Amended: 2-25-86
APPENDIX A
PATRON'S REQUEST FOR RECONSIDERATION OF A WORK
(Attach extra pages if needed to complete statements)
Author, composer, producer, artist, etc.____ Drill, Esther & McDonald, Heather & Odes, Rebecca _
Title_ Deal With It! A whole new approach to your body, brain and life as a gURL ____
Publisher (if known)____ __________________ Pocket Books ______________
Request initiated by___Laurie Taylor _______________________________
Telephone__443-2014_______ Address_____1343 Equestrian Way_________
Complainant represents: __x__himself
_____Name of organization_________________________________________________
_____Identify other group__________________________________________________
1. To what in the work do you object? Please be specific, cite exact parts: SEE ATTACHED FOR EXACT PARTS
I object to the graphic and casual attitude this book deals with sex. It furnishes sexual instruction for girls. - The book describes oral sex, anal sex, group sex, masturbation, orgasms, sex toys including dildos and vibrators, homosexuality, bisexuality, and other sex topics. The book has specific instructions for different sex acts along with cartoon images and "advice" from girls taken from the website describing their own sexual experiences and viewpoints. Such depictions begin the desensitization process for accepting this behavior as normal. –
- Using objects: “Body massagers.. Dildos.. often.. resemble a penis. Vibrators.. designed for penetration, others for external use. Anything, as long as it’s clean, unbreakable, and has no sharp edges, is a fair game as a sex toy”
- “role playing… Tying each other up (bondage).. Sadomasochism (S&M).. deliberately inflicts pain.. kind of power role-playing. These games can be fun to experiment with.. Multiple partners Three-way sex.. An orgy or group sex..”
- Recommendation for the “first time”: ..request he perform oral sex on you first. ..lubricates things up.. condoms.. lubricated kind.”
“Vaginal sex… hiding the salami.. screwing laying.. fucking.. doing the nasty.. bumping uglies.. penis-vagina penetration is just one part of sex.. not necessarily the best part” stick figures illustrating boy on top, girl on top and boy behind girl positions “known as doggie style” a discussion of how it is important to be well lubricated and lubricants
I object to the fact that this book violates several school policies, including but not limited to Student Discipline Policy 5.17: Sexual Harassment Policies 4180& 4250; Student Publications and the Distribution of Literature 5.14. I would also point out that a teacher of 12th grade students could not read this book aloud to a class without repercussions, a student could not give a written let alone an oral book report on this book, and 2 students could not discuss the content of this book on school property without violating school policy and being disciplined . I would also add that if read aloud at a PTA meeting parents would be incensed and answered would be forth coming. I also believe that a teacher reading this to a single student could face charges of sexual harassment, child endangerment, sexual assault and many other crimes that are perpetrated on minor children by adults with heinous motives.
I object to the fact that the school is sanctioning this explicit language. According to the US Supreme Court, providing students with this pornographic language, images, and behavior sends the message to the student that it is acceptable - to the school and society.
The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently recognized society’s “compelling interest” in protecting minors from sexually explicit material defined as “harmful to minors.” The societal availability of pornography erodes public standards of morality affecting all members of the community and in particular children. In Ginsberg v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the observations of psychiatrist Dr. Gaylin of the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Clinic, reporting on the views of psychiatrists in the Yale Law Journal: “Psychiatrists made a distinction between the reading of pornography, as unlikely to be per se harmful, and the permitting of the reading of pornography, which was conceived as potentially destructive. The child is protected in his reading of pornography by the knowledge that it is pornographic, i.e. disapproved. It is outside of parental standards and not a part of his identification process. To openly permit implies parental approval and even suggests seductive encouragement. If this is so of parental approval, it is equally so of societal approval—another potent influence on the developing ego.”
2. What of value is there in this work?_____I personally find no educational, informational or literary value in this work.
