"Education, Faculty of"@en . "DSpace"@en . "UBCV"@en . "Beveridge, Lian Judith"@en . "2012-08-21T17:08:04Z"@en . "2012"@en . "Doctor of Philosophy - PhD"@en . "University of British Columbia"@en . "In this dissertation I analyse lesbian and gay picturebooks and the discourse of a censorship challenge to these books. I take a deconstructive approach to the material, using queer theory, children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature criticism and children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s culture theory to analyse the ways in which the knowledge/ignorance and adult/child binaries are reinscribed and undone in these discourses. I focus on absences of LGBT-specific language, physical bodies, difference and non-normative gender identities in the picturebooks, and analyse a wide range of media in a challenge in Lexington, Massachusetts which began in 2005. I argue that both the books and the discourse of the challenge have the effect of reinscribing a construction of the ideal child as ignorant and asexual. This conceptualisation of childhood dismisses actual children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s ability to absorb, challenge or disseminate knowledge, and refuses to offer them possibilities of non-normative genders and sexualities for their lives. \n\tI argue that, due to the focus on sexuality and the unavoidably pedagogical nature of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, the picturebooks inherently trouble the knowledge/ignorance binary. Due to this disruptive condition the normalising politics of the picturebooks are inadequate to prevent the books from becoming controversial. Queer picturebooks that resisted normalisation and represented real difference would better respect the intellectual and emotional needs of child readers."@en . "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/42990?expand=metadata"@en . " JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE: THE KNOWLEDGE/IGNORANCE BINARY IN CENSORSHIP AND LESBIAN AND GAY PICTUREBOOKS by LIAN JUDITH BEVERIDGE Dip. Creative Arts, The University of Melbourne 2004. B.A. (Hons), The University of Melbourne, 2005. M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2007. A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Cross Faculty Inquiry in Education) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2012 \u00C2\u00A9 Lian Judith Beveridge, 2012 ii Abstract In this dissertation I analyse lesbian and gay picturebooks and the discourse of a censorship challenge to these books. I take a deconstructive approach to the material, using queer theory, children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature criticism and children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s culture theory to analyse the ways in which the knowledge/ignorance and adult/child binaries are reinscribed and undone in these discourses. I focus on absences of LGBT-specific language, physical bodies, difference and non-normative gender identities in the picturebooks, and analyse a wide range of media in a challenge in Lexington, Massachusetts which began in 2005. I argue that both the books and the discourse of the challenge have the effect of reinscribing a construction of the ideal child as ignorant and asexual. This conceptualisation of childhood dismisses actual children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s ability to absorb, challenge or disseminate knowledge, and refuses to offer them possibilities of non-normative genders and sexualities for their lives. I argue that, due to the focus on sexuality and the unavoidably pedagogical nature of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, the picturebooks inherently trouble the knowledge/ignorance binary. Due to this disruptive condition the normalising politics of the picturebooks are inadequate to prevent the books from becoming controversial. Queer picturebooks that resisted normalisation and represented real difference would better respect the intellectual and emotional needs of child readers. iii Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... ii\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Table of Contents......................................................................................................................iii\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Acknowledgements................................................................................................................... iv\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Chapter 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Definitions ...........................................................................................................................................2\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Significance ...................................................................................................................................... 14\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Structure ........................................................................................................................................... 14\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Chapter 2. Literature Review, Theoretical Framework and Methodology............... 17\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Literature\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Review:\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Literature\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Critics\t\r \u00C2\u00A0on\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Lesbian\t\r \u00C2\u00A0and\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Gay\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Picturebooks .............................................................................................................................................................. 17\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Theoretical\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Framework:\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Knowledge/Ignorance\t\r \u00C2\u00A0and\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Adult/Child\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Binaries .............. 23\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Method:\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Deconstruction\t\r \u00C2\u00A0and\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Queer\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Theory.......................................................................... 29\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Chapter 3. Absence in Lesbian and Gay Picturebooks .................................................. 37\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Absent\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Language ............................................................................................................................ 38\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Absent\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Bodies .................................................................................................................................. 41\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Absences\t\r \u00C2\u00A0of\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Difference ................................................................................................................. 48\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Absences\t\r \u00C2\u00A0of\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Non-\u00C2\u00ADNormative\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Genders ...................................................................................... 59\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Just\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Like:\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Normalising\t\r \u00C2\u00A0and\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Injurious\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Conduct...................................................................... 62\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Chapter 4. Innocence Destroyed in Lexington, Massachusetts .................................... 67\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Outline\t\r \u00C2\u00A0of\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Key\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Events\t\r \u00C2\u00A0and\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Participants .................................................................................. 68\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Innocence/Ignorance.................................................................................................................... 73\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Ignorance\t\r \u00C2\u00A0of\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Homosexuality....................................................................................................... 79\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Knowledge\t\r \u00C2\u00A0of\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Homosexuality .................................................................................................... 86\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Rights\t\r \u00C2\u00A0over\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Children\t\r \u00C2\u00A0or\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Rights? ........................................................................... 92\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 98\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Chapter 5. The Knowledge/Ignorance Binary in Both Censorship and the Picturebooks ..........................................................................................................................100\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Picturebooks\t\r \u00C2\u00A0are\t\r \u00C2\u00A0About\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Sexuality ..........................................................................................101\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Picturebooks\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Provide\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Information ........................................................................................106\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Picturebooks\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Provide\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Information\t\r \u00C2\u00A0About\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Sexuality ........................................................110\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Conclusion:\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Queer\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Picturebooks.............................................................................................111\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Further\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Avenues\t\r \u00C2\u00A0for\t\r \u00C2\u00A0Research .................................................................................................116\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................118\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 Appendix: Lesbian and Gay Picturebooks, Organised Chronologically .................135\t\r \u00C2\u00A0 iv Acknowledgements Roommates and neighbours for days playing in the garden and nights studying in the kitchen. Special mention Caelie Frampton, Mike Toews, Myka Tucker- Abrahamson, Sam Bradd, Sarah Buchanan, and Quvi Taylor. My academic friends and mentors in Vancouver, Melbourne and Oxford: Anna Andrews-Caughey, Anika Stafford, Ariel Caldwell, Bonnie Alexander, Christine McInnis Lyons, Claire Higgins, Devon Greyson, Grace Moore, Jennifer Scott, Riley Kearns, and Sharalyn Jordan. Special mention to my committee: Claudia Ruitenberg, Theresa Rogers and Beth Marshall. The vortex, for continuing a support network over ten years, two generations and three continents. Special mention Kristine Jover, Kristen Parer, Meri Machin- Roberts, Sally MacAdams, Sarah Rae, and Sophie Gillies. Partners, past and present, who made a space for themselves among towers of theory books. Special mention to Katie, who got me into the PhD, and Jonelle, who got me out. Gretta and Brian Beveridge, for giving me free reign of the bookshelves as a child. The bike store and yarn store folks, for keeping my brain working in different ways. My students, for reminding me that every sentence must have a subject and every paper an argument. The babies and toddlers, for demanding that every picturebook be worth their attention. Special mention Ellis, Elizabeth, Julian, Mabel and Paul. 1 Chapter 1. Introduction Chadwick: First, from Massachusetts, the story of a fairy tale that got a teacher sued for reading it to her second grade class. The story is about two gay princes. Several parents objected to it, some sighted [sic] religious beliefs. School officials say gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, teachers have an obligation to talk about it. [. . .] Ms. Robin Wirthlin (Parent): And suddenly it was love at first sight and you see the hearts and butterflies flying between the two of them and they kiss at the end of the book. [. . .] And I thought, What are they trying to teach these children? [. . .] Smith: [this incident], she says, violated her religious freedom and her right to privacy. Ms. Wirthlin: It makes me think that they are trying to indoctrinate the children and normalize and affirm homosexuality before the parents have had an opportunity to present a balanced view. -\u00E2\u0080\u009CTeacher, School Sued\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.1 In this National Public Radio Broadcast Robin Wirthlin discusses the time a teacher read Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland\u00E2\u0080\u0099s picturebook King and King to Wirthlins\u00E2\u0080\u0099 seven-year-old son. This excerpt exemplifies how LGBT picture books have come to be used as tools in larger cultural debates around sexuality and childhood. 1 I have corrected a misspelling of \u00E2\u0080\u009CWirthlin\u00E2\u0080\u009D in the original transcript. 2 In this dissertation I examine adult cultural constructions of childhood innocence in lesbian and gay picturebooks and in the discourse of a debate over the place of such books in elementary classrooms in Lexington, Massachusetts. More specifically, I analyse how both the picturebooks themselves and debate over them employ and reinforce the binary opposition between knowledge and ignorance. The picturebooks and the discourse that surrounds the challenge generally construct the ideal child as innocent, ignorant, asexual and entirely vulnerable. At the same time, and ironically, the picturebooks inherently undermine the knowledge/ignorance and adult/child binaries in that they contain information about sexuality. The picturebooks and those defending them would better serve actual child readers if they embraced this disruptive position rather than attempting to mute it. Definitions By \u00E2\u0080\u009Cknowledge/ignorance binary\u00E2\u0080\u009D I mean the ways concepts of knowledge, information, fact, opinion, indoctrination, education, maturity and wisdom are constructed in opposition to concepts of ignorance, innocence, purity, secrecy, protection, age-appropriateness, vulnerability and emptiness. The knowledge/ignorance binary is tightly related to the adult/child binary, and specifically the reasons adults desire childhood innocence, and the ways in which they enforce it. The knowledge/ignorance binary inescapably invokes the binary of guilt and innocence, as sexuality is linked, in many Western cultures, with the Fall of Adam and Eve. I argue that, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick writes, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinnocence\u00E2\u0080\u009D is the \u00E2\u0080\u009Csentimental privileging of ignorance\u00E2\u0080\u009D 3 (Epistemology 7). Therefore, I use the terms \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinnocence\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Cignorance\u00E2\u0080\u009D more or less synonymously (I explore this topic in more detail in Chapter Two). In her essay on the definition of a \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchild\u00E2\u0080\u009D Karin Lesnik-Oberstein writes \u00E2\u0080\u009Calthough the idea that \u00E2\u0080\u0098children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature\u00E2\u0080\u0099 might pose problems of definition is often accepted and discussed by critics, the idea that the \u00E2\u0080\u0098child\u00E2\u0080\u0099 might pose equal\u00E2\u0080\u0094if not greater\u00E2\u0080\u0094problems of definition is strenuously resisted\u00E2\u0080\u009D (17). She traces a trajectory of criticism that engages with the problem of defining the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchild.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Philippe Ari\u00C3\u00A8s\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Centuries of Childhood is a key text discussing the shifting, contradictory and historically bound concept of the child. As Margaret King writes in her article \u00E2\u0080\u009CConcepts of Childhood\u00E2\u0080\u009D: Ari\u00C3\u00A8s\u00E2\u0080\u0099s greatest contribution [. . .] is his insistence on the historicity of childhood: that childhood was not an essential condition, a constant across time, but something that changed\u00E2\u0080\u0094or, if childhood itself, bound by biologically- and psychologically-determined phases of development, is constant, then the understanding of it differed, as did the way it was experienced by both adults and children. (372) Jacquelyn Rose further complicates the definition of the child by acknowledging that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchildren\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature rests on the idea that there is a child who is simply there to be addressed and that speaking to it might be simple\u00E2\u0080\u009D (1), but actually \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca set of divisions\u00E2\u0080\u0094 of class, culture and literacy\u00E2\u0080\u0094[. . .] undermine any generalized concept of the child\u00E2\u0080\u009D (7). In this dissertation I am primarily interested in the ways in which adults construct the idea of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe child.\u00E2\u0080\u009D As Rose argues, \u00E2\u0080\u009CWhat we have been given instead is a glorification of the child. This suggests not only a refusal to acknowledge difficulties and contradictions in relation to childhood; it implies that we use the image of the child to 4 deny those same difficulties in relation to ourselves\u00E2\u0080\u009D (8). I rely on the work of these theorists in my analysis of constructions of the ideal child as simple and ignorant. Although I speak in broad terms of adults and children, there are, of course multiple competing discourses and resistances within both groups. Following Foucault, I \u00E2\u0080\u009Cconceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Foucault 100). The definition of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchild\u00E2\u0080\u009D is complicated by the many different types of children we may mean we use the term \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchild.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The term may refer to the actual child, the implied child reader, the ideal child, and the remembered child, among others. These categories are overlapping, and the distinctions between them are difficult to maintain in any sustained discussion of childhood. The actual child may be understood as the flesh-and-blood child, such as that person sitting in our classroom, borrowing books in our library, or eating at our kitchen table. There is, as I will discuss, an absence of actual children in this dissertation. The term \u00E2\u0080\u009Cimplied child reader\u00E2\u0080\u009D is a variation of Iser\u00E2\u0080\u0099s term \u00E2\u0080\u009Cimplied reader,\u00E2\u0080\u009D which \u00E2\u0080\u009Cincorporates both the prestructuring of the potential meaning by the text, and the reader\u00E2\u0080\u0099s actualization of this potential through the reading process\u00E2\u0080\u009D (qtd. in Nodelman and Reimer 17). In other words, it is the \u00E2\u0080\u009Crole a text implies and invites a reader to take on\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Nodelman and Reimer 16). Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature theorists such as Aidan Chambers, Peggy Whalen-Levitt and Mavis Reimer have taken up Iser\u00E2\u0080\u0099s theories of the implied reader to think about the complexities of a child written by an adult author. The child created by children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature is the focus of Chapter 3. 5 Fictional children populate the picturebooks under analysis. In some ways this child performs a similar role to the implied child reader, as the texts rarely engage in postmodern literary strategies, or encourage the implied child reader to know more than the fictional protagonist. In other ways, the implied child reader must have more knowledge of sexuality than the fictional children in these books, in order to make sense of the texts. The works of queer theorists writing on childhood are also frequently about fictional children, but these are, as I will discuss, children written for adults, as these theorists tend to analyse the works of canonical authors such as Herman Melville, Henry James, Marcel Proust, and Oscar Wilde, rather than literature written for implied child audiences. The ideal child is the future child, the imagined child, the child we all should have been. It is closely tied up with adult memories of our childhoods, as they were, or as we wish they were. The desire for the ideal future child and the past self as child are entangled. In their introduction to Curiouser: On the Queerness of Children, Steven Bruhm and Natasha Hurley write that utopianism and nostalgia follow the child \u00E2\u0080\u009Caround like a family pet\u00E2\u0080\u009D (xiii). This child is, I argue, the primary one under debate in the censorship case, and therefore the focus of Chapter 4. A slightly different ideal child is the focus of queer theorists: the queer child. Their ideal child is no less imagined, and no less associated with adult memories, but is not idealised or nostalgic, rather being associated with death, sex, money and power. The queer child is, perhaps, the dystopic version of the ideal child. This child is discussed primarily in Chapter 2. 