I hope that smiley means you’re kidding, Krisfer. It’s just as important for boys to learn how not to get a girl pregnant as it is for girls to learn how not to get pregnant themselves.
It’s a joke, it’s actually gURL if that helps any.
I can’t quite understand how you can have stick figures demonstrating sexual positions. Does one have a little stick penis? How do you draw a stick vagina? It seems like penetration, the most important part, could only be implied.
Plus I’m sure they can find much more detailed drawing in the bathroom walls.
Yes Momma, thank you for reminding me.
Has anyone here actually *seen * the book? I agree that libraries should not censor information about menstruation, STD’s, pregnancy prevention, etc., but to actually illustrate various sexual positions in a kids book seems a bit over the top, IMHO.
Let them figure it out like we did - with lots of elbows and knees and laughter and snorts - that’s part of what builds intimacy! 
Well, all stick figures are to some extent pornographic.
STICK FIGURES!?!?!?
What kind of message are we sending to our daughters? That you have to be pencil thin to be sexually active and popular? This book promotes anorexia, and should have been banned a long time ago!
And if they’re stick figures, how do we know they’re not (gasp) lesbians!
This book is obviously the product of the smut peddlers, the weight-loss industry and the crypto homosexual militants.
Well, I have a book of various Native American mythology and stories (from tribes all over the continent) and some of the spacers in the book are stick figures in this vein. So, going off from what I remember…For a woman: Draw a stick figure. Add a dot on each side to represent breasts, then rub out a bit of where the legs join the torso to get a bit of a slit representing a vagina.
For a man: Draw a stick figure. Add a little bit of a stick past the junction of legs and torso to represent the penis.
As for the rest, I’m not sure.
Have I gone without too long if I’m finding the concept of explicit sex performed by stick figures to be oddly titillating?
Yes.
Thought so. 
Oops, I might as well hide that astrological poster featuring 12 of the Kama Sutra positions performed by Afro hair stick figures, one under each sign.
:eek: I want this!
Well, Amazon has some pages available for view. No stick figures, unfortunately, but the Table of Contents and Index are there along with a few other pages. I’ve actually read the book (checked it out from the library) and certainly thought it perfectly appropriate for high school aged kids. As I recall, all the information was correct and imparted in an amusing and eye-catching fashion. That’s a bad thing?
I can’t believe they’re using stick figures when there are so many lovingly photographed and detailed works illustrating the exact same things out there.
Mrs Myers hasn’t read Cosmo recently, has she?
Because here’s a news flash, if the library doesn’t stock it, the cornershop has women’s magazines that are a whole lot more explicit.
And I’m not talking about the top-shelf porn.
Oh for the love of Pete, these people make me embarrassed to be a parent. I do not want to be part of a group they belong to!
I wonder- who picked this book to be in the library in the first place? Are they glanced at before purchase by the school or district or just thrown up on the shelves? Obviously, someone thought it was okay…
My first sex ed class was in the 4th grade, when I was 9. I don’t think I learned anything new.
Of course, in the 6th grade, we furtively passed around Forever by Judy Blume! Woo hoo!
I hear ya EJsGirl. Well except in 6th grade we furtively passed around Sybil. :eek:
I browsed the Amazon preview and except for the term “gurl” it is just the sort of thing I would WANT to give my girl as she hits puberty.
Maybe fer just damned orneryness, I’ll give it to my son… can’t be any worse than th Playboy he’ll be hiding in a few years!
That book looks awesome. I wish I’d had it as a kid. Of course, I’d have needed it more at 11 (for the body development stuff), but it’s got some great info, and it’s got stories from real girls so when you do have something different about your body (like big boobs at 13) you don’t feel so alone.
Okay, I have received the Chatham Public Library’s copy of this book, and I have now read it. (And so far God hasn’t struck me down for reading porn, so…)
My Book Report
Wow.
The End.
No, it is not porn.
This book is a fascinating, instructive, comprehensive, well-written blend of Our Bodies, Ourselves, The Joy of Sex, Seventeen magazine, and medline.com, goaskalice.com, and Dr. Dean Edell. How Pamela’s Mom could ignore all that and focus on a few simple pen-and-ink sketches is utterly beyond me. Unless, of course, she merely picked the book up, glanced at it, saw the “dirty pix”, and didn’t bother to actually read the book.
