Detailed descriptions of the author’s sexual experiences including kissing, masturbation, oral sex, and anal sex, on pages 170-176 of George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue” have made significant contributions to the wrongful banning of this book. Upon initial consideration, multiple pages dedicated to sharing the author’s sexual experiences in a book intended for young boys, may seem inappropriate and worthy of restriction. Without having knowledge of the context of these pages it is possible to understand, and maybe even agree with, the outrage associated with the book being available to teenagers in a school library. Additionally, homophobia and an aversion to public discussion of sex due to its taboo nature have caused people to push…show more content… Hearing the older sibling-like perspective that Johnson offers allows young people to learn from the author’s experience and be more knowledgeable when engaging in relationships of their own. Poor sexual education can make someone’s first experience a scary, and potentially dangerous one. Overall, gender education in the United States is inadequate. There are only twenty-five states that require sex and HIV education to be provided to students (Guttmacher Institute). This lack of education and representation is even more prevalent when considering queer relationships. Four states actually require that negative information is shared about homosexuality or that a positive emphasis is placed on heterosexuality (Guttmacher Institute). Without formal education, young people turn to pornography as a source of information, even though it is not a reliable or realistic source. Johnson states that the only thing watching pornography taught them was that anal sex is “painful, or at least played up as such on the cameras” (173). This shows that they were not even sure of the validity of the small amount of information they gained from watching
