I can’t be indistinguishable from GOP book banners unless the books I want banned are the same, just going by the meaning of the word indistinguishable. Maybe you mean that my desire to ban a book is not distinguishable, but thats not the same as being indistinguishable from GOP ‘freaks’. And of course, some books are eminently bannable - its very much a content issue.

I don’t really pay much attention to what people who consume fantasies (fictions, if you prefer) involving child abuse tell me about the material they want me to read or view - its a danagerous thing to do, you can end up viewing child abuse material. I also don’t pay much attention to disclaimers that authors might place in their works - I don’t take fiction at face value, and I don’t uncritically trust what authors write (I think that would be very naive), especially about topics they know will be subject to censorship.

Please don’t try to share such material with me, thanks.

I can see why somebody in the US might have that perspective, but it isn’t true. Most parents want to protect, nurture, and help their child(ren). Their interests are in their childs best interests - certainly some amount are misguided or decieved about what those best interests are. But from that basic premise, it is possible to persuade them otherwise, no small task and easier said than done given what you’re up against there, but certainly possible because of that fundamental premise, that most do love and care for their children.

Sure parents can be abusers, but a school would (should at least) also fire such a person if they were employed there, certainly they would if it became public knowledge. Obviously pornography production isn’t absuse in this case, but you can see why the school won’t take the risk once it becomes public knowledge?

Its unfortunately not on the parents - or it should be, but it isn’t. As you say, we work with what we’ve got, and its the case that many parents are not able or even willing to explain to their child that, and society must therefore do it for them.

I disagree however about sex work - if it isn’t publically known, or if the sex worker/teacher doesn’t publically do such, then thats ok, but as I’ve argued elsewhere, children need to be treated differently when it comes to sexual material, and there is a high degree of risk that children would end up having access to such published material. So I don’t think its the same - if a teacher is publically trans, there isn’t a safeguarding issue because there’s no sexual material possibly being accessed by the children.

In my country, and I don’t mean this as analogous, but as an example, teachers have an enhanced check of their records. It isn’t perfect of course - it doesn’t stop someone who hasn’t been caught. It does prevent people who’ve had for example a bar fight (I think within a certain time period) from working with children. Obviously, without context, you can’t say that someone who got into a fight is a danger to children, but I think its necessary in a practical sense, because while of course in many cases over-protective, it does serve to eliminate a risk. Do you think this is too much, given that it will inevitably prevent some perfectly safe people from working with children? Personally, I can see the point of it, especially from the school or parent’s perspective. Again, I don’t mean that a bar fight is analogous to sex work, just that there are always practical and practicable considerations with risk assessments.

Ah well I think fantasy can have several meanings, but the one I intended was that of ‘imaginary’ or from the imagination, which I think is accurate.

Lots of ‘racy’ stories were disguised in the past as ‘critiques’ or condemnations - priests especially were quite skilled at this, and tabloids today are similar, I don’t think it means much.

I really don’t think its a good idea to conflate child abuse material (even with ‘disclaimers’) with LGBTQ+ people. I know the right do that, but I think claiming that a condemnation of Lolita is “indistinguishable” from books that are accepting of LGBTQ+ people is harmful.

Well schools do need to respect parents rights and worries if they’re correct or well founded - they’ve entrusted their care and education to them, and they have a duty of care as part of their job. If they don’t think the concerns are well founded, they need to discuss that with the parents and explain why.

I don’t think you should live with that conflation, because it would mean that a trans person could never be a teacher, since it will never be tolerated for something or some person that is inherently sexual by mere presence or nature (like pornography) to be involved with children, except in the sense of carefully regulated sex education.

it isn’t fiction? perhaps, these kind of things are often really confessionals.

Well, as you accept, its controversial - ambiguously understood. Maybe those people are idiots, it doesn’t change the issue - there are idiots (or naive or poorly educated people) in this world, they have to be accomodated in terms of whats allowed in the public sphere.

You absolutely can be held responsible for writing such things, even if you put a disclaimer on it. Some people glorify or identify with monsters, even if they’re presented as such - some people like villains in movies. The ambiguity is an issue easily avoided by banning the book - nothing of value would be lost.

No, I suppose I should have been more exact, I assumed it would be obvious - if somebody who is a teacher, writes a dry, detached, scientific & academic paper about child abuse for the purpose of education and safeguarding, because they’re a qualified expert in a related regulated field, they shouldn’t be barred from teaching.

If some aristo writes a fantasy about the subject, yes they should be banned from teaching.

yes, this kind of thing is why I wrote ‘usually’, and ‘generally’, not ‘always’.

Not anything, but certainly something about child abuse, when, and I can’t emphasise this enough, you’re responsible for teaching children is certainly an auto disqualification.

sure, if critical race theory were child abuse, and if the author were a Russian aristo who fled to the US when the commies won. I suppose any logic can be applied to anything if we ignore what’s actually being discussed.

It really isn’t puritan to dislike Lolita and I think if you think that connection you’ve made through you’ll see why.

it isn’t, because teachers aren’t just any kind of job, they teach children - naturally vulnerable people. Therefore, we have to limit what kinds of experiences they’re exposed to. Because of the way communities work, once this kind of thing becomes public knowledge, everyone knows.

Therefore, there is a risk that children at the school could view the kind of product this person is selling. This is the kind of experience that with children we should limit how and when they’re exposed to.

We can’t garuntee that every parent is able or willing to ensure that their child isn’t exposed to this, and a teacher at the school has increased that risk by producing such content - again because of how communities work, this makes it more likely that such ‘scandelous’ material would be viewed by children.