6 Slippage between these categories is inescapable. As I mentioned, ideas about the remembered child affect ideas about the ideal child, while ideas about the ideal child affect the implied child created in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature. Lives of actual children are often used as a focus for debates over the way in which we define the ideal child, and real children become confused with the ideal. Ideas about the ideal child and the implied child reader have effects on actual children. For instance, I argue that the picturebooks write a fictional child character and also create an implied child reader who is ignorant of homophobia, even when discrimination is directed towards them. This implied reader is aligned with the ideal child under debate in the censorship case, who is, and should be, ignorant about homophobia. These books affect actual child readers who do not receive information about homophobia from the texts, and the legal and practical outcomes of the censorship debate may affect what information about homophobia actual children receive in schools. These different understandings of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe child\u00E2\u0080\u009D all interact in our cultural understandings of sexuality and childhood. I study thirty-one LGBT picturebooks published in the US, the UK and Canada between 1983 and 2011 (see Appendix). The books are drawn primarily from annotated bibliographies including Laurel A. Clyde and Marjorie Lobban\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Out of the Closet and Into the Classroom, Frances Ann Day\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Lesbian and Gay Voices: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to Literature for Children and Young Adults and Jamie Campbell Naidoo\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Rainbow Family Collections: Selecting and Using Children's Books With Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Content. In my search for the texts I was guided by researchers who wrote about the process of identifying and acquiring lesbian and gay children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, such as Laurel A. Clyde and Marjorie Lobban\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 7 article about their process of producing their 1996 annotated bibliography. This text aims \u00E2\u0080\u009Cto include all books in which there is a homosexual character, or references to homosexuality, or in which homosexual terms are used\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CA Door Half Open\u00E2\u0080\u009D 18). Their \u00E2\u0080\u009Cresources and strategies [. . .] used to identify and locate books [were] varied,\u00E2\u0080\u009D and included searching: national and trade bibliographies [. . .] national library catalogues [. . .] databases created by Internet-based bookstores such as Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble on the Web [. . .] catalogues of libraries that specialize in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature [. . .] specialist bookshops [including] Little Sisters and Vancouver Kidsbooks in Vancouver (Canada) [and] review sources [including] Lambda Book Report, VOYA, School Library Journal, Books for Keeps, Scan, Magpies, and Reading Time. (18) Despite this effort, they found acquiring or even reading all of the books they identified to be a challenge. They write: the older books, and some newer ones, have proved difficult to purchase or to locate through inter-library loan. Some were not even listed in the standard national and trade bibliographies, or in the catalogues of libraries that specialize in the collection of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature. It was almost as if a conspiracy existed to keep the books from readers. (19) Vivianne Fogarty\u00E2\u0080\u0099s investigation into \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe accessibility and availability of GLBTQ picture books, written in English and French and suitable for K\u00E2\u0080\u00936 students\u00E2\u0080\u009D in Winnipeg, Manitoba was also illuminating in its difficulty (22). She found that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmany school and 8 public library collections under-represent GLBTQ materials and that searches for these materials can be difficult and cumbersome\u00E2\u0080\u009D (23). I have chosen my sample of texts based on the following criteria: picturebooks in English, aimed at an audience of children under five, fictional, containing at least one explicitly lesbian or gay character and available at public and university libraries, or in bookstores. My own searches have been conducted primarily in Vancouver, Canada, and Melbourne, Australia. Speciality LGBT or children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s bookstores such as Little Sisters and Kidsbooks in Vancouver, and Hares and Hyenas and The Little Bookroom in Melbourne, have been key sources for such material, but large chain bookstores such as ChaptersIndigo and Collins Bookstores often carry a good range of picturebooks. I have also used internet sources, such as Amazon subject lists, to identify relevant picturebooks. However, as far as possible I have excluded self-published books. The books I analyse in this dissertation are generally readily available in libraries and bookstores across Canada, and are regularly mentioned in online and published bibliographies of LGBT children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature. As this dissertation focuses on cultural understandings of childhood and sexuality, and public debate over these issues, prominent and easily accessed picturebooks are particularly germane. I analyse only picturebooks that are explicitly about lesbian or gay characters; I will not analyse queer subtext in other picturebooks. The texts I discuss range from board books for babies such as Leslea Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Mommy, Mama and Me, to longer fairytales such as Johnny Valentine\u00E2\u0080\u0099s The Duke Who Outlawed Jellybeans. I use the narrow term \u00E2\u0080\u009Clesbian and gay\u00E2\u0080\u009D very consciously. The books do not encompass the diversity indicated by the acronym LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender), as, with the notable 9 exception of Marcus Ewert\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 10,000 Dresses, the picturebooks do not contain any self- identified bisexual, transgender or intersex characters. The current texts are normalising to the extent that they cannot accurately be described as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cqueer.\u00E2\u0080\u009D In his introduction to Fear of a Queer Planet Michael Warner writes queer \u00E2\u0080\u009Crejects a minoritizing logic of toleration or simple political interest-representation in favor of a more thorough resistance to regimes of the normal [and] has the effect of pointing out a wide field of normalization, rather than simple intolerance, as the site of violence\u00E2\u0080\u009D (xxvi). As I will argue, the picturebooks I study have the effect of supporting the regimes of the normal, and thus cannot be called queer. For the purposes of this dissertation I rely on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick\u00E2\u0080\u0099s discussion of the definitions of sex, gender and sexuality, as it engages with the complexity of the relationships between the three concepts. Her work relies on feminist and queer theory, which are both key schools of thought in understanding the conceptual links and disconnects between childhood, ignorance and sexuality. She writes that sex, gender and sexuality are \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthree terms whose usage relations and analytical relations are almost irremediably slippery\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Epistemology 27). She discusses the separation of sex and gender according to feminist thought, in which \u00E2\u0080\u009C\u00E2\u0080\u0098sex\u00E2\u0080\u0099 has had the meaning of a certain group of irreducible, biological differentiations between members of the species Homo sapiens who have XX and those who have XY chromosomes\u00E2\u0080\u009D (27). Gender refers to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe far more elaborated, more fully and richly dichotomized social production and reproduction of male and female identities and behaviours \u00E2\u0080\u0093 of male and female persons\u00E2\u0080\u009D (27). Sexuality includes an \u00E2\u0080\u009Carray of acts, expectations, narratives, pleasures, identity- formations, and knowledges, in both women and men, that tends to cluster most densely 10 around certain genital sensations but is not adequately defined by them\u00E2\u0080\u009D (29). An important point to take from this definition is that sexuality encompasses both identity and behaviour. Sexuality is defined by physical acts, yes, but it is also centrally defined by cultural and social expectations, narratives, and knowledges. Sexuality tends to \u00E2\u0080\u009Crepresent the full spectrum of positions between the most intimate and the most social, the most predetermined and the most aleatory, the most physically rooted and the most symbolically infused, the most innate and the most learned, the most autonomous and the most relational traits of being\u00E2\u0080\u009D (29). Another important point about sexuality is that it is defined by the heterosexual matrix: one is sexed male, has a masculine gender and is attracted to females, or one is sexed female, has a feminine gender and is attracted to males. Judith Butler writes that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe cultural matrix through which gender identity has become intelligible requires that certain kinds of \u00E2\u0080\u0098identities\u00E2\u0080\u0099 cannot \u00E2\u0080\u0098exist\u00E2\u0080\u0099 \u00E2\u0080\u0093 that is, those in which gender does not follow from sex and those in which the practices of desire do not \u00E2\u0080\u0098follow\u00E2\u0080\u0099 from either sex or gender\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Gender Trouble 24). She defines \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfollow\u00E2\u0080\u009D as \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca political relation of entailment instituted by the cultural laws that establish and regulate the shape and meaning of sexuality\u00E2\u0080\u009D (24). In this heterosexist assumption the relation of sex, gender and sexuality is seamless and unnoticeable unless one violates these cultural laws. While almost all of the picturebooks I study are concerned exclusively with sexuality, I also consider gender in my dissertation. Sedgwick, referencing Gayle Rubin, argues that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe question of gender and the question of sexuality, inextricable from one another though they are in that each can be expressed only in the terms of the other, are nonetheless not the same question\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Epistemology 30). Although the questions of gender 11 and sexuality are certainly not the same in the picturebooks, gender and sexuality are intertwined throughout the books and the debates over them. Sedgwick notes that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cparticular manifestations or features of particular sexuality are among the things that plunge women and men most ineluctably into the discursive, institutional, and bodily enmeshments of gender definition, gender relation, and gender inequality\u00E2\u0080\u009D (30). I use the term \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccisgendered\u00E2\u0080\u009D to refer to people whose gender identity matches the sex assigned to them at birth, and either \u00E2\u0080\u009Cstraight\u00E2\u0080\u009D or \u00E2\u0080\u009Cheterosexual\u00E2\u0080\u009D to refer to people exclusively attracted to people of a different gender from their own. I often use the term \u00E2\u0080\u009Cnon-normative genders and sexualities\u00E2\u0080\u009D in this dissertation. I mean this as a very broad term which includes all genders and sexualities that do not fit the heterosexual matrix; all genders in which one\u00E2\u0080\u0099s gender identity does not neatly match with the sex assigned at birth, and all sexualities that are not heterosexual. Another term I use is LGBT, which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (I have not included I for intersex, as many intersexed people are identified as such when children, which would greatly complicate my discussion). The terms \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchallenge\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccensorship\u00E2\u0080\u009D also require definition. Peter Hunt\u00E2\u0080\u0099s \u00E2\u0080\u009CCensorship and Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature in Britain Now, or, The Return of Abigail\u00E2\u0080\u009D is a key text. He addresses the complexity of censorship of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, describing it as \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca texture of paradoxes: between benevolent control and fearful repression; between commonsense attitudes to words and meanings and necessary freedom of interpretation; between a \u00E2\u0080\u0098trivial\u00E2\u0080\u0099 subject and a far-from-trivial reaction to it\u00E2\u0080\u0094and [. . .] between the overt and the covert\u00E2\u0080\u009D (103). Hunt also makes the important point that \u00E2\u0080\u009C[a] censor of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s books does not have to answer to anything except \u00E2\u0080\u0098common sense,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 which is 12 blithely (or aggressively) assumed to be ideologically neutral, and which assumes [. . .] a spectacularly simplistic relationship between text and reader\u00E2\u0080\u009D (99). Hunt refers to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cquiet censorship,\u00E2\u0080\u009D which occurs when \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpublishers of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature who, in anticipation of negative reaction or unwanted pressure from the public, exercise censorship outside of the public eye\u00E2\u0080\u009D (paraphrased by Booth 27). Judy Norton expands on the chain reaction of quiet censorship: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cin the contemporary American world of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, author reacts to publisher, who reacts to school, library, and bookstore constituencies, which react to their fear of \u00E2\u0080\u0098trouble\u00E2\u0080\u0099 (read parents)\u00E2\u0080\u009D (297). Challenges are defined as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe formal, written request[s] to remove [books] from library shelves or otherwise restrict public access\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Doyle 16). Although I rely on Hunt\u00E2\u0080\u0099s work, I use the language of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchallenge\u00E2\u0080\u009D rather than \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccensorship\u00E2\u0080\u009D, as it covers both successful and unsuccessful attempts to suppress literature. In this language I am indebted to library studies, which argues that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchallenges are as important to document as actual bannings that result in removing a book from the shelves of a library or bookstore or from the curriculum at a school\u00E2\u0080\u009D (17), because \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe threat of banning can be as dangerous as the actuality\u00E2\u0080\u009D (8). The particular challenge I analyse did not ultimately result in any books removed from the shelves. However, three lesbian and gay picturebooks were the origin of the challenge, and they were brought up consistently over the three years of discourse I study. I chose the challenge in Lexington, Massachusetts not because it is particularly representative of challenges, but because it involves a wide range of opinions from different parties across the political spectrum, and therefore provides a window into a broad range of cultural discourses on sexuality and childhood. This case involves a 13 number of large and important organisations such as the Mormon Church, and some participants in the challenge went on to be involved in high profile political campaigns, such as those around marriage bills in California and Florida. The discourse of this debate is intertwined with crucial cultural groups and movement in the United States. Given the current political prominence of the U.S. on the international stage, and that the bulk of the picturebooks in my sample are published in the U.S, (as indeed are most lesbian and gay picturebooks), it is appropriate for this dissertation to study a challenge from this nation. Equally rich material is available in challenges such as the Surrey School Board case in Canada in 1997, and the case of Brenna and Vicki Harding\u00E2\u0080\u0099s early readers and Play School segment in Australia in 2004 (see Naidoo 55 and Harding 29). I am indebted to previous case-studies on lesbian and gay picturebooks such as Marta L. Magnuson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s \u00E2\u0080\u009CPerceptions of Self and the \u00E2\u0080\u0098Other\u00E2\u0080\u0099: An Analysis of Challenges to And Tango Makes Three,\u00E2\u0080\u009D which \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfocused on the motives behind challenges to the acclaimed children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s book And Tango Makes Three and the reasoning given by those in the community who opposed these challenges,\u00E2\u0080\u009D with the intention of helping \u00E2\u0080\u009Clibrarians [. . .] better understand what motivates people to challenge books and find effective ways to work with challengers to achieve acceptable solutions\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Magnuson n. pag). Damian Collins\u00E2\u0080\u0099 \u00E2\u0080\u009CCulture, Religion and Curriculum: Lessons from the \u00E2\u0080\u0098Three Books\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Controversy in Surrey, BC\u00E2\u0080\u009D applies a geographical framework to a challenge, reviewing \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe 6 years of controversy that surrounded the Surrey School Board\u00E2\u0080\u0099s actions, and the ways in which the issues raised were framed and resolved by the courts\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Collins 343). He argues that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgeographical categories\u00E2\u0080\u0094in particular, the distinction between public and private\u00E2\u0080\u0094are central to cultural and legal conflict over religion\u00E2\u0080\u0099s place in the curricula and governance 14 of public schools\u00E2\u0080\u009D (343). My analysis contributes to this scholarship on picturebook challenges by applying a deconstructive framework based on the knowledge/ignorance binary, and by analysing a body of picturebooks with a challenge. Significance The picturebooks I study represent one of the only sources of information intended for children about sexualities other than heterosexuality. There are certainly some films that tackle the topic, such as the documentaries It\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Elementary and It\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Still Elementary, both directed by Debra Chasnoff, or Barb Taylor\u00E2\u0080\u0099s short animation Tomboy, about a girl fighting against gender stereotypes, but the picturebooks play an important role in child-orientated media about non-normative genders and sexualities. I argue that it is important that the sources that are sporadically available to actual children be politically astute, and vital that children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature be thoughtfully and vibrantly written and illustrated, to respect the emotional, creative and intellectual qualities of implied child readers, and actual children. Structure In my literature review, theoretical framework and methodology chapter I situate my work within an academic landscape. I outline the work of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature theorists who write on the lesbian and gay picturebooks I have chosen to study, and explore the knowledge/ignorance binary and the adult/child binary, with a focus on how and why adults construct the ideal child as innocent. I then explain my use of a deconstructive framework, and situate this study within queer theory. 15 Absence in lesbian and gay picturebooks is the focus of my third chapter. I perform a close reading of the words and images of the picturebooks in my sample through a knowledge/ignorance framework. I argue that the picturebooks have the effect of reinforcing the knowledge/ignorance binary as they have central absences around specific pieces of knowledge adults wish to keep from the implied child reader, and therefore, the ideal and actual child. I argue further that the picturebooks have the effect of making the instability of the binary evident, as they are so centrally about ignorances one cannot read them without an awareness of the knowledge they occlude. I close with a reading of the picturebooks in my sample based on Warner\u00E2\u0080\u0099s work on \u00E2\u0080\u009Cnormalising speech\u00E2\u0080\u009D and Butler\u00E2\u0080\u0099s work on \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinjurious speech,\u00E2\u0080\u009D which explores the potentially detrimental effects of this reinforcement on the implied child reader. In my fourth chapter I study a case in which two couples sued over the inclusion of three lesbian and gay picturebooks in an elementary school in Lexington, Massachusetts. I analyse the discourse of a wide range of participants through a lens of the knowledge/ignorance binary. I argue that the discourse of the majority of participants has the effect of reinforcing an understanding of the ideal child as ignorant, asexual and extremely vulnerable to the impact of information about non-normative genders and sexualities. However, the discourse of the challenge demonstrates the binary collapsing through the emphasis on defining and shoring up \u00E2\u0080\u009Cnatural\u00E2\u0080\u009D innocence. In the final chapter I consider the picturebooks and the discourse of the Lexington case together, and draw conclusions about the effects of the way the knowledge/ignorance binary acts in these discourses. I argue that lesbian and gay picturebooks are inherently disruptive of adult constructions of childhood innocence in 16 that they are about sexuality and they provide information to their implied child reader. I hypothesise what a picturebook that embraced its disruptive position would look like. 17 Chapter 2. Literature Review, Theoretical Framework and Methodology In this chapter I outline the intellectual traditions in which this dissertation is situated. In the first section I discuss children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature theorists who have written on lesbian and gay picturebooks, and queer children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature more generally. They offer readings of the books in terms of ideology and adult/child power relations. In the second section I review the literature on the knowledge/ignorance and adult/child binaries. I draw on theoretical work from psychoanalysis, cultural studies, queer theory, children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature and children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s culture criticism to consider how and why adults construct ideal childhood innocence. I take a deconstructive approach to the picturebooks and the discourse of the challenge. I am influenced primarily by North American queer theorists who write about the ideal and the queer child, whose post-structuralist approaches offer deconstructive insights into conceptualisation of childhood and sexuality. In the third section in this chapter I discuss the work of queer theorists whose insights into knowledge/ignorance and adult/child binaries I build on to analyse my texts. Literature Review: Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature Critics on Lesbian and Gay Picturebooks Scholars in the field of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature criticism such as Kenneth Kidd, Melynda Huskey and Michelle Ann Abate have analysed many of the picturebooks that I study here. In this dissertation I draw on this previous scholarship and its focus on the power dynamics implicit in adult conceptions of childhood innocence. Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 18 literature criticism is a key academic force in analysing the power dynamic between children and adults, and especially the role of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature in creating and mandating ideals of childhood. A foundational critic is Jacqueline Rose, who, in her book The Case of Peter Pan: Or The Impossibility of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Fiction, made the observation that children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s books are written, illustrated, edited, published, promoted and purchased by adults, setting up \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca world in which the adult comes first (author, maker, giver) and the child comes after (reader, product, receiver)\u00E2\u0080\u009D (1-2). Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature constructs an ideal, adult-centred child through text \u00E2\u0080\u009Cin order to secure the child who is outside the book, the one who does not come so easily within its grasp\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2). In fact, John Stephens argues that this controlling impulse is the defining element of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature: \u00E2\u0080\u009CWhat this otherwise rather amorphous body of texts has in common is an impulse to intervene in the lives of children\u00E2\u0080\u009D (8). He argues that this intervention takes the form of ideological education. The intention of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature \u00E2\u0080\u009Cis to render the world intelligible,\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe intelligibility which a society offers its children is a network of ideological positions, many of which are neither articulated nor recognized as being essentially ideological\u00E2\u0080\u009D (8). These theorists argue that children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature is inherently didactic and controlling, intended to secure the implied child reader in ideological ways. One way in which lesbian and gay picturebooks are written about is in a bibliotherapeutic manner. For example, Suzanne Bunkers discusses Susanne Bosche\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin in her The Lion and The Unicorn article \u00E2\u0080\u009C\u00E2\u0080\u0098We are not the Cleavers\u00E2\u0080\u0099: Images of Nontraditional Families in Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature.\u00E2\u0080\u009D She notes the scarcity of lesbian and gay picturebooks in libraries and bookstores, and writes approvingly of Jenny that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe book highlights the caring environment in which Jenny 19 lives, and it subtly reminds readers that a gay home can be a happy home\u00E2\u0080\u009D (119). Kay Chick discusses a range of books in her Blackbird article \u00E2\u0080\u009CFostering an Appreciation for all Kinds of Families: Picturebooks with Gay and Lesbian Themes.