School Porn is Not Accidental

Here's the Proof

Friday, March 8, 2024, the Nebraska State Board of Education will be debating their library/media policy change proposal.

Briefly, the proposal has two parts:

First, prevent sexually explicit materials in schools. Here is the description from the proposed rule.

“(d) "Pornographic" means: 1. depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct which are patently offensive as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, considering the youngest age of students with access to the material, 2. materials that, taken as a whole, have as the dominant theme an appeal to prurient interest in sex as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, and 3. a reasonable person would find the material or performance taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific purposes or value, considering the youngest age of students with access to the material.

(e) Sexually explicit content, meaning detailed or expressed without vagueness, implication, or ambiguity, whether by text or image, including but not limited to: (a) Real or simulated intercourse, whether genitalgenital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal between persons of the same or opposite sex or between a human and an animal or with an artificial genital; (b) real or simulated masturbation; (c) real or simulated sadomasochistic abuse; (d) erotic fondling; (e) erotic nudity; or (f) real or simulated defecation or urination for the purpose of sexual gratification or sexual stimulation of one or more of the persons involved; and visual depiction means live performance or photographic representation and includes any undeveloped film or videotape or data stored on a computer disk or by other electronic means which is capable of conversion into a visual image and also includes any photograph, film, video, picture, digital image, or computer-displayed image, video, or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, computer, digital, or other means.”

The second part of the proposal eliminates onerous and unnecessary minimum purchases that are currently mandated for each school. Currently, each school is required to provide 150 new book titles each year. Middle and high Schools are required to subscribe to 10 to 25 periodicals.

This minimum purchase requirement is a tremendous burden, especially on small schools, and board member Kirk Penner has proposed that it be eliminated.

Keep those minimum requirements in mind as you read on, as we believe they will be important.

Kami, a Norfolk, NE grandmother, took the time to do a survey of the high school libraries that she could gain access to through their online catalogs. (Not every school district allows access to an online catalog.)

She used this website to look up individual books at each individual school. If you try to replicate her search you will learn how much patience it takes.

https://www.gofollett.com/aasp/ui/pick/pick

She used this book rating site booklooks.org to find titles to search for. She chose 83 titles to search. Booklooks rates titles from 0 (no concerns, appropriate for children) to 5 (themes of sexual assault, battery, beastiality, or sadomasochistic abuse).

For reference, the book “To Kill a Mockingbird” is rated a 2.

If you make a comparison to movie ratings, a 3 would be equivalent to PG-13 (admission with an adult), a 4 would be equivalent to an R rating (adults only), and a 5 would be equivalent to an X rating (explicit sexual content and violence).

Kami chose 83 titles,

40 of them were rated 3,

39 of them were rated 4,

and only 4 of them were rated 5.

Remember those numbers.

Of the 148 high school libraries surveyed, 98% (145) of them had one or more of those 83 books. However, the breakdown is very illuminating.

Notice on the graphic that 16% of schools had at least one of the 40 titles of 3-rated books.

However, the 4-rated books (equivalent to R rated movies) were twice as popular as the 3-rated books. 33% of schools had at least one of those 39 titles.

Incredibly, the X equivalent 5-rated books were found in a whopping 49% of schools! Remember, there were only 4 of these X titles searched, and they were in half the schools.

Clearly, the more disturbing the content, the more likely it is to be found on the library shelf of a Nebraska high school. The obvious question is WHY?

Did 49% of Nebraska school librarians wake up one morning and say to themselves: “I think I should add some violent, sadomasochistic sexual content to our catalog?” No, we don’t believe there is any possibility this happened organically.

Remember the 150 book mandate?

What if the library does not have the budget to purchase 150 titles every year, would they accept donations? Were these books donated to 98% of the libraries, with the worst of the worst going to 49% of schools? That is the most obvious conclusion.

If so, who donated the books? Who paid for them, who dispersed them, and what is their agenda?

There are many examples of great age-appropriate literature for school libraries to choose from.

These controversial books are unnecessary. Here are excerpts from two of the four level-5 books. This is adult content. Are there some near-adults in high school? Yes. There are also younger adolescents at the school library. There is a big difference between a freshman and a senior, not the least of which is that seniors can drive themselves to the public library. They can go to the public library or Amazon to get these books if they wish.

“Sold” by Patricia McCormick.

“It is a simple kitchen sound, the grinding of spices with a wooden pestle. Sometimes it means nothing more than spicy stew for supper. But sometimes it means that the cook is readying the hot chili punishment for one of us. And then it is a sound that turns even the hardest woman here into a whimpering child. Because it means that someone has crossed Mumtaz, that Mumtaz will smear the chili on a stick and put it inside the girl, and that all of us will be awake throughout the night, listening to the girl moan. She pushes the cook aside, takes her stick, rolls it in the chili powder, and wheels around to face me. I fall to the floor, kissing her feet and weeping. She gives me a kick in the ribs, and all the air flies out of me in a whoosh. Then she is gone. Soon I hear a piteous wailing coming from the next room. Anita bends over me. “It’s Kumari, the new girl,” she says, stroking my hair. “She accepted a bangle bracelet from a customer.”

“Triangles” by Ellen Hopkins

“To offer up ever slender thread of control is frightening. Exhilarating. I am naked when he lays me, trembling, on the bed. “I won’t hurt you. Not if you’re very good.” He uses my stockings. One for my hands, which he crosses at the wrists, stretching them over my head. The other he wraps around my eyes. I’m swimming in a dark sea where something unseen waits for me. “Don’t move.” It’s hard to comply when his teeth rake my neck in a vampire style kiss, lower to my nipples. His bite is half brilliant hurt, half surreal pleasure. The scent, lifting from his hair, is spice. Cloves, I think. It’s sharp, sexy as hell. “Open your legs.” His face dives between them, and his mouth claims what he finds there. And when he says, “You can come now,” I am beyond ready. “Now that you’re wet, I’m going to do something I’ve always wanted to.” He slips one finger inside me. Two. Three. At four, the pressure becomes terrific. But when I squirm, he gives my arms a warning tug. “No. Hold still.” I do and he works his entire hand into that narrow place. And over the flashing silver pain, I shudder orgasm. “That’s my girl.” I wish I could see his rigid cock, fevered, and poised to push inside me. One wicked thrust and I come again. And again. And now, so does he.

When you look at the books that were searched in this review, you may notice that a large percentage of them were written by the same 4 or 5 “best-selling” authors. Are they “best-selling” because they appear in so many schools?

Some of these books, i.e. “The Color Purple,” are literary masterpieces with adult themes. Understood. But recall that only 16% of Nebraska high schools have level-3 books such as that one, while 49% of schools have at least one of the four level-5 books. Those statistics suggest that shock value trumps literary value when “media specialists” are making their choices.

Why has this issue become the hill to die on for those librarians and media specialists? Is it because they feel the need to defend the donations they accepted? Or is there another reason?

We support getting rid of the insane minimum requirement for new titles. As far as “sexually explicit” content is concerned, let those books prove their worthiness to be an exception, rather than forcing parents to explain why they shouldn’t be the rule.

by Sue Greenwald M.D. with special thanks to Kami Riley for sharing her research.