Florida TV Cuts Feed as Ron DeSantis Shows Explicit Content in School Books

ThatRobGuy

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According to Newsweek, and several right-leaning media outlets like The Florida Voice and Fox News, the book is sexually explicit, containing masturbation, body fluids, and it has depictions of nudity and an erection. Considering this is a graphic novel, I can understand why people would find that problematic.

So either you overlooked this, or a whole lot of news outlets, including Newsweek are being misleading.
It's not just right leaning media outlets... my first thought was that was a possibility that someone doctored something up in photoshop to try to prove a point...but the content in question is available right on the Author's own "Google Books" page, and a lot of the explicit content in right there for all to see 30+ preview pages of the book they allow you view for free without buying it.
 
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FireDragon76

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Okay, here goes (we'll see if this sticks or if I get in trouble, I'll try to not use any explicit verbiage here)

There's a scene in the book where it visually depicts underage adolescent boys playing a game where each one has to "do a certain something" into a Gatorade bottle, and whoever "completes the deed last" has to drink it.

Does that clarify? If not, you're free to get on google and search for the book title and "Gatorade bottle" if you really wanna know.

I'm certainly not posting the actual illustration here.

**Correction: It was a mountain dew bottle

I don't know the specifics of Florida law, but it's an obvious red flag as to why it shouldn't be in Florida schools. Depictions of body fluids in sex acts for prurient purposes are obvious examples of obscenity, well recognized in several states and upheld by courts.

People don't want their kids exposed to things that are widely recognized as inappropriate or sexually degrading. This has nothing to do with being anti-gay, it's just a matter of common sense decency, and people are simply being dishonest by claiming this is a legitimate issue of censorship of potentially unpopular ideas.
 
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Pommer

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According to Newsweek, and several right-leaning media outlets like The Florida Voice and Fox News, the book is sexually explicit, containing masturbation, body fluids, and it has depictions of nudity and an erection. Considering this is a graphic novel, I can understand why people would find that problematic.

So either you overlooked this, or a whole lot of news outlets, including Newsweek are being misleading.
A boy fully covered by a sleeping bag with “motion” evident in his crotch.
The “nudity” was limited to side/back showers scene.
Nothing “explicit” at all.
 
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FireDragon76

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A boy fully covered by a sleeping bag with “motion” evident in his crotch.
The “nudity” was limited to side/back showers scene.
Nothing “explicit” at all.

The book is just full of crudeness and obscenity, even if it's not all that explicit. The kid in the book watches his dad's dirty VHS tapes and gets sexually aroused. I'm sorry, but even as a liberal Protestant, I fail to see how it's a good idea to have books normalizing inappropriate content and sexually degrading acts in schools.

Growing up in my home in the 80's and early 90's, we had no dirty magazines or tapes, nor did boy scouts camp ever involve kids masturbating together and attempting force kids to drink body fluids in a degrading act of sexual hazing. That kind of stuff is not normal or healthy, and people have every right to object to this kind of thing being normalized.
 
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Pommer

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The book is just full of crudeness and obscenity, even if it's not all that explicit. The kid in the book watches his dad's dirty VHS tapes and gets sexually aroused. I'm sorry, but even as a liberal Protestant, I fail to see how it's a good idea to have books normalizing inappropriate content and sexually degrading acts in schools.

Growing up in my home in the 80's and early 90's, we had no dirty magazines or tapes, nor did boy scouts camp ever involve kids masturbating together and attempting force kids to drink body fluids in a degrading act of sexual hazing. That kind of stuff is not normal or healthy, and people have every right to object to this kind of thing being normalized.
A good third of the way in, yes, as “backstory”; we see “Aiden’s” reaction to his dad’s stash of {inappropriate content}, from the belly up, and some thought bubbles.

The story is a fictionalized autobiography, maybe this is what happened to him and in order to heal and help others heal; so don’t be ashamed of awakening to one’s own body, even though “dad” leaving out his erotica was just as “abusive” as his ranting and raving.

It’s a survivor’s book, “this is what it was like for me, it gets better.”
Nothing more.
 