3. What do you feel might be the result of reading, viewing, or listening to this work?
The language and acts in this book are so shocking, not to mention irresponsible that they are sure to cause impressions to be branded on the minds of minors. The author’s descriptions of sexual acts is intended to titillate and persuade children to imitate them. Encouraging this type of behavior in the day of Aids and soaring STD’s can only result in more health issues for the students- and anguish and expense for the parents who will be left holding the bag. Soliciting, encouraging, and supplying children with detailed instructions on how to perform oral sex…,(“ .. Concentrate on the head.. Underneath the shaft is also a good place.. roll your tongue down the bottom of it. If it’s.. big one.. don’t try to get the whole thing in your mouth.. might.. gag.. have fun and just go with what seems right. ..literally sucked on his penis.. when you ‘suck’ .. kinda put him in your mouth.. bob your head up and down sliding your hand up and down his penis at the same time. ..think guys like it better if you swallow, but if it grosses you.. move your mouth away.. cover the head with your hand so he’s not squirting all over the place. ..ain’t so bad. ..Wouldn’t put it on my cornflakes, but it doesn’t taste too heinous!” )( - “eating out cunnilingus going down.. like fingering a girl.. just using the tongue.. make a girl cum.. some guys just like eating girls.. he knows I like it a lot..” Discussion on how condoms, some flavored like touch o’ mint, or dental dams are required to be totally safe. “69 is simultaneous oral sex.. Vaginal fluids are meant to be aphrodisiacs. That’s why people get off on going down on girls: the smell, the taste,..” )
anal sex, (“Anal sex: penetration of the anus by a penis or other stuff, such as fingers.. many people find.. this.. pleasurable.. should involve substantial lubrication”) and how to masturbate; to endorse the use of sex toys, i.e. dildos; to promote and espouse the pleasures of sadomasochism, bondage, and orgies (- “role playing… Tying each other up (bondage).. Sadomasochism (S&M).. deliberately inflicts pain.. kind of power role-playing. These games can be fun to experiment with.. Multiple partners Three-way sex.. An orgy or group sex..” ) constitutes pandering to minors and results in the decay of contemporary community standards and moral decorum.
Every child will process this information differently. Many children will become confused and anxious after being confronted with this crude, sexual pontification. For some children, this book could be life altering. They will be stimulated by the passages but will feel guilt and disgust for doing so. Harold Voth, who is on the faculty of the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas, states, “there are millions of people who appear manifestly healthy, but who also harbor substantial latent sicknesses which are residues of developmental arrests or abnormal development which may find expression in sexual perversions. Thus, viewing pornography, most of which depicts perverse behavior, activates the developmental sexual arrests which exist in millions of people”... Dr. Voth sees such exposure as especially damaging to the young who are on the threshold of entering into an active sexual life. For them, these vital processes should be guided toward greater maturity, not retrogressively toward perversion or transient, meaningless sex. As he states, "Society and individuals alike can only be harmed when we legitimize abnormal behavior."
Information of this nature should be handled by adults, preferably parents, and explained in a clinical way rather than presented in raw gutter language like in this book. At the very least, parents should know their child is reading about such subjects and have the opportunity to discuss it with them. he law doesn't even allow sex education without parental consent. This book is sex instruction not education and is handled in a deviant way to desensitize and demoralize children by asserting that sex is some raw animalistic purging of bodily fluids with no physical, moral, or emotional consequences. ANY responsible mentally stable, sexually healthy adult would know the dangers of this material in the hands of an immature, sexual naïve child.
4. For what age group would you recommend this work?__Not Any_________________
5. Did you read, view, or listen to the entire work?_______Yes____________________
What pages or sections?______________________________________________
6. Are you aware of the judgment of this work by critics?_____Yes_________________
7. Are you aware of the teacher's purpose in using this work?___No________________
8. What do you believe is the theme or purpose of this work?___________________
The purpose is shock value, to desensitize children to vulgarity, to titillate children sexually, and to demoralize and devalue human sexuality under the guise of literature and education.
This book being available to children without parental consent and knowledge undermines the district’s own espousal of “parental involvement” by exposing the child to perverted sexual information about which the parents have no knowledge. This act affronts any effort by a parent to pass on a normal, let alone virtuous philosophy of the most critical and extraordinary relationship known to man.
This type of sexually explicit material trivializes human sexuality and demeans human relationships
9. What would you prefer the school do about this work:
____Do not assign or recommend it to my child.
__x__Withdraw it back from all students. Without parental knowledge and consent.
____Send it back to the proper department for reevaluation.
I am only asking for parental permission for students to have access to this book. NY City actually “yanked” it from the shelves of 371 middle and high schools immediately upon discovery, days before school started in 2003.
10. In its place, what work of equal value would you recommend that would convey as valuable a picture and perspective of a society or set of values?
I my opinion this book does not convey any valuable picture or perspective of society; conversely, it undermines moral integrity and community values and sends a dangerous message, that as long as it is “written” vulgarity and profane sexual content are acceptable and educational.
Signature of the complainant
Laurie Taylor 8/1/05