\u00E2\u0080\u009D She critiques the older picturebooks for containing stereotypes and being both too dense and too dull for young audiences, but argues that, on the whole, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay-sensitive picturebooks [. . .] can help young children to understand themselves and others while modelling for them what is important in homes, schools and society\u00E2\u0080\u009D (15). These articles illustrate what is perhaps the most common estimation of the picturebooks; they are not terribly good art, but they play an important psycho-social role for actual children. Kenneth Kidd\u00E2\u0080\u0099s insightful work on lesbian and gay picturebooks makes clear the overwhelming difficulty of writing about sexuality in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature in his 1998 introduction to a special edition of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature Association Quarterly on \u00E2\u0080\u009Clesbian/gay literature for children and young adults.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Kidd writes that lesbian and gay picturebooks \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctypically downplay even adult sexuality in favor of a normalizing rhetoric of family values\u00E2\u0080\u009D (114). He attributes this downplaying \u00E2\u0080\u009Cboth to the reticence about sexuality in general in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s books and to the lingering belief that homosexuality in particular is incompatible with, or even antithetical to, childhood and its culture\u00E2\u0080\u009D (114). Melynda Huskey builds on Kidd\u00E2\u0080\u0099s argument in her article \u00E2\u0080\u009CQueering the Picture Book.\u00E2\u0080\u009D She argues that a popular strategy for dealing with the problem is to normalise lesbian and gay characters: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cin the realm of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099 literature, where the condition by which homosexuality may be named is that its normality, which is to say above all its nonsexuality, must be overdetermined in every context\u00E2\u0080\u009D (68). She suggests authors and editors attempt to avoid charges of recruitment by making the picturebooks unappealing 20 to children: \u00E2\u0080\u009CProduced under financial constraints that favor undistinguished illustrations and unimpressive book design, gay-themed picture books embrace their limitations, allowing the book to support the ideological message, \u00E2\u0080\u0098nothing overly appetizing or fun here\u00E2\u0080\u0099\u00E2\u0080\u009D (68). Huskey\u00E2\u0080\u0099s article is focused on the older picturebooks. While the newer picturebooks frequently contain full colour illustrations on glossy paper and so forth, the unappealing nature and overwhelming normativity of the books persists. Huskey suggests a solution is to look \u00E2\u0080\u009Coutside the [. . .] explicitly gay picture books to the innumerable theoretically \u00E2\u0080\u0098nongay\u00E2\u0080\u0099 picture books\u00E2\u0080\u009D and adopt a queer reading of these books (69). In their introduction to the edited collection Over The Rainbow: Queer Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s and Young Adult Literature Michelle Ann Abate and Kenneth Kidd extend this strategy to include queer readings of explicitly lesbian and gay picturebooks. They point out that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cunderstanding children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature as queer rather than more narrowly as lesbian/gay broadens the interpretive possibilities\u00E2\u0080\u009D (4). This strategy acknowledges that the books are not queer in themselves, but rather need to be read against the grain in order to be queered. Abate and Kidd argue that applying queer theory and queer readings to children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature is intellectually and socially important, as \u00E2\u0080\u009Centrenched denial about (homo)sexuality, combined with the phobic conflation of homosexuality with pedophilia, has made children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature the final frontier for queer theory in some ways\u00E2\u0080\u009D (14). Noting that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cqueer theory has lately shown great interest in the figure of the child [ . . .] but not so much in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature\u00E2\u0080\u009D (8), they offer hope \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwith this volume to encourage a more dynamic relationship between queer theory and children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature studies\u00E2\u0080\u009D (8). 21 Abate and Kidd\u00E2\u0080\u0099s collection contains another children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature scholar who famously advocated for reading against the grain: Judy Norton, in her article \u00E2\u0080\u009CTranschildren and The Discipline of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature.\u00E2\u0080\u009D She writes: pending the creation of a substantial body of specifically trans-children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, we can intervene in the reproductive cycle of transphobia through strategies of transreading: intuiting/interpreting the gender of child characters as not necessarily perfectly aligned with their anatomies. (299) Since the publication of this article, 10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewert has appeared, which is about a young trans girl and her dress designing dreams, but with this fine exception, Norton\u00E2\u0080\u0099s appeal for transreading is still pertinent. Norton references another article published in the collection: Elizabeth Ford\u00E2\u0080\u0099s \u00E2\u0080\u009CH/Z: Why Leslea Newman Makes Heather into Zoe.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Ford posits that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cyou may skirt, but not approach a gay/lesbian theme in literature for children and sell your book if, and only if, the gender identity of your young protagonist is unambiguous\u00E2\u0080\u009D (209-10). I agree with her argument that, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cultimately, it is the fear of what children might learn about their own sexual identities, not about the sexuality of adults around them, that makes these books controversial\u00E2\u0080\u009D (202). She writes that Heather of Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Heather Has Two Mommies arouses this fear, and the fear \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthat gay or lesbian parents will produce gay or lesbian children because her clothing, her features, her body, signals androgynous child, not boy or girl\u00E2\u0080\u009D (205). Norton and Ford both argue that gender-normativity marks the lesbian and gay picturebooks, and enables their publication. Eric Rofes\u00E2\u0080\u0099 \u00E2\u0080\u009CInnocence, Perversion, and Heather\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Two Mommies\u00E2\u0080\u009D also analyses the representation of fictional children in the picturebooks, but his focus is on their 22 childness, rather than their gender. He argues that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchildren retain the characteristics they have been granted within mainstream American culture (cute, innocent, simple, asexual), and the family unit in this body of literature escapes without being problematized\u00E2\u0080\u009D (18- 19). He refers to these images of children as \u00E2\u0080\u009Coppressive\u00E2\u0080\u009D (19), and argues that: the homosexual as pervert and the child as innocent are bound [so] tightly together [. . .] that lesbian and gay advocacy strategies will be ineffective in dislodging perversion as the central representation of homosexuality until they abandon tactics that patronize and \u00E2\u0080\u0098infantilize\u00E2\u0080\u0099 children and perpetuate a vision of childhood as simple, pure, and dependent upon the superior wisdom of adults. (5) Rofes\u00E2\u0080\u0099 argument highlights the power dynamic of adult constructions of childhood innocence, and argues that actual children will continue to be subject to victimisation and queer adults subject to characterisation as perverts until we acknowledge the instability of the knowledge/ignorance binary (22-3). The work I have outlined insightfully explores the power dynamics between adults and children, both actual and ideal, the way these dynamics play out in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature and the consequences of the power of adults over actual children. Writing about lesbian and gay children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature and queer readings of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature exposes the difficulty of such literature and such readings, and draws connections between this body of literature and the adult/child relationship. In this dissertation I address similar questions of power dynamics and cultural discourses of sexuality and childhood by focusing on the absences in the picturebooks. As Peter Hunt explains, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cit is the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cblindnesses\u00E2\u0080\u0099 of, or the omissions from children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s books \u00E2\u0080\u0093 what they don\u00E2\u0080\u0099t or can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t say \u00E2\u0080\u0093 which are important\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature xi). My contribution is also to study together 23 both the picturebooks and the language of a challenge to them, which offers further evidence for the arguments of Kidd, Huskey and Ford in the connections it draws between cultural antipathy to information about non-normative genders and sexualities being present in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, and what does not appear in lesbian and gay picturebooks. Theoretical Framework: Knowledge/Ignorance and Adult/Child Binaries Psychoanalysis offers an explanation for some of the reasons why adults might desire childhood innocence so strongly, and the methods by which adults construct it: adults are attached to their own idealised childhood, or nurture a desire to compensate for their less than ideal childhood. These are deep, unconscious, psychological needs for a particular concept of childhood. Diane Gittins suggests that \u00E2\u0080\u009Ceach and every one of us [. . .] carries our own, usually well-hidden and frequently denied, emotional and irrational baggage relating to our own subjective experiences of having once been a child\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2). She also writes that adults have \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca desire to maintain our own myth of having once been innocent\u00E2\u0080\u009D (204). Perry Nodelman expands this desire to create an idyllic past for our individual selves; he includes an idealised past for our whole society: Adults who understand childhood as a time they once experienced themselves, then left behind by growing more complex, tend to equate it with other mythic golden pasts \u00E2\u0080\u0093 gardens of paradise, pastoral idylls, and so on. They view it in the same idyllic terms, in the golden glow of retrospective nostalgia. (Hidden Adult 46) 24 These theorists suggest that adults need the ideal child for unconscious reasons, both personal and emotional. These nostalgic desires have less to do with an actual past and more to do with the idea of what that past should have been: an investment in the past rooted in fantasy. Cultural studies theorist Henry Jenkins claims that \u00E2\u0080\u009Calmost every major political battle of the twentieth century has been fought on the backs of our children\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2). The ideal child is an easily manipulated political tool, and being seen to be fighting \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfor the kids\u00E2\u0080\u009D is an expedient way for a public figure to be seen performing an ethical role. These battles often have little benefit for the actual child. Henry Giroux writes that \u00E2\u0080\u009Clacking opportunities to vote, mobilize, or register their opinions, young children become an easy target and referent in discussions of moral uplift and social legitimation\u00E2\u0080\u009D (41). Giroux\u00E2\u0080\u0099s attention to the moral dimension is apt: rhetorical use of the figure of the ideal child targets illogical, affective elements of an adult audience. Adults are invested in the ideal child because it is a useful tool to manipulate people. This rather cynical explanation can be tempered by a more generous reading that the emotions raised by the figure of the ideal child stimulate adults\u00E2\u0080\u0099 political engagement. In this reading, people are motivated by a desire to improve the lives of actual children, and this desire leads them to advocate for social change. Either of these readings could apply to the participants in the challenge I analyse in this dissertation. In No Future: Queer Theory and The Death Drive, Lee Edelman offers a provocative reading of adults\u00E2\u0080\u0099 political use of the figure of the ideal child. He suggests that those in power use the future of the child to prevent any change for those in need of it now. He argues that adults\u00E2\u0080\u0099 construction of the ideal child as blank, innocent and empty 25 causes any adult desire for radical political change to be read as destructive: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe lives, the speech, and the freedoms of adults face constant threat of legal curtailment out of deference to imaginary Children\u00E2\u0080\u009D (19). Edelman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s work does not subvert traditional concepts of adult constructions of childhood innocence; he constructs childhood as entirely oppositional to adulthood. As Kenneth Kidd writes, \u00E2\u0080\u009CEdelman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s No Future refuses to engage that prospect [of queer childhood(s)]. Edelman happily dispenses with the child, or rather the Child\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CQueer Theory\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Child\u00E2\u0080\u009D 183). However, Edelman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s battle cry against conservative and disabling uses of the figure of the ideal child in politics gets to the root of adult manipulation of the child: \u00E2\u0080\u009CFuck the social order and the Child in whose name we\u00E2\u0080\u0099re collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net\u00E2\u0080\u009D (29). Theorists on sexual education argue that adults are so invested in the innocence of the ideal child that adults deny actual children knowledge they need to protect their lives. Robert McRuer, in his article \u00E2\u0080\u009CReading and Writing \u00E2\u0080\u0098Immunity\u00E2\u0080\u0099: Children and the Anti- Body,\u00E2\u0080\u009D writes that \u00E2\u0080\u009C\u00E2\u0080\u0098adult\u00E2\u0080\u0099 and \u00E2\u0080\u0098child\u00E2\u0080\u0099 are by no means innocent, descriptive categories that emerge naturally; they are categories constructed in accordance with mechanisms of power and control that would serve to keep those designated children \u00E2\u0080\u0098in their place\u00E2\u0080\u0099\u00E2\u0080\u009D (188). He analyses children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature about AIDS, noting the absence of gay male bodies and of practical information about protecting oneself from infection. He argues that these exclusions are \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpotentially lethal, since [. . .] the life-saving lessons learned in gay and lesbian communities during the AIDS epidemic have been effaced\u00E2\u0080\u009D (185). The specific knowledge that is kept from actual children in the name of their innocence may 26 not only keep children in their place: it may kill them.2 Likewise, in Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex, Judith Levine provides an exhaustive description of sex education in the US, focusing on abstinence-only education. She concludes from rates of teen pregnancy, STIs and imprisonment that \u00E2\u0080\u009CAmerica\u00E2\u0080\u0099s drive to protect kids from sex is protecting them from nothing. Instead, often it is harming them\u00E2\u0080\u009D (xxxiv). Levine also points out that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cprosecutions of minors as adults are becoming almost common\u00E2\u0080\u009D (88). Innocence is such a defining factor in the construction of the ideal child that guilt negates the chronological age of the actual child. McRuer ends his article with the clear, practical argument that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay and proto-gay (and heterosexual and proto- heterosexual) children do exist, and these children need to learn not only that they should be compassionate toward those people already living with AIDS, but rather that AIDS may affect them directly if they share needles or engage in unprotected sex\u00E2\u0080\u009D (197). In Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting and Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture, James Kincaid provides controversial and persuasive readings of adult investments in childhood innocence. He offers a challenging thesis about adults\u00E2\u0080\u0099 cultural need for stories of child abuse: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwhat [these narratives] are offering is a nicely protected way of talking about the subject of child sexuality\u00E2\u0080\u009D (in Jenkins 246). These titillating tales of sexual abuse allow us to safely and publicly enjoy child eroticism, \u00E2\u0080\u009Can eroticism that can be flaunted and also screened, exploited and denied, enjoyed and cast off, made central and made criminal\u00E2\u0080\u009D (247). His analysis describes a society that talks constantly about children and sex, \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca society which has been loudly 2 I am reminded at this point of Kincaid\u00E2\u0080\u0099s work on dead children, particularly a controversial claim that adults actually desire dead children. As he points out, a gawky adolescent is no longer cute or desirable. A dead child on the other hand, is perfect: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe good child is patient, quiet, submissive; the best child is eternally so\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Child-Loving 234). 27 castigating itself for its hypocrisy for more than a century, which speaks verbosely of its own silence, [and] takes great pains to relate in detail the things it does not say\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Foucault 8). This claim provides a persuasive interpretation of the insistent and passionate ways those who seek to censor lesbian and gay picturebooks describe what the \u00E2\u0080\u009Chomosexual agenda\u00E2\u0080\u009D has in mind for ideal and actual children. It also resonates with Judith Butler\u00E2\u0080\u0099s analysis of censorship in Excitable Speech, especially her observation that censorship efforts \u00E2\u0080\u009Care compelled to restage in the spectacles of public denunciations they perform the very utterances they seek to banish from public life\u00E2\u0080\u009D (17). Kincaid argues that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchildhood in our culture has come to be largely a coordinate set of have nots: the child is that which does not have\u00E2\u0080\u009D (247). He argues that blankness is attractive to adults as anything may be written upon it. We can read this blank innocence as a guarded space, created and protected by adult desire. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick reads ignorance \u00E2\u0080\u009Cnot as a vacuum or as the blank it can pretend to be but as a weighty and occupied and consequential epistemological space\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Epistemology 77). She writes that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cignorances, far from being pieces of the originary dark, are produced by and correspond to particular knowledges and circulate as part of particular regimes of truth\u00E2\u0080\u009D (25). Sedgwick describes \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinnocence\u00E2\u0080\u009D as the \u00E2\u0080\u009Csentimental privileging of ignorance\u00E2\u0080\u009D (7). \u00E2\u0080\u009CChildhood innocence\u00E2\u0080\u009D often means \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchildhood ignorance,\u00E2\u0080\u009D perhaps relating to a desire for adults\u00E2\u0080\u0099 own nostalgic, imagined, innocent, ideal childhoods. In ascribing and maintaining this innocence, adults must keep particular knowledge from children, ideal, implied and actual. Robert N. Proctor, in his collection, Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, writes that: 28 We need to think about the conscious, unconscious, and structural production of ignorance, its diverse causes and conformations, whether brought about by neglect, forgetfulness, myopia, extinction, secrecy, or suppression. The point is to question the naturalness of ignorance, its causes and its distribution. (3) Therefore, in questioning the naturalness of innocence, we must start to think about why adults desire the innocence of the ideal child so fervently. The innocent child is an adult construction, not a naturally existing entity. As Perry Nodelman argues, adults teach implied child readers how they should experience childhood: [texts of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature replace] actual childhood innocence with an adult vision of childhood innocence \u00E2\u0080\u0093 inviting child readers to value their lack of knowledge, to develop an understanding of the meaning of the lack rather than just to lack it. (The Hidden Adult 45) The innocence adults ascribe to ideal children and implied child readers is an enforced space, and it is created in relation to specific knowledge adults do not wish ideal children to have. This work offers explanations of adults\u00E2\u0080\u0099 investments in childhood innocence, and the ways in which adult desires for a particular ideal conception of childhood disrespect actual children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s experience, knowledge and intellectual abilities. These theories cohere with those of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature criticism in exploring ways in which adults project their ideas about the ideal child onto actual children \u00E2\u0080\u0093 mandating a certain way of being for children. My project adds to this body of thinking by analysing a picturebook challenge for the ways both those seeking to censor the books and those defending them use 29 language which has the effect of reinscribing an innocent/ignorant child. The example offers support to Kincaid and Sedgwick\u00E2\u0080\u0099s arguments about the slippage between innocence and ignorance, and the ways adult desires for childhood innocence can fail to acknowledge and support actual children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s capabilities. Method: Deconstruction and Queer Theory I have explored the knowledge/ignorance binary in several ways in this literature review, focusing on how and why adults construct ideal childhood innocence. I have also outlined ways in which children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature critics have analysed lesbian and gay picturebooks using this framework. In this dissertation I build on these theorists, using a deconstructive approach to the picturebooks and the challenge. In this section I will explore theoretical and methodological approaches to the knowledge/ignorance binary and adult/child binary that share a common set of poststructuralist assumptions. I hesitate to write about deconstruction under the heading \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmethod\u00E2\u0080\u009D, as Derrida was quite clear that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdeconstruction is not a method and cannot be transformed into one\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Letter 3). However, I admire Derrida\u00E2\u0080\u0099s ability to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmake [. . .] the constructed character appear as such\u00E2\u0080\u009D and, in my work, I focus on the other side of \u00E2\u0080\u009Call the themes that have been privileged until now [. . .] that is, presence, consciousness, sign, theme, thesis, etc.