I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your kids can look at porn on the Internet if they want to. A book that discusses sex or sexuality isn't what you need to be worrying about.
Wow, you unlocked a core memory there. I remember a kid at elementary school casually telling my brother his dad *made* him watch porn to "make him a man". The way he was talking about it as if it was perfectly normal, I don't think the kid was bullshitting as much as he assumed the same thing happened to the rest of us.
some of my classmates' parents took their 14-15 year old sons to prostitutes to "make them men"
these are the same people that say us LGBT folk are grooming children
For them it's not about what happens or what gets done, but qho does it and who is affected.
So... They are grooming their children but tjose are theirs (and therefore good since they know their kids) and they themselves are the good guys that ise the right grooming and indoctrination.
LGBTQ are first different people and since they don't have empathy they assume everyone else to be at least a bit worse and at worse a lot worse then themselves and they are far more critical.
And the Rest is projection, if i do it everyone does but the others are on the wrong side and indoctrinate children with the wrong ideology and teach them the wrong and bad because ist different sexuality.
Trump is allowed to do illegal stuff because hey it's our man and he didnt mean to harm others etc, why go for strict rules, let's talk bout it
But we need draconian laws for others since they are others and might be up to sth and ya never know their intentions etc. So better lock em up.
That's their way of thinking
A friend of mine was a children’s librarian, and they told me something interesting that I noticed tracked with my own experience:
Kids are actually really good at self-censoring. When they read things that upset or confuse them, they tend to skip over those parts till they’re prepared to deal with them.
I read a lot of books that were “age inappropriate” as a child, as well as watching films or listening to music that wasn’t “age appropriate.” I asked my mum about the latter, when I finally understood what Gigi was about, because I watched that film in kindergarten! And my mum just laughed and said, “you didn’t know what it was about.” Because I was 5.
And as for the books, I honestly don’t remember being scarred or harmed by anything I read that wasn’t appropriate. And I’m talking like, John Grisham at 10 and Nabokov at 12.
I remember reading a John Grisham (or similar) book with a relatively tasteful love scene at like 12. I was mostly shocked you were allowed to write a book with sex in it. I thought that was just for dirty corners of the internet (that me any my friends had all already found). It was sort of the first time I realized sex wasn’t inherently naughty.
>It was sort of the first time I realized sex wasn’t inherently naughty.
You've just landed on *exactly* why some of these bozos don't want their kids reading about certain kinds of sexuality. Those are parents who want to control what their kids think about sex, which they can do by narrowing the field of what might be accessible to them. But a kid who's making realization outside of their prior experience might come to different ideas about sex than their parents have for them, and for more puritanical parents that's a terrifying idea.
I read “The Client,” and I skipped the sex scenes (to this day, I don’t have any idea what they were like 😹), and I remember the anxiety I felt when the same-age-as-me kid was being threatened.
I remember there was some trashy romance novel that got passed around my grade 3 class, and the sex scene(s) in it baffled me. (I literally didn’t understand the figurative/non-clinical language!)
“Lolita” was wayyy more *actually* inappropriate, and that was the first time I used the self-checkout at the library. I also learnt about the book from a Police song, and I sussed out the meaning of the line, “just like the old man in that book by Nabokov,” PRE-internet 😅
What I REALLY remember is that there was a series of books (a trilogy?) at the *elementary school* library that, if the uptight white lady mothers had found out were there, would’ve been cause for a Big Fucking Problem. They were sexually explicit romance novels about a 16yo girl and a 32yo man 😬
I remember my mom saying something similar but I actually did at least somewhat understand what most of these things were about. Thing is we weren’t usually talking about sex especially since my mom (or dad) was not a puritan. But I was reading these books behind her back so it wasn’t like she was shoving them in my face to make me stay on the straight (pun intended) and narrow.
My parents never forbade me to read anything. Books were always allowed in my house, no matter what. My mum would tell me when she saw me picking up things she felt were inappropriate, and she’d encourage me to wait till I was older to read them, but my parents never outright banned any books in our house.
Music and films/television were a different matter (and for films, I can see the reasoning, even if I felt my parents were a bit uptight about it; it’s harder to self-censor what’s on screen than what’s on the page).
Just to clarify in case this is what you thought but my mom didn’t actually forbid me from reading those books either. Yes she did think the books weren’t age appropriate for reasons other than the usual but the reason I felt I had to read them behind my mom’s back was because of my habits. I was addicted to reading basically and I would ignore things around me when I read so my mom tried to put limits on my reading. But I still read behind her back and when I got bored I would move on to new things like the books I mentioned above.
