Banned Books Week announced several days ago that George by Alex Gino—a middle-grade book about a trans-girl who, though she is known as a boy, wants to play the female lead in the play Charlotte’s Web—was the #1 banned or challenged book in 2019. There are many cogent criticisms of Banned Books Week as a library event and plenty of analyses of particular banned books, including George. But I want to focus on one issue in particular. On the website Common Sense Media, George has its defenders, including the official reviewer for the site. Of course, it has its detractors too, most of whom worry about young children being exposed to sex. I agree that early exposure to sex can be detrimental to a child’s development and lead to all kinds of problems. In fact, I have personal experience in support of that fear. And if George contained any sex, I would agree that it should be aimed toward older readers. But George does not have any sex—no explicit sexual acts, no descriptions of genitalia, no expressions of sexual feelings. One reference to “dirty magazines” or something in a bit of dialogue from George’s older brother.
George merely presents a character whose gender does not match her … sex. Let me explain. I am constrained by a language that finds it necessary to couch discussions of whether one is male or female and whether one feels romantic love toward males or females in terms of sex, meaning that stuff between our legs. This often gets conflated with sex, meaning people doing stuff with the stuff between our legs. I fell in love with a girl for the first time when I was four years old. Arguably, it had nothing to do with sex. Nor, in a deeper sense, did my identification as a boy. I mean, I have the stuff between my legs that males typically have (not that that’s any of your business). But me feeling like a boy, falling in love with a girl, those are primarily psychological events. Western culture has conflated the terms “sex” and “gender” for a long time, but science understands the words in a more refined way. Sex denotes definite physical equipment: the chromosomes, the hormones, the genitalia. Gender is a softer term, generally construed as a “social construct.” That always makes me think of gender as a choice, but I don’t think that’s true. Perhaps “mental phenomenon” would be more accurate, although things like gender roles are social rather than mental. Sex and gender are interrelated, then, like the body and the mind. But it’s not that simple. According to this medically reviewed article on Medical News Today, chromosomes come in a wider array than just XX and XY. Some men have an extra X, some women have a Y, etc. Hormones vary from person to person. Some men have more estrogen than others, some women more testosterone. Some people are born intersexed, with “ambiguous genitalia,” so it isn’t even a clear distinction on that level. One can have a penis, an extra X, high estrogen levels, and that person might identify as a woman. That would be totally reasonable, from a scientific perspective. So much for clarity. The bottom line: What lies in our pubic region does not necessarily determine our gender. Gender, thusly, is freed from sex, but what about sexuality? Is it really sexual? When I was in preschool puppy love with my next-door neighbor Jill, was that sexual? Freud’s theory of infantile sex fantasy notwithstanding (plenty of problems with Freud, but that’s another story), sex did not play a part in that relationship. Why, then, do we call it heterosexuality or homosexuality? At its core, attraction is about whom we love as much as it is about whom we want to bone. We need a new word for it. Hetero- and homoamorousness? Do we need an umlaut on that a? At any rate, I have established that neither gender nor “sexuality” in children constitutes sex in the sense that stuffy grownups object to sex. The flaw in the English language by which gender, sex (genital), sex (pornographic), and sexuality get mixed up is an unfortunately convenient tool used by those who wish to dehumanize and delegitimize transgender people, nonbinary people, and gay, bisexual, and lesbian people. As with many books dealing with subject matter that may be outside your child’s everyday experience, George may warrant a conversation about all this (gender, sex, etc.). My Spidey-sense tells me that this might be the real issue. Parents don’t want to talk to their kids, because it requires effort, time, vulnerability, and open-mindedness. I don’t blame them. Parenting is a hard job. But it’s harder if you put all your energy into making sure your kid fits in some box you’ve constructed. So talk to your children, and leave George alone.
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AuthorJeffrey Babbitt, MLIS, is a graduate of the School of Library and Information Science at Wayne State University who is pursuing a career as a librarian in Michigan. Subject Headings
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June 2021
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