Being a teenager is hard. But it’s a particularly frightening time for young adults who identify as gay, bisexual or transgender: Canadian statistics show that more than half of all LGBTQ teens are verbally harassed at school, compared to less than ten per cent of straight-identifying teens.
What if a book – one almost 1,900 people are now trying to censor – could help change that?
An online petition started by Ottawa-based children’s author Kathy Clark aims to revoke a young adult novel’s 2014 Governor General’s Literary award, claiming the novel is too graphic.
Canadian author Raziel Ried wrote the book, called When Everything Feels Like the Movies, and based it loosely on the life of Larry Fobes King, who was shot and killed by a Grade 8 classmate in 2008 after King asked him to be his valentine. The book is an important look into not only the rich inner life of a gay teen growing up in a small town, but the harsh social realities he faces every day.
But the petition points to the book’s “vulgar” and sexually explicit language, arguing that young adults – defined by the Canada Council for the Arts as aged 12-18 – shouldn’t be exposed to such language.
“We feel that this book damages the high standards we have come to expect of the Governor Generals Award,” the petition reads. “It is not what we as parents, grandparents, educators and fellow authors consider good literature for teens.”
Yes, the book contains some explicit – sometimes even shockingly so – scenes. But how many young adults haven’t seen just as vulgar content in movies, on television shows, or even actively sought it out on the Internet?
It’s naïve to suggest When Everything Feels Like the Movies would be any teenager’s first exposure to sexually explicit content. In fact, many other critically acclaimed young adult novels feature similarly explicit scenes, but with one important difference: they take place between straight couples.
While it might be too bold to suggest that the petition is an outright act of homophobia, it’s likely that part of the reason for its signatories’ shock is their unfamiliarity with the idea of gay sex.
Perhaps if the parents and teachers who signed the petition had been exposed to literary storylines that explored narratives of gay teens when they were young adults, their views on the book would be more positive.
Literature has long been used as a sort of social meter. We can read fiction written decades ago to measure how societies treated their marginalized groups.
But it can also work the other way around. Literature is an incredibly powerful way to foster empathy in young adults, since novels allow readers to immerse themselves in the inner lives of those who live vastly different outer lives from their own.
Teens who can empathize with their gay peers, who can recognize their full humanity, are more likely to treat those peers with respect. Young adults as an entire generation would benefit from more quality literature about sexual orientation gaining notoriety and popularity, perhaps starting with When Everything Feels Like the Movies.
Failing to recognize a book’s literary merit based on its sexual content demonstrates an archaic understanding of young adults’ maturity levels.
And preventing such an important, socially relevant story from gaining the recognition that comes with a national literary award, based on something as trivial as its “vulgar” language, is simply irresponsible.