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I don't think they are destabilizing the parent-child relationship at all. I don't think they are inserting their beliefs on children, I think all of that is fear mongering. What happens when 17 parents think the subject material is fine, 3 want this or that taken out of it, 7 want it banned altogether, etc? It's absurd that parents today need to be a participant or observer in the classroom all of a sudden. It undermines teachers and authority in general IMO. It increases division, which is a much bigger threat to our country than a teacher putting a pic on her desk of her and her wife.
Here's the latest madness: North Dakota is considering a ban on any book that has any sexually explicit parts or discusses gender identity. This is NOT school libraries, but public libraries that adults go to. The GOP supposedly the party for individual freedoms, now wants to control what adults can read in their taxpayer supported library? What happened to, "if you don't like it, don't check that book out"? "I don't like this so you can't have it". It became It is BS that they are the party of individual's rights and freedom.
Any librarian who doesn't go along will spend 30 days in jail, under this bill. Anyone who has ever studied fascism should be terrified by all this. That's what the Nazi party did after coming to power in Germany pre-WWII. There are videos of them gleefully burning books. Silencing what you don't like doesn't make it go away.
"Books containing “sexually explicit” content — including depictions of sexual or gender identity — would be banned from North Dakota public libraries under legislation that state lawmakers began considering Tuesday.
The GOP-dominated state House Judiciary Committee heard arguments but did not take a vote on the measure, which applies to visual depictions of “sexually explicit” content and proposes up to 30 days imprisonment for librarians who refuse to remove the offending books."
That was so bizarre! And of course the underlying problem was a false shortage created by people trying to profit from the crisis by buying trailer-loads of TB from warehouse stores and local chain stores to turn around and sell at grossly inflated prices. By the time people realized they'd need to stock up a bit at home, there was nothing available. Same with any kind of sanitizer, even hydrogen peroxide.
So ,as always, human greed threw a wrench into the works. Never underestimate the power of human foibles to sink the ship.
My local Target store still has two crammed full isles of paper towels they cant sell and don't have room to store in back because it is already full. People who hoarded TP and paper towels won't be buying them for years and years. Stores continued to order normal amounts but are severely overstocked due to all the people who still have pandemic supplies at home.
They incompetently broke the world for Covid and we will never go back to "normal."
I don't think they are destabilizing the parent-child relationship at all. I don't think they are inserting their beliefs on children, I think all of that is fear mongering. What happens when 17 parents think the subject material is fine, 3 want this or that taken out of it, 7 want it banned altogether, etc? It's absurd that parents today need to be a participant or observer in the classroom all of a sudden. It undermines teachers and authority in general IMO. It increases division, which is a much bigger threat to our country than a teacher putting a pic on her desk of her and her wife.
Here's the latest madness: North Dakota is considering a ban on any book that has any sexually explicit parts or discusses gender identity. This is NOT school libraries, but public libraries that adults go to. The GOP supposedly the party for individual freedoms, now wants to control what adults can read in their taxpayer supported library? What happened to, "if you don't like it, don't check that book out"? It became "I don't like this so you can't have it". It is BS that they are the party of individual's rights and freedom.
Any librarian who doesn't go along will spend 30 days in jail, under this bill. Anyone who has ever studied fascism should be terrified by all this. That's what the Nazi party did after coming to power in Germany pre-WWII. There are videos of them gleefully burning books. Silencing what you don't like doesn't make it go away.
"Books containing “sexually explicit” content — including depictions of sexual or gender identity — would be banned from North Dakota public libraries under legislation that state lawmakers began considering Tuesday.
The GOP-dominated state House Judiciary Committee heard arguments but did not take a vote on the measure, which applies to visual depictions of “sexually explicit” content and proposes up to 30 days imprisonment for librarians who refuse to remove the offending books."
Public libraries do not offer porn. In all the blue states I've lived, I've never seen Hustler or Playboy on the magazine shelves of a public library. Perhaps your library is different.