\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Negotiations 16). To manoeuvre in this situation I am led by Gert Biesta, who suggests that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdeconstruction is not something that Derrida does or that other philosophers can do after him. Deconstruction is rather something that \u00E2\u0080\u0098occurs\u00E2\u0080\u0099\u00E2\u0080\u009D (76). Therefore, the most appropriate course is to witness deconstruction, which, he argues: 30 not only hints at a set of activities that is different from \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccritical analysis\u00E2\u0080\u009D but also suggests a different attitude, one that is affirmative more than destructive and that is ethico-political more than that it operates on the plane of cognition and rationality. (74) This strategy can usefully be applied to the way the knowledge/ignorance binary, under inspection, deconstructs itself. As Paul de Man puts it: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe deconstruction is not something we have added to the text but it constituted the text in the first place\u00E2\u0080\u009D (1376- 77). I argue that the lesbian and gay picturebooks constitute a deconstruction of the knowledge/ignorance binary. Much of the work of queer theorists writing on childhood is influenced by deconstruction and post-structuralism. These theorists tend to use a literary criticism approach, rather than philosophical or hermeneutic approaches. Their work has hallmarks of deconstruction in their dedication to doubleness, tension and the uncanny: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinstead of choosing between incompatible or contradictory readings, [one] attempts to understand the double binds and tensions that are articulated in the text\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Leitch et al. \u00E2\u0080\u009CIntroduction\u00E2\u0080\u009D 1683). They refuse to conclude at natural stopping points, instead dwelling in the difficult and ghostly. They deal with important and complex binary pairs such as adult/child, real/ideal, male/female, and straight/gay. Identifying the ways in which they observe the deconstruction of these fundamental binaries is helpful for observing the deconstruction of the knowledge/ignorance binary in the picturebooks, and the discourse of a challenge to the books. Lauren Berlant\u00E2\u0080\u0099s classic essay \u00E2\u0080\u009CSex in Public\u00E2\u0080\u009D engages with the adult/child binary by demonstrating how the figure of the adult is defined and undermined by the figure \u00E2\u0080\u009Cof 31 the seducible little girl\u00E2\u0080\u009D (66). Her essay turns on revealing the mutual dependence and instability of the public of the nation and the private citizen. Her work introduces a familiar binary in queer theory on childhood: future/past. She writes that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cbecause the only thing the nation form is able to assure for itself is its past, its archive of official memory, it must develop in the present ways of establishing its dominion over the future\u00E2\u0080\u009D (58). This dominion over the future, as Edelman points out, is a dominion of imaginary, ideal children. Berlant advocates identifying the ways in which these adult/child, future/past and public/private binaries do not hold, unlike Edelman, who uses them as a base for his argument. Identifying the instability of the future/past binary in relation to childhood is a productive tool in queer temporality studies. Indeed, Natasha Hurley comments, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe figure of the child found itself at the heart of the most heated debates in queer theory\u00E2\u0080\u0094a debate that has, in many respects, paradoxically left the child behind and morphed into one about refusing futurity\u00E2\u0080\u009D (121-2). In her In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives Judith Halberstam argues that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cqueer subcultures produce alternative temporalities by allowing their participants to believe that their futures can be imagined according to logics that lie outside of those paradigmatic markers of life experience \u00E2\u0080\u0093 namely, birth, marriage, reproduction, and death\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2). Halberstam describes queer children who refuse this logic as disengaging from the adult/child binary and taking advantage of the subversive possibilities of queer temporality. She seems to extend \u00E2\u0080\u009Cqueer\u00E2\u0080\u009D to include children queered by illness, early death, sexual abuse, etc. Sara Ahmed complicates the temporality of heterosexuality by reading it through a phenomenological lens: ideal children must follow the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cstraight line\u00E2\u0080\u009D of the family. She writes that one can link \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe 32 compulsion to become straight to the work of genealogy, which connect the line of descent between parents and children with the affinity of the heterosexual couple, as the meeting point between the vertical and horizontal lines of the family tree\u00E2\u0080\u009D (92). A queer child disavows a straight line to the future/past, and \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccan only, in this wish for the straight line, be read as the source of injury\u00E2\u0080\u009D (91). Both Michael Moon and Kathryn Bond Stockton engage with the ways in which queer childhoods interact with queer temporalities through the concept of ghostliness. Moon\u00E2\u0080\u0099s A Small Boy and Others is about memory, imitation and artistic revisiting of queer boyhoods. He analyses canonical texts along with pop culture artefacts in order to consider the ways that the past and the present unravel each other in the lives and creations of figures such as Andy Warhol and Joseph Cornell. Moon writes of each of the \u00E2\u0080\u009Csmall boys\u00E2\u0080\u009D in his study being \u00E2\u0080\u009Chaunted\u00E2\u0080\u009D by ghosts of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe highly improbable person he became\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Cby their eventual intimate association as artists and as persons with untimely deaths \u00E2\u0080\u0093 those of others as well as with the possibility of their own\u00E2\u0080\u009D (3). Stockton\u00E2\u0080\u0099s The Queer Child Or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century \u00E2\u0080\u009Cscouts the conceptual force of ghostly gayness in the figure of the child \u00E2\u0080\u0093 this child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s subliminal, cresting appearances only as a fiction\u00E2\u0080\u009D (4). She offers a haunting image of the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay child\u00E2\u0080\u009D as \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca gravestone marker for where or when one\u00E2\u0080\u0099s straight life died\u00E2\u0080\u009D (7). In addition to ghostliness, Kathryn Bond Stockton defines queer childhood in terms of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgrowing sidewards,\u00E2\u0080\u009D the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfascinating asynchronicities\u00E2\u0080\u009D that indicate \u00E2\u0080\u009Cways of growing which are not growing up\u00E2\u0080\u009D (11). She also explores the child queered by innocence, colour, money and Freud. She introduces the concept of the sexual and aggressive child: the cruel child. Undoing the binary of innocence and guilt, Bond 33 explores Freud\u00E2\u0080\u0099s queer child, who has a \u00E2\u0080\u009Clove of anality, voyeurism, and aggression\u00E2\u0080\u009D (27). This queer child is natural and innocent because it is guilty of murderous and sexual desires. Stockton\u00E2\u0080\u0099s work on the child/adult binary demonstrates the ways in which the ideal and queer child are infinitely complex constructions, intertwined with the concept of the adult in surprising ways. Judith Butler comes from a philosophical tradition, working in a long tradition of French post-structuralists. Her work on the iterability of gender has done much to trouble understanding of the binaries of real/imitation as well as male/female. Butler famously writes about performances that destabilise \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe very distinctions between the natural and the artificial, depth and surface, inner and outer, through which discourse about genders almost always operates\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Leitch et al. 2541). Her writing on childhood is less obviously focused on binaries than that on gender, but is still relevant to the knowledge/ignorance binary. Her chapter \u00E2\u0080\u009CUndiagnosing Gender\u00E2\u0080\u009D discusses The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders\u00E2\u0080\u0099 diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in relation to its enabling and destructive potential for ideal and actual children and transgendered adults. While this piece seems oddly invested in maintaining adult/child boundaries (children function as the innocent victims of GID) her analysis identifies the collapse of real/imitation and male/female binaries within the diagnosis. She offers a close reading of the diagnostic criteria for childhood GID in which the gender binary is undone by itself. In the section on boys\u00E2\u0080\u0099 play she notes that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwhat the boys are said to do is to engage in a series of substitutions and improvisations\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Undoing Gender 96), while for girls, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cevidence of one\u00E2\u0080\u0099s cross-gendered identification is confirmed by being identified as a boy by a stranger\u00E2\u0080\u009D (97). In both of these instances, she argues, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe DSM seeks to establish 34 gender as a set of more or less fixed and conventional norms, even as it keeps giving us evidence to the contrary, almost as if it is at cross purposes with its own aims\u00E2\u0080\u009D (98). Butler completes her observation of these deconstructing binaries by observing the collapse of the self/other binary. She concludes by commenting on the mutual interdependency of mortal bodily beings, writing poignantly on \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe social conditions by which autonomy is strangely, dispossessed and undone,\u00E2\u0080\u009D concluding that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwe must be undone in order to do ourselves\u00E2\u0080\u009D (101). According to the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism the main objections to Butler\u00E2\u0080\u0099s work \u00E2\u0080\u009Cecho the objections often made to post-structuralist work. Key questions focus on agency, power, and ethics, while her difficult style and specialized terminology seem to guarantee a small audience for work that aims to have political consequences\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Leitch et al. 2538). Such criticism could be levelled at many of the theorists I am discussing here, who embrace indeterminacy at the level of both the sentence and the argument. This criticism ties into ongoing debates in and about deconstructive criticism over the primacy of the text and the importance of social or political context. According to Jonathan Culler, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe deconstructive critic is frequently accused of treating the text being analysed as an entirely self-referential play of forms with no cognitive, ethical, or referential value\u00E2\u0080\u009D (279). This description does not tally exactly with the queer childhood theorists. Many of them do perform extraordinarily close readings, but they frequently engage with the ethical implications of the texts they are reading. As Biesta put it, their writing is ethico-political more than analytic. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has produced important critical material on childhood and on the knowledge/ignorance binary. She models an analysis of the 35 knowledge/ignorance binary in her chapter \u00E2\u0080\u009CEpistemology of the Closet\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Epistemology 67-90). The binaries that structure this chapter include secrecy/disclosure and private/public (72), but most crucially knowledge/ignorance (73). She explores this binary by first translating \u00E2\u0080\u009Cknowledge\u00E2\u0080\u009D as \u00E2\u0080\u009Csexual knowledge,\u00E2\u0080\u009D tracing this shift via Foucault\u00E2\u0080\u0099s History of Sexuality and Genesis, and secondly translating \u00E2\u0080\u009Csexual knowledge\u00E2\u0080\u009D as \u00E2\u0080\u009Chomosexuality,\u00E2\u0080\u009D via the nineteenth-century culture of the individual, St. Paul and Lord Alfred Douglas. Sedgwick then focuses on ignorance, drawing attention to its deliberate construction. Treating ignorance this way, focusing on the marginalised side of the binary, destabilises the power relations of knowledge/ignorance. She is \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinterested at this point in trying, as we are getting used to trying with \u00E2\u0080\u0098knowledge,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 to pluralize and specify [ignorance]\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Tendencies 25). This desire is played out as she discusses the wide range of available ignorances around someone coming out, the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cimponderable and convulsive [matters] of the open secret\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Epistemology 80). Sedgwick explores the changing terms of the key binary, focuses on the marginalised side, and witnesses it collapse. In the final step of her methodology, she brings the knowledge/ignorance binary into play with the issues of homo/heterosexual definition in a number of ways, including focusing on the heterosexist culture which requires a closet and ignorance, and whose \u00E2\u0080\u009Cintimate representational needs [the closet] serves\u00E2\u0080\u009D (69). Queer theorists witness instabilities in binaries of adult and child, innocence and guilt, and knowledge and innocence. They draw connections and oppositions between the ideal child and concepts of nationhood, gender, temporality, family structure and death. Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature theorists and children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s culture theorists have produced illuminating material on texts written for children, the adult/child binary and the ways in which this 36 power dynamic is enacted by children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature. My dissertation contributes to the work that brings these fields into dialogue by using a deconstructive lens to analyse both absences in the picturebooks and the discourse of a challenge to them, to explore cultural understandings of sexuality and childhood as they are enacted in these discourses. Kenneth Kidd asserts one \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccannot possibly ignore the fact of the engagement of queer theory with the figure of the child\u00E2\u0080\u009D (184). However, Natasha Hurley, in her article \u00E2\u0080\u009CThe Perversions of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature,\u00E2\u0080\u009D argues, although queer theorists have produced confronting material on childhood, they rarely analyse texts written for children: To point to the history of [queer theorists\u00E2\u0080\u0099] engagement with the figure of the child is not at all the same thing as pointing to its engagement with children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, however. The latter has tended to be either elided or eclipsed in these queer theoretical debates. The objects of analysis for most queer theorists have been works for adults that represent queer children. Similar kinds of analysis of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature have simply not risen to the same kind of status. (122) Kidd writes more specifically that, while \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchildren\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature scholars know their queer theory, queer theorists don\u00E2\u0080\u0099t seem to know much about children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CQueer Theory\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Child\u00E2\u0080\u009D 184). He suggests that this ignorance is detrimental to the field of queer theory, as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cqueer critiques of Childhood and theories of queer childhood would have a field day with children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature and its criticism\u00E2\u0080\u009D (184). With this dissertation I contribute to the tradition of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature scholars applying queer and post- structuralist theory to texts written for children, and add to our knowledge of the ways in which the ideal child is constructed in and by a specific body of such texts. 37 Chapter 3. Absence in Lesbian and Gay Picturebooks The picturebooks offer a representation of non-normative genders and sexualities, but explicit language specific to LGBT people and issues, LGBT bodies, visible difference and gender variation is conspicuously absent from these texts. In this chapter I analyse the text and image of the picturebooks and argue that these absences both reinforce and undo the knowledge/ignorance binary. I will structure my chapter around absences of language, bodies, difference and gender variation. The language that is absent from picturebooks includes specific terms for gender identity and sexual orientation, such as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay,\u00E2\u0080\u009D \u00E2\u0080\u009Clesbian,\u00E2\u0080\u009D \u00E2\u0080\u009Cqueer,\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Chomosexual.\u00E2\u0080\u009D In considering absent bodies I include the absence of physical affection between lesbian or gay adults, between adults and children, the absence of naked bodies, and the absence of information about reproduction. The absence of difference is the most crucial and the most difficult to quantify. I explore the overwhelming normativity of adult and child characters in the picturebooks, and consider the ignorance of identity-based difference and differences in physical appearance. I also consider the absence of people with non-normative genders. I outline picturebooks that could be read against the grain as representing transgender experience. These absences relate to a number of ignorances of specific knowledges that are being maintained by the books. These ignorances are closely tied to adult conceptions of ideal childhood innocence. However, as the picturebooks are writing about the very things of which they are trying to preserve ignorance, we can witness the knowledge/ignorance binary coming undone. 38 Absent Language Perhaps the most obvious absence in picturebooks is that of language specific to non-normative genders and sexualities. In the lesbian and gay picturebooks in my sample the list of language that is conspicuously avoided is surprisingly long and broad. Even what would appear to be essential words such as gay, lesbian and homosexual rarely appear. The picturebooks published in the early 1990s occasionally include some language specific to non-normative sexualities, but after this point the picturebooks I study explain sexuality through vague language about love, when they explain it at all. There is also a complete absence of words such as bisexual, transgender, intersex, genderqueer, polyamorous, partner and lover. The picturebooks are also missing words such as straight, heterosexual or heterosexist. There is an absence of political activism in the books, and of words such as homophobia, discrimination, rights, politics, demonstration, march, pride and community. There is an absence of information about reproduction, and of terms such as donor, sperm, birth, surrogate and step-. Even the term sexuality does not appear. One of the earliest lesbian or gay picturebooks to be published was Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Roommate, written and illustrated by Michael Willhoite and published by Alyson Wonderland in 1990. This full colour picturebook is illustrated in Willhoite\u00E2\u0080\u0099s characteristic caricature style, and written in a plain, informal way. It contains this exchange between the child protagonist and his mother: 39 Mommy says Daddy and Frank are gay. At first I didn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t know what that meant. So she explained it. Being gay is just one more kind of love. And love is the best kind of happiness.3 This passage is one of the few times the word \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay\u00E2\u0080\u009D appears in a picturebook. Its definition of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay\u00E2\u0080\u009D is classic in its vagueness. It leaves out crucial information, such as the information that, unlike the majority of people, gay people love someone of the same gender. Willhoite\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Uncle What-Is-It is Coming to Visit!, published in 1993, also includes the word. The young characters ask various neighbourhood characters what \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay\u00E2\u0080\u009D means, and are given lavishly described and illustrated stereotypes: a drag queen, a leather man. When their reassuringly middle-class, gender-normative Uncle Brett arrives he explains that \u00E2\u0080\u009Csome gay men do dress up like women and some do wear black leather. But that\u00E2\u0080\u0099s all right, too.\u00E2\u0080\u009D In 1991 Leslea Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Gloria Goes to Gay Pride obviously foregrounds the word \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay.\u00E2\u0080\u009D It even includes the chant \u00E2\u0080\u009CTwo-four-six-eight, being gay is really great!\u00E2\u0080\u009D (23). Susanne Bosche\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 1983 picturebook Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin includes the words \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgays\u00E2\u0080\u009D multiple times. One of the few instances of quiet adult humour in the picturebooks is in a throw-away reference in Johnny Valentine\u00E2\u0080\u0099s The Duke Who Outlawed Jelly Beans, published in 1993. One of the characters notes \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfinding a good job wasn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t easy for a lesbian sorcerer.\u00E2\u0080\u009D 1993 marks a turning point in the picturebooks \u00E2\u0080\u0093 the words \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Clesbian\u00E2\u0080\u009D have not appeared in any widely available picturebook since. While it is difficult to prove conclusively why this is so, authors and critics such as Robert McRuer and Jamie Campbell Naidoo point out that the lesbian and gay 3 Unless indicated otherwise, picturebooks have no page numbers. I omit \u00E2\u0080\u009Cn. pag.\u00E2\u0080\u009D for ease of reading. 40 picturebook field was spearheaded by the establishment of Alyson Books\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Alyson Wonderland imprint for children in 1989 (see Naidoo 49 and 51), but their first books (Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Heather and Willhoite\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Daddy) did not receive widespread attention until 1992, when three major conflicts arose over the books (see McRuer 184, and Newman \u00E2\u0080\u009CHeather and Her Critics\u00E2\u0080\u009D 153). These two ground-breaking books went on to be \u00E2\u0080\u009Camong the most censored books in school and public libraries\u00E2\u0080\u009D (McRuer 184). It is possible to hypothesise that this strong negative reaction to the books led to greater caution on the part of lesbian and gay picturebook creators. The available vocabulary for essential LGBT related words has shrunk to almost nothing over the thirty or so years lesbian and gay picturebooks have been published. In its place there is a repetitive vocabulary of euphemisms about love. The phrase \u00E2\u0080\u009Clove makes a family,\u00E2\u0080\u009D or some variation, has appeared repeatedly since the landmark 1989 publication of Leslea Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Heather Has Two Mommies: \u00E2\u0080\u009CEach family is special. The most important thing about a family is that all the people in it love each other.\u00E2\u0080\u009D In addition to Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Roommate, quoted above, variations include: \u00E2\u0080\u009CMy mummies said we\u00E2\u0080\u0099re a family because we live together and love each other.\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Elwin and Paulse) \u00E2\u0080\u009CFamilies help each other because they are made up of people who love you.\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Aldrich) [Mommy and Mama Lu] \u00E2\u0080\u009Chad so much love they wanted to share it with a baby.