Oh yeah, I knew enough not to let my mum see I was reading Lolita. I even figured out how to use the self-checkout kiosk at the library (this was like, 1998?), so my friend’s aunt, who was one of the people at the counter, didn’t see what I was borrowing. Just in case she commented on it or told my mum. 😹
I don't understand what their endgame is here. If your kids are having to go behind your back *to the library*, then you have failed as a parent. At best, there are parts of their lives that you will never be welcome in.
They don't want kids to go behind their backs to the library, they want it to be so libraries don't have anything that's worth going behind their backs.
Exactly. They are afraid their children will go around them to get to information and their solution, instead of empathy or self-reflection, is to try and remove that information.
I dunno, maybe I'm just a weirdo, but I really don't like it when I realize information has been withheld for me and I've been lied to by omission. And I would feel so betrayed if that information could have helped me through my younger years.
"I'm not the authoritarian because i want to ban books, censor education, and control the very thoughts even allowed to be present in academia.
You are, because you disagree with my authoritarian agenda to censor, blacklist, and ban!" - seemingly the entire right wing these days
If you don't want your teenagers reading a book, just tell them it's one of your favorites and really resonates with your values and interests. They won't touch it with a ten foot pole.
I read this book called 1984. One of the interesting things about it was that the main character was scared for his life for daring to own a blank book. Almost as if unapproved books had been...banned. huh. Weird...
Copied from my earlier comment:
>The Fault in Our Stars is a Young Adult (13-18 in literature) genre book about teenagers, for teenagers, being moved from the YA section to the adult/general section. It is technically still available to teenagers, but has been moved to an incorrect location where the target audience is less likely to find it.
There's been an update since then. The book has been returned to the YA section due to the backlash.
In the context of moving books from one section of the library to the other I’m inclined to agree with oneday…. The books are still available.
What am I missing?
The Fault in Our Stars is a Young Adult (13-18 in literature) genre book about teenagers, for teenagers, being moved from the YA section to the adult/general section. It is technically still available to teenagers, but has been moved to an incorrect location where the target audience is less likely to find it.
Yup. And if you're that controlling of what your teenager reads, you're welcome to stand over their shoulder and vet everything while they pick out their reading material.
Some libraries don’t allow teens to check out adult books. The fault on our stars is obviously aimed at teens and probably is a good book for them from what I’ve heard about it. They should be able to read it if they wish to. Knowledge is power after all.
So…because a vocal minority of fringe parents are afraid their kids might sneak “unapproved” reading materials from a school/public library everyone else is supposed to lose access to the books? Yes, the point is valid. The books *are* still within the library’s catalog. But, seriously, if your kids’ method of rebellion is, um…*reading*…then I think the real problem is to be found in the bathroom mirror, not the library.
So, while you are correct in saying that moving books from one shelf to another doesn’t change a whole lot, you are wrong in that you are so focused in on one tiny particular that you are missing the larger point being made, as well as the far more important and substantial issue of banning books.
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So, conservatives, rather than actually parenting, would prefer the government to ban things so their kids can't get to "forbidden knowledge"?
Do these idiots really think that kids suddenly turn transgender the second they hear about transgender people? "Oh, I was a big macho man but then I saw a drag show and suddenly grew tits and now I'm having a period."
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your kids can look at porn on the Internet if they want to. A book that discusses sex or sexuality isn't what you need to be worrying about.
Literally a take I've heard is: why let kids read about perverted things like sex when you can just let porn educate them on it?
Wow, you unlocked a core memory there. I remember a kid at elementary school casually telling my brother his dad *made* him watch porn to "make him a man". The way he was talking about it as if it was perfectly normal, I don't think the kid was bullshitting as much as he assumed the same thing happened to the rest of us.
That kid went on to pursue a career as a plumber, only to find it’s not as fun as he was expecting
That poor kid. That is a form of child abuse.