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Pommer

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Growing up in my home in the 80's and early 90's, we had no dirty magazines or tapes, nor did boy scouts camp ever involve kids masturbating together and attempting force kids to drink body fluids in a degrading act of sexual hazing. That kind of stuff is not normal or healthy, and people have every right to object to this kind of thing being normalized.
Yes, I agree some people will find quite a bit to be upset about with this title.
That’s great. But it is a needed thing for both those kids who are coming to terms with their sexuality and kids who never question theirs (who nonetheless want to know what “it might be like to be ‘that way’!”

The era of people deciding what is “acceptable” in our society is over.
Wherever the society is going to meander, that’s where it’s going to go, trying to “guide” it to one side or the other just exasperates the (shrinking) middle and the extremists “win” for a while.

Socially we’re becoming more liberal, even as the political realm skews more right.
That’s usually not a good combo, and something is bound to “give”.
 
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ThatRobGuy

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No, you do the maths. Which page is the explicit content on?
If you go to the author's own Google books page, open the book preview, page 131 is one such example
(and I have a sneaking suspicion that Mountain Dew didn't endorse that product placement)

I think a book can adequately express the journey of an adolescent discovering they're LGBT without that type of thing being depicted, correct?
 
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FireDragon76

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Yes, I agree some people will find quite a bit to be upset about with this title.
That’s great. But it is a needed thing for both those kids who are coming to terms with their sexuality and kids who never question theirs (who nonetheless want to know what “it might be like to be ‘that way’!”

The era of people deciding what is “acceptable” in our society is over.

Says who? This kind of attitude is what fuels extremism, as it represents a breakdown of negotiation, dialogue, and consensus-building. Every enduring society has rules about what is acceptable. Rules in themselves aren't inherently tyrranical, if they contribute to the common good.

Parents have every right to object to material in schools they deem indecent. It's real tyrrany to suggest that they should just shut up and trust so-called experts, who do not necessarily have their interests at heart, and who don't have to be around to pick up the broken pieces of broken lives left behind, in their libertarian fantasyland conceptualization of ethics.

Wherever the society is going to meander, that’s where it’s going to go, trying to “guide” it to one side or the other just exasperates the (shrinking) middle and the extremists “win” for a while.

It's the denial of the right of society as a whole to have any kind of norm that is the deeper problem.

Socially we’re becoming more liberal, even as the political realm skews more right.

You say that likes its some kind of historical inevitability, like a society can't destroy itself through internal conflict (it's happened before, like in Weimar Germany, until the bulk of Germans, tired of fighting in the streets and the filth in theaters, sided with the fascists). If that doesn't disturb you as a real possibility, you simply aren't being realistic, or worse, you don't care.
 
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Larniavc

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If you go to the author's own Google books page, open the book preview, page 131 is one such example
(and I have a sneaking suspicion that Mountain Dew didn't endorse that product placement)
How is that any more problematic than the hundreds of other comic where people routinely use firearms to kill people, get beaten to death, thrown of buildings, crushed to death by monsters?

What is so dangerous about human anatomy?
 
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FireDragon76

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How is that any more problematic than the hundreds of other comic where people routinely use firearms to kill people, get beaten to death, thrown of buildings, crushed to death by monsters?

What is so dangerous about human anatomy?

It features obscene, humiliating, sexualized depictions of minors in a book that could be read by children. If this were a book about a heterosexual person, featuring similar content, and it were in a school library, it would be withdrawn in a heartbeat and hardly anybody would blink an eye.
 
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Larniavc

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It features obscene, humiliating, sexualized depictions of minors in a book that could be read by children.
It's YA. Like the Hunger Games, Divergent and Maze Runner. It's not for little kids. They are not the target audience.
 
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Pommer

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Says who? This kind of attitude is what fuels extremism, as it represents a breakdown of negotiation, dialogue, and consensus-building. Every enduring society has rules about what is acceptable. Rules in themselves aren't inherently tyrranical, if they contribute to the common good.

Parents have every right to object to material in schools they deem indecent. It's real tyrrany to suggest that they should just shut up and trust so-called experts, who do not necessarily have their interests at heart, and who don't have to be around to pick up the broken pieces of broken lives left behind, in their libertarian fantasyland conceptualization of ethics.



It's the denial of the right of society as a whole to have any kind of norm that is the deeper problem.



