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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.
Sure, but do we really need drawings of it, and not the character as she (or he, if we're being correct in our terminology) thinking about the experience, what he expected, and how that was different from reality?
This is the fundamental division here between the two sides: one set thinks "no, a depiction of a sexual act in a book for teenagers that will be in a school library is not appropriate" and the other set thinks "this isn't sexy like porn, it's fine".
The recommended reading age, looking it up, is for 14-15/15 and up. But will younger kids be able to access it? What's fine for a 15 year old may not be appropriate for a 12 year old, and that's part of the whole fight. Unless the librarians are ensuring younger kids can't get the book, and it doesn't seem like this particular group feels they should be engaging in what they perceive as censorship, then parents can't be sure their kids aren't accessing inappropriate material.
And that's the other part of the fight: what parents think they should be able to decide is appropriate for their kids, versus what the school or school board thinks is okay. Just saying that hey, kids have always sneaked around and gotten into stuff they shouldn't have at that age isn't good enough. Kids might be sneaking drinks at home out of the parents' liquor cabinet, but do we want schools handing out shots of whiskey to 12 (or 15) year olds on the grounds that "they're gonna do it anyway, might as well do it in a safe environment"?
"Oh hey, it wasn't whiskey, it was wine or an alcopop" isn't that much better as justification.
I think so. It's a graphic memoir.
Let me just dump some assorted background opinions that will probably offend approximately everyone, unintentionally.
So, yeah, I don't consider the awkward sex acts in Gender Queer pornographic or erotic. But I also am not that concerned about the risk even if some kids just flip through it to look for the dick scene and don't ever read a single word.
I'm fine with a school library stocking it for teenagers, but I'd be shocked if they were happily letting 8 or 9 year olds take it out and read it.
Yeah, I think it's the age-appropriate as well as every thing else. There's not going to be much middle ground between parents who don't want their kids exposed to this kind of material in school, without their parental consent, and without them introducing (or not) such topics on their own schedule, and school teachers/staff/administration who want to show off how liberal and open-minded and "We don't censor books here" they are.
I think it would be a safe bet that such "we don't censor books here" types, who like to participate in Banned Books
Daysorry, it's now an entire Week, wouldn't stock a copy of, say, The Secret of the Rosary because separation of church and state! non-establishment of religion! no preferring one faith over another! and so forth. Nobody would bravely stand up for "if kids want to know about such prayers, we can't stop them exploring their spirituality and we shouldn't try".Yeah I agree with this. I see these banned books week posters at my library. My ten seconds of thinking reaction is: good old librarians, defending free speech.
Then I think about it for a few minutes and wonder how books actually could be banned, and that that looks like, Also what happens if they don't take any particular stand on banning books, like marking it as BANNED in the online catalog, but instead reduce copies in stock to zero.
My local library doesn't stock The Bell Curve by Murray. That's odd. It's a best seller in psychology that sold more than a million copies. It never even shows up in the online catalog, period. You would never know it existed.
Did the librarians deliberately disappear it? Do they say "look even though we have a five story building downtown in a blue town in a blue state that allocates significant revenue to this library we have limited funds and cannot stock every book"? How would I even begin to contest this.
I assume the ideal librarian chooses books to stock based on some standard like popularity but also public good value but I realize it's probably much more arbitrary than this. And a lot more inscrutable for outsiders.
I note they do have eight copies of Gender Queer, 4 currently loaned out.
They did deliberately disappear it. It was probably initially disappeared on the basis of being pseudoscience, although I’ve seen Chariots of the Gods in libraries before (strange!)
Then it was probably disappeared on the basis of being racist, although I’ve seen The Wretched of the Earth and The Autobiography of Malcolm X in libraries before (strange again!)
Now it’s probably being disappeared on the basis of causing harm or some similar euphemism treadmill, if you could even get the librarian in question to really think through the situation. The fact that Gender Queer appears to be causing no small amount of psychological distress to at least some people, somewhere, is irrelevant to the librarian (yet stranger still!)
The answer to your bolded question, and the thrust of my argument, is that the whole entire debate is ground that one side has prepared and conditioned such that the other side can never win.
You shouldn’t fight on conditioned ground, that is, by engaging in debate with the librarian. You should just seek to harden your heart, gain control of the commons, fire the librarian and restock the library according to the tastes of you and your people, whoever they may be.
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Or in other words, it’s oppression pornography (or reverse pornography in the "reverse racism" sense).
It's still devoid of any other literary value and is just a masturbatory aid for progressive women, but the difference is important (and the first step to figuring out that in an environment of equality, unusual in a state of nature, their sexual misbehavior is just as much a problem as it is when men do it).
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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.
Well, as the sign at the "Drag the Kids to Pride" show told us, it's not gonna lick itself
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I find this... unlikely, unless your grandfather was Amish.
Assuming you are no older than me (and probably younger), your grandfather was dating in 1930s at the earliest. Picnics with a chaperone were considered old-fashioned in most of the US even then, and certainly not "risque."
It’s possible that mores were different for a young Brit of my grandfather’s (old-fashioned) class. He was later nearly disowned for marrying a girl at university (rare but they did exist) who didn’t have what was considered an appropriate background.
It’s also possible I made up the chaperone. I’m afraid it’s been a long time since I heard the story.
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He may not be American.
Indeed :) British.
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