Besides the usual Health Ed-type of sketches of breasts (hubba hubba :rolleyes: ), there are:
[ul]
[li] three sets of stick figures on page 90 that illustrate the three major sexual positions (labeled “Boy on Top”, “Girl on Top”, and “Boy Behind Girl”). Only someone who was already familiar with the positions via actual practice would be able to fill in the blanks and visualize “two people having sex” from these. I am reminded of the way that it’s generally only the people who already know what an erect phallus looks like who are able to detect phalluses in things like Disney cartoons and McDonalds advertisements.[/li][li] a closeup, quite detailed drawing of female genitalia on page 16 (complete with smiling female face peering over the mons veneris at Faithful Reader, with a word balloon saying “Hello”), and on page 17 a series of quick sketches showing what different hymens can look like and explaining why you may not have one, exactly. Which are drawings that I wish I had had, growing up in the 1960s, because I spent a certain amount of time worrying about why, when I looked between my legs with a hand mirror, it didn’t look like there was some kind of mysterious “membrane” there. If I had had this book, I would have known what I had was well within normal parameters, and its lack of “imperforateness” was easily explained by the fact that I rode horses once a week.[/li][li] a small drawing on page 60 of what an erect penis looks like, which is also something I wish I had known earlier than “my wedding night”. In high school Health class, they show you those standard Health Ed drawings of a limp noodle, which was a great source of puzzlement, because it didn’t seem to jibe with the bodice-rippers’ description of “throbbing manhood”.[/li][li] a sketch on page 44 of a woman’s crotch, illustrating what an average mat of female pubic hair looks like. More drawings of full-length female nudes on pp. 46-47, showing variations on the theme of “how much pubic hair should you have”. Message: “Whatever you got is ohh-kay.” I also wish I had known this, I would have spent less time worrying about whether my pubic hair was normal. Apparently, it is. Good to know at age 49.[/li][li] an abstract drawing on page 72 showing a seated woman with her legs spread, masturbating by touching herself “down there”. Message: “Masturbation is okay. Masturbation is normal.” Which was also something I wish someone authoritative had told me when I was in high school, because the Reverend Dave Wilkerson was completely convinced that I was going to burn in Hell forever for it, especially after I read Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask when I was a sophomore (borrowing it from the girl who sat next to me in Chorus, a senior, who smirked knowingly as she handed it to me.) I had no idea…And eventually I grew up a bit and realized that masturbation is a normal part of sexuality, and that all those preachers who preached against “self-pollution” just had issues with sexuality, period, and I threw away all my Jesus Person literature.[/li][/ul]
But “sexuality” isn’t the only thing in this book, not by a long shot. It’s actually only a small portion–there’s far more information on things like, well, practically everything that has to do with your body. Nutrition, bulimia, drug use, mood swings, clinical depression, abortion, contraception, you name it, and it covers relationships, religion, and money management, too, just for good measure. There’s advice on what to do if a guy who’s a “friend” suddenly gets romantically interested in you. There’s advice on how to handle your boyfriend’s pressure to go down on him. There are frank discussions of rape, date rape, incest, sexual harassment, and molestation. What do you do if your parent comes out of the closet? What is “Wicca”?
And throughout, there is a positive, affirming message that “What you have, and what you are, is what’s right for you.” For example, there’s an informative discussion of how those fashion models in those glamorous Seventeen photo shoots get to look that way, that it takes about 20 people to get her dressed, made up, lit, and carefully photographed.
And it includes the information that sexuality is a continuum, that it’s ohh-kay to groove on boys but to occasionally think about girls.
There isn’t anything in this book that isn’t available through other sources, there are no unusual insights. But it’s packaged attractively, soft-bound, not hard-bound like an intimidating textbook, and it’s written at a refreshingly candid high-school level.
Now, there are people who would refuse to allow teens access to the “sex” information on the grounds that it “might give them ideas”. “Tell a girl what fellatio or ‘doggie-style’ is,” they announce, “and next thing you know, she’ll want to try it.” (I’m guessing that Pamela’s mom would fall in this group.)
To which I respond, “So?” Isn’t it better for her to find out what a “blow job” is through looking it up in a book, than by having her boyfriend lay it on her in a confrontational way in the back seat of a car, “If you loved me, you’d do this”? Knowledge is power.
So, who needs this book? This book is perfect for the high school girl who who needs to know what a “blow job” is because the other girls are always talking about it and she’s embarrassed to admit she doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or what that white itchy cheesy discharge is between her legs, and she can’t ask her mother because it might be a STD and her mother would think she’d been putting out for some boy somewhere, or what “poppers” are, or what, and where, a “clitoris” is, or what she should do about her friend who keeps cutting herself.
In other words, this is a book that needs to be on the shelf of a high school library.
This book is not something that I would hand to either my 14-year-old daughter or my 20-year-old daughter and say, “You need to read this.” It’s Too Much Information. The sex stuff, as I said, is only a small part of it. It would be like handing her the AMA Family Medical Encyclopedia and telling her, “You need to read this.”
But for the occasional look-up, it’s perfect.
I feel sorry for Pamela.
P.S. I ran this past the Better Half. I explained the issue to him and handed him the book. “Is this porn?” I asked him. He leafed through it, and handed it back.
“Yep.”
I was stunned. “How is it porn?”
“Because, like the Supreme Court said, it appeals to prurient interest.”
“But, it wasn’t written in order to appeal to prurient interest. It was written like Our Bodies, Ourselves.”
He gave me a blank look. I said, “You do know what Our Bodies, Ourselves is, don’t you?”
No, he didn’t. I told him, “It’s like an owner’s manual for women’s bodies, from the 1960s.”
He said, “Well, it doesn’t matter. If I were a 13-year-old boy, those drawings would appeal to my prurient interest, and that makes it porn.”
I said, “The Sears Roebuck underwear catalog appeals to a 13-year-old boy’s prurient interest. Is the Sears catalog porn?”
“No, and that’s why this book needs to be on the library’s shelf, because it wasn’t written to be porn, it was written to be resource material–but it’s still porn.”
We had to agree to disagree on whether it was porn. He agreed that it was silly to take it off the shelf, because he’s opposed to censorship, but he still maintains that it “counts” as porn.
Duck Duck Goose, you’ve done us all a wonderful service in locating and reading this book. I’d like to be the first to thank you for your summation in the fight to End Ignorance.
I suspected the book contained much of what you detailed, but wasn’t certain.
Nice work! 