More like ‘smut under the radar’ hoping to make this acceptable (inclusive?) behaviour. Yuk.
A PRIDE children’s book featuring men in bondage gear was shown to four-year-olds in pre-school, it has emerged.
Parents had raised concerns with staff at Genesis Pre School, in Hull, East Yorkshire, after it was brought to their attention that children were being exposed to the images.
A staff member had checked with parents of the nursery pupils if they were happy with the contents of the book Grandad’s Pride by Harry Woodgate to be shown to their children, but one flagged images of “partially naked” men in “leather bondage gear” as concerning.
A member of staff then defended the images, arguing that children wouldn’t understand the erotic and sexualised depictions.
What are your thoughts on this book?
Dickens
Staceyann
Four year olds are very much aware of their own bodies - but the adult world of bondage, kink, porn, and all other varieties of sexual preferences, is not something their intellect at that age can process
Or indeed that they should even be attempting to process, surely.Well, that was rather my point!
I'm sure it doesn't feature in their small world so it's not something they'd be naturally drawn towards - although they are susceptible to make-believe, magic, witches on broomsticks, Peter Pan, etc, etc (not to mention Father Christmas in his many disguises via various other cultures).
But the adult world of 'sex' with all its complexities (and dangers) is something that I don't believe adults should be foisting on them, however 'sanitised' the depictions - Grandad looks quite innocuous in his funny pants in that colourful illustration... quite different I suspect from what grandad would look like down in the bondage 'cellar' with all the equipment and tools of the 'trade'.
Yes the bondage cellar indeed Dickens! Anyone remember Cynthia Payne and some of her high profile clients that included judges and the like? Well the cellar did, if I remember rightly, when reading about it, include chains, whips and means to suspend people from the ceiling, so whilst "granddad" is in his underwear complete with suspenders is at the tamer end of all of that, it is nevertheless part of an adult world that a young child would not be able to rationalise. Why make the spurious claim, "it's in the interests of inclusivity", and if you, narrow minded people can't see that you are from a different planet altogether. A dangerous precedent is being set, a young mind doesn't need to be overburdened or corrupted by what goes on in the seemier parts of the adult world, unfortunately that will come to them all too soon with the availability of pornography, but in the meantime lets keep their young minds unsullied. As someone suggested up thread in the boiling of the frog analogy, this sort of grooming teaching is insidious and to what end? Lets not forget there was once an organisation called PIE, back in the 1970s, Paedophile Information Exchange, who for a while was endorsed by a few politicians on the basis that it was ok for adults to have sexual relations with minors, if the child gave their consent {hmm] A child can't give consent, they don't have the reasoning to make an informed choice.
The illustration shown on the front of the book which allegedly is aimed at American youngsters, our kids nevertheless get a watered down version. When posters point that out, "anyway that is the American version" what they are saying is "so the British version is not quite as overt" inferring possibly that even on Planet Anything Goes, there is something not quite right about the original picture, but ok for America's small children then?
Is it not possible to weave a story around gay granddad or grandma in a regular context with their partner, showing them for example, gardening, golfing, swimming, cooking, walking the dog, doing all the 101 pursuits that make up the lives of grandparents of all sexual orientations rather than in bondage gear an acknowledged quirk, and yes kids do like dressing up mine even wore their pants over their Superman costumes, but men in stockings and suspenders, how many little children are confronted with that 
As for the group discussion in the aftermath of story time, when a the child asks "why is granddad dressed like that" how is that answered? some would suggest that it could be skirted around, children do pick up on evasiveness, and if indeed that is the case, why put it in there in the first place.
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