What About the Children?

At a time when the Australian government has announced its decision to introduce a new regime to censor the Internet, it’s worth thinking again about the argument that exposure to certain kinds of speech and expression might be harmful to children. The problem is that it is difficult to find evidence as to what kinds of material are actually likely to produce that kind of harm.

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Complete entry

Posted by Giulio Prisco  on  12/20  at  11:49 AM

I find the growing interference of nanny-states in each and every aspect of our lives disgusting.

Nobody protected us from reality when we were kids, and yet most of us have grown to become reasonably balanced and responsible adults. Same for our fathers. I think we should show the same respect to younger generations.

But of course, this has nothing to do with what is good for the people. It is about control freaks craving even more control.

Posted by veronica  on  12/20  at  02:20 PM

If a person, such as myself, objects to a political leader who recommends to school children books that romanticize the rape of 13-year-old children, does that mean I am "driven by Augustinian ideas that the body and its functions are shameful"?

Posted by Brian  on  12/21  at  02:06 PM

'romanticize the rape of 13-year-old children...'

You're going to have to provide some context and a legitimate example of that actually occurring or your statement is worse than useless.

Posted by veronica  on  12/21  at  04:14 PM

As you wish, Brian. I hope the following will pass the filter at IEET.

President Obama's Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings and his GLSEN organization were promoting books to school-aged children, including one with the following lines, coming from a thirteen-year old boy:

"This incident (a rape) should have soured me on men, but it only made me more confused and needful. One day later, something accidental happened that would change my life. I discovered that at a urinal I could actually see someone else's penis. I was ecstatic and fearful, but I wanted more. One day, at a local shopping mall, as I was trying to sneak a peek at penises in the rest rooms, a man at the urinal actually turned to me and started playing with himself. He flashed me a gold-toothed smirk and motioned for me to come over. Shocked, I zippered up and ran out, but the seeds had been laid. The whole world of rest-room sex had opened itself up to me.

Soon I was spending a great deal of time hanging out in shopping malls and cruising the rest rooms for sexual encounters. My rest-room exploits started to be a great burden on my mind. The better part of the year was spent making deals with God, asking for a sign, then ignoring and rationalizing everything I perceived to be a sign, praying for forgiveness, and being obsessed with raging hormones and a seemingly endless supply of d**ks..."

For more examples of what (ahem, non-Augustinian) books Jennings' organization recommends to children, just Google on "Fistgate."

Posted by jhughes  on  12/21  at  04:54 PM

We wouldn't think of censoring such a loyal Teabagging fan Veronica.

So, back to your question about whether you are an anti-sex prude, I think you probably are. The book in question is "Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade" which has been shamefully demagogued by the Right as we have come to expect:

http://mediamatters.org/print/research/200912140036

The passage in question, in context, is not at all an endorsement of teens having sex with adults, of rape, or even of anonymous encounters. It is in fact a sad comment that a gay teen put himself in harm's way because our homophobic society made it so difficult to pursue safe sex with peers.

Teaching kids a sex-positive message that respects queer experience means acknowledging all kinds of personal history that makes us squirm. But if you don't want your kid to read it I'm absolutely sure there is no school in the US that would force them to.

And you remind me of my own sex ed class at the Unitarian Church back in 1974, where I was obliged to read a passage about masturbation from Portnoy's Complaint to my classmates in order to break the ice. The experience most certainly did not normalize or romanticize for me abusing a piece of liver as described.

Now if I can direct your attention to the real threat to American morals, it might be the shameful habit that our right-wingers have of lying about everything, and working themselves up into a paranoic fervor that justifies acts of violence. That's more worrisome I think than whether teenagers might discover that people who have been raped may still pursue sexual relationships.

Posted by veronica  on  12/22  at  09:09 AM

There was a teenage boy lying in a hospital in a full body cast. The doctor asked him, "why in the world were you rollerblading on the freeway?"
See the end of this post for the boy's response.

Mr. Hughes, I'm not sure why you think you know so much about me. First, not only am I not a teabagger, I don't even know one. I hear some of them are kooks. But if you want to resort to the argument of "If you oppose some of the President's choices, you must be a teabagger," that's your prerogative. Similarly, if I oppose certain material for children, including fisting kits, that must make me an anti-sex prude. Tell that to my three children.

Mr. Hughes believes the passage in question is out of context and is not at all an endorsement of teens having sex with adults, of rape, or even of anonymous encounters. What a loaded sentence. Of course it was not an endorsement of rape, but it was an endorsement of anonymous encounters with men. Not like that would be new to GLSEN, who passed out literature endorsing such behavior for kids who might like to "cruise the parks":

"No Dookie On Your Noodle! Nobody knows better than queer men that sh*t happens. It's just a fact of lifeand butts*x. While there are steps to take to avoid a mess, they're not always practical for the boy on the go. Condoms allow you a certain freedom that can be a great selling point if you're cruising the park and don't want stray spunk on your new polyester shirt'
That's from:
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/dookie-noodle-300x184.jpg

Now, let's hear the rollerblading boy's response to the doctor:

"I was rollerblading on the freeway because the city has provided me with no safe places to skate."

That uproarious answer is analogous to Mr. Hughes's comment:

"It is in fact a sad comment that a gay teen put himself in harm's way because our homophobic society made it so difficult to pursue safe sex with peers."

Posted by jhughes  on  12/22  at  02:20 PM

I don't know Veronica, if you aren't already a teabagger I suspect you would fit right in. You appear to be up on all the right wing talking points, hot off the far right's blogs and news sites.

In this case Dec 4 and 22 posts on First Things, a religious Right magazine.

But at least you read us for balance right? Because you have an open mind...

In any case the attempt to smear Kevin Jennings, the President Safe Schools appointee, as an advocate of fisting and anonymous sex is, as I said, typical hysterical hyperbole that has come to characterize the radical right in the US.

Posted by veronica  on  12/22  at  05:14 PM

Don't you realize that Jennings smeared /himself/?
The "far right blogs" are willing to expose him, but the leftwing sites aren't.
And you feel the way to defend him is by ad hominem attacks on the "far right" "radical right" "religious right?" Can't you just ignore the so-called "smearers" and look at the "Safe Schools Czar" /himself/ and the smutty material that he promotes to schoolchildren?

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