http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...cher-watchdog-writes-soft-porn-for-teens?bn=1 Code: The longtime chair of discipline at the Ontario College of Teachers is the co-author of a soft porn book for teens that chronicles the sexy adventures of Grade 9 girls and boys at a mythical Toronto high school. The Sexteens and the Fake Goddess is a lurid tale of striptease, breast fondling, bum grabbing, orgasms, drugs and blackmail that features a deputy headmaster who sweeps a sex assault under the carpet and tells male students at a pep rally that if he was younger he would have sex with all the girls in the audience. Another teacher gives a boy advice on French kissing and as the plot unfolds we learn that the deputy headmaster and a third teacher once had a threesome with a female student... To reiterate, this is the chair of discipline for the Ontario college of teachers - the guy in charge of making sure that all the teachers in the province stay above-board, and issuing disciplinary actions against those that behave in ways that violate the ethics of their profession. Tremblay claims that this book is completely separate from his occupation, and that the book is intended to "start a dialogue between parents and their teenagers. It is meant to empower teenagers, to encourage them to be strong and resist or avoid peer pressure". Focus: Is soft-core porn the best way to start a dialogue with your kids, or to encourage strength and an avoidance of peer-pressure, or is this guy just a lech writing smut for teens?
Crazy, right? I always carry mine under my left nut. This guy isn't a lech writing smut for teens. This guy is a lech writing smut for himself, and other like-minded leches. Something tells me that anyone standing within 5 feet of this guy's hard drive would be arrested for child endangerment.
I can't see this thread being anything but that. But I'll try anyway. Focus: Is soft-core porn the best way to start a dialogue with your kids, or to encourage strength and an avoidance of peer-pressure, or is this guy just a lech writing smut for teens? I pick option #3. While I don't have any children of my own (yay abortions), I'm 98% sure I wouldn't want them getting the sex talk from a guy that looks like Richard Schiff. Teens already have broadband access at home and/or smartphones. It'd be a lot easier and more satisfying to look at two lesbians going ass to ass with a doubleheaded dildo than it would be to read something that borders on statutory rape. I think this guy gets off on the idea that teenagers are getting off reading his crazy train to Creepville. Edit: REALLY?!
The sequel to the book is titled "If I Did Them," with a forward from OJ and an afterward by the parents of Megan Kanak. Does Canada have probable cause? Because other than potentially a few measly laws, I see no reason why authorities aren't currently raiding his house in hazmat suits. And he's head a disciplinarian? Fuck, it's like the Scootah of pedophiles.
Here's the Amazon link And here's his author page where, unfortunately, he has written other books as well including this one (I can only assume he describes most of the wines as tasting a bit "young").
I have a lot of reactions to this. I'll try to write them as coherently as possible. First, in response to the first question of whether or not racy novels are a good way for teens to be introduced to sex, my answer is yes, I think it's a good way to do it. As I said in the "how did you learn about sex" thread, I was raised by a single dad and that whole subject was pretty much dealt with my throwing sex ed books at me, which helped a lot, but let's face it, there's a difference between the clinical sex that's discussed in those pages and how sex is actually dealt with in real life. I remember buying one book in particular that was basically a Young Adult romance novel, and my dad was nervous about letting me read it, but it did answer a lot of questions and gave me a bit more of a clue of what I was going to deal with someday. I don't think there was actually any sex in it, but I do remember there being a blowjob and maybe fingering. (It actually caused a bit of a scandal when my friends' parents found out I was reading sections aloud of it to them, but that's another story.) Once I got to college, I was pretty glad my dad had let me read those types of books, watch Sex and the City, and be somewhat cool about me having sex in general, because I've always found that the sheltered kids end up in a lot more trouble than the ones who were allowed to figure things out for themselves. If I have kids, I'd rather they read sexualized Young Adult books rather than give them free reign to the internet and start them off with hardcore porn. At least in the books, it usually deals with the other emotional stuff and responsibilities that come along with the territory. That being said, I don't think this guy wrote the type of book I'm talking about. He did not write a sexy book for teens. He wrote an erotic novel for adults involving teens, statutory rape, and sexual assault. So the answer to the third question about him being a leech or whatever is also yes. This guy is clearly gross, and the fact that he was in charge of discipline and later caught hiding or protecting the very type of behavior he glorified in his book is absolutely wrong and disgusting. (And I won't get started on the "infant massage" thing because I just ate and I want to keep my dinner in my stomach.) If he wrote erotic novels not set in a school - where he's paid to protect against the topic of his book - like about pirates or the prairie or wherever the fuck erotic novels take place these days, I don't think he should be reprimanded. I usually disagree with the stories of teachers being fired because it was discovered that they were a stripper or a prostitute or whatever, and I feel like that's the easiest way to create an equivalent for a male teacher, to write erotica. Even if he were to write a book like I was defending in the first paragraph, where it was honestly exploring teenagers discovering sex in a "safer" and more realistic way without being so graphic, and completely eliminating all sexual relationships and commentary between the students and the teachers, then I don't think he should have been fired. As a writer, I tend to lean to not penalizing people for what they come up with as fiction, and standing by the idea that just because you can come up with a story like that doesn't mean you would enjoy it or believe in it if it were played out in real life. But it's just so disturbingly close to the truth that I feel like it can be pretty safely said that these are just drawing from the depths of his dirty mind. (Like how watching Woody Allen movies always feels like you're watching his masturbatory fantasies up on a screen.) If anything, he should have known better than to publish this type of story for the public eye, but I find it particularly alarming that he's claiming he thinks the storylines of his book portray normal teenage sexuality and sexual situations, which really tips me off that the guy is just a pervert. I think I'm done.
