Archive for September 21, 2010

September 21st, 2010

An Invitation (Perhaps a Plea) to Explore…

I recently read on Blogging Censorship, the blog of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), of two recent cases of proposed or fulfilled book banning in (United States) school libraries. The first was at Sequoyah Middle School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, in response to a complaint from a parent about the book Shooting Star by Fredrick McKissack Jr. The school board faced a decision in August about whether to allow the book to remain on the school library’s shelves, which it ultimately did. The second case was at Stockton High School in Stockton, Missouri, which a few weeks ago held a public forum about its April ban of the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie from classrooms and the school library.

In the Oklahoma case, a parent complained that Shooting Star used the word “fuck” in the text 45 times.

In the Missouri case, one of the dissenting parents had this to say:

Mike Holzknecht, who has two children in Stockton schools, supports the ban. He displayed several large copies of pages in the book, one of which described masturbation.

“I am proud of you guys for saying no. Here’s the limit,” he said to the board, pointing to the pages. “We’re not going to take it.

“It’s an insult to my son and my daughter to say we have to have stuff like this in our schools to make them read,” Holzknecht said.

So. “Fuck” and masturbation. These are what we collectively feel so afraid of our children being exposed to, from which it is so important to protect them. A word that has been known to refer to sex and a personal act that involves oneself. Huh.

Listen, parents who initiated and continued action to have these books banned from school: I am not a parent. I do not pretend to know how challenging and intense being one may be. There have been many times when I have observed something related to children or parenting and recognized and acknowledged that I do not know how I would respond or act in that situation.

It seems strongly evident to me, however, that acting like sex doesn’t exist, or that it’s something scary or wrong or bad, is not helpful. It is not going to contribute to kids’ developing aware and whole perspectives about this intrinsic area of life. It’s not going to help children respect their bodies, their instincts, each other more. It very well may interfere with these things.

What it is more likely to result in is things like the adult services section of a popular website being shut down and efforts to put people in jail for selling products designed to invoke sexual stimulation because so many adults seem so skittish about sex that openness or professional services around it seem to scare them enough to try to pretend it doesn’t exist, at least in ways they feel uneasy about, in adults too.

Another way of putting it is that these adults may have been privy to this kind of sex-phobic teaching as children too.

As has occurred to me many times, what I wish or would prefer is that adults not simply project things onto children because it seems easier (which in a way it almost undoubtedly is, though in another way it results in suffering because it is ignorant) instead of examining themselves. I truly don’t blame people for experiencing issues around sexuality. (In some ways, I may relate.) The society in which we live has seemed to me to act rampantly pubescent and/or puritanical about sex, and it does not seem to nurture an open, aware environment or tendency to nurture those characteristics individually around it. It thus does not seem surprising to me that inner distortions, conscious or unconscious, exist in numerous adults around sexuality.

But that is what they are—they are issues in oneself around this complex and inherent-to-life subject and area of life. Projecting them outward thoughtlessly, especially onto youth, is a disservice to all. Doesn’t that make sense? If you are not examining, and indeed sometimes experiencing the discomfort of, working through your own issues, don’t you see how simply projecting outward whatever you are not facing in yourself subconsciously or unconsciously is perpetuating that cycle? It means the kids subjected to this kind of projection may more likely themselves not learn how to self-examine and may even develop some of the same unconscious and subconscious issues around sexuality that have not been worked through in the adults around them.

In this way, examining oneself may truly be a way to break a lot of cycles. This terminology may be familiar in its usage in domestic violence campaigns—”breaking the cycle” of violence has been spoken of in this context. There are many more “cycles,” phenomena of ignorance and unawareness in ourselves, that are similarly perpetuated, albeit seemingly in not as grotesquely obvious ways. This is one of them. When we aren’t aware of our own unconscious motivations because we have not acknowledged or examined things inside us that admittedly feel uncomfortable, we invite and breed the perpetuation of that unconsciousness and suppression.

In my experience, observation, and understanding, individuals who seem to demonstrate extreme self-righteousness, judgment, or dictatorial tendencies do not do so just because it seems fun. Regardless of whether they are aware of or acknowledge motivations for these tendencies, there is likely a lot of unprocessed pain and/or psychological patterning in them that came at a time when they themselves were children and developed these psychic structures in order to survive. I really do understand that attending to these things in ourselves may be extremely uncomfortable, painful, or even traumatic.

But not examining them is painful in an ongoing manner not only for ourselves but also for humanity collectively. Fearing sex as a subject and our children’s eventual exposure to it as a healthy, intrinsic part of life seems indicative to me of a distortion in perspective. It is not sex itself that is problematic but our fears and issues around it of which we are not consciously aware and/or which we have not worked through, and this seems especially relevant in relation to how we are teaching and the messages we are sending young people about this aspect of life. Especially if we feel a fear or resistance around sexuality, I invite us all to take a deep breath and sincerely examine what is truly there and what resistances or inhibitions we encounter in relation to the subject—and to eventually explore the idea of feeling enthusiastic about nurturing the open, individualized, integrated, authentic, eventual sexual selves of all youth and indeed all individuals.

Love,
Emerald

“I’m sick of all my judges, so scared of what they’ll find…they’re so scared of letting me shine…”
-The Killers “Sam’s Town”