\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Garden) 41 These phrases do not explain queer sexuality in an accurate or interesting manner. While love is surely an important part of relationships and families, it is an inadequate explanation for a picturebook about same-sex relationships. It does not cover the difference that is, indeed, the point of these picturebooks: that two people of the same gender love one another, and this type of love is different from the mainstream. It also teaches ignorance about why normalising LGBT picturebooks are created, as it omits the vocabulary of discrimination and activism. The effect of this narrowing of language is to create an implied child reader who is incapable of comprehending specific or complex language, and who does not need any specific language around gender and sexuality. It contributes to an understanding of the ideal child as ignorant and asexual. These absences do not respect the ability of actual children to think, or acknowledge the possibilities of current or future non-normative genders or sexualities for implied and actual readers. Absent Bodies Given the centrality of the body in queer and feminist theory, it is notable that the body is one of the central absences of the lesbian and gay picturebooks in my sample. The absence of bodies, if read through the knowledge/ignorance binary, indicates a reinscription of the definition of the ideal child as asexual. The fervent reinscription of asexual childhood indicates the instability of the binary \u00E2\u0080\u0093 it requires constant reinforcement. The inherently disruptive nature of the picturebooks is also apparent, as the bodies of lesbian and gay adults and children must appear in the books: the physical bodies of the characters are present on every page. Mommy of Leslea Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 42 Mommy, Mama, and Me appears sixteen times in an eighteen-page board book, for instance. Despite this overabundance of bodies, there are several meaningful ways in which bodies are absent in the picturebooks, including the lack of adult/adult physical affection, adult/child physical affection, nudity and information on reproduction. Adults in the lesbian and gay picturebooks I study rarely show physical affection towards one another. A few early books show some physical contact between gay men: Jenny\u00E2\u0080\u0099s two dads snuggle in bed (Bosche), Daddy and his roommate cuddle at several points, and sunscreen each other\u00E2\u0080\u0099s backs at the beach (Willhoite). The first edition of Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Heather includes Mama Jane and Mama Kate hugging several times (all of these images are removed from the later editions). Patricia Polacco\u00E2\u0080\u0099s In Our Mothers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 House, a picturebook published in 2009, contains an unusual amount of physical intimacy between the adult women. They cuddle several times, most notably in the last image of them, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgrow[ing] old together.\u00E2\u0080\u009D With these few exceptions, the adults in the lesbian and gay picturebooks in my sample almost never touch one another, especially in texts published after the early nineties. The absence of bodies reinforces the knowledge/ignorance binary in that it equates LGBT people with sex and with paedophilic attraction, and defines the ideal child in opposition to these things. There is relatively little physical affection between lesbian or gay adults and fictional children in picturebooks. This lack is not as marked as that between adults, but is still surprisingly prevalent considering the amount of physical contact caring for an actual baby or young child entails. The books published in the early nineties feature the most adult/child contact: Heather\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Mama Jane puts a bandaid on her knee (Newman), and Asha gets \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca big hug and a kiss\u00E2\u0080\u009D from mum Alice (Elwin and Paulse). In later books 43 hair-braiding and washing are ways adults physically nurture fictional children. The protagonists of A Tale of Two Daddies (Oelschlager), and Mom and Mum are Getting Married! both have their hair braided (Setterington). Lou of One Dad gets a hug from both his dads, and they ruffle his hair (Valentine). One of the few representations in my sample of adults touching fictional children for pleasure rather than nurturing are present in Bobbie Combs\u00E2\u0080\u0099 alphabet book and counting book. The adults have children sit in their laps for stories, give them piggy-back rides and hold hands to learn roller skating. These picturebooks are unusual in that they represent lesbian and gay adults and children enjoying physical contact with one another, thus undermining the construction of LGBT adults as sexual predators. Men and women are allowed different levels of physical interaction with their children in the books. Lesbians are allowed more leeway in their physical affection towards their children. There is a lot of holding and kissing in Patricia Polacco\u00E2\u0080\u0099s In Our Mothers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 House, and also in Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s board book Mommy, Mama and Me. Illustrations of fathers with children tend to have all adult hands clearly visible. Due to the homophobic conflation of homosexuality and paedophilia, it is unusual to see illustrations of lesbian and gay adults touching children. However, the picturebooks are about families who are made up of people who love one another. One method for dealing with the difficulty of representing non-physical care and affection is the representation of the two mothers or fathers holding either hand of their child, so the three are linked but the lesbian or gay adults have no physical contact with each other. This pose is present in Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Heather (all three editions), Johnny Valentine\u00E2\u0080\u0099s One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads, Andrew R. Aldrich\u00E2\u0080\u0099s How My Family Came to 44 Be, Nancy Garden\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Family (three times), Sarah S. Brannen\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Uncle Bobby\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Wedding and Vanita Oelschlager\u00E2\u0080\u0099s A Tale of Two Daddies. The prohibition on physical bodies extends beyond physical affection to include naked bodies. Some early characters have visible physical bodies: Eric and Martin are topless at one point (Bosche), as is Heather (Newman). Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s roommate also appears shirtless (Willhoite). The first edition of Heather has an illustration of Mama Jane mostly naked at a visit to the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cspecial doctor\u00E2\u0080\u009D \u00E2\u0080\u0093 she is artfully draped. Subsequent editions do not contain this image. In books I study that are published after the early nineties all characters are fully clothed, apart from a few instances. Mia of Lindenbaum\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Mini Mia is depicted mostly naked when she\u00E2\u0080\u0099s getting changed to go swimming (and she is watching the other women in the change room avidly). Oelschlager\u00E2\u0080\u0099s protagonist is shown topless in the bath while Poppa washes her hair. None of the picturebooks in my sample picture a male child shirtless. The physical body is also increasingly absent in the lack of information on where these fictional children came from. An exception is found in Bosche\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin, the first lesbian or gay picturebook to be published in English. This text, first published in Denmark in 1981, is illustrated with black and white photos by Andreas Hansen. It tells the story of a day in the life of Jenny and her two fathers. The men explain to their daughter that she was born of a heterosexual couple (now divorced), because, as Eric says, \u00E2\u0080\u009CWe can love each other in the same ways as anyone else, but we can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t have babies. Only women and men can have babies together. You know that!\u00E2\u0080\u009D (49). The most famous \u00E2\u0080\u0093 or is it infamous? \u00E2\u0080\u0093 explanation of a child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s origins in a lesbian or gay 45 picturebook is the story of Heather\u00E2\u0080\u0099s conception. The first edition of Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s text explains: Kate and Jane went to see a special doctor together. After the doctor examined Jane to make sure that she was healthy, she put some sperm into Jane\u00E2\u0080\u0099s vagina. The sperm swam up into Jane\u00E2\u0080\u0099s womb. If there was an egg waiting there, the sperm and the egg would meet, and the baby would start to grow. The text goes on to explain pregnancy and a midwife-assisted birth in much the same pragmatic, specific language. This text was published in 1989; in retrospect it appears almost inflammatory in its detail. The second and third editions of Heather excise the information about Heather\u00E2\u0080\u0099s origins. The images of a heavily pregnant Mama Jane in the first edition are also one of the few times a visual image shows the bodies involved in reproduction. Comb\u00E2\u0080\u0099s ABC has a pregnant woman at the supermarket, and 123 has two women in bed cuddling a newborn baby, with \u00E2\u0080\u009C8: Eight cats\u00E2\u0080\u009D in with them, but these illustrations are unusual.4 Jenny and Heather are remarkable for the specificity and clarity of their description of two ways lesbian and gay people can have children. In my analysis of the sample, I found that since 1989, conception and birth have been addressed only in the vaguest manner, if at all. Many of the later books feature adoption, but emphasise the bureaucratic and legal aspects of the process over the biological. Nancy Garden\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Family features one \u00E2\u0080\u009Cbirth mom\u00E2\u0080\u009D and another mother who \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwent to a judge and told him [she] wanted [Molly] to be [her] little girl too.\u00E2\u0080\u009D In King and King and Family a \u00E2\u0080\u009Clittle girl from the jungle\u00E2\u0080\u009D stows-away in a suitcase during King Lee and King Bertie\u00E2\u0080\u0099s honeymoon 4 We should also note at this point the lack of nursing bodies. 46 (de Haan and Nijland). The princes are pictured walled in by \u00E2\u0080\u009Clots of documents and stamps,\u00E2\u0080\u009D making their adoption of Princess Daisy official. Andrew R. Aldrich\u00E2\u0080\u0099s How My Family Came to Be \u00E2\u0080\u0093 Daddy, Papa and Me also features an image of the fathers dwarfed by \u00E2\u0080\u009Clots and lots of paperwork\u00E2\u0080\u009D (original emphasis). As the title suggests, this text goes into some detail about the adoption process. The baby\u00E2\u0080\u0099s \u00E2\u0080\u009Cbirth mom was too sick to take care of children,\u00E2\u0080\u009D so the two men go through several meetings with a social worker, including a house inspection, in order to be able to pick up and take home their new baby. However, in the majority of lesbian and gay picturebooks in my sample, children simply appear, something like the Princess Daisy yelling \u00E2\u0080\u009Csurprise\u00E2\u0080\u009D as she bursts from the Kings\u00E2\u0080\u0099 suitcase. One would hope that the lack of focus on origin stories could be attributed to a shift away from the fact of lesbian and gay families. Might these books have a plot about something other than family structure? Unfortunately, most of the picturebooks are still centrally about the fact of a lesbian or gay family. They therefore omit crucial information about the origins and composition of the family. Lesbian and gay picturebooks are not alone in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature in treading carefully around nudity, physical affection, and reproduction. Representations of the body have long been a controversial issue in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature. Janice Irvine\u00E2\u0080\u0099s article on sex education is a crucial text in interpreting absences of the body. She writes that the two main assumptions about sex and childhood are that speech about sex unhealthily stimulates sexual thought and practice among students. This anxious warning\u00E2\u0080\u0094that sex education makes kids go out and have sex\u00E2\u0080\u0094is as old as sex education itself. The second, more recent allegation about sex education is that speaking about sex is sex. (60) 47 The creators of picturebooks can be seen to be reacting to both of these allegations, but more particularly the second, in which \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinnocent children are hurt, indeed abused, simply by the act of speaking about sex\u00E2\u0080\u009D (64). As Irvine notes: \u00E2\u0080\u009Csince much of the targeted pedagogy is speech about homosexuality, the perpetrator is a familiar figure\u00E2\u0080\u0094the child- molesting homosexual\u00E2\u0080\u009D (69). The effect of the lack of bodies in my sample of lesbian and gay picturebooks is to reinforce this association of child-molestation and homosexuality. The texts also have the effect of reinforcing a concept of childhood in which the ideal child is extremely vulnerable to any information about sexuality, a conceptualisation which ignores actual children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s ability to challenge information, and children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s previous knowledge about non-normative genders and sexualities. As Jen Gilbert argues in \u00E2\u0080\u009CRisking A Relation: Sex Education And Adolescent Development\u00E2\u0080\u009D: In its address to the most intimate aspects of life\u00E2\u0080\u0094love, loss, vulnerability, power, friendship, aggression\u00E2\u0080\u0094sex education is necessarily entangled in the adolescent\u00E2\u0080\u0099s efforts to construct a self, find love outside the family, enjoy one\u00E2\u0080\u0099s newly adult body. (49) Gilbert writes of adolescents in this article, and obviously children do not have newly adult bodies, but they do have bodies capable of different kinds of physical pleasure. Her idea can be extrapolated to cover the role of actual children in constructing and understanding their own sexualities, and their place in a range of relationships. In contrast to this construction of a young person with an active role in negotiating their intimate life and development, the picturebooks create an implied reader who is passive, ignorant, asexual and vulnerable. They do not construct a reader who can enjoy or learn from representations of queer bodies without being abused by this exposure. 48 The picturebooks inherently trouble the adult/child binary as lesbian and gay picturebooks must show queer bodies, sometimes thirty-two times in a row. Furthermore, the nature of illustration invites us to look at these bodies; illustrations are designed to make the reader linger. As Nodelman writes, \u00E2\u0080\u009CIt is in the nature of pictures that they imply our freedom to enjoy what they depict\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Words About Pictures 118). These lesbian and gay bodies are there for us to look at. No matter how fully clothed, discrete and non- affectionate they may be, there are still non-heterosexual bodies on the page, inviting us to look at them. The picturebooks offer us queer bodies for readers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 gaze and enjoyment while simultaneously having the effect of obscuring the implied child readers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 possible pleasure in these bodies. Absences of Difference The picturebooks have the effect of reinforcing the knowledge/ignorance binary as they present a startlingly normative picture of lesbian and gay people. In this section I present absences of many kinds of visible and invisible difference, primarily identity- based. These absences work to reinforce the construction of the ideal child as asexual and incapable of handling complex information. One glaring absence in the picturebooks in my sample is that of bisexual people. I have been unable to find even one character who is identified as such. Even Willhoite\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Daddy of Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Roommate, who was married to a woman and now is in a relationship with a man, is not identified as bisexual. In fact, he is one of the few characters in picturebooks explicitly called \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay.\u00E2\u0080\u009D There is likewise an absence of bisexual symbolism such as the pink, blue and purple flag. 49 There is also a complete absence of polyamorous families: fictional children may have two mothers or two fathers, but only two. Picturebooks that are not explicitly about polyamorous families, but can be usefully read as such include Pia Lindenbaum\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Else- Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies, about a little girl with one mother and seven fathers, and Inga Moore\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Six Dinner Sid, about a cat who successfully negotiates living in six households. There is a scarcity in my sample of lesbian or gay adults who are not white, though this absence is not total. One of the earliest lesbian and gay picturebooks is Rosamund Elwin and Michele Paulse\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Asha\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Mums, illustrated in pencil and watercolour by Dawn Lee. This small picturebook, published in 1990, has crowded illustrations, and tells the story of a little girl who is troubled by her classmate\u00E2\u0080\u0099s assertion that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cit\u00E2\u0080\u0099s wrong to have two mommies.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Asha\u00E2\u0080\u0099s mums talk to their daughter and to her teacher about the situation, and it ends happily. Asha and her mothers are not Caucasian, Asha is taught by a woman of colour, and has friends who appear to be of a range of different ethnic heritages. This picturebook is also unusual as it was written and illustrated by women of colour and published by a feminist press. Johnny Valentine\u00E2\u0080\u0099s One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dads, Blue Dads, published in 1994, contains an extended metaphor between sexuality and skin colour, treating the topic lightly and humorously. Among the picturebooks I study there are two books about white adults who adopt babies of different ethnicities. The two women in Patricia Polacco\u00E2\u0080\u0099s In Our Mothers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 House adopt an African-American baby, then an Asian baby, then a white baby. The back cover of Andrew R. Aldrich\u00E2\u0080\u0099s picturebook proclaims: \u00E2\u0080\u009CAdoption. Two fathers. Interracial families. How My Family Came to Be \u00E2\u0080\u0093 Daddy, Papa and Me touches on these 50 very complex topics at an age-appropriate level.\u00E2\u0080\u009D It is about two white men who adopt an African-American baby. Although the text engages with gender, in the child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s comment that \u00E2\u0080\u009CI have lots of women who help raise me too \u00E2\u0080\u0093 like my teachers, my godmother, and my granny,\u00E2\u0080\u009D it fails to address race explicitly. A notable exception to the whiteness of lesbian and gay picturebooks is Rigoberto Gonzalez\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Antonio\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Card: La Tarjeta de Antonio, published in 2005. The picturebook is written and illustrated by experienced Latino artists, and published by San Francisco- based Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Book Press, which is described on the copyright page as a \u00E2\u0080\u009Cnon-profit publisher of multicultural literature for children.\u00E2\u0080\u009D This text is about a multi-cultural family, and has its text written in both Spanish and English. Antonio\u00E2\u0080\u0099s class draws pictures for Mother\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Day cards and he worries about displaying his, as \u00E2\u0080\u009Che doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t want to hear the kids laughing at his card\u00E2\u0080\u009D (20). The book is unusual in that the child protagonist experiences a range of emotions, including shame. It is also unusual in Antonio\u00E2\u0080\u0099s level of agency. When he brings his problem to his mother, she doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t solve it for him. She discusses the ways in which all people are \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca little different from each other,\u00E2\u0080\u009D then says \u00E2\u0080\u009CWell, I\u00E2\u0080\u0099ll leave it up to you, Antonio. You\u00E2\u0080\u0099re old enough now to decide what to do\u00E2\u0080\u009D (18). After a full day\u00E2\u0080\u0099s thought Antonio has a realisation, that he is \u00E2\u0080\u009Cso lucky that [his mother\u00E2\u0080\u0099s partner] is part of his family\u00E2\u0080\u009D (30). He decides to display the card. Picturebooks that feature a number of different families are more likely to represent adults of colour than picturebooks about one family. The lesbian family in Susan Meyers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 board book Everywhere Babies is an interracial couple with an African- American baby. Bobbie Combs\u00E2\u0080\u0099 123 and ABC include adults and children of many races. 51 Desiree Keene and Brian Rappa\u00E2\u0080\u0099s cartoon illustrations for ABC also include a character with a visible disability: one of the moms eating \u00E2\u0080\u009CI is for ice cream\u00E2\u0080\u009D is in a wheelchair. This character is the only lesbian or gay adult in my sample who does not appear to be fully abled. There is one child in Comb\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 123 in a wheelchair, wearing one of \u00E2\u0080\u009C5: Five hats sitting on our heads.\u00E2\u0080\u009D This boy is the only child in my sample picturebooks to have a visible disability. With a few exceptions, the families in lesbian and gay picturebooks live alone in large houses, drive cars, and appear to be middle-class. Some of the early books offer exceptions to this rule. The gay men in Bosche\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin walk everywhere, including to the Laundromat, dragging their washing in a toy cart. They patch bicycle inner tubes rather than replacing them, and when they throw a birthday party, it is in the backyard with a vase of flowers from their own lilac bush, and a present wrapped in newspaper. Asha and Heather are both walked to school/play group (Elwin and Paulse; Newman), rather than being driven. Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Gloria walks to Gay Pride hand-in-hand with her mothers, and Gloria\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Mama Grace carries a packed lunch in her big knapsack (14). These instances offer representations of working-class families. A different kind of exception to the middle-class world of lesbian and gay picturebooks is de Haan and Nijland\u00E2\u0080\u0099s King Lee and King Bertie, who live in a castle and keep servants. But on the whole, lesbian and gay families in picturebooks appear to be solidly middle-class. Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature critics have pointed out that, historically, most children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature is problematically white and middle class (see Hunt and Ray 41-42). 52 In the context of the overwhelming normativity of the people in lesbian and gay picturebooks, these absences are particularly problematic.5 I have been discussing primarily identity-based categories, and have waded into the murky waters of categorising people on the basis of their appearance. It is possible that any number of the characters are bisexual but with a same-sex partner, transgender and read as cisgender, polyamorous but only pictured with their primary partner, have a invisible disability, are Latino but are light-skinned, etc. Readers may read against the grain in these ways. However, there are few characters in picturebooks who explicitly fall into these categories. The situation is complicated by the visual nature of picturebooks: the bulk of the information a reader has about characters comes from their physical appearance. There is also an absence of visibly queer characters in picturebooks. Of course, there is no \u00E2\u0080\u009Cone way\u00E2\u0080\u009D to appear queer. For the purposes of this study, I will focus on the fact that people who can be easily, even stereotypically, identified as queer are not represented in these picturebooks. The few exceptions to this absence occur, unsurprisingly, in the earlier picturebooks. Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s roommate is pictured at one point wearing only tight blue jeans with a white hankie from a back pocket (Willhoite). His handlebar moustache adds to a sense of visible queerness. Likewise, Heather has a carpenter mother, and Gloria a mechanic mother, both with a soft-butch aesthetic (Newman). The most obvious visible queer is in Willhoite\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Uncle What-Is-It is Coming 5 There is also a history of representing characters in picturebooks as anthropomorphised animals, in part to avoid questions of race and class. Several lesbian and gay picturebooks attempt this strategy. However, I would argue that, for instance, the gay men in Brannen\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Uncle Bobby\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Wedding are clearly white and middle class, despite being drawn as guineapigs. 53 to Visit! The two stereotypes the children are given to explain \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay\u00E2\u0080\u009D are illustrated in flamboyant detail. A few newer books picture characters with a queer aesthetic. Mini Mia\u00E2\u0080\u0099s darling Uncle Tommy wears a lot of pink, has two earrings in one ear and one in the other, and carefully styled facial hair (Lindenbaum). Both mothers in Patricia Polacca\u00E2\u0080\u0099s In Our Mothers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 House are short-haired and dress androgynously. There is even a joke in the text about how, despite never wearing dresses, they don them for their children. Their daughter writes \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmy heart still skips a beat when I think of the two of them trying so hard to please us in those awkward, sweeping, ridiculous dresses.\u00E2\u0080\u009D There is a lack of LGBT symbolism in the picturebooks, which would be another way to signify non-normative identities. Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Gloria Goes to Gay Pride contains the highest amount of queer symbolism of any picturebook: rainbows, pink triangles, women\u00E2\u0080\u0099s symbols. Purchasing and wearing clothing adorned with these symbols is also a significant part of the plot, making Gloria unusual in picturebook history. The decorations for Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s wedding include a number of rainbow flags (Willhoite). The only other texts I have identified containing queer symbolism are Comb\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 123 and ABC. Desiree Keane and Brian Rappa illustrations for ABC feature many rainbows, including \u00E2\u0080\u009CR is for Rainbow,\u00E2\u0080\u009D while Danamarie\u00E2\u0080\u0099s oil paintings for 123, include, subtly, a small rainbow flag, and a man wearing a hat with a pink triangle. On the whole, however, after the picturebooks from the early nineties, in my sample there is a noticeable absence of visibly queer people in picturebooks, and an absence of queer symbolism. There is also an absence of politically active adults in the picturebooks. The only adults who engage in LGBT political activism in the picturebooks I studied are Gloria\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 54 two mothers, who take her to Pride Parade wearing signs that say \u00E2\u0080\u009CGay nurse healing the earth\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009CGay mechanic healing the planet\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Newman 11-13). After this picturebook, published in 1991, the most politically active queers in picturebooks are those in the car with the \u00E2\u0080\u009CHate is not a family value\u00E2\u0080\u009D bumper sticker, driving out the illustration for \u00E2\u0080\u009C1: One family going for a ride\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Combs 123). While they feature significant numbers of adults marrying and adopting children, none of the picturebooks address the question of whether these marriages have legal protection, or by what process of activism the adults achieved the right to adopt a child as a lesbian or gay couple. In addition to their lack of political activism, the lesbian and gay people in the picturebooks in my sample are lacking community. With a few exceptions, they work and socialise exclusively with people who appear to be straight. 123 and ABC have some queer adults with queer friends (Combs), but otherwise, with the exception of the protagonists, all of the characters in the picturebooks appear to be heterosexual. This absence is particularly noticeable in the wedding scenes, which are generally a sea of heterosexuality around the brides or grooms. These lesbian and gay people have little or no queer community, and are not invested in advocating for LGBT rights. This life, with \u00E2\u0080\u009Cno visible participation in gay (physical, cultural, sartorial) semiotics or community\u00E2\u0080\u009D would, as Sedgwick points out, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfor many contemporary gay people, [. . .] be impossible; for a great many, it would seem starvingly impoverished in terms of culture, community, and meaning\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Tendencies 156, footnote 5). Another key way in which the picturebooks fail to deal with difference is in their treatment of homophobia \u00E2\u0080\u0093 that is, other people dealing with the difference queer families embody. In general the picturebooks in my sample are absent of homophobia. A notable 55 exception to this situation is Bosche\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. Part of this long text is a lengthy explanation of homophobia, including the information that people can get \u00E2\u0080\u009Cscared or angry\u00E2\u0080\u009D and say cruel things if they aren\u00E2\u0080\u0099t properly educated about homosexuals, or \u00E2\u0080\u009Cperhaps someone has told them it is wrong\u00E2\u0080\u009D (40). A similar, but briefer, incident occurs in Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Gloria Goes to Gay Pride, another early picturebook. While Gloria and her mothers are marching in the Pride Parade they see protesters holding signs that say \u00E2\u0080\u009CGays go away\u00E2\u0080\u009D (24). Her mothers explain: \u00E2\u0080\u009CSome people think Mama Rose and I shouldn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t love each other,\u00E2\u0080\u009D Mama Grace says. I don\u00E2\u0080\u0099t understand. \u00E2\u0080\u009CBut you always tell me love is the most important thing of all.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Mama Rose picks me up. \u00E2\u0080\u009CLove is the most important thing of all,\u00E2\u0080\u009D she says. \u00E2\u0080\u009CSome women love women, some men love men, and some women and men love each other. That\u00E2\u0080\u0099s why we march in the parade \u00E2\u0080\u0093 so everyone can have a choice.\u00E2\u0080\u009D (26) Bosche\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin and Newman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Gloria offer clear explanations of causes of homophobia, and model different strategies to combat it. Such explicit discussions about homophobia are very unusual in the genre. A more subtle way that the picturebooks occasionally represent homophobia is asides about other absences. In Jeannine Atkins\u00E2\u0080\u0099 A Name On the Quilt Grandpa does not help the family sew the AIDS memorial quilt panel because \u00E2\u0080\u009C[he] says he doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t know how to sew.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The poignancy of the situation is indicated quietly towards the end of the picturebook, when the family unfurls the completed quilt panel, when Grandma says \u00E2\u0080\u009C\u00E2\u0080\u0098Grandpa should have come. He 56 should have seen this\u00E2\u0080\u0099 [. . .] She put her head on Dad\u00E2\u0080\u0099s shoulder for a minute, then turned away.\u00E2\u0080\u009D This representation of familial homophobia paints a meaningful picture of the complexity and emotional difficulty of dealing with difference. Generally, homophobia is expressed by the picturebooks by creating an implied child audience who is ignorant of the topic. Molly of Nancy Garden\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Family is representative. The plot of the story is very similar to Heather and Asha: Molly goes to school, and is teased by other children for having two mothers. She is upset, and is comforted by her teacher and mothers, who explain that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthere are lots of different kinds of families.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Molly then embraces her alternative family. Sharon Wooding\u00E2\u0080\u0099s coloured pencil illustrations show us Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s emotional range: sad and trying not to cry, confused, then happy and loved. Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s agency in the story is limited to pondering her mothers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 words for a morning before accepting them as truth. Her primary role in the story is to act as a sponge for adult messages. Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s confusion throughout the story is emblematic of the genre. Fictional children are not given room to be angry about homophobia, or sad about other people attacking them, but are allowed to be confused about their family structure so adults can explain the situation to them. Rather than offering a child-appropriate explanation of homophobia, or modelling responses to the aggressive comments levelled at fictional children with two mothers, the implied child reader is told to turn from this knowledge and submit her or himself to adult protection. The implied child reader learns nothing of the institutional or systematic nature of oppression, or practical self-defence strategies. Instead, she or he learns that homophobia is knowledge of which she or he should be innocent, and that she or he should value this ignorance to meet adult expectations. 57 The topic of homophobia has a complex place in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature. Christine Jenkins\u00E2\u0080\u0099 article on young adult novels between 1969 and 1997 memorably lists the fates of fictional gay and lesbian characters, who \u00E2\u0080\u009Chave been beaten, shot, gay-bashed, drowned, sexually molested, kidnapped, framed on drug charges, or killed in car accidents\u00E2\u0080\u009D (309). She identifies the characterisation of LGBT people as \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctargets, scapegoats, and victims\u00E2\u0080\u009D as a result of \u00E2\u0080\u009Coppression based on sexual identity\u00E2\u0080\u009D (309). The punishment of LGBT characters in young adult fiction has become less routine over time. Kenneth Kidd\u00E2\u0080\u0099s article for CHLAQ writes of \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccoming out\u00E2\u0080\u009D novels as the quintessential \u00E2\u0080\u009Cyoung adult issue fiction,\u00E2\u0080\u009D and notes approvingly that homophobia has \u00E2\u0080\u009Creplaced homosexuality as the designated social problem addressed\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CSexuality and Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature\u00E2\u0080\u009D 114). However, Thomas Crisp suggests that this shift has not been completely positive. He argues that the presence of homophobia as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cissue\u00E2\u0080\u009D has become problematic because \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe recurring reliance upon homophobia as a literary mechanism to engender \u00E2\u0080\u0098realism\u00E2\u0080\u0099 in literature simultaneously implies that homophobia is too large an issue to confront and is ultimately bad, but inevitable behavior\u00E2\u0080\u009D (339). He writes that authors may \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinadvertently use homophobia in ways that ultimately only work to reinstate heteronormativity\u00E2\u0080\u009D (339). The picturebooks I study in this dissertation exist in-between these two states: while no lesbian or gay people in the picturebooks are punished in the manner of characters in early LGBT young novels, they are not yet exploring homophobia as an \u00E2\u0080\u009Cissue.\u00E2\u0080\u009D They tread a neutral path which rarely addresses homosexuality or homophobia directly, and instead is built around absences of information. In terms of the knowledge/ignorance binary, the primary problem with the absence of information about 58 homophobia in the picturebooks is that it has the effect of reinscribing the ideal child as an ignorant child incapable of understanding the causes of homophobia and incapable of defending her or himself. When one considers all of these absences of adult difference it becomes clear that people in the lesbian and gay picturebooks I study are incredibly normalised. They are as close to a white, middle-class, heterosexual norm as possible. As Anika Stafford writes, another effect \u00E2\u0080\u009Cof the relentless normalization of characters in same-sex relationships is that often families are exemplified for the ways in which they uphold the status quo in all ways except for this one exception\u00E2\u0080\u009D (174). The picturebooks attempt to address the topic of difference while not representing difference in any way. In fact, the erasure of difference is taken to the extent of erasing the personalities of most of the characters. As Naidoo writes, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmany LGBTQ children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s books suffer from an agenda that tries to normalise the experience of rainbow families to such an extent that storylines are didactic and characters are not multidimensional\u00E2\u0080\u009D (56). The difference under discussion in the books \u00E2\u0080\u0093 that of homosexuality, narrowly defined \u00E2\u0080\u0093 is barely legible and vastly over- determined by everything it is not. Ideal childhood innocence is maintained by stripping the picturebooks of their primary content. The absence of difference in the picturebooks can be read as an attempt to protect specific ignorances around the possibility of non-heteronormative lives, and that such lives contain a range of social positions. The picturebooks are caught in the simultaneous creation and destruction of the knowledge/ignorance binary in their need to represent lesbian and gay adults as worthy and lovable adults without representing them as role- models for their implied readers. The picturebooks offer these people as worthy of 59 respect and equal treatment, but must not offer these people as someone ideal children may wish to be. No fictional child in the picturebooks ever expresses a desire to be \u00E2\u0080\u009Cjust like\u00E2\u0080\u009D Daddy or Mama Jane when they grow up. If it is acknowledged that queer people can be different from straight people \u00E2\u0080\u0093 look different, be interested in different things \u00E2\u0080\u0093 or even be more interesting or more attractive than those who fit the heterosexual norm, then the text would open a space for an implied reader to be attracted to these options. The picturebooks reinscribe the construction of childhood in terms of its futurity, but also trouble this construction by offering and shutting down queer possibilities for that future. Absences of Non-Normative Genders Due to the absence of transgendered adults or children, the picturebooks have the effect of closing down the implied child reader\u00E2\u0080\u0099s awareness of different futures for themselves. Although a number of internet-based picturebooks have been produced, there are currently no picturebooks about trans adults produced by publishing houses. In addition, the cisgendered lesbian and gay adults in picturebooks in my sample are overwhelmingly normatively gendered. With a very few exceptions, the women are feminine and the men are masculine. Likewise, the fictional children in the lesbian and gay picturebooks are overwhelmingly gender-normative. As I discussed in my literature review, the normative gender of the characters may be the condition under which adult sexuality outside heterosexuality may be represented in picturebooks. Given the lack of picturebooks that explicitly include transgendered adults, I will briefly discuss two books that could be read, against the grain, as representing the experiences of transgendered adults. Verla Kay\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Rough, Tough Charley is about an 60 historical character who could easily and successfully be read as transgendered. Charley presents as male throughout life, and is treated as a man by society. However, Kay, in the text and the afterword, lays heavy emphasis on the idea that Charley was \u00E2\u0080\u009Creally a woman\u00E2\u0080\u009D who dressed like a man in order to access male privilege. This argument undermines any trans possibilities of Charley\u00E2\u0080\u0099s life and unnecessarily simplifies and consolidates Charley\u00E2\u0080\u0099s gender identification. Another picturebook that opens then firmly closes transgender possibilities is Eric Carle\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Mister Seahorse, which is about the range of ways male sea-creatures care for eggs, often in their own bodies. The text of the picturebook lays a heavy repetitive emphasis on heterosexual coupling: Mr Stickleback cares for the eggs laid by Mrs Stickleback, Mr Tilapia carries the eggs laid by Mrs. Tilapia. Nonetheless, the picturebook could be read as a metaphor for trans male experiences of pregnancy and birth. Judy Norton\u00E2\u0080\u0099s groundbreaking article on trans children ends on a slightly wistful note: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpending the creation of a substantial body of specifically trans-children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, we can intervene in the reproductive cycle of transphobia through strategies of transreading: intuiting/interpreting the gender of child characters as not necessarily perfectly aligned with their anatomies\u00E2\u0080\u009D (299). While a substantial body of literature is yet to appear, there is at least one picturebook which appears to represent a trans child: 10,000 Dresses, written by Marcus Ewert and illustrated by Rex Ray in a chunky computer-generated collage style. It was published in 2008 by Seven Stories Press, an independent publishing house with an emphasis on social justice. In this story Bailey dreams of 10,000 different dresses. She is discouraged from her dress-designing ambitions by her parents, and big brother, who say \u00E2\u0080\u009CYou\u00E2\u0080\u0099re a boy. Boys don\u00E2\u0080\u0099t wear 61 dresses!\u00E2\u0080\u009D At the end of the story Bailey befriends an older girl, and together they make beautiful dresses covered in mirrors. The older girl says \u00E2\u0080\u009CYou\u00E2\u0080\u0099re the coolest girl I\u00E2\u0080\u0099ve ever met, Bailey!\u00E2\u0080\u009D 10,000 Dresses stands out sharply from previous picturebooks about childhood cross-gender identification or behaviour. It is one of the only picturebooks which affirms gender identity over a sexed body. There is a tradition of picturebooks about feminine boys, such as Tomie De Paola\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Oscar Button is a Sissy and Charlotte Zolotow\u00E2\u0080\u0099s William\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Doll, but this book is quite different. The older books rely on the assumption that the central character will grow out of feminine behaviour and embrace a \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctrue\u00E2\u0080\u009D masculine self. Bailey\u00E2\u0080\u0099s female identity is affirmed throughout the text by using female pronouns and referring to her as a girl. There is no sense that Bailey will or should return to her \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctrue\u00E2\u0080\u009D gender. The ending of the picturebook is particularly positive, as it implies Bailey and her new friend will have an enjoyable ongoing partnership making dresses. She will not \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgrow out of\u00E2\u0080\u009D her female gender identity or her feminine behaviour. It seems, as Naidoo puts it, 10,000 Dresses is indeed \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe first transgender picture book for children\u00E2\u0080\u009D (45). There is not yet a transgender picturebook for young trans boys. Although there is a long tradition of picturebooks about tomboys, such as Are You a Boy or a Girl? by Karleen Pendleton Jim\u00C3\u00A9nez, I have been unable to find any picturebooks that are about fictional children who were categorised as female at birth but self-identify as male. None of the annotated bibliographies or online sources I consulted have identified such a text. The picturebooks have the effect of reinscribing the adult/child binary by recreating an implied child reader ignorant of the idea that there are more genders than two, and that there can be movement between those genders. The implied child readers 62 must not see the possibility of movement or ambiguity in their own gender, and or appreciate the range in other people.6 This reinscription of a culture of transphobia must also affect actual children who can not see themselves in these texts. At the same time, however, the knowledge/ignorance binary is shown to be unstable: if actual children were naturally innocent of trans possibilities, their idealised ignorance would not need to be guarded so jealously. Just Like: Normalising and Injurious Conduct In their absences of language, bodies and difference, the picturebooks have the effect of reinscribing the knowledge/ignorance and adult/child binaries. They reinforce a construction of the ideal child as asexual and unable to deal with complex information. I propose a reading of this reinscription of childhood innocence based on Judith Butler\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Excitable Speech. Butler\u00E2\u0080\u0099s analysis of censorship and the performative provides a useful lens through which to analyse the picturebooks. Butler lays out three specific speech acts that attract censorship: Central to [gay and lesbian] politics are a number of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cspeech acts\u00E2\u0080\u009D that can be, and have been construed as offensive and, indeed, injurious conduct: graphic self- representation, as in Mapplethorpe\u00E2\u0080\u0099s photography; explicit self-declaration, such as that which takes place in the practise of coming out; and explicit sexual education, as in AIDS education. (22) 6 I am not arguing that reading books about transgender people would \u00E2\u0080\u009Cturn\u00E2\u0080\u009D a child trans. I am arguing that an awareness of the range of gender possibilities would be positive for both trans and cis- gendered children. 63 If we bring these categories to bear on the picturebooks we can see how these absences play out. Graphic self-representation is absent in the lack of queer bodies and visible difference. Explicit self-declaration is absent in the lack of language, while explicit sexual education is absent in the lack of information on reproduction. According to Butler, sharing certain types of knowledge, especially on topics such as homosexuality, can be taken as a physical act: \u00E2\u0080\u009Clinguistic injury acts like physical injury\u00E2\u0080\u009D (4), and saying \u00E2\u0080\u009CI am a homosexual\u00E2\u0080\u009D can be constituted as a performance, constituting the speech as \u00E2\u0080\u009Chomosexual conduct\u00E2\u0080\u009D (107). Sharing knowledge becomes an act, and, as knowledge becomes sexual knowledge, sharing knowledge becomes a sexual act. I argue that imparting information to the ideal child is constructed as injurious conduct which is destructive of the purity of the child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s mind or body. As I discussed in my literature review, adults have strong, often unconscious, highly emotional reasons for desiring childhood innocence. In many ways adults value the innocence of the ideal child above an actual child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s life. Kincaid asks whether \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwe feel that a defiled child is of no use to us and might as well be dead\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Erotic Innocence 17). Taking into account this investment in childhood innocence, it becomes clear why giving an actual child or implied child reader knowledge about sexuality can provoke a violent reaction. Adults value childhood innocence, that is, sexual innocence, that is, ignorance about sexuality. If an actual child or implied child reader is given information about lesbian and gay people, this can be understood as performing a homosexual act on the child, therefore destroying her or his innocence. As adults define the ideal child so furiously according to its innocence, destroying the innocence of an actual child or implied child reader with this knowledge/act means destroying the child. 