Our societal problem is with the internet's easy access to porn, our country is redefining/examining what is porn. In the 1980's, when I left NYC's Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue, I passed the peepshows and XXX rated movie theaters. Our society had a clear definition of porn.
Since them, our mainstream movie rating system (G, GP, R & X) is shifting towards more sex and violence. Mainly because GP movies make more revenue with an edgy movie companies, yet want a GP rating to attract a wider audience. Our country has been playing around with the idea of child appropriate content for awhile.
It's move into books and especially in children's books.*
The question in North Dakota is what is porn and do we allow porn in libraries?. It's a legitimate question and with the advent of the internet, some people's perceptions of porn changed. Boundaries are being push and people are reacting.
*The move into children's book is linked to a rise in making pedophilia mainstream. I'm old enough to remember the Xeroxed Man-Boy Love advertising in NYC village's street lights.
Listen how this recent NYT article is redefining pedophilia:
Quote:
Images of child sex abuse have reached a crisis point on the internet, spreading at unprecedented rates in part because tech platforms and law enforcement agencies have failed to keep pace with the problem.
“The biological clues attached to pedophilia demonstrate that its roots are prenatal,” said James Cantor, director of the Toronto Sexuality Center. “These are not genetic; they can be traced to specific periods of development in the womb.”
Psychological and environmental factors may also contribute, though it is not yet clear what those are or how they interact with developmental conditions.
By contrast, the common presumption that pedophiles were themselves abused as children now has less support. Some therapists and researchers say these findings from law enforcement threaten to unfairly tar people who never act on their desires. This group certainly exists — they’re sometimes called “virtuous pedophiles” — but in an era of increasing alarm over the proliferation of online abuse, they are going only further underground.
Watch the language, cause it's only a matter of time before pedophilia is mainstream as "they were born this way." Doesn't this sound like Lady Gaga's lyrics?
Public libraries do not offer porn. In all the blue states I've lived, I've never seen Hustler or Playboy on the magazine shelves of a public library. Perhaps your library is different.
Our societal problem is with the internet's easy access to porn, our country is redefining/examining what is porn. In the 1980's, when I left NYC's Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue, I passed the peepshows and XXX rated movie theaters. Our society had a clear definition of porn.
Since them, our mainstream movie rating system (G, GP, R & X) is shifting towards more sex and violence. Mainly because GP movies make more revenue with an edgy movie companies, yet want a GP rating to attract a wider audience. Our country has been playing around with the idea of child appropriate content for awhile.
It's move into books and especially in children's books.*
The question in North Dakota is what is porn and do we allow porn in libraries?. It's a legitimate question and with the advent of the internet, some people's perceptions of porn changed. Boundaries are being push and people are reacting.
*The move into children's book is linked to a rise in making pedophilia mainstream. I'm old enough to remember the Xeroxed Man-Boy Love advertising in NYC village's street lights.
Listen how this recent NYT article is redefining pedophilia:
Watch the language, cause it's only a matter of time before pedophilia is mainstream as "they were born this way." Doesn't this sound like Lady Gaga's lyrics?
Your post is really all over the place. You're old enough to remember man-boy love in the gayest place on earth, yet you think that sex and violence are moving into children's books in North Dakota.
I live on Planet earth, have elementary-school-aged children, and regularly read the new release books in the children's and young adult sections of the library. My kids bring home a shopping bag full of books each week, and at least a few of them aren't graphic novels (the true scourge of modern childhood literature). Neither the regular print media, nor graphic novels, are more violent or sexually explicit than my books in the 80's and 90's. There's certainly no normalization of pedophilia going on in any broad sense in children's literature.
You might be able to find some edgy graphic novels with gays/lesbians discussing sexual topics and using swear words in the adult section--keep your kids out of those--but they are generally realistic depictions of actual cis and non-cis topics. They are certainly worlds better than the hyper-sexualized ultra-violent comic books (DC and Marvel and all the lesser evils) that were marketed to children and teens during my youth. Those still exist as well, by the way, but some have "mutated" into a more child-friendly Saturday-morning-cartoon versions. I wouldn't call that a good thing, but it's not this sky-is-falling pedeophillic waterfall.
