By Elizabeth Harper

Grandad’s Pride by Harry Woodgate
(ages 3–6)

Don and David mentioned the book Grandad’s Pride by Harry Woodgate on the Literate ApeCast in the “Rorschach of the News” segment. The discussion was prompted by an opinion piece: “Why I Quit as a School Librarian.” The author wrote she quit because this book written for young children included illustrations of people in “fetish gear.”

David didn’t believe it at first and went searching for pictures on the Amazon listing for the book, and so did I as I was listening. At first David couldn’t find what was so objectionable. And then he saw it: leather fetish wear, which he described as “leather straps,” “horny lederhosen,”and “like a weird bathing suit.” The illustrations are in the background. Don said it’s about sex and therefore inappropriate in a book for young children. David said, “Everything exists on a spectrum of nuance.”

I borrowed the book from the library.

People who say they’re protecting freedom by demanding that books be removed from library shelves so other people’s children can’t read them irritate me. I think all this handwringing about books for children, along with the demands to remove them from school libraries and classrooms, is nonsense for the purpose of inuring people to the practice of banning books ostensibly “to protect the children.” What it’s really about is promoting various normative, conservative, and authoritarian agendas. Or it’s just people’s own discomfort around issues of gender and sexual expression being projected onto books for children, which don’t have anything to do with adult sex at all.

Children’s books are about what children care about: getting along with their friends and family; understanding themselves and the world; going on adventures and having parties; loving, learning, and having fun. Young children do not care about and are not interested in the sex lives of adults. They care about everyone feeling loved and having literal and figurative homes.

But I don’t know everything, and I don’t talk about books without reading the books I’m talking about, so I borrowed the book so I could read it and discern where it existed on the “spectrum of nuance.”

There are no BDSM, fetish, or other kinds of sex scenes in this children’s book. The tiny background pictures of parade participants in leather fetish wear are just showing a bit of dressing up. Interestingly enough, the illustrations are different in the U.K. and the U.S. versions. In the U.S. version, two individuals (pierced and tattooed, male-appearing, though they could be trans, nonbinary, or something else) are wearing black clothing and accessories and embracing, maybe smooching. In the U.K. version they are standing side by side. One of them is wearing a black kilt and holding a rainbow flag. The other one, wearing a harness and thong ensemble, is holding an ice cream cone. On the next page, illustrating one of Grandad’s memories, specifically from Pride 1985, there is another picture of a man, with beard and chest hair, sporting a harness and thong ensemble with shorts and holding a “Lesbian & Gay Pride ’85” sign. So these small background illustrations are what the fuss is about.

What else is in this book? Lots of pictures of people in all different kinds of outfits with different signs and flags and accessories. The illustrations in the book show diversity, community, acceptance, and, importantly, pride and respect (as opposed to shame and disdain). There are a variety of skin tones and ages. There are people in wheelchairs, lots of rainbow pride flags, and other flags too, including bisexual flags and lesbian flags. There’s a man wearing a turban; a woman wearing a hijab.

There are banners and signs with slogans including the following:

“TRANS RIGHTS NOW”
“LOVE IS A HUMAN RIGHT”
“EQUALITY FOR ALL”
“IT’S OK to say GAY”
“All we need is LOVE”
“LOVE IS LOVE”
“CLOSETS ARE FOR CLOTHES”
“PROTECT TRANS KIDS”
“EVERYONE DESERVES A HAPPY EVER AFTER”
“BREAK THE CIS-TEM”
“LOVE WILL ALWAYS WIN”
“QUEER, DISABLED, FABULOUS”
“LGB WITH THE T”
“OUT AND PROUD”
“trans kids are magic”
And:
“BLACK LESBIANS”
“LESBIANS & GAYS SUPPORT THE MINERS” (from Pride ’85)
And from what I’m guessing is the late 1980s or early 1990s:
“ACT UP”
“SILENCE=DEATH”
“LIBERATION NOW”
“WE ARE EVERYWHERE”
“AIDS: WE NEED RESEARCH NOT HYSTERIA”
(Maybe you don’t want to discuss the callousness of the government in the face of a global health crisis with your three-year-old, but then again, maybe you do.)
From Berlin:
“HAPPY CHRISTOPHER STREET DAY”
“REPEAL PARAGRAPH 175”
Plus:
“SOME PEOPLE ARE GAY GET OVER IT”
“HAPPY PRIDE!”
“SAME-SEX MARRIAGE FINALLY LEGAL! it’s about time”
“LOVE WINS”
And on the cover:
"Be PROUD of who you ARe!”

So, by definition, kinks and fetishes are about sex. But that’s not all they’re about. And what they’re about can be different for different individuals. They can be about community, theater, playacting, or about deep personal healing, acceptance, trust, and love, or a way of dealing with neurodivergent sensory processing issues or … And kids don’t need to know the details, any more than they need to know the details of their parents’ marriage counseling or therapy sessions.

What they do need to know is that there are all sorts of ways to be and things to do in the world. So there’s abundance of choice, but also they don’t need to feel bad, feel shame, for liking different things or wanting to play in ways that others don’t. What’s important is that everyone is respected. People should be respected as the individuals they are, along with whatever identities feel right for them and as members of whatever communities they find themselves in or choose for themselves.

What is inappropriate is forcing adult sexuality, or family financial responsibilities, or adult emotional issues on children. Your child is not your emotional caretaker, breadwinner, or sexual partner.

Heavy BDSM scenes would be inappropriate for young children, since they might find them confusing and worry that people are getting hurt. Consent is important—and BDSM, leather, kink, and other fetish communities have done tremendous work in providing and promoting the language of consent—but heavy BDSM scenes are not the way to teach young children. Phrases such as “use your words,” “keep your hands to yourself,” “gentle touch,” and “nice hands” prevalent in preschool classrooms are adequate for this purpose. But heavy BDSM is not what is happening in this picture book for young children.

And then there’s this, which is almost too ridiculous to make note of, but basically the author is reading all sorts of insidious meanings into the illustrations. If you find her arguments persuasive, stop and think about how she is reading a predatory, grooming conspiracy into an illustration of a map with the word “MAP” printed on it. Labeling a picture of a map with the word “MAP” in a book for young children seems appropriate to me. It’s pre-reading labeling. It’s about early literacy development and print awareness. The big conspiracy is helping children learn to read. Eye roll. Sigh. Here is an article about the publisher’s response to criticisms of the book.

To be clear, forcing adult sexual acts on children is not consensual, not respectful. And yes, children are deserving of respect as human beings with their own feelings. Child sexual abuse (CSA) is particularly upsetting to me because often there is emotional manipulation involved. The adult befriends the child, takes a special interest in them, or takes advantage of the authority they have over the child—and then demands that the child keep their secret, often causing the child to feel ambivalence, confusion, and shame.

I think of the harm caused by people feeling (being made to feel) ashamed of who they are, what they like, what feels good to them. Shame is what’s harmful. Not pride. It’s the priest who imposes his desires on children under his care and guidance in secret, behind closed doors, who feels shame and causes his victims to feel shame as well. (Catholic Boy Blues by Norbert Krapf is another book I borrowed from the library recently.)

Our society destroys people by imposing and perpetuating shame and the internalization of shame.

Teaching children to respect themselves as well as other people might be better protection against CSA than banning books. The ability to say, “I don’t want to play that way” or, “I want some time and space for myself” can help them assert themselves and be in touch with their own feelings and desires. Also, let children play, pretend, playact, dress up, try different things, and learn about themselves, the world, and other people.

Representation is not ideology. It’s not even true diversity. But it’s something. It’s a start. It’s better than nothing.