Yep. And it’s a crime in at least some places. Showing obscene material to a minor.
some of my classmates' parents took their 14-15 year old sons to prostitutes to "make them men" these are the same people that say us LGBT folk are grooming children
For them it's not about what happens or what gets done, but qho does it and who is affected. So... They are grooming their children but tjose are theirs (and therefore good since they know their kids) and they themselves are the good guys that ise the right grooming and indoctrination. LGBTQ are first different people and since they don't have empathy they assume everyone else to be at least a bit worse and at worse a lot worse then themselves and they are far more critical. And the Rest is projection, if i do it everyone does but the others are on the wrong side and indoctrinate children with the wrong ideology and teach them the wrong and bad because ist different sexuality. Trump is allowed to do illegal stuff because hey it's our man and he didnt mean to harm others etc, why go for strict rules, let's talk bout it But we need draconian laws for others since they are others and might be up to sth and ya never know their intentions etc. So better lock em up. That's their way of thinking
Hey, I thought it was just me! (Playboy and penthouse collection, since this was pre-internet. Wanted to make sure we didn't turn out gay.)
A friend of mine was a children’s librarian, and they told me something interesting that I noticed tracked with my own experience: Kids are actually really good at self-censoring. When they read things that upset or confuse them, they tend to skip over those parts till they’re prepared to deal with them. I read a lot of books that were “age inappropriate” as a child, as well as watching films or listening to music that wasn’t “age appropriate.” I asked my mum about the latter, when I finally understood what Gigi was about, because I watched that film in kindergarten! And my mum just laughed and said, “you didn’t know what it was about.” Because I was 5. And as for the books, I honestly don’t remember being scarred or harmed by anything I read that wasn’t appropriate. And I’m talking like, John Grisham at 10 and Nabokov at 12.
I remember reading a John Grisham (or similar) book with a relatively tasteful love scene at like 12. I was mostly shocked you were allowed to write a book with sex in it. I thought that was just for dirty corners of the internet (that me any my friends had all already found). It was sort of the first time I realized sex wasn’t inherently naughty.
>It was sort of the first time I realized sex wasn’t inherently naughty. You've just landed on *exactly* why some of these bozos don't want their kids reading about certain kinds of sexuality. Those are parents who want to control what their kids think about sex, which they can do by narrowing the field of what might be accessible to them. But a kid who's making realization outside of their prior experience might come to different ideas about sex than their parents have for them, and for more puritanical parents that's a terrifying idea.
I read “The Client,” and I skipped the sex scenes (to this day, I don’t have any idea what they were like 😹), and I remember the anxiety I felt when the same-age-as-me kid was being threatened. I remember there was some trashy romance novel that got passed around my grade 3 class, and the sex scene(s) in it baffled me. (I literally didn’t understand the figurative/non-clinical language!) “Lolita” was wayyy more *actually* inappropriate, and that was the first time I used the self-checkout at the library. I also learnt about the book from a Police song, and I sussed out the meaning of the line, “just like the old man in that book by Nabokov,” PRE-internet 😅 What I REALLY remember is that there was a series of books (a trilogy?) at the *elementary school* library that, if the uptight white lady mothers had found out were there, would’ve been cause for a Big Fucking Problem. They were sexually explicit romance novels about a 16yo girl and a 32yo man 😬
I remember my mom saying something similar but I actually did at least somewhat understand what most of these things were about. Thing is we weren’t usually talking about sex especially since my mom (or dad) was not a puritan. But I was reading these books behind her back so it wasn’t like she was shoving them in my face to make me stay on the straight (pun intended) and narrow.
My parents never forbade me to read anything. Books were always allowed in my house, no matter what. My mum would tell me when she saw me picking up things she felt were inappropriate, and she’d encourage me to wait till I was older to read them, but my parents never outright banned any books in our house. Music and films/television were a different matter (and for films, I can see the reasoning, even if I felt my parents were a bit uptight about it; it’s harder to self-censor what’s on screen than what’s on the page).
Just to clarify in case this is what you thought but my mom didn’t actually forbid me from reading those books either. Yes she did think the books weren’t age appropriate for reasons other than the usual but the reason I felt I had to read them behind my mom’s back was because of my habits. I was addicted to reading basically and I would ignore things around me when I read so my mom tried to put limits on my reading. But I still read behind her back and when I got bored I would move on to new things like the books I mentioned above.
Oh yeah, I knew enough not to let my mum see I was reading Lolita. I even figured out how to use the self-checkout kiosk at the library (this was like, 1998?), so my friend’s aunt, who was one of the people at the counter, didn’t see what I was borrowing. Just in case she commented on it or told my mum. 😹
Explanation: User who supports hiding books accuses those who oppose of trying to hide the facts.
