The thing is that LGBT+ content tends to be conflated with sexual content.
We both know that the vast majority of these books aren't banned because they're obscene. They're being banned because people don't want any mention of LGBT+ people or topics, with flimsy excuses.
Seems just as reasonable... So no, not clear at all.
These bans are happening in high school. Be honest with yourself and admit what you already know: High schoolers are horny. Restricting them from books that discuss sexuality in a realistic way, combined with "abstinence only" sex education still common in these places, makes it more likely that their first exposure with sexual media is actual hardcore pornography, and I don't feel like I need to explain to you why that's bad.
You can’t just drop sexually explicit images in a book then cry afoul when parents and taxpayers don’t want it in their public schools. They didn’t allow hustler and playboy and they’re trying to not allow this. They have a pretty consistent standard unlike the groups that advocate for such material to be made available to kids and teens.
How do you expect anyone to take you seriously with such a blatently dishonest comparison?
If I post the blowjob scene from Gender Queer here u/dang is going to ban my account, but you’re free to google it and say whether or not it’s more explicit than a woman baring her breast.
While we’re at it, how un-feminist and objectifying to imply that a woman’s body should be overly sexualized. Isn’t treating men’s and women’s nipples differently how we train kids to objectify women? If anything we need more Playboy in schools to destigmatize a women’s bare body. #FreeTheNipple
If Riley Reid put out a graphic memoir about tearing down taboos in sex and confronting “slut shaming” you wouldn’t advocate for it to be in schools.
If you’re trying to claim I’m making some sort of false analogy or moral equivalency then you should try to answer my original question: what is the limiting principle? Because if it’s as weak as “it’s a memoir that’s about discovering identity” it’s not only a weak argument that few would agree with but it opens the door to a lot of other stuff that you’re already trying to rule out.
What if Playboy helps some boys discover their straight identity? Is that not worth discovering? Some young girls might find Playboy helpful in discovering their lesbian identity. Wrap a story around it and it’s apparently good to go for schools.
It is unclear what harm you believe Gender Queer might cause to teenagers.
The problem you've highlighted with defining what porn is is not a new debate and as you've admitted we'd be here all day - and likely still not agree on a definition. The problem with your definition is that what people find arousing is a pretty wide spectrum and would include things that are not traditionally regarded as porn.
Going back to our thought experiment, at what point would my theoretical graphic memoir of Riley Reid no longer be porn? What would the words to picture ratio have to be? You can make this same argument about Gender Queer; does the inclusion of the illustrations add any significant value to a memoir about someone discovering their identity?
As far as whats appropriate for minors in a public school setting, society decided a while ago that once sexually explicit material is included, there is no countervailing interest. This is a pretty black and white standard that until recently all parties found agreeable. If you are advocating for changing that standard, you'll have to defend why children/teens/minors have more of an interest in seeing illustrations of a minor boy performing oral sex on another minor boy than seeing an adult woman in the nude. Claiming it not being porn can be argued both ways for both.
Because what I’m seeing on social media is parents at school board meetings reading NC-17 level books that are in their elementary school kids classrooms.
Is that not a thing? I mean, I only see it on social media, so it could me disinformation?
Is it disinformation?
Can you be specific?
> Can you be specific?
Here's an example.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/knox-zajac-reads-aloud-from-po...
So we have plenty of experience that says seeing the occasional sexually explicit photo or drawing doesn’t harm kids.
https://www.deseret.com/2022/3/16/22979747/book-bans-are-the...
> At first blush, the reports could seem sensational, a narrative driven by political campaigns that could be decided in schools. But the growth in efforts to suppress books is real. Last November, the American Library Association warned of “widespread efforts to censor books in U.S. schools and libraries,” while The New York Times reported that the association received “330 reports of book challenges” — attempts to remove books from library shelves and classroom curricula — last fall. For comparison, the association reported about 240 book challenges in the entire year of 2017.
...
> Beyond school board meetings, where parents, students or teachers can voice their concerns, the movement to restrict material has spread to state legislatures. One Texas Republican, Matt Krause, recently released a list of 850 books that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.” Krause asked schools to investigate whether they possessed copies.
They don't care that the science points to structured and informed transition being the best option for many trans people. They don't want there to be any trans people. There's no science behind the right-wing view, just hate and bigotry. They think that people are going online, watching a few TikTok videos, and suddenly saying "I'm trans! I want surgery and hormone blockers now!" when that is quite literally never the case. These are kids who are already internally struggling with their own gender feelings versus their body, and there are two types of responses. Loving parents accept their kids for who they are, and assure them that they will always be loved. Parents who are more worried about being "embarrassed" or "ungodly" will tend to suppress this instead, attempting to force the kid into their mold, instead of allowing their kid to be their true self.
These are people who were most likely prevented from learning actual critical thinking skills. They honestly don't understand how to think things through with logic, instead they inject their emotions into the issue, and you can never effectively fight emotion with logic. Logic can't be made "more logical", but emotional appeals can sure be made "more emotional", so emotion often wins out. Emotion is a quite visceral thing that we don't even fully understand. I'm certain that we feel emotion before we even exit the womb, long before any notion of logic could even exist for us.
I don't have an answer, but it's clear that these people simply do not care about the life experience of the "other", and in this case the "other" is the queer population.