You say that likes its some kind of historical inevitability, like a society can't destroy itself through internal conflict (it's happened before, like in Weimar Germany, until the bulk of Germans, tired of fighting in the streets and the filth in theaters, sided with the fascists). If that doesn't disturb you as a real possibility, you simply aren't being realistic, or worse, you don't care.
I see. The marginalized people have to bear the brunt of society’s fears and simply stop openly existing so that the vast majority can “feel safe”.
Pitiful.
 
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rambot

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Says who? This kind of attitude is what fuels extremism, as it represents a breakdown of negotiation, dialogue, and consensus-building. Every enduring society has rules about what is acceptable. Rules in themselves aren't inherently tyrranical, if they contribute to the common good.

Parents have every right to object to material in schools they deem indecent. It's real tyrrany to suggest that they should just shut up and trust so-called experts, who do not necessarily have their interests at heart, and who don't have to be around to pick up the broken pieces of broken lives left behind, in their libertarian fantasyland conceptualization of ethics.
Parents have every right to object but that doesn't mean the school has an obligation to respond to every single complaint. When it is the parents' responsibility to tell their kid "hey don't take out these books" or deal with it on their own terms? Why is the state superimposing one particular parent group's response to a source over others?

I've seen it been said many many times that children are not racist. They are born racist; they simply are not. It is a mindset and idea that is given by parents.

So yeah, sometimes parents are just wrong. Sometimes the kids of racist parents probably SHOULD read a book that explains how Eid is all about. Sometimes those racist terrible parents need to have their stupid outlooks undermined.
 
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FireDragon76

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I see. The marginalized people have to bear the brunt of society’s fears and simply stop openly existing so that the vast majority can “feel safe”.
Pitiful.

I never said anything like that. There's a difference between advocating that everybody be treated equally, and not discriminated against, and advocating for any and all content in schools.

We're talking about a public school. The public has every right to object to content they deem obscene or inappropriate.
 
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ThatRobGuy

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How is that any more problematic than the hundreds of other comic where people routinely use firearms to kill people, get beaten to death, thrown of buildings, crushed to death by monsters?

What is so dangerous about human anatomy?
Are violent comic books a staple of public schools?

And if they were, would be people try to defend them from requests for removal? Unlikely.

Saying "what's so dangerous about human anatomy?" is being deliberately obtuse.


The page I referenced in that book isn't an "anatomy lesson", it's not just a "gay theme". If someone was trying to ban a health book for an illustration of a penis or vagina, I'd be fighting against the ban. There's a big difference between "book with a gay theme" or "book that depicts a part of the anatomy"...and the kind of thing that was going on, on that page of the book.
 
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ThatRobGuy

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It's YA. Like the Hunger Games, Divergent and Maze Runner. It's not for little kids. They are not the target audience.
So what age group is the target audience for the kind of act depicted on page I mentioned?

Pretty sure if you were looking to see a video depiction of such an act among adults, you wouldn't even be able to find it on a regular adult website and would likely have to go to a sketchy one that specializes in certain "fetishes"

Even in the world of anime, such content would require the book to be sealed in plastic wrap and require the purchaser to prove they were 18+.
 
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ThatRobGuy

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A boy fully covered by a sleeping bag with “motion” evident in his crotch.
The “nudity” was limited to side/back showers scene.
Nothing “explicit” at all.
That's not the depiction in the book I was referring to.

We learned about masturbation in health class way back when I was in 6th grade, that's not "shocking"...and it's something that every adolescent male does (gay or straight)

The part in the book I was referring to was something very different.
 
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Larniavc

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Saying "what's so dangerous about human anatomy?" is being deliberately obtuse.
This is prudishness. America being terrified that might be taught about sex (gay or straight) instead of how to shoot guns is (to the rest of the world) baffling.

Is giving knowledge about a penis or vagina so terrible? Is it worse than teaching them how to effectively use a gun? Something at a person that will kill them? That's the crazy thing about America: terrified about people having sex the 'wrong' way but fine flooding their society with easy ways to kill people.

smh

BTW: I'm a little drunk as i write this so forgive my overdramatising.
 
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Larniavc

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Are violent comic books a staple of public schools?
Are you implying queer fiction is a 'staple' at schools? Is it on any of the lessons reading lists? I bet t he teachers notes are fun.
 
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