Can we just generally try and avoid linking my name with kiddy fiddling? I mean I'll have a hard enough time explaining the shit in my house to the cops, if they have the correct and truthful understanding that they only ever get used on enthusiastically consenting adults. I kind of see how his book could be an instructional allegory into folly - detailing why the dude is a fucking catastrophe. But that's not how it reads from the descriptions. I can't imagine how stupid he'd have to be to publish that sort of material while trying to maintain a career as a man working in education. It's like the world's slowest suicide by cop.
Huge sales of a teen erotica book? Versus potential future earnings from a previously well-placed education career? No, I'd say his financial future is about as inspiring as his job prospects. I work at a Uni doing Business Analysis. I have to have a police clearance on the off chance I'm alone in a room with a student. They take this shit seriously, and that's age 18 and above. This guy is about to get crucified.
Suicide by gen-pop. Focus: The two options aren't mutually exclusive, however, sex-ed materials should probably be produced by someone who has had sex, and ideally entire relationships, outside the confines of his or her shag-carpeted utility van. Assuming you could find someone with no ulterior motives: Spoiler I SMELL YOUR HAIR WHEN YOU'RE NOT LOOKING I'd say that fiction, as a vector for education, is inherently limited. Fiction tends to follow narrative arcs and have justice and clear lessons and shit like that. Life in general and sex in particular are not like that, and it can be destructive to think of them that way. I'd say the best sex-ed materials, I may be biased because it's what I got, are non-fictional, unembellished first-hand accounts. Examples: The Hite Report, anything by Nancy Friday. The stuff my parents gave me was geared towards straight guys, I expect you could find something useful for any gender and orientation. The advantage of this approach, vs. The Talk, is the lack of awkwardness. The disadvantage is that the parent can't tailor the lesson to suit their own beliefs, which I'd say is not much of a disadvantage at all.
For comparison, in my Toronto high school, they decided the best way to have th talk was to tell us that if we used a condom and it broke, we were going to die. (nb, Catholics apparently do not believe in AZT). I'm not sure that having a teacher write a softcore porn book is a better approach. It might even be worse, I'm not sure. Actually, I think this is a bad approach. While I think hat the goal of sex Ed should not be to discourage kids from having sex, it also shouldn't encourage kids to have sex. It should be to enable them to make he right decision, recognize healthy sexual relationships, say yes to good ones and say no to bad ones. Having kids read fiction about kids their age having sex rather puts ideas in their heads that this is the kind o behavior that they should engage in, or behaviour that they are missing out on and are therefore losers for not engaging in. I don't care if the book contains lessons and allegories for the foibles of sex, literary analysis at 16 just isn't that deep. But then again, sex Ed runs so mug deeper than a high school class; it's the culture you're raised in, where a nipple is viewed as the most toxic, poisonous thing a young person can see at a super bowl halftime show, yet where cleavage is on every magazine cover; or how a group of elderly virgins (supposedly) are allowed to teach you that sex is evil and wicked and deadly and only for the purpose of creating children, yet every movie and dog and tv show shows otherwise normal people engaging in sex with consequences ranging from awkwardness to babies to hilarity to a meaningful exchange of emotion and feeling. In my experience, the reality of sex is that when it's good, it combines all of these elements without leading to disaster (except babies, but I'm not at that stage of my life). You can be in a committed relationship and not use condoms if she's on the pill and my dick hasn't fallen off yet; you can be not married and sex can be meaningful. Sex can also feel good and be something you look forward to after six weeks apart. It can be awkward, and funny, and amazing, and problematic, and all of these things can be perfectly okay and normal. Th major regret about my sex education is that my 14 or 15 year old self would read this and think "I don't know about that..." and disapprove because that's what school and church taught; my parents never said a thing. One way or another, all kids should know that, if they are or aren't having sex, either option is acceptable, and it won't be black and white, neither purely hedonistic nor functional nor emotional nor physical, but a combination whose ratios change. Softcore porn doesn't help send this message. It starts at a young age, explaining what relationships are without devolving into "mommies and daddies touching each other in a special way", and a culture capable of accepting sex as a parting human life and accepting of children being able to hear about sex and it's permutations without turning into delinquents.
Problem solved - he resigned yesterday because "he was afraid staying at the College would hurt the institution". He made the choice "out of concern that the public perception of matters raised today in the media could lead to an erosion of the public’s confidence in the College and its work". I suppose this just leaves him time to write more sketchy weird books. I'll be honest - the fact that his wife was co-author was equally creepy. I don't think I'd react well if my husband told me he wanted to write teen erotica, let alone offer to co-write it.
While I think fiction books about sex among teenagers could be used as a teaching tool for sexual education, I think the book in question is smut. I think a book about teenage sex, even one that is fiction, should be true to the teenage experience. I'm sure there are some teenagers who have three-ways, sex with adults, etc., but that's not something the average teenager deals with. The fiction book that taught me the most about sex is Forever by Judy Blume. It deals with the issues without being perverted.
This in and of itself is one thing. Writing creepy teenage smut is also one thing. But when you combine the two............
Why would any teenager care to learn about sex through his book(s) when can just just turn to good old fashioned porn like thy already do? Yeah the guy's a creep but it's a non-issue.
I don't see what the big deal is, I mean who hasn't spent some time furiously masterbating while writing stories about 14 year olds banging each other's brains out? I don't think there's anyone here who hasn't put pen to paper and wound up with a fucking filthy teen sex romp, either on purpose or by accident. Like it was said earlier, every teen has already seen every sort of disgusting porn that would make your grandfather shit his insides out his wrinkly asshole, there's no way this stuff is affecting them in any way. In fact, I thought it was a proven fact that teens don't even know how to read anymore. Seems like this is just a little literature to get pedo's through the day. Also it should be noted that I don't have kids and could give a shit what happens to them as a whole.