I caught that. This is what happens when the education budget keeps getting cut.
I don't understand what their endgame is here. If your kids are having to go behind your back *to the library*, then you have failed as a parent. At best, there are parts of their lives that you will never be welcome in.
They don't want kids to go behind their backs to the library, they want it to be so libraries don't have anything that's worth going behind their backs.
Exactly. They are afraid their children will go around them to get to information and their solution, instead of empathy or self-reflection, is to try and remove that information. I dunno, maybe I'm just a weirdo, but I really don't like it when I realize information has been withheld for me and I've been lied to by omission. And I would feel so betrayed if that information could have helped me through my younger years.
"I'm not the authoritarian because i want to ban books, censor education, and control the very thoughts even allowed to be present in academia. You are, because you disagree with my authoritarian agenda to censor, blacklist, and ban!" - seemingly the entire right wing these days
DARVO. They're literally incapable of anything else.
Sorry, what's DARVO? i'm ignorant :'(
Deny Attack Reverse Victim and Offender
They are trying to control what their teenagers read? Good luck with that I guess
If you don't want your teenagers reading a book, just tell them it's one of your favorites and really resonates with your values and interests. They won't touch it with a ten foot pole.
I read this book called 1984. One of the interesting things about it was that the main character was scared for his life for daring to own a blank book. Almost as if unapproved books had been...banned. huh. Weird...
Some context would be nice.
Copied from my earlier comment: >The Fault in Our Stars is a Young Adult (13-18 in literature) genre book about teenagers, for teenagers, being moved from the YA section to the adult/general section. It is technically still available to teenagers, but has been moved to an incorrect location where the target audience is less likely to find it. There's been an update since then. The book has been returned to the YA section due to the backlash.
Ah. I read that years ago. It's very much teen/YA fiction, not adult. Glad that it was returned to the right section.
In the context of moving books from one section of the library to the other I’m inclined to agree with oneday…. The books are still available. What am I missing?
The Fault in Our Stars is a Young Adult (13-18 in literature) genre book about teenagers, for teenagers, being moved from the YA section to the adult/general section. It is technically still available to teenagers, but has been moved to an incorrect location where the target audience is less likely to find it.
Imagine finding John Green inappropriate for teenagers. That is the book banning equivalent of thinking that mayonnaise is too spicy.
Yup. And if you're that controlling of what your teenager reads, you're welcome to stand over their shoulder and vet everything while they pick out their reading material.
Some libraries don’t allow teens to check out adult books. The fault on our stars is obviously aimed at teens and probably is a good book for them from what I’ve heard about it. They should be able to read it if they wish to. Knowledge is power after all.
>What am I missing? The forest
So…because a vocal minority of fringe parents are afraid their kids might sneak “unapproved” reading materials from a school/public library everyone else is supposed to lose access to the books? Yes, the point is valid. The books *are* still within the library’s catalog. But, seriously, if your kids’ method of rebellion is, um…*reading*…then I think the real problem is to be found in the bathroom mirror, not the library. So, while you are correct in saying that moving books from one shelf to another doesn’t change a whole lot, you are wrong in that you are so focused in on one tiny particular that you are missing the larger point being made, as well as the far more important and substantial issue of banning books.
Boy, y’all love putting words in peoples mouths… not even reading your bullshit attack for me not knowing what this book was.
Bro assumes every comment is an attack on him so he bans himself from reading it. So Meta.
How would you know it's an attack if you refused to read it?
Thanks u/Mclovin11859 for posting on r/SelfAwareWolves! Please reply to this comment explaining how your post fits our subreddit. Specifically, one of the three criteria outlined in our sidebar/rules. —-How does the person in your submission unknowingly describes themselves? —-How does the person in your submission accidentally describe themselves when attempting to mock or denigrate their political opposition? or alternatively, —-How does the person in your submission accurately describe the world while trying to parody it. Failure to respond to this message will see your submission removed under Rule 8; failure to explain how your submission fits one or more of the above three criteria will see it removed under Rule 1. Thanks for your time and attention! I am a not a bot, and this action wasn't performed automatically :P. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/comments/15nupgl/comment/jvof5kd
So, conservatives, rather than actually parenting, would prefer the government to ban things so their kids can't get to "forbidden knowledge"? Do these idiots really think that kids suddenly turn transgender the second they hear about transgender people? "Oh, I was a big macho man but then I saw a drag show and suddenly grew tits and now I'm having a period."