Last week, the new book Welcome To Sex – targeted at children as young as 11 and their parents – was ripped from department store Big W’s shelves after a torrent of complaints and abuse directed at staff.
“To keep our team and customers safe, the book will now only be available online,” a Big W spokesperson said.
The book is written by the award-winning authors of Welcome To Consent, Dr Melissa Kang and Yumi Stynes, and published by children’s publisher Hardie Grant, complete with illustrations.
It explains concepts such as gender identity and provides instructions such as how to masturbate, as well as heterosexual and homosexual sexual acts such as scissoring and oral sex.
For now, the book, which campaigners state is problematic because it “teaches children about sex”, is still available at other department stores including Target and the book chain Dymocks – however, they are next on the list.
This kind of movement is not dissimilar to what is happening in the US, with book bans being imposed on school libraries. But in my experience, it’s the same parents who happily hand over electronic devices to their children as soon as they can hold one who complain about such books.
The reality is that if your child has access to a computer, an iPad or equivalent, they’ve probably already Googled many of these terms and have even been exposed to porn.
As a mother of a teenager and an aunty, any parent who believes this isn’t the case is simply deluding themselves.
I grew up in a very sheltered, strict, religious environment where sex wasn’t discussed other than that it should be saved for marriage, otherwise you would burn in hell. Masturbating was considered a sin too, and your period dirty.
I married young at 22, without knowing anything about how to care about and pleasure my body, and found sex extremely shameful and difficult.
I turned to porn for sex education, which isn’t a great place to learn about sex, as much of it is sexist, stereotyped and male-focused.
As a divorced woman, I struggled for many years, being drawn to destructive relationships and only being able to enjoy sex if it was punishment.
It has taken me a lifetime to undo the damage done, and I know that I will never fully be healed. I am currently researching the effects of the migrant experience and religion and how such an upbringing manifests in the adult in my nonfiction book, Not Till You’re Married, as a way to unravel my journey, understand what happened, heal, but also help others who have also experienced what I have.
When I self-published my poetry book, Love and Fck Poems, more than ten years ago as a way of reclaiming my own body, I was disheartened when it was always shoved on the bottom shelf at bookshops, hidden away, and also censored by some online retailers.
Despite this, my book is a bestseller for Australian poetry, yet even today it is still not displayed as openly and proudly as books like The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fck, for example, which of course, is written by a man.
While the content is not sexual in The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fck, isn’t it a person’s choice to pick up a book and buy it or not? Why isn’t a feminist book about sexual liberation not displayed as proudly as a man’s instruction book on reclaiming your life?
There are many women out there who need to read literature such as my book to heal, yet this seems to take a back seat to the life instructions of a man.
The argument that books such as mine should not be displayed to protect our children is alarmingly flawed.
The moment the internet was easily accessible on handheld devices, our children lost their innocence, and what control parents had over their kids was diminished.
Even on Netflix, for example, shows like Sex Education – which I eagerly applaud for its brilliant depictions around the complexities of sex for teenagers, the parent-child conversations around sex and how parents should be open about sex with their children and not pretend like they don’t have it – are easily accessible to children with a few clicks of a button.
The suppression of sex and sexual books does more harm than good.
Sexuality is a natural human function that should be spoken about openly with our children.
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I would rather a child read my poetry book or Welcome To Sex than look at porn.
At least with my book, I am presenting a full human being, flawed and vulnerable. Welcome To Sex, to me, seems like a healthy book for a parent to have on their shelves.
Koraly Dimitriadis is a poet, writer and performer and the author of the poetry books Love and Fck Poems and Just Give Me The Pills. | @koralyd
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