Granddad's Pride a picture book for under 7s

[Imnobody4]

I despair this could have been a positive book instead of this.

The gay community rightly and successfully distanced itself from bigoted allegations that "gayness" is somehow associated with paedophilia. This kind of book does untold damage by dragging in fetishes, unnecessary surgeries, and other references which are, at least, questionable.

twitter.com/blablafishcakes/status/1665991458959097856?t=j26SaoImYIHD0psjWCvmAA&s=19

Someone is getting their jollies here aren’t they?

how shameful for the people enabling it

That’s a very good point about Rachel Rooney. She wrote an empowering, body-positive book for kids that was seen as hateful anti-trans propaganda.

That this incredibly dodgy and kink-normalising book is deemed award-worthy shows what a topsy-turvy world we live in.

The cover of the MAP does look like graffiti drawing of an ejaculating penis. Look at the shape of the islands at the too. Not a coincidence

Also the kids workshops only available for a very narrow age range 4-8. Often pedophiles have very specific age preferences

I wonder when we as a society are going to figure out that Pride is largely about sex and has nothing to do with children and that people who actively seek to talk to children about sex urgently need their hard drive examining

"here's the author, you'll be totally surprised with what they look like"

Charles Hawtrey in a wig?

Someone on twitter pointed out that compass rose on the corner of the map lhas been drawn as a blue spiral. Which it has. Apparently this is the symbol for men who like small boys. It it? I haven't the foggiest, but it's an odd way to draw a compass rose.

What I don’t understand, is that there is so much focus now on having ‘sensitivity readers’ to ensure what is published is ‘safe’, why don’t these publishing houses also employ ‘sensitivity observers’ to ensure that nothing published can be interpreted in ways that negatively impact a group.

Those sensitivity readers should, of course, be people who have no allegiances to the work they are overview. So, I am talking about someone who will go… er.. maybe this needs a rethink and is not afraid to point out things that even thinking those things would be called homophobic.

That photoshoot should never have happened. And I suspect there is too many instances in this book for it not to be deliberate.

But you can completely see why, in a workplace culture in which you can lose your entire career for saying the wrong thing, nobody wants to be the one to point out that the star prizewinning queer author you have commissioned is promoting paedophilia.

Perhaps there aren't that many sensitivity readers who are familiar with all the secret coding of paedophiles.

And I'm guessing that as soon as everyone gets it, the codes will change. There's no point in having a covert language, if everyone knows it.

He has said that he hides things in his illustrations for his friends and family to find.

The guy in bondage gear has a paw print 🐾 tattoo (for furries) and putti angel wings (apparently for liking young boys) on his arm in the US edition but these have been removed in the British one. He's also embracing another man in the US edition but not in the U.K. one. This suggests that someone has made editorial decisions about what will fly with the different audiences. So his publishing house is absolutely aware of the symbolism in the book.

Without wishing to overload you, MAP is a now a fairly common term, designed, I believe, to take the stigma out of the concept of paedophilia, by not saying paedophile.

As if.

The reason a lot of people are familiar with it is because paedophiles would write it in their bios on Twitter. Quite openly. MAP. And NOMAP. Which stands for non offending minor attracted person.

They would also, quite openly, state the ages of the children they were interested in. Things like 0 to 6 months. Or 2 to 5 years.

This is on bloody Twitter. Accessed by the police, MPs, judges. The lot.

It doesn't get more overt. They must've thought all their fucking Christmases had come at once. I believe it's been clamped down on now, but it was there for bloody yonks.

Jacob Breslow, the former Mermaids trustee who has written some very dubious stuff, has a tattoo of a little boy with wings on his torso.

That is a grim thought Clymene.

So, who is celebrating this book then? A community being painted by the illustrator as having paraphilias that should be normalised and that children should be told about?

And of course, I am not talking about homosexuality as a paraphilia. Far from it.

I am surprised the kids did not denounce Granddad as transphobe for having an old style Pride flag.

And Grand'dad' sounds a bit cishet to me.

I'm as straight laced as they come and that struck me too at first glance.

I can think of nothing else to add apart from 'Holy Fuck, how did that ever get published?'

Wow!! Yet more evidence that we have lost the plot. I mean, you wouldn’t have pictures of mum wearing a thong in a children’s book…. So why is bondage acceptable here? Why can’t children just know that some people are in a couple with someone of the same sex and that’s ok and normal? Why do we need to bring sex into it?

And the MAP thing is so blatant. Unbelievable.

And the Lolita sunglasses - these are seen later on being worn by a kid.

It's a bloody arrogance of it.

Did they really think people wouldn't point all this out?

We recently have had protest activity in the town where I work, particularly centered around libraries and schools.

This is the kind of thing of course that really is upsetting the people in the protest group, or stuff like Juno Dawson's book, or that graphic novel with the depictions of oral sex using a dildo.

Lots of the parents and some of the library staff (as private citizens) have been in counter-protest mode, and what has really struck me is that none that I talked to have really looked into the content of these things. They are being described as "LGBTIQ+ bools" and they are just accepting that description and seem to conclude that is the whole objection these people have. I think in most cases these people would not believe you if you told them what is in these books - though I also suspect if you showed them, they would feel they had to support it.

The flip side of that is the people who are upset about the books assume that all of these people, and the librarians doing the ordering, are well aware of this content and approve of it. Which is logical, but isn't the reality, the librarians in charge of collections are largely ordering based on the book filling a slot they want and based on the publishers description. They always want to find sj content, frankly I think that is more important to them than finding good stories.

But the conclusion the more naive protesters come to is that all the people who they associate with supporting LGBTIQ+ think this stuff is ok for kids and basically that they are perverts or enablers of perverts. Any concerns they ever had about gay rights look totally justified to them.

I think we have seen that people fully believe that it is a sign of hatred to discuss them or even think them.

People are that indoctrinated into glossing over issues so as to not portray a group as having issues that they need to address. Rather than tackling the issues with honesty and openness. Which I feel is what Pride was originally about. Honesty and openness to dispel false deplorable stereotyping.

Well cishom, which is just have bad

" Have you ever done it with a transman Grandad? why not? What's wrong with surgically enhanced cock you old transphobe?"

" Are you one of those borings old Gays Granddad? Tell us what is like in the old days before everyone became pansexual"