. And yes, on the way back to having no metaphorical sewage flowing through our intellectual and spiritual lives, we have to pump the sewer back down to just around our waists, and then our knees, and our ankles, and so forth.
There are things that can be sexual but not pornographic, but those things are, culturally, well prior to Playboy.
Sex acts aren't inherently "erotica." The idea that no library books ever depicted sex acts (visually or textually) before Gender Queer is false.
Sure they are. We can do this all day.
Not once have I argued this. You brought in the question of text. I’m not sure who you’re arguing with right now.
What I have argued and will continue to argue is that there is a constant churn of Cthulhu swimming left, towards greater and greater degradation of the commons. Today it’s someone defending cutesy drawings of blowjobs in library books that librarians push or market towards young teens or tweens, 10 or 20 years from now it’ll be someone defending librarians pushing kids towards cutesy drawings of some author’s autobiographical exploration of the first time they let their dog fuck them. Maybe sooner! Things are moving fast.
Maybe that will be too much for you, or maybe it won’t, maybe you’ll continue to say, “Well, I read Gor in the school library when I was a kid, and I remember the Gender Queer arguments on the Motte (PBUI) and the kinds of assholes who took the counter-argument to me, so this is fine also.”
Or maybe you’ll find your grandkid reading it in the library’s booknook and you’ll be appalled. I don’t know. But your current arguments are toothless to me because my stance is that Gor in the school library was already too much.
We are merely having the discussion about Gender Queer because that is where the current battlefield starts. Unfortunately, from my point of view.
Okay, but using your own personal definitions and saying "Nuh uh" isn't much of an argument.
Maybe so, though I am unconvinced by arguments that have been made basically since Roman times about the degradation of morals and the corruption of the youth.
I wouldn't have any heartburn about prohibiting Gender Queer from school libraries, but public libraries (which are meant to serve adults as well as children, and which can impose age restrictions on certain books) do not need to cater to your personal preferred level of acceptability.
Likewise, your arguments are toothless to me, because I don't know anyone who turned into a degenerate because they read spicy genre fiction as a kid. I am not saying there is no line, but the line is always going to be fuzzy and negotiable and subjective. You are afraid I'd be okay with exposing children to bestiality; I am afraid you'd like to censor anything that would raise a maiden aunt's eyebrows in 1890. You're right that this is where the battlefield is, however much I personally find Gender Queer offputting (and inappropriate for pre-teens).
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It's actually a strap-on. And neither of the characters finds it sexy. The scene is meant to be awkward.
Confused teens not even knowing how to fuck might be gross but it doesn't strike me as erotica.
I am well aware it’s a strap-on. The facing page in the book in question specifically refers to the act as a blowjob.
I quote:
This writing is erotica.
IMO that's still missing the point. They were excited about it and tried to do it and found out it was awkward and disturbing rather than exciting. Like the same panel and the next several:
"I can't feel anything"
"This was much hotter when it was only in my imagination"
"Hey Z... let's try something else"
In thought balloons: "But now that I've had sex a few times I'm not sure I really need any more. Trying to get off in front of someone is kind of weird."
"I think when I do orgasm, it's not because of my body but in spite of it"
They were clearly acting out roles assigned to them by others and by media. If anything it was saying "putting on a strap-on and sucking it isn't what being queer is about"
To me this is practically anti-erotica. It's like reading about asexual people describing PIV sex as rubbing their elbows together.
It’s about a kid growing up not feeling feminine, struggling to fit into pre-built sexual and gender roles, experimenting, and ultimately realizing she's asexual and nonbinary.
It's definitionally unsexy as a whole.
By this media! There is no reason for young children to know about strapons or blowjobs. This is a self-licking ice cream cone - teaching children about explicit sex acts and then saying ‘well, children these days encounter sex early, they need to be taught about this stuff’.
When my grandfather was sixteen going on a picnic with a girl and her chaperone was considered risqué. Now they’re teaching pre-pubescents about blowjobs.
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