What I have noticed is a trend toward tolerance and inclusivity in Children's books. There are more POC heroes, more meaningful characters who are disabled, and more protagonists coming from a background of adversity--refugees, single-parent, criminal parent, and other disadvantaged backgrounds than just an Oliver Twist orphan, or whatever trope tended to be overused in past fiction. I think this is a great thing. It helps develop empathy in children from stable nuclear-family households, and reassures those from disadvantaged backgrounds that they really can do anything they set their minds to; they don't have to be victims of circumstance but can be the hero of their story.
As for the NYT article; victimization of children will never be normalized. I suppose I shouldn't say so, since school mass shootings have become the accepted norm in America. Research into determining who is and who is not a pedophile seems like a worthwhile pursuit. I'd certainly prefer to know if our youth pastor or baseball coach was predisposed to pedophilia--and appropriate, better-targeted safeguards were maintained--as opposed to not knowing, and going back to the old days where two-person-integrity and other (possibly newer and better-informed) modern protections for children are no longer in place.
Public libraries do not offer porn. In all the blue states I've lived, I've never seen Hustler or Playboy on the magazine shelves of a public library. Perhaps your library is different.
Our societal problem is with the internet's easy access to porn, our country is redefining/examining what is porn. In the 1980's, when I left NYC's Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue, I passed the peepshows and XXX rated movie theaters. Our society had a clear definition of porn.
Since them, our mainstream movie rating system (G, GP, R & X) is shifting towards more sex and violence. Mainly because GP movies make more revenue with an edgy movie companies, yet want a GP rating to attract a wider audience. Our country has been playing around with the idea of child appropriate content for awhile.
It's move into books and especially in children's books.*
The question in North Dakota is what is porn and do we allow porn in libraries?. It's a legitimate question and with the advent of the internet, some people's perceptions of porn changed. Boundaries are being push and people are reacting.
*The move into children's book is linked to a rise in making pedophilia mainstream. I'm old enough to remember the Xeroxed Man-Boy Love advertising in NYC village's street lights.
Listen how this recent NYT article is redefining pedophilia:
Watch the language, cause it's only a matter of time before pedophilia is mainstream as "they were born this way." Doesn't this sound like Lady Gaga's lyrics?
I think you're in panic mode, and most of this has little to do with the situation in school libraries.
My local Target store still has two crammed full isles of paper towels they cant sell and don't have room to store in back because it is already full. People who hoarded TP and paper towels won't be buying them for years and years. Stores continued to order normal amounts but are severely overstocked due to all the people who still have pandemic supplies at home.
They incompetently broke the world for Covid and we will never go back to "normal."
I haven't heard about any stores having too much of anything, do you work at Target? Are you seriously trying to say that 2 years after lockdowns, they still have so much stock they can't sell it? I don't believe that for a second. Do you actually think most people after all this time have garages full of TP and paper towels so that no one is buying it anymore??? I see people with TP and paper towels in their cart everytime I go shopping. They control the amount they order, you know that, right?
Public libraries do not offer porn. In all the blue states I've lived, I've never seen Hustler or Playboy on the magazine shelves of a public library. Perhaps your library is different.
Our societal problem is with the internet's easy access to porn, our country is redefining/examining what is porn. In the 1980's, when I left NYC's Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue, I passed the peepshows and XXX rated movie theaters. Our society had a clear definition of porn.
Since them, our mainstream movie rating system (G, GP, R & X) is shifting towards more sex and violence. Mainly because GP movies make more revenue with an edgy movie companies, yet want a GP rating to attract a wider audience. Our country has been playing around with the idea of child appropriate content for awhile.
It's move into books and especially in children's books.*
The question in North Dakota is what is porn and do we allow porn in libraries?. It's a legitimate question and with the advent of the internet, some people's perceptions of porn changed. Boundaries are being push and people are reacting.
