Senators Are Triggered By Porn They Claim Heals Traumatized Kids
It is time to retire these insane talking points.
When liberals go to leftist school to learn their talking points, one of the most popular tropes seems to be “children and teens need to ‘see themselves’ in the literature.” Every time parents point out that books and materials in their children’s school is graphically and/or pictorially obscene and violent, we can all make bank that the next thing coming from a liberal’s mouth will be one of these two accepted talking points: 1. You haven’t read the entire book so you don’t understand the context, and 2. Children need to ‘see themselves’ so they don’t feel alone, and the graphic depiction of a blow job or a violent physical and sexual assault is somehow a balm to the soul of a minor who is homosexual or has endured a violent assault.
Both of these tropes were on full display during both the March 8, 2024 State Board of Education meeting where rule changes were presented by Kirk Penner to eliminate legally defined sexually explicit material from school libraries, and also March 18-20, 2024 at the Nebraska Legislature where Senator Joni Albrecht’s LB 441 finally made it to the floor for debate after 4 years in committee, calling for school librarians and school teachers to be liable for the legally obscene materials some of them promote. Even though Senator Justin Wayne offered to amend the bill to repair legal concerns, three Republican “no” votes killed it. Senators Riepe, Hughes, and Brandt sided with obscenity.
Both the State Board and Nebraska Legislature attempts to insert some guardrails onto the autoban of school smut were defeated.
Regardless of your position on these rule change attempts, could we all just agree that some books have only shock value as a context, and that traumatized children who ‘see themselves’ by reading porn are actually being re-traumatized?
Truly Senators and Board Members, if you must be so sanctimonious, at least have the courtesy to not be so dangerously and colossally WRONG.
The kids are not OK. In 2021, 57% of girls showed signs of clinical depression.
The schools are determined to make it worse in a variety of ways, not the least of which is pretending to be centers for “mental health.” Exposing youth to material that is gratuitously violent, sexually explicit, and steeped in profanity, substance abuse, and depravity is not a treatment method mentioned in the DSM-5. For background read this: Should Schools Become Mental Health Practitioners?
Let’s look at the State Board meeting first. This video briefly summarizes the presentation. WARNING: Adult Content
Mr. Penner’s PowerPoint presentation made clear that the State Board does have the mandate to make this rule change. Three board members, Penner, Tegtmeier, and Jones, voted for the rule change. The other 5 members voted to keep the sexually explicit materials in the schools. All of them at one point agreed that there was age-inappropriate material being presented to minors, but they dutifully used accepted liberal talking points one and two above to defend them.
The early parts of the Legislative discussion can be found on the video below. If you start at about 1:06 you will hear Senator Machaela Cavanaugh state that the discussed materials are not in the schools since no one in the room has seen them. (That is accepted liberal talking point number 3.) She immediately followed her brother John Cavanaugh who implied that obscenity is in the eye of the beholder. At 1:15, Senator Halloran reads from one of the books that parents have found in schools, he starts by saying “Senator Cavanaughs.” Our take is that he was responding to both Senator Cavanaughs opinions that there is no obscenity in the schools, or that it is being overblown.
Without that demonstration, it is impossible for the public to understand exactly what parents mean when they say there is obscenity in our schools. Overcoming that denial is very difficult.
You can watch and make your own determination. DO NOT play audio if children are present.
After the reading by Senator Halloran, Senator John Cavanaugh immediately launched into accepted liberal talking point number one: context. At 1:21, Senator Machaela Cavanaugh calmly asked how much time is left for her comments and says she will wait. Then a couple more speakers had a calm discussion. Then Senator Machaela Cavanaugh had a crying fit.
Anyone who follows the legislature closely has been privy to multiple versions of Senator M. Cavanaugh’s crying fits, so it is difficult to know when it is real.
However, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt that she was emotionally triggered by the obscene passage that Senator Halloran read. She called it obscene and since the name Cavanaugh was incorporated into the reading, she put herself into the character of the victim in the book.
It must be noted that “context” did not play a role in Senator M. Cavanaugh’s distress regarding the passage. She had not read the rest of the book, refuting liberal talking point number one.
She did, however, milk that re-traumatization on social media for the rest of the night, even receiving a version of accepted liberal talking point number two from State Board of Education member Deborah Neary (She/Her).
The following morning, many of us watched with heartfelt concern while another Senator was visibly shaking as he recounted the triggering nature of the obscene book passage for him personally. Undoubtedly, many people who are victims, or love victims, of physical or sexual violence would be triggered towards a flashback or unbearable memory.
Many of those victims attend K-12 schools and have access to this material.
The fact that having the obscene passage read aloud DID trigger and re-traumatize grown adult Senators who have some degree of power and support is very illustrative. No one wanted to cause anguish to another, but that is what happened. That is what obscenity does.
Accepted liberal talking point number two, that traumatized children "need to see themselves" in the literature is wrong and dangerous. One Senator even suggested that youth who have not experienced sexual assault would gain empathy by reading such an explicit passage. NO!
These are not adults, most do not have life experiences to compare to this literature. Therefore, the obscene passages are either causing flashbacks to the trauma, or they ARE THE TRAUMA!
The Senators who were emotionally triggered by one obscene passage read aloud demonstated this firsthand. Anyone who treats traumatized children or teens knows that the WORST THING YOU CAN DO is to trigger a flashback to their trauma when they are not expecting it, and are alone and not being supported. Such as in a school library.
Imagine a 15-year-old girl who has been a victim of sexual violence, sitting in her school library and reading that passage. She might have a psychotic breakdown, she might start throwing furniture. She might attack someone or walk in front of a bus. Everyone would wonder what happened to make her “freak out.” No one would ever recognize there was a connection to a book.
There are real people experiencing real consequences due to our societal negligence.
Go back and look at that graph from 2021 showing that 57% of girls had signs of clinical depression. Do you wonder what the number is today?