It’s a very good point – at least in YA novels there’s a higher chance that the authors have thought about presenting sex & sexual themes in a responsible way, and are more likely to do so in such a way that the kids who aren’t ready to read about that stuff yet can judge that for themselves before they get anything too, ahem, ‘in your face.’

Of course the people who complain are not complaining about the way sex is presented, they don’t want their children reading about the EXISTENCE of sex or other darker issues until they’re… thirty?

Lauren Myracle did an interesting feature on her blog a while back where she chatted with a parent who had been trying to ban one of her books from a school library (for mention of things like blowjobs, though only in a theoretical way) and she put her case across well – it’s the first time I’ve actually been in sympathy with a book banner. One of her points was that with school libraries, kids have access to books without their parents knowing.

But I still don’t agree with her, because once kids get to their teens, quite frankly, they deserve some privacy. And if they worst they get up to is reading some books their parents feel are age-inappropriate, that’s a pretty healthy form of rebellion compared to what they could be getting up to.

The very first sex scenes I read was from the Clan of the Cave Bear books. I was eleven. And um, my parents may have disapproved, but I still snuck the books from the bookcase when they weren’t looking (having many siblings help in this aspect). This is what children do.

I personally do not understand why conservative parents are so up in arms about this, because come on. What would you rather have your children and/or teenagers read? Option one, reasonably non graphic sex, a lot of the time even “off stage” and only mentioned in passing, written with teenagers and their curiousity in mind? Or, option two, sex scenes in books for adults, often graphic in nature and sometimes with awesome (and when I say awsome I mean pretty damn bad) ideals like the one I started out with, with a man so well-endowed that he’s never met a woman who he can fit inside of (yes, seriously) until… dun-dun-dun, he meets the protag of this particular book?

Um. Yeah. I’m not kidding about that part.

*steps off soap box*