*The move into children's book is linked to a rise in making pedophilia mainstream. I'm old enough to remember the Xeroxed Man-Boy Love advertising in NYC village's street lights.
Listen how this recent NYT article is redefining pedophilia:
Watch the language, cause it's only a matter of time before pedophilia is mainstream as "they were born this way." Doesn't this sound like Lady Gaga's lyrics?
I DO believe pedophiles are born that way. Just like serial killers. That's why they can't be reformed, it's a compulsion they can't fight. I do not see any move to make pedophilia mainstream, and IMO many on the the Right are mistaken in what they see as the threat. There is all this talk of trans and gay people "grooming" but there is ZERO evidence that gay or trans people are more likely to be pedophiles. In fact it is usually a trusted authority figure, priest, teacher, uncle.
The porn access on computers IS a problem, I agree. If I had a child I would most definitely have website blockers. But I do not think the books they want to ban are porn, or they wouldn't be in the libraries in the first place. You said that yourself. I think people are going nuts like they did during the Salem Witch Trials, seeing pedophilia and sexualizing in everything (kids are being held in pizza place, really???) .
I think the threat of pedophiles for most kids is the same as it was 50 years ago when I was molested (a neighbor), 99% of the time it is someone the child knows who is married, goes to church and appears to be upstanding citizen. But that doesn't get people all riled up the way Trans story time does. People in power need division and enemies to stay in power, and the Right, it seems, has chosen it's enemies, and their followers are lapping it up to the detriment of (IMO) everything we are supposed to stand for. I never thought I would live to see book bannings on the scale they are happening, in this country. And it is not, IMO about protecting kids as much as it has to do with "We don't approve of certain lifestyles and so we want to restrict them".
One public library (not school library) was actually defunded by citizens vote, because they had one book about transgender they wouldn't get rid of. BUT they moved it from the library shelves to behind the library counter, where adults had to ask for it and show i.d. to take it out. But that wasn't good enough, they wanted the book gone. To me that shows that it has not one thing to do with children, but about wanting to ban anything they don't personally approve of. Who are they to tell every adult in that town what they can and can't read? I don't understand why people are accepting this so easily, it is fascism, and scary and dangerous to me.
As for the internet, I agree it has grossly increased international crime rings involvement in sex trafficking of both children and adults. The vast majority of them people who were poor and desperate being taken advantage of by unscrupulous mules and other people who pretend they want to help them. I don't know the solution to that, though. I do know that banning books and jailing librarians is not it, though.
In the 1980's, when I left NYC's Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue, I passed the peepshows and XXX rated movie theaters. Our society had a clear definition of porn.
I worked at the PABT at that time. The neighborhood has been Disneyfied since then, but if you want to see a glimpse of the old days, watch "The Times Square Killer" about Richard Cottingham, a serial killer who was operating there and on the other side of the Hudson in NJ at the time. Lots of footage of what it looked like back then.
I was only 20 in '79 when I started, and it was all new to me, the pimps waiting for runaways, the hookers coming out at lunchtime to pick up businessmen's business, the drug dealers, the porn shops and live sex shows. "Seven Into Snowy" on one marquee stands out in my memory.
Could we please stop straying so far away from education.
Hmm, good point.
So, I agree with the OP that a good education includes being made uncomfortable or being prodded to think about something other than one's own small world.
In Jr. High (dating myself here, nowadays it's called "middle school"), we had a music teacher who took us through Wagner's entire Ring of the Nibelung, telling the story and listening to the music. I loved it, but at one point, Mr. P. said "God is a myth". I remember him.grinning and casting his eyes around the room for a reaction. He didn't get one there, but some of the kids went home and told their parents, and I think there may have been a bit of a kerfluffle over it. We were a small borough known in the area as "the town of churches".
But it did make some of us think about how at one time these stories were believed to be as real as we believed Christianity to be.
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