On what planet is a kid seeking out this information learning about it for the first time in the school library?
Huge difference between saying teachers shouldn't distribute the book and it should be removed from the school library. Libraries don't push books by virtue of having them on their shelves.
And again, when you look at the populations getting uppity about this, it's the ones with high rates of teenage pregnancy and STI transmission. Which makes sense. If Suzy only sees pictures and videos online, or has acts described to her by equally-clueless friends, she's less capable of making informed decisions than someone who also saw the terminology and context in a book. (She's also been informed the topic is taboo.)
Not particularly, but it's a moot question. It's not part of her sex ed. It's on a book shelf. We don't ask why The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is an important part of Suzy's anything when we concur with it being available. Same here.
Turning the question around, what's the harm in Suzy going into a library, picking up this book and learning Grindr exists? (Again, in a hypothetical universe where this sequence of actions occurs without her knowing of it already.)
> Reminder that Suzy is 11 years old, not a teenager
"The average age of first exposure" to online porn is 12 [1]. Even if Suzy's parents practice perfect digital hygiene, unless they're raising her as a houseplant, she's going to be exposed to this at a younger age than we were. The choice is whether she gets exposed within a context of information, understanding and comfort, or if she's thrown into the fray in a state of ignorance.
[1] https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/education/2023-05-14/sex-inter...
Note that my argument begins and ends with libraries. I don't really have an opinion on classroom instruction and materials.
Yes there was, and your conviction that this must be an exaggeration shows just how completely out of touch the mainstream media-following public is from the reality of the situation. Just as a single example, the children's illustrated sex instruction manual "This Book is Gay" has had its relevant contents republished all over the internet, so that one would practically have to have been specifically avoiding seeing it. It is using LGBTQ as a shield for pedophilia and as an LGBTQ person that makes me sick. The very title gleefully declares this intent: "This Book is Gay" and therefore if you object you must be a homophobe, and not, you know, someone who thinks that maybe children shouldn't be having sex unless and until they are old enough to work it out for themselves.
ETA: I almost forgot that even Snopes had to admit about the contents of this particular book: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tampa-school-sex-book/. In fact snopes reports it's even worse than what I said; it provides instructions on how to obtain access to hookup apps. To kids. Hookup apps. Kids. It's sick.
Well, I read the snopes article and the book seems edgy but reasonable. Why is it sick? Is it wrong to teach middle school kids about sex before they might have it in high school? Anyways, I said I wasn't going to respond here anymore, so I won't, but I guess your morals and mine aren't a matching pair. I don't see how sex ed harms middle school kids. If anything, it helps them not be a dufus and get preggo when they have sex the first time. Lots of movies that middle schoolers watch show people meeting each other in different situatiosn and then dating, which isn't any different from a "hookup app", which aren't used for as much sex hookups as you folks seem to think, it's where people today meet each other to date. Sex isn't sick, it's how humans make babies and become closer as couples and sometimes how they have fun.
Who the fuck brought pedo shit into this? Not me. I am for information dissemination. You're the one thinking every kid is going to be going on Grindr and meeting adults who want to have sex with them. If I tell my kid "this is weed, I smoke it to feel calmer" it doesn't mean I want my kid to go and use it until he's not developing any longer. I still want him to know what weed is, so he can make an informed choice when his friend asks him to try it in college or whatever.
You have an answer for everything, don't you? Funny how all of your answers are aimed toward promoting pedophilia.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
[0] Absolutely no one who is developmentally prepared to have sex needs a book to tell them about the existence of oral sex, because they already know. We are not talking about books telling teens how to have sex safely, we are talking about books informing pre-pubescent children which parts A go into which parts B.