Outrage from parents and citizens last week saw a children’s book Welcome to Sex! pulled from the shelves of select retailers nationwide.
According to the blurb, this brightly illustrated book is targeted at 12-15-year-old kids. The inside cover adds ‘an apprehensive 11-year-old’.
Across suburbia and in the regions, many parents wrote frustrated reviews on the Big W website, who were previously selling the book. These reviews were promptly deleted in favour of others that glowed with approval. After leaving several one-star rating reviews that wafted off into cyberland, I toyed with the idea of sending screenshots to Sky News and 2GB.
Screenshots of my comments were shared on social media pages including Telegram and Messenger groups. Preaching to the converted, I supposed, but I picked up as many tips as I gave. I shared links about how to write reviews on other book-selling sites for concerned citizens.
My day job suffered. I pecked at my keyboard, swept along in a rising swell of indignation. The children’s book in question offers the lowdown on anal sex, hand jobs, oral sex, penis size, fingering, and sex positions to achieve orgasm (69 and scissoring). All of this is complete with cartoon illustrations.
Transgender-isms aplenty could potentially confuse children with gender identity and reassignments. There are also pages to downplay virginity (‘such an outdated concept’).
Many have asked how such a book could be sold in the family-friendly section.
Simmering activism took me into the local library to voice my protest at the Pride display by adding post-it notes reading: ‘Let kids be kids’. I also turned some of the books inwards, but my efforts were soon righted. I lurked in Big W stores, checking the shelves for age-inappropriate books until the PA system blared Voice referendum propaganda. I complained to the manager and then wrote a letter to The Australian, which was ignored.
There’s the crunch. We citizen activists cannot hope to insert a few words into any form of mainstream media.
Their ABC, that jewel in the crown of thorny activism, recently excelled itself by promoting a cartoon favourable to puberty blockers. To uplifting music and a glowing sun, it showed a 10-year-old boy excited to start puberty blockers to ‘pause’ his body in a gentle transition. ‘I’m 10. When I was younger I just didn’t feel right and everything felt wrong. I saw girls with hairbrushes and Barbies and like them having cool long hair. Oh! I want that hair, I’d like that dress. I knew that I wanted to be a girl and I was a girl but I didn’t really know what to say or how to say it or if it was true.’ The cartoon ends with, ‘I am who I want to be, I can do what I want to do.’
An ABC spokesperson defended the cartoon at the time, saying it met editorial guidelines.
But take heart, citizen activists. Some retailers have removed the latest sex education book aimed at children. They complained that their staff were subjected to ‘offensive behaviour’. Grey activists, abusive? Us? We should compare the treatment of Posie Parker and Moira Deeming at Let Women Speak rallies to a handful of concerned parents turning over books. Neo-Nazis we are not. Instead, we are grateful to emerge unscathed as cultural victors in one battle amongst many after following the great activist tradition of … writing book reviews.
