FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va.—Virginia Beach City Public Schools have decided to keep a book teaching masturbation and gender identity in its middle school libraries. While the book was in two middle school libraries when it was challenged in July, a third middle school has acquired it and featured it in the recently added books collection.
The book “Sex Is a Funny Word: A Book About Bodies, Feelings, and You,” written by Cory Silverberg and illustrated by Fiona Smyth, includes images of a child touching herself in the bathtub.
“You may have discovered that touching some parts of your body, especially in the middle parts, can make you feel warm and tingly. Grown-ups call this kind of touch masturbation,” says the book. It also mentions specific body parts for the performance of masturbation.
The book also encourages children to explore their gender identity, saying that sex at birth doesn’t address the “whole body.”
Book Challenge
Virginia Beach City school board member Victoria Manning submitted a challenge in July, asking the school district to reevaluate “Sex Is a Funny Word” due to its masturbation and sexuality content.Further, he said the book was “inclusive.” “For example, drawings include children with disabilities and children with different body types,” he wrote.
The letter also said that the parent reviewer on the committee thought the book was “informative” and “liked the questions at the end of each chapter as they provide topics for students to discuss with their parents or guardians.”
According to Rogers’s letter, the committee was composed of a student, parent, school-based staff, and central support staff.
Bayside and Corporate Landing Middle Schools had the book when Manning submitted her challenge in July. Now a third school, Larkspur Middle School, has acquired the same book. Lisa Castellano, library media specialist at the school, didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
Manning told The Epoch Times her reason for filing the challenge: “I want reasonable restrictions that provide age-appropriate materials in our schools. Sexually explicit content should not be recommended or provided to minors, at least not without parental consent.”
“There are restrictions on what types of movies can be shown to minors. Yet children are provided with these extremely explicit and pornographic materials without their parent’s permission,” she added.
‘Teach My Kid the Basics,’ Not Masturbation
Lindsey has three children studying in the Virginia Beach City school district. Her son, the middle of the three, is a middle schooler. She doesn’t want to disclose her last name for fear of being doxed.“Teach my kid English, math, science, the basics. I don’t need you to teach my kid how to masturbate or how to have anal sex,” she said about the school. “That’s not something I send my kid to school for.”
According to Lindsey, parents who want to teach moral values to their children are already battling with social media and other influences their children are exposed to. And to walk into a middle school library and find sexually explicit books is deeply disturbing to her.
“We have a right to know what is going to be shaping the minds of our kids,” she told The Epoch Times. She emphasized that she wasn’t a book banner; she didn’t believe the book was appropriate for public schools.
A middle school teacher who has taught for 30 years, 22 of which have been in the Virginia Beach City Public Schools, echoed Lindsey’s sentiment. This year, she teaches 120 students social studies and English, two subjects “hit hard by inappropriate materials or subject matters,” according to her.
“Parents should feel confident that when they send their children to school, it is a safe place. As teachers and as adults in the lives of children, we all have a responsibility to be a gatekeeper preventing harm,” she commented on the condition of anonymity, for fear of losing her job.
“Unfortunately, many administrative officials and school board members are allowing adult materials into the schools, which is why school board elections are more important now than ever,” she told The Epoch Times.
However, library books are considered resources and not instructional materials unless used in school assignments or projects.