I don't know how many of you follow the Young Adult literary world, but sex is an issue often (and unsurprisingly) dealt with. What I'm interested in talking about is how sexuality is approached in teen literature today (and how people generally react to it). My specific example involves John Green's novel "Looking For Alaska". In the book there is an extremely awkward oral sex scene involving the narrator and a girl that he has been dated and isn't really interested in. It's a very short scene, and nothing else sexually explicit happens to the narrator for the rest of the story, but when a school in New York tried to assign the novel as reading material for an English course several parents got a little upset. This incident happened two years ago, but the video that the author posted in response is still online and further explains the situation as well as his intent in writing the oral sex scene in his novel.
What do you think of John Green's reasoning? How do you feel sexuality should be approached in Teen Literature and why?
*Bonus Question!* Why do people throw the word pornography at anything and everything involving sex?
I think John Green is the king of YA, and so I may be slightly biased, but one of the reasons I feel that way is because of how intelligently he deals with issues like sex, death, and identity. He's certainly a realist, he recognizes that we are sexual creatures by nature and no matter how much we'd like to deny it, our experiences with sex (or perhaps just how to navigate our sexual society)during the teenage years are pivotal. I feel much the same way about how sexuality should be approached in teen literature, give teens the knowledge to make good decisions, but don't shame them into thinking sex is bad or damning or that they have to be chaste 'or else'.
ReplyDeleteAs for the word pornography, I'm tempted to say it has stemmed from religious condemnations of any sort of pre-marital or extramarital sexual activity, and sex generally being seen as a base activity .... but that's just a guess.
Thanks for sharing this video Whitney. I read this book a few years ago and actually hardly remember this specific scene. I suppose it didn't even really phase me. While reading the scene, I don't even remember being under the impression that it was pornographic at all. I think that adults need to realize that teenagers should be educated about their sexuality, as opposed to trying to hide it and pretend teenage sexuality doesn't exist. By banning a book like this, what message does this send to teenagers about oral sex? I think this is a great post that relates very well to the readings about how to educate teens about oral sex as well as other types of sex. And to answer your question about what is pornography, that's difficult because I never really think about it. According to the world english dictionary it means:
ReplyDelete"1. writings, pictures, films, etc, designed to stimulate sexual excitement
2. the production of such material "
It's interesting because by this definition I suppose a lot of things could be considered "pornography" and not just the assumed online websites and such.