64 Another way to think about reinforcing this binary is as a normalising practise. In his classic The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life Michael Warner writes that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe point of being normal is to blend, to have no visible difference and no conflict\u00E2\u0080\u009D (60). This description neatly describes the politics of the bulk of the lesbian and gay picturebooks in my sample. He argues specifically that this politics of normal is based on disavowing sex, and that its \u00E2\u0080\u009Ceffect is a kind of expulsion, abjection, and contempt for those more visibly defined by sex\u00E2\u0080\u009D (67). This description fits the lack of bodies, information about reproduction, physical affection and so forth in the picturebooks. The trouble with the politics of normal is that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cembracing this standard merely throws shame on those who stand farther down the ladder of respectability. It does not seem to be possible to think of oneself as normal without thinking that some other kind of person is pathological\u00E2\u0080\u009D (60). The extent of normalisation in the picturebooks is such that almost no LGBT people would fit its narrow confines: almost all readers must be further down the ladder of respectability. Normalising, using Warner\u00E2\u0080\u0099s definition, can be read to include innocence. In reinforcing the knowledge/ignorance binary, the picturebooks and those discussing them are continuing the normative politics of these texts. The politics of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe normal\u00E2\u0080\u009D correlates with the politics of the knowledge/ignorance and adult/child binaries, which consistently re-affirm the status quo. The normalising nature of the picturebooks is detrimental to their aesthetic and political qualities. The overwhelming focus on what is not being said makes this body of literature circular and repetitive. The picturebooks demonstrate this circularity and their normalisation in their language of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cjust like\u00E2\u0080\u009D: \u00E2\u0080\u009CWho\u00E2\u0080\u0099s in a family? The people who love 65 you the most! Just like in your family\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Skutch); \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthey\u00E2\u0080\u0099re just like all other dads\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Valentine, One Dad); \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwe play, talk, read, hug and sometimes fight, just like other families\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Aldrich, original emphasis); \u00E2\u0080\u009CRoy and Silo took [Tango] for a swim, just like all the other penguin families\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Richardson and Parnell). The picturebooks in my sample display lesbian and gay families as imitations of heterosexual families, rather than demonstrating the joys of growing up in a queer family, and the fun of being a queer adult. A fear evoked by giving knowledge about homosexuality to implied child readers is that of queer possibilities for the ideal child. The childhood desires adults fear could take two forms: desire to touch, and desire to be. It is as threatening to imagine an ideal or actual child wanting to touch or be touched by a queer body, as it is to imagine a child wanting to inhabit a queer body. Adult investment in the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s asexuality and innocence requires the implied child reader to remain ignorant of the possibility of desire for the queer body. However, the instability of the adult/child binary is visible in adults\u00E2\u0080\u0099 inability to simply show queer bodies interacting with each other, interacting with fictional children, naked, or involved in reproduction. Adults enforce the asexuality and innocence of ideal children by obscuring these bodies. The picturebooks offer no inspiring queer bodies or queer lives, so the implied child reader or actual child may not find any hope for a future outside of the norm. This narrowing of life possibilities for an actual and an implied child reader is a sad consequence of the relentless normalisation and reinscription of the knowledge/ignorance and adult/child binaries in the picturebooks. The reinscription of the knowledge/ignorance binary that is the effect of these picturebooks is disrespectful of actual children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s abilities to take in and challenge 66 information about sexuality, and also fails to offer them accurate information about or imaginative possibilities for their own gender or sexuality. As Simon Watney points out in \u00E2\u0080\u009CSchool\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Out\u00E2\u0080\u009D: \u00E2\u0080\u009CThe question is not whether or not children are sexual beings, but how adults respond to children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s sexuality, in ways that range from total denial to an untroubled acceptance\u00E2\u0080\u009D (47). These books respond to actual children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s sexuality by denying it totally, and creating an implied reader and ideal child who is innocent and asexual. The implied reader of these texts is not an intellectual or emotional being with her or his own experience; the implied reader is a passive, ignorant and incapable child. In \u00E2\u0080\u009CRethinking Childhood\u00E2\u0080\u009D Leena Alanen argues that this type of construction is related to the role of adults as the \u00E2\u0080\u009Celite\u00E2\u0080\u009D in our culture: As a consequence of the viewpoint\u00E2\u0080\u0099s inherent elitism and functionalism the intentions and interests of children as participants in their own socialization are effectively excluded, presumably on the assumption that they more or less converge with those of the elites. This, of course, helps to model children as passive objects and victims of influences external to them, unable and unwilling to resist. (58) This model of ideal childhood is demeaning to the capabilities of actual children. Alanen suggests instead, that adults \u00E2\u0080\u009Cavoid the conventional victimization of children [. . .] granting them instead the status of participants and constructors in the very processes that make their - and our \u00E2\u0080\u0093 world\u00E2\u0080\u009D (65). As I will argue in more detail in Chapter 5, picturebooks which granted implied child readers the role of active subjects and participants in the world would better respect and serve actual children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s intellectual, and emotional capabilities. 67 Chapter 4. Innocence Destroyed in Lexington, Massachusetts In this chapter I examine a challenge sparked by three picturebooks. The case began in Lexington, Massachusetts in January 2005, when a child brought home from school Robert Skutch\u00E2\u0080\u0099s picturebook Who\u00E2\u0080\u0099s In a Family? By October 2008 thousands of dollars had been spent on legal fees, and two Mormon parents were setting off on a \u00E2\u0080\u009CProtect Marriage State-wide Bus Tour,\u00E2\u0080\u009D telling their story of lost childhood innocence. In this chapter I analyse the discourse of the debate about three lesbian and gay picturebooks over these three and a half years. I use an analytical framework of the knowledge/ignorance binary to examine how different sides of the debate conceptualise childhood and sexuality. In this chapter I draw out similarities between the discourse of the challenge and the discourse of the picturebooks. In the final chapter of this dissertation I will discuss this relationship in terms of the ways in which both discourses reinscribe or resist the knowledge/ignorance binary. I analyse a wide range of media about the case, including newspaper reports, letters to the editor, television and radio interviews, internet position statements, judges\u00E2\u0080\u0099 findings, and legislation. I also examine as wide a range of positions as possible, seeking representations of the issues from right-wing or conservative groups such as organisation MassResistance, and Protect Traditional Marriage, alongside left-wing or progressive groups such as Lexington C.A.R.E.S, and queer parents with children at Estabrook Elementary. Finally, I consider the representation of the incident produced by those acting as arbiters, such as Supreme, Federal and Appeals Court Judges. Of this range of material I ask the questions: How is the knowledge/ignorance binary operating in this discourse? How is it undoing itself? I argue that all sides of this 68 complex debate make arguments that have the effect of reinscribing the knowledge/ignorance binary, in that they construct the ideal child as innocent, asexual and vulnerable, and knowledge of sexuality as incredibly powerful. I argue that the main topic under debate is the control of children, both ideal and actual. The plaintiffs in the cases seek control over the information flow to their actual children, as they believe the ideal child should be absolutely innocent and vulnerable. The defendants believe ideal children have some intellectual and social defences, but still assume the rights of parents to control actual and ideal children. The instability of the knowledge/ignorance binary is visible in the debate in the repeated reinscription of the innocence of the ideal child, and in the way this \u00E2\u0080\u009Cnatural\u00E2\u0080\u009D state requires constant protection. I structure this chapter around themes related to knowledge and ignorance in the discourse of the challenge. After an outline of the key events, I begin with exploring the construction of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe innocent/ignorant child\u00E2\u0080\u009D in the debate, then discuss constructions of the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s ignorance of homosexuality, then the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s knowledge of homosexuality. I focus on the pivotal moment of the first contact between the ideal child and the knowledge of homosexuality, which was a key concern in the case. I close by introducing instances in debate that demonstrate the instability of the knowledge/ignorance binary. Outline of Key Events and Participants The challenge began in \u00E2\u0080\u009CLexington, a quiet suburb about 10 miles west of Boston\u00E2\u0080\u009D (LeBlanc n. pag.). On the 14th of January 2005 Estabrook Elementary sent five year old Jacob Parker home from school with a \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdiversity book bag\u00E2\u0080\u009D containing material 69 intended to promote tolerance. The material inside was suggested reading, rather than mandated (Aiello n. pag.). One of the picturebooks included was Who\u00E2\u0080\u0099s in a Family? by Robert Skutch. This rather plain text illustrates a range of different animal and human families, including one family with two mothers and one family with two fathers. The picturebook\u00E2\u0080\u0099s message is that although \u00E2\u0080\u009CA family can be made up in many different ways,\u00E2\u0080\u009D all families comprise \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe people who love you the most!\u00E2\u0080\u009D Jacob\u00E2\u0080\u0099s parents, Tonia and David Parker, who describe themselves as Judeo-Christian, were horrified by this book. They complained to the school principal, Joni Jay, and to the interim school superintendent, William Hurley (\u00E2\u0080\u009CTimeline of Events\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.). After a meeting with the principal and superintendent there was a widely reported incident in which David Parker was \u00E2\u0080\u009Carrested April 27 and charged with trespassing [. . .] because he wouldn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t leave until the school promised to notify him when his son\u00E2\u0080\u0099s class discussed homosexuality\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Viser B3). After being arrested and \u00E2\u0080\u009Crefusing to post the $40 bail, he spent the night in jail\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CKindergarten Same-Sex Talk\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.). On the 5th of June 2005, the controversial Westboro Church held a protest at five Lexington churches, while \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca group of about three dozen residents turned their backs [. . .] in silent protest\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Viser B3). Later that year, when Jacob entered First Grade at Estabrook Elementary, his parents discovered that: First graders have a \u00E2\u0080\u009Creading centre\u00E2\u0080\u009D in the classroom that serves as a mini- library. The same book, Who\u00E2\u0080\u0099s in a Family, is in Jacob\u00E2\u0080\u0099s reading centre along with an additional book, Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Family by Nancy Garden, depicting gay and lesbian relationships and gay and lesbian marriage. (Parker. et al. v. Hurley et al. Compl. and Jury Demand. n. pag.) 70 The Parkers were outraged at this discovery, but took no further action at this point. The second couple, Mormon parents Robb and Robin Wirthlin, join the story on the 24th of March 2006, when \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca second grade teacher in Lexington read to her class the fairy tale King and King, which tells the story of two princes falling in love\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Lindsay n. pag.). The Wirthlin\u00E2\u0080\u0099s seven year old son, Joey, came home agitated and told his parents about the picturebook. They were shocked and horrified. They exchanged a series of emails and held a meeting with Heather Kramer (Joey\u00E2\u0080\u0099s teacher), and Joni Jay (the Principal), but failed to come to a solution that satisfied the Wirthlins. The two families joined together, and took their case to the courts. They sued the Town of Lexington, its school board, various administrators (including the superintendent), and Joey\u00E2\u0080\u0099s teacher. One important plank of their case is the Massachusetts \u00E2\u0080\u009COpt-out\u00E2\u0080\u009D law, which was passed on the 1st of September 1997. The implementation of this law was heavily backed by Brian Camenker of the organisation MassResistance (LeBlanc n. pag.). MassResistance is a Christian organisation which has been labelled a hate-group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre (Southern Poverty Law Centre n. pag.). According to their blog, MassResistance\u00E2\u0080\u0099s goals are to: \u00E2\u0080\u009CEnd judicial tyranny, homosexual \u00E2\u0080\u0098marriage\u00E2\u0080\u0099, and homosexual activist recruitment of our children in the public schools! Preserve our Judeo-Christian heritage, the Culture of Life, and free speech!\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Camenker n. pag.). The organisation was heavily involved in campaigning against gay marriage, which was legalised in Massachusetts in 2003. The connection is disputed, but it is alleged that the Wirthlins, at least, were involved with MassResistance (\u00E2\u0080\u009CThe Wirthlins And A Certified Hate Group\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.). The journeys of both the Parker and Wirthlin families are recorded in great detail on the MassResistance website, as are 71 the complex progress of the legal cases. Much of the legal material I cite in this chapter is available on Camenker\u00E2\u0080\u0099s online archive; his cataloguing enables a broad audience for this debate. The opt-out law that Camenker spear-headed states that: Every city, town, regional school district or vocational school district implementing or maintaining curriculum which primarily involves human sexual education or human sexuality issues shall adopt a policy ensuring parental/guardian notification. Such policy shall afford parents or guardians the flexibility to exempt their children from any portion of said curriculum through written notification to the school principal. No child so exempted shall be penalized by reason of such exemption. (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 71, \u00C2\u00A7 32A.) The plaintiffs argued that Estabrook Primary had failed to respect this law. A legal journal summarises the case: On 27 April 2006, the Parkers and the Wirthlins filed suit in federal court, claiming violations of both federal and state law. Their federal claims were based on their 14th Amendment \u00E2\u0080\u009Cliberty\u00E2\u0080\u009D of child rearing and the First Amendment free exercise of religion clause. Their state claims were based on the aforementioned state opt-out statute and the Massachusetts civil rights law. The defendants filed a motion to dismiss the suit. On 23 February 2007, after holding a hearing on the defendants\u00E2\u0080\u0099 motion, the federal court issued a decision that dismissed the plaintiffs\u00E2\u0080\u0099 federal claims with 72 prejudice and their state claims without prejudice, meaning that the parents could seek resolution of their state- law claims in state court. (Zirkel 238) The decision Judge Wolf issued was \u00E2\u0080\u009Cbased on earlier court findings that parents do not have a constitutional right to dictate what their children are taught in the public schools\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CUpholding Diversity Lessons\u00E2\u0080\u009D A10). The plaintiffs appealed in January 2008, with similar results. Judge Lynch concluded that she affirmed \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe district court\u00E2\u0080\u0099s dismissal with prejudice of plaintiffs\u00E2\u0080\u0099 federal claims and its dismissal without prejudice of the state claims so that they may be reinstated, should plaintiffs choose, in state court\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker v. Hurley, 514 F.3d 87 (1st Cir. 2008) at 43). Rather than reinstate their claims in state court, in October 2008 the Parkers and Wirthlins approached the U.S. Supreme Court, which \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdeclined to hear Parker v. Hurley [. . .], upholding the dismissal by federal district and appellate courts of the parental-rights lawsuit originating in Lexington\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Murphy n. pag.). By this time, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe Wirthlins no longer live[d] in Lexington, and Parker [. . .] and his wife [had] started home-schooling their children\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Murphy n. pag.). The legal side of the case ended here, but the Wirthlins continued to share their story. In October 2008 they starred in a campaign advertisement that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwarns that if California voters reject Proposition 8\u00E2\u0080\u0094a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as being between a man and woman\u00E2\u0080\u0094local schools could follow Massachusetts\u00E2\u0080\u0099 lead and teach children about gay marriage\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Leal A). The interview is introduced by an actress playing a teacher, who appears to be showing the Wirthlins\u00E2\u0080\u0099 story as part of a classroom lesson. In this clip the Wirthlins brandish a copy of de Haan and Nijland\u00E2\u0080\u0099s King and King, and tell the story of Joey\u00E2\u0080\u0099s classroom experience with the book. A newspaper article describes the couple as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpart of the out-of-state effort by the Mormon Church, 73 whose members have contributed millions of dollars to the Yes on 8 war chest, to pass Prop 8\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Aiello n. pag.). The Wirthlins began \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctravelling through California campaigning for Prop. 8\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Leal A), and appeared in nearly identical advertisements during similar campaigns over marriage amendments in Florida in February 2009, and Maine in November 2009. Innocence/Ignorance Both sides of the debate make arguments that reinforce the knowledge/ignorance binary in their construction of the ideal child as innocent. The Judeo-Christian parents and their supporters offer a construction of the ideal child based on extreme innocence and vulnerability. The queer-supportive participants in the discourse provide a less extreme construction, but one still premised on the need to protect childhood innocence. The emphasis on the vigilance needed to protect this innocence indicates the instability of the knowledge/ignorance binary: it needs constant reassertion. There is a significant lack of assertion from any side that the ideal child may be interested in, capable of or better off protecting her or his self. One way the innocence of the ideal child is asserted in the debate is through repeated references to youth. David Parker rarely uses the world \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchild\u00E2\u0080\u009D without adding \u00E2\u0080\u009Cyoung,\u00E2\u0080\u009D \u00E2\u0080\u009Cimpressionable\u00E2\u0080\u009D or \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctender-aged\u00E2\u0080\u009D: It is an indoctrination process. I\u00E2\u0080\u0099m talking about young children. (Mulvihill n. pag.)7 7 My emphasis throughout all five quotes. 74 They are trying to force their own views, views that are controversial in the adult world, upon young children. (Llana 2) [T]he parents do not want to dictate curriculum, but do want to be able to remove their young children from classrooms when homosexuality or gay marriage is being discussed. (Lavoie n. pag.) Tender-aged children should not be put in the harmful position where adults in public spaces are sending conflicting moral messages. (Parker, D. n. pag.) Such attempts to indoctrinate young impressionable children into accepting the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmorality\u00E2\u0080\u009D of lesbian/homosexual conduct and the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cvalidity\u00E2\u0080\u009D of transgendered expression/identity do not belong in the elementary classroom. (Parker, D. n. pag.) Likewise, Robb and Robin Wirthlin\u00E2\u0080\u0099s media appearances are noticeable for their emphasis on the youth of the ideal child. As Robb says repeatedly: \u00E2\u0080\u009CThis is so young. He is so young\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CPress Conference\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.). He states \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwhen gay marriage is legalised, it really is not just about two people. The social consequences trickle down to the lowest levels of society.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Children, for the Wirthlins, are so young that they are the lowest levels of society. Although the queer-supportive participants in the discourse do not explicitly focus on the youth and innocence of the ideal child, their argument overlaps with the Judeo- 75 Christian participants in the assertion of the need to protect childhood innocence. Even their direct opponents in the Proposition 8 battle agree on the vulnerability of children: Cohen: Kate Kendall of the No on 8 campaign says she\u00E2\u0080\u0099s saddened to see kids dragged into this political battle, but she says it\u00E2\u0080\u0099s easy to see why that\u00E2\u0080\u0099s happened. Ms. Kate Kendall: There is probably no more protective part of human nature than when a parent feels like they need to protect their children. (\u00E2\u0080\u009CFight Over California\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.) The website Good As You (GAY) writes about the Prop 8 advertisement in which a teacher introduces the video of the Wirthlins: Our biggest concern with the video? That a public school teacher would even have a political video like this in her classroom library. Heck, we\u00E2\u0080\u0099d feel that way even if it was an anti-Prop. 8 video. It\u00E2\u0080\u0099s a classroom, not a political playing field. (\u00E2\u0080\u009CThere\u00E2\u0080\u0099s No Class In This Video\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.) GAY agrees that the ideal child should be protected from politics. In her decision to dismiss, Judge Lynch devotes several pages to precedents in which the impressionability of childhood was challenged. She generally discusses the ideal child, and notes that \u00E2\u0080\u009C[e]ducators treat this age differential as significant. [. . .] Further, as the plaintiffs sensibly point out, high school students are less responsive to what adults say than are very young elementary school children\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker v. Hurley, 514 F.3d 87 (1st Cir. 2008) at 27). Lynch affirms previous decisions, concluding that there is \u00E2\u0080\u009Cno principled reason why the age of students should be irrelevant\u00E2\u0080\u009D (ibid at 27-8). She argues that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe impressionability of young school children\u00E2\u0080\u009D is indeed clear and important 76 (ibid at 27). Although Judge Lynch found against the plaintiffs, her conclusion seems to agree with their views of the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s innocence and vulnerability. While the arbiters in the case and the queer-supportive participants in the debate are less likely to emphasise the concept of innocence and youth, they still assert a need to protect the ideal child from political issues. The statements of both sides reinforced the knowledge/ignorance binary in their argument the ideal children should not, or even cannot understand anything sad, difficult or complex. Their arguments expressed a conception of childhood that is oppositional to thinking. In a press conference for Yes2marriage Robin Wirthlin argues that her actual child was not capable of understanding any difficult material, and in extension, ideal children should not be faced with such issues. Robin says: Second-grade! This is such a young age! Can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t we wait until the kids are a little older? Can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t we wait until they\u00E2\u0080\u0099re more complex? Y\u00E2\u0080\u0099know, in second grade they\u00E2\u0080\u0099re still learning how to sit still and how to raise their hand when they have a question. They don\u00E2\u0080\u0099t need to face adult complex social issues. (\u00E2\u0080\u009CPress Conference\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.) The connection Robin Wirthlin makes between complexity and adulthood is also present in David Parker\u00E2\u0080\u0099s statements. He is quoted saying: \u00E2\u0080\u009CThey are trying to force their own views, views that are controversial in the adult world, upon young children\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Llana 2). The parents\u00E2\u0080\u0099 statements reinforce a conception of the ideal childhood incompatible with ambiguity and complexity. The Judeo-Christian parents in this debate and their supporters take the adult/child binary to the extreme of arguing that introducing complex adult ideas to the ideal child is 77 actually damaging to the child. Their views have the effect of constructing the ideal child in opposition not only to knowledge, but to the act of thinking. They argue that exposure to intellectual ambiguity was emotionally distressing to their actual children and would therefore be distressing to the ideal child: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmaking children bear the burden of conflicting beliefs tears at their sense of security and well-being, since they yearn to please both parents and teachers\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker, D. n. pag.). In this extraordinary statement David Parker claims that if the ideal child hears from her or his teacher that homosexuality is unproblematic, and from her or his parents that homosexuality is immoral, the child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s sense of self will be severely damaged. He writes that \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctender-aged children should not be put in the harmful position where adults in public spaces are sending conflicting moral messages.