Since I haven’t read this book, I can’t vouch for the material inside. Based on the title, it sounds like a book that attempts to help young girls feel okay about their bodies. Perhaps someone in the bookselling industry, or someone that’s actually read the book, can shed some light on the materials therein.
But banned thanks to the complaints from one mother? Really?
It seems to me that if you think your 16 year-old daughter will be damaged by a book about their own bodies, then perhaps your biggest problem isn’t the book in the library.
The librarian looked at and agreed. Apparently it had stick figures going over various sexual positions. I don’t actually have a problem with the illustrations if that’s the case, but it’s not the most unreasonable complaint I’ve ever heard when it comes to parents trying to get a book out of the school library.
A 16 year old wanting to learn more about her body and sex? 16 is too young to be learning about those things in school! Won’t somebody please think of the children?!
Well, you couldn’t really expect her to open to the main part of the book without protective goggles on now could you? Who knows what filth, wretchedness, and perversions lie within.
So they should walk down the street after school to the public library where they can check out such smut and filth and bring it to school to show their friends.
And I suppose they regularly go through the text books and white out/erase all the breasts and penises drawn on the pictures therein?
Or have kids stopped doing that in the couple years I’ve been out of high school?
I agree with Neurotik it’s not a completely unreasonable complaint, but at the same time I want to shake my head because last time I checked high school kids were 15+ and by that point were getting some interesting facts from their peers. A little straight dope on sex won’t hurt them, especially as it’s not like the school is forcing their precious daughters to read this smutty evil book.
Because marriage is between a man and a woman and we need an amendment to prevent anybody from marrying those damn stick figures! I mean, you can’t even tell which is which!
I don’t happen to believe that showing figures in sexual positions automatically “counts” as “porn”, but in the interests of research, I will go and look. I see from a search of the Decatur Public Library’s online database that while they do not have a copy of Deal with It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain and Life as a Gurl, the Rolling Prairie Library System detects one down in Chatham. I will request it tomorrow and get back to you sometime next week.
…unless God strikes me down for reading porn, in which case I hereby bequeath all my unused SDMB pixels to the Salvation Army.
This whole crapola of wanting to shield people from violence and sex is stupid. The whole point of exposure to such things in a controlled/safe environment is to better prepare them for the inevitable encounter in unsafe, real world environment. I wish people would have some fucking courage and realize this.
Everything but the spelling on the message boards, which is offensively abysmal. Methinks that some of these gurls (argh!) should spend a little less time worrying about where their clitorises (clitorii?) are and a little more time learning how to spell. But that’s just me.
Meanwhile, nerts to Mrs. Myers. When young Pamella comes home with an STD or unintended pregnancy, she’ll learn her lesson the hard way about why access to information about sexual matters – even if accompanied by “pornographic” stick figures – is important.
From talking to my peers now (I’m 20), I’ve heard some hilarious misconceptions that they had as teenagers about sex due to lack of good sex education. Some of them only figured certain human anatomical issues out during their first sexual experiences. And guess what? Despite the efforts of backwards loonies everywhere, my generation is still sexually active. Ignorance won’t stop human nature from taking its course; it will just lead to unnecessarily risky behavior.