A teacher is also a role model, and an authority figure. In any school (that’s properly run), if a child said for example ‘I want to be a pornographer when I grow up’ or ‘I want to be a drug dealer when I grow up’ (or the childlike equivalent) that would immediately raise a warning flag and be investigated, because of the innate vulnerability of children, and the potential risk and harm that could come from such activities, and that it just is not a normal thing for a child to want or say. If you have a teacher who promotes being a pornographer, it makes this kind of process complicated. While the teacher might not do so ‘as a teacher’, once it is public knowledge, everyone knows, and children will end up knowing too.

So the best way to avoid any risks and harms, is to say to teachers: ‘you can’t be a teacher and a pornographer’. Maybe there’s nothing bad about doing porn, but no institution entrusted by the community with the care of their children will accept a pornographer teacher.

There’s also nothing bad about teachers not being allowed to be pornographers, or drug dealers. Any teacher must be fully aware that if such activities become public knowledge they will be fired - likely for breech of contract. I doubt this was a surprise to the teacher in question.

Fans of that book, or the literati, always say that, and yet its very popular with child abusers. No doubt there are those who read it and were disgusted. Most people however don’t need an elaborate fantasy novel to tell them that kind of thing is very very bad.

If I’ve misunderstood the message, and others have too (it isn’t generally well liked, except in certain circles, usually called at least ‘controversial’), then we can be sure that anyone writing such material shouldn’t be a teacher, and certainly children shouldn’t be exposed to it - and the way communities work, children at such a teacher’s school would be well aware of any controversial publications they might have made. Personally, I think it is a literary trick (like the ‘poverty porn’ genre) to justify the promotion of dodgy material to a certain class for titilation, so I’d do a lot more than sack such an author.

Well I disagree with what they’ve said, and I don’t think they’ve explained it at all, rather just accused me of being a puritan or similar. Could you try, in your own words?

I think the claims that have been made by others against me or my position that weren’t simply lazy smears, I’ve already refuted (that what a teacher does publically is no business of the public, and that because military teachers/recruiters are allowed in schools so too should this, that there is any relation to trans people or drag queens to this issue, that teachers being fired for being pornographers means sex work is consequentially immoral). I certainly don’t feel that anyone’s said anything in contradiction that’s caused me to even consider that my stance might be incorrect, but I’m willing to consider a reasonable and good response - I don’t want to have brain worms after all.

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No, but it is sexualised, actually sexual, content being advertised by somebody who works with children, and that may be accesible to those children. That isn’t the case with somebody who is visibly trans and teaching, unless for some reason they decided to become a pornographer.

thanks, and likewise

Yes, because they’re the responsible adult, by virtue of their job and you’d hope their age and experience, and its their actions that allow it to become a possible risk. Children of course should be taught properly, but they’re also impulsive and not wise and lack education, so we don’t treat them as responsible for their actions (with caveats) in the same way we do adults.

Small children can have older siblings or friends who might show them that, and sometimes parents aren’t responsible or good parents, sometimes children themselves are innapropriate because of harmful upbringing - this might be unusual or unlikely, but with children (and an institution entrusted to care for people’s children) any small risk must be treated very seriously.

No problem

It might well remind you of that, but being visibly trans isn’t sexualised content being shown to children. I’m not surprised the arguments seem similar - its why right wingers use those lines, because it resonates with people, and if you conflate sexualised content (that people fundamentally will have an issue with for the reasons I’ve given elsewhere) with simply being trans, you can persuade people that being trans is an issue.

I used the analogy because of how people (parents especially) feel about war, and because its a thing that carries great risks of harm and exploitation, being a soldier. Of course there are circumstances where a parent, out of desperation usually (sometimes out of greed) - as a matter of survival - would be ok with it. But generally speaking, people who aren’t desperate don’t want their children to be soldiers, they want them to be happy, prosperous, not maimed, not violent and so on, so there has to be a lot of incentive and propaganda around it to convince people - and even then it finds a lot of resistance from people.

I know that soldiers are romanticized, and so is violence, but I don’t think that because that occurs, education of children should be a free for all - gambling is another example, because its something that children (and adults of course, but that’s a different though related issue) are vulnerable to taking a bad lesson from exposure to, that can lead to harmful consequences for them and others.

Sex is cool, but it can also be harmful, in and of itself or as an aspect of a relationship with others. War is similar - if a soldier is defending out of necessity their people from violence or theft, that’s cool, but there is a lot of scope for it not being cool. Things like this, that have a great potential for harm and risk of harm, for individuals and communities, need to be treated very carefully and cautiously when it comes to children (and really, adults of course, but especially children). Despite sex being (usually) cool, its not I don’t think an issue to request that teachers of children, as role models and authority figures, should not be pornographers - just as they should not be soldiers.

I don’t feel good about it at all, and I think it should be banned! The presence of one bad thing doesn’t make other bad things ok, though.

We are our experiences, our environments, and with children they’re in a stage where learning lots is more important than learning or experiencing critically, and they don’t have much wisdom or experience to be properly judgemental or to contextualise or understand what they see or hear, so we have to treat them differently. Development is also a process over time, so we need to make sure the learning content is appropriate for the age or developmental stage (including social development), and also not all taught at once but rather gradually, depending on their current capacity.

I’m unsure why you’d think its a necessary question to ask, given the comment you’ve responded to, but I hope you’re satisfied with the answer.