Full disclosure: not at ALL an expert in these matters, so take my words with a grain of salt. Apologies if I cause confusion/distress.
Hrm, well, I think it might depend on what age this book is meant for. I personally wouldn’t be comfortable with elementary kids being shown this (mainly for the wording and illustrations, I’d maybe be more ok teaching these topics to younger kids if it was more like a clinical textbook, with dry explanations and simple diagrams (“oral sex” instead of the slang term “blowjob”, a clinical illustration of an erection instead of “the bulge”, eg.).
For somewhat older kids, I see this being a case-by-case. Some tweens/teens might see it as informative, others outright pornographic. I personally am looking at these illustrations and, for my personal tastes/standards, this leans heavily into porn territory.
But like I said, I’m not an expert, I’m just giving my two-cents. If anyone feels like I’ve said anything inappropriate or insulting, please let me know. Thank you.
I don’t think so. Taken out of context, those pages certainly look bad. But I like to go to the source and see for myself. I highly recommend that for everyone. I downloaded the book on Kindle and am about 3/4 of the way through it. While there are a few panels that seem graphic, that should not class the entire book as porn. An age restriction for the preteens seems appropriate, but teens should be able to read this. It will pertain to some of them, and they will never get any better information than this from school or their parents. Even if they don’t have this particular issue, the fact that others have these kinds of issues lets them know that not everyone is rigidly male or female, straight or gay, etc.
A book is incapable of being child pornography if it contains no photographs of children in sexual situations. I don’t understand people that refer to books and illustrations as child pornography, I really don’t. It minimizes what victims go through.
The victim isn’t what’s important here to them, rather it’s the nature of the so-called perpetrator.
When we say, fiction and actual CSAM aren’t the same, we’re obviously right, but we’re also missing the point. They obviously aren’t the same in an absolute sense - what is? - but they are the same in the sense that they are consumed and sought out by people with pedophilic Interests. To the ANTI, that’s the only sense that matters.
Anti’s aren’t motivated out of a deep care for children, but rather a deep hatred of pedophiles. CSAM and fiction are both consumed by pedophiles, Ergo. They’re both reprehensible.
Then they are the very same people that hate other marginalized groups because they exist and they’re worth the same ounce of brain cells of my attention. I’m not willing to fight their hate with anything less than understanding, information, love, and reason.