\u00E2\u0080\u009D These claims portray a childhood so innocent that the act of thinking would tear at a child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s well-being. Parker\u00E2\u0080\u0099s statement also introduces the picture of a childhood so innocent that the ideal child does not want to think or have independent knowledge. It is not so much that adults must teach the ideal child to obey, but that this child does so innately. This innate innocent obedience must be constantly protected from outside influence, such as adults who would introduce complex or difficult ideas to a child. The knowledge/ignorance binary must be constantly reinforced to prevent it undoing itself. Innocence must be protected from knowledge. The idea that the ideal child needs adult control and vigilance in order to enjoy their innocence is more subtly present in the oppositional view. In a letter to the editor two Lexington residents write \u00E2\u0080\u009CChildren can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t learn in school unless there\u00E2\u0080\u0099s discipline. And there\u00E2\u0080\u0099s no discipline where there is ostracism and intimidation. Every student, gay or 78 not, child of gay parents or not, benefits from a school policy that forbids bullying\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Pato and Zeder n. pag.). They argue that the ideal child requires discipline. In a letter to the editor Sara McGlinchey argues that the ideal child is naturally, unthinkingly accepting of difference, but this natural acceptance must be caught and guarded from a very young age, or it will be corrupted: \u00E2\u0080\u009CParents and teachers must indeed reach children at the kindergarten age to foster the growth of the kind of acceptance of diversity that most children naturally feel\u00E2\u0080\u009D (n. pag.). She sees ideal childhood innocence as containing some awareness of difference, but one that is entirely vulnerable to outside influence. The plaintiffs hold an extreme conception of childhood innocence, one in which the ideal child cannot think and does not want to think about complex topics. Although the defendants, in comparison, are less extreme in their conception of childhood, they still do not, on the whole, consider the ideal children as capable of or interested in thinking about difficult topics. While they consider children as less absolutely ignorant than their right-wing opponents, they do not see them as capable intellectual beings. They agree that discipline and restriction of information are vital to maintaining childhood innocence. They also agree with the right-wing plaintiffs on the degree to which the ideal child is impressionable to adult influence. Both sides hold, to some degree, an understanding of the ideal child as vulnerable, and children as incapable of and unwilling to integrate complex concepts. Neither group considers the idea that children, ideal or actual, may have their own sources of information or their own ability to think critically about complex issues. The natural, innocent, innately ignorant and accepting ideal child is an actively created and defended place of ignorance and inability. 79 Ignorance of Homosexuality As I discussed in my literature review, when adults talk about the ideal child destroyed by knowledge, adults tend to mean sexual knowledge, as if childhood is Eden and the inevitable expulsion must be postponed as long as possible. In this debate the knowledge of homosexuality was often opposed to childhood innocence. The binary was revealed as unstable as participants in the debate were forced to acknowledge the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s knowledge of homosexuality in order to offer anti-discriminatory education or to belittle the knowledge that children hold. The question over how much knowledge children have of non-normative genders and sexualities is a central feature in the debate over the Parker/Wirthlin case. The arguments of the Judeo-Christian adults in the case reinforce childhood ignorance of sexual information. They assume that the ideal child is naturally innocent of homosexuality. They assume that the ideal child is incapable of discovering non- normative gender identities or sexual desires within her or his self, and argue that their actual children and therefore the ideal child should have no contact with any information about any non-normative sexualities or genders, sex outside marriage, or different view- points on any of these topics. These assumptions are made apparent in a newspaper article titled \u00E2\u0080\u009CElementary schools shouldn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t be teaching homosexuality,\u00E2\u0080\u009D which critiques using lesbian and gay picturebooks in the classroom: At the high school level, some of this indoctrination might be excused on the grounds that students are old enough to make personal choices and maybe some 80 of them can define terms like \u00E2\u0080\u009Csexuality\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgender.\u00E2\u0080\u009D No such excuse can be made for this kind of social indoctrination at the elementary level. (Knight B07) Knight not only argues that the ideal child should be profoundly ignorant about gender and sexuality, he believes she or he is inherently ignorant. The force of this belief is emphasised by the fact that he does not feel the need to argue his point, but rather needs only refer sarcastically to the assumption about childhood he shares with his implied audience. Judge Wolf summed up the position of the plaintiffs in his dismissal of their Federal lawsuit thus: Plaintiffs [. . .] request injunctive relief that would require the defendants to: notify the plaintiff parents of any adult initiated classroom discussion of sexuality, gender identity, or forms of marriage until their children are in the seventh grade; allow the plaintiff parents to exempt their children from any such discussion; permit the plaintiff parents to observe silently and record any such discussion; and prohibit \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmaterials graphically depicting homosexual physical contact,\u00E2\u0080\u009D evidently including King and King, from being submitted to the students until seventh grade. (Parker v. Hurley. 474 F. Supp. 2d 26 (D. Mass 2007) at 12) Their position involves a surprisingly comprehensive list of knowledge that should be kept from their actual children. Their construction of the ideal childhood they want for their actual children entails an ignorance of any information about sexuality or gender outside a married, heterosexual Christian (white, middle-class) scenario. The extent to which this ignorance requires defending indicates the instability of the knowledge/ignorance binary. 81 Jen Gilbert describes sexuality arriving \u00E2\u0080\u009Clike an unwelcome and disruptive guest; it stands in for what is most foreign in the self, and it must be tamed and assimilated if it is not to wreck the self and the social order\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CAmbivalence only?\u00E2\u0080\u009D 233). In this debate the knowledge of homosexuality was the unwelcome and disruptive guest which the Parkers and Wirthlins sought to keep from the door as long as possible. Although they claim they \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdidn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t want to discuss sexual orientation yet with their son\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Lindsay n. pag.), it appears that the plaintiffs wish to keep their actual children ignorant of homosexuality certainly until adolescence, and preferably until adulthood. It is only when it becomes clear that someone else is imminently going to provide children with information about LGBT people, that the Parker/Wirthlins will violate their children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s innocence in order to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cget in first.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Their lawyer writes that they \u00E2\u0080\u009Crecognize that at some point, their children will be exposed to the knowledge that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts endorses as legal some marriages they believe to be inconsistent with their faith\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker. et al. v. Hurley et al. Compl. and Jury Demand n. pag.). Their primary concerns appear to be putting off this exposure, and making sure the exposure is done by the correct parties. The opponents of this view have a more complex argument: the ideal child may have an innocent, adult-given knowledge of homosexuality, or an innocent adult-given knowledge of homophobia. The left-wing discourse constructs knowledge about homosexuality as knowledge that supports children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s future. They construct knowledge of homosexuality as a corrective force to adult-given homophobia, thus positing the provision of knowledge of homosexuality as a tool to return children to a state of pre- homophobic innocence. They construct an ideal childhood that can be returned to innocence through corrective anti-homophobic education. In these understandings the 82 construction of the ideal child is complex and less absolute than that undertaken by the right-wing commenters, but works to reinscribe the knowledge/ignorance binary as childhood is still understood as profoundly innocent, ignorant and in need of protection. The primary way queer or queer-supportive people in the debate construct children who have knowledge of homosexuality is as innocents with simple knowledge of their family structure. In a guest commentary for the Lexington Minuteman, Carol Rose, Lexington resident and executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, writes with the assumption that the ideal child may have knowledge of her or his own same-sex parents, and therefore homosexuality: \u00E2\u0080\u009CAll students deserve to have their families represented in classroom reading materials, and not to have something as fundamental as their basic family structure singled out as being \u00E2\u0080\u0098off limits\u00E2\u0080\u0099\u00E2\u0080\u009D(n. pag.). In a letter to the editor a lesbian mother discusses the potential impact on her actual children if Parker has his way: Imagine having to tell a kindergartner that they are not allowed to talk about what they did with their parents over the weekend? Imagine how terrible that same kindergartner would feel if they were not permitted to draw a picture of their family, because it might upset somebody? I shudder to think of what that would do to any of our children and their sense of feeling good in the world. (Brodner n. pag.) Like those of the Wirthlins and Parkers, these statements shift between actual children and the ideal child, and they indicate the level of protection childhood innocence requires. Any negative messages can tear at the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s sense of belonging in the world. 83 The queer or queer-supportive adults also argue the ideal children may hold knowledge of homosexuality through knowledge of homophobia. This knowledge is adult-initiated, and may be removed by instilling correction information. This correction will return the ideal child to an innocent, pre-homophobic state. Homophobia is treated in queer-supportive discourse as an adult intrusion that threatens children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s inherent tolerance. This position is present in a guest commentary in the Lexington Minuteman by Meg Soens, a founding member of Lexington C.A.R.E.S., and a lesbian parent with children at Estabrook Elementary. She and her partner \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfeared that the school would not protect our children from the cruelty that kids can learn from their parents\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Soens n. pag.). This argument relies on the construction that children are too innocent to behave cruelly without adult interference. If the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s innocence is protected she or he will not learn to discriminate, as children are inherently tolerant and accepting in their ignorance. Vickey Parker offers a more complex construction of the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s knowledge of homophobia in her guest commentary titled \u00E2\u0080\u009CWhy Inclusion Matters For All Types Of Families,\u00E2\u0080\u009D in the Lexington Minuteman. Parker described herself as \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca Lexington resident and the chairman of the Estabrook Anti-Bias Committee.\u00E2\u0080\u009D In this article Parker claims that children learn first that they can use language to bully other children, and must be taught later that this hurtful language is indeed hurtful: \u00E2\u0080\u009CChildren learn early that terms of difference can be used to mock or bully other children, and unless they also learn early that their peers can be hurt by such terms, they feel empowered to use them\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker, V. n. pag.). This statement reinforces the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s innocence: Parker writes that children \u00E2\u0080\u009Clearn early\u00E2\u0080\u009D to discriminate. 84 The arguments of queer and queer-supportive adults have the effect of supporting a construction of childhood in which adults must provide information in order for children to unlearn homophobia. These adults understand that actual children may have knowledge of homosexuality, and may share it via, for instance, drawing a picture of their family or talking about what they did over the weekend, but the ideal child is understood as too innocent to educate her or his peers out of discrimination. The correct response to the ideal child expressing information about homosexuality or homophobia is for an adult to intervene and educate the child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s peers about bullying. For example, \u00E2\u0080\u009CJoni Jay, principal of Estabrook, noted that elementary-school students often use the word \u00E2\u0080\u0098gay\u00E2\u0080\u0099 as a pejorative term and she suggested that [Lexington C.A.R.E.S.] take steps to support teaching tolerance among children\u00E2\u0080\u009D (McDonald 4). While the left-wing participants in this case accept that children, actual and ideal, may have knowledge about homosexuality or homophobia, they do not accept that the ideal child may share this knowledge. The arguments of both sides of the debate support the knowledge/ignorance binary in that information and knowledge resides with adults, and ignorance with children. The defendants\u00E2\u0080\u0099 argument reinforces a construction of the ideal child in which children have some knowledge about their family structure or some knowledge of homophobia, though this information must be given to children by adults. The plaintiffs\u00E2\u0080\u0099 arguments offer a construction of childhood that has no knowledge of homosexuality, or only unimportant, weak information. Both sides acknowledge some potential for the ideal child to hold and communicate information about non-normative genders or sexualities, but this potential is small and quickly dismissed. Adults in this debate make statements 85 that reinforce adults as the bearers and communicators of knowledge about homosexuality, and children as the passive, vulnerable recipients. The plaintiffs in the case repeatedly use the phrase \u00E2\u0080\u009Cadult-initiated discussions of homosexuality,\u00E2\u0080\u009D which would seem to imply that they understand there may be \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchild- initiated discussions.\u00E2\u0080\u009D They rarely engage with this concept, however, and when they do, they generally belittle the capacity of children to hold or share knowledge. Their lawyer engages with the topic in some detail in his response to the American Civil Liberties Union\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Memorandum Amicus Curiae. He draws a clear distinction between the worth and impact of child-initiated and adult-initiated discussion: Contrary to defendants\u00E2\u0080\u0099 expressed fears, the plaintiffs recognize that mere \u00E2\u0080\u009Cexposure\u00E2\u0080\u009D can come from other children. [. . .] The concept, which the ACLU chooses to ignore, is that the parents are alleging far more than mere exposure. A second grade teacher sitting down and reading a book is a far different circumstance from kids bantering with one another on the playground. (Pls.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Mem. Opp. Amicus Br. Civil Action No. 06-CV-10751-MLW at 5) The attorney\u00E2\u0080\u0099s writing is notable for its reinforcement of the ideal child as entirely vulnerable to being \u00E2\u0080\u009Coverwhelmed by the respect, adoration, and admiration for a known adult teacher\u00E2\u0080\u009D (ibid at 6). A different lawyer for the plaintiffs furthers the understanding that the ideal child can hold only weak and unimportant knowledge by referring to communication between children as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cplayground banter\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker. et al. v. Hurley et al. Compl. and Jury Demand n. pag.). These arguments have the effect of reinscribing the knowledge/ignorance binary, but also revealing its instability, as they must acknowledge the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s knowledge in order to minimise it. 86 The statements of both sides have the effect of constructing the ideal ignorant child in opposition to knowledge of homosexuality. However, the knowledge/ignorance binary and adult/child binaries are revealed to be undoing themselves because both sides must acknowledge children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s knowledge of homosexuality in order to offer remedial anti-discriminatory education or to belittle this knowledge. Knowledge of Homosexuality Although it appears that both the plaintiffs and the defendants would prefer that the ideal child have no knowledge (the former) or very little knowledge (the latter) about homosexuality, if the ideal child must have information on the topic, the two groups agree that the first information that reaches innocent children will be the most powerful, so it is very important to get your information across before someone else transmits \u00E2\u0080\u009Cincorrect information.\u00E2\u0080\u009D They also agree that information about non-normative genders and sexualities is incredibly powerful. Only a small, bland amount is necessary in order to have a dramatic and long-lasting personal effect on the ideal child. This knowledge is also sticky: a small amount of bland information will allow the child access to a much wider range of information. It is the extreme innocence of childhood that enables these arguments, as the ideal child is seen as devoid of intellectual defences. These statements have the effect of enforcing an adult/child construction in which knowledge of homosexuality is incredibly powerful, and the ideal child incredibly blank and vulnerable. During an National Public Radio broadcast Robin Wirthlin clearly states her need to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cget in first\u00E2\u0080\u009D with information about homosexuality: \u00E2\u0080\u009CIt makes me think that they are 87 trying to indoctrinate the children and normalize and affirm homosexuality before the parents have had an opportunity to present a balanced view\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CTeacher, School Sued\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.). This statement indicates the power of the first contact with knowledge about homosexuality. The plaintiff\u00E2\u0080\u0099s lawyer argues that this first contact is so important that an incorrect application will destroy Christianity: The burden here is nothing short of an intentional attempt to wipe the plaintiff\u00E2\u0080\u0099s faith away altogether. The obvious and well-pleaded impressionable age of the children, combined with the State\u00E2\u0080\u0099s abject unwillingness to even notify the parents that it intends to indoctrinate on these extremely personal topics virtually ensures that if the State gets its way, the Plaintiffs\u00E2\u0080\u0099 children will not harbor the families\u00E2\u0080\u0099 beliefs. (Pls.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Mem. Opp. Amicus Br. Civil Action No. 06-CV-10751- MLW at 4) Claims such as this give a sense of the importance of this first contact. They also evoke \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe emotional tumult that is part of any conversation involving sexuality and youth\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Gilbert \u00E2\u0080\u009CAmbivalence only?\u00E2\u0080\u009D 234), and indicate why challenges to these picturebooks can be so tempestuous: there is a great deal at stake. The anti-gay discourse is more explicit than the pro-gay discourse about the need to provide the correct information first. An unusually upfront queer-supportive position is apparent in a letter to the editor saying that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe right time to teach children that it\u00E2\u0080\u0099s OK to be gay is before the church and their parents start teaching them it\u00E2\u0080\u0099s evil. From what I can tell, kindergarten is way too late. Homophobes don\u00E2\u0080\u0099t wait before they teach hate\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Brown n. pag.). A similar perspective appears in an editorial in the Boston Globe: \u00E2\u0080\u009CThe 88 earlier most students learn that lesson, the better\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CUpholding Diversity Lessons\u00E2\u0080\u009D A10). Because the ideal child is so blank, the first information that reaches the ideal child is that which sticks. The arbiters of the case argue that adults must provide the ideal child with correct non-discriminatory education before others have the chance to teach her or him discrimination. Judge Wolf, in his February 2007 dismissal of the case, compares the case with Brown v. Hot, Sexy and Safer Productions, 68 F.3d 525 (1st Cir. 1995), and states that the age of the actual children under discussion doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t affect his decision: Nor does the young age of the students in the instant case distinguish Brown. [. . .] In Brown, the First Circuit did not write anything that suggests that it would have found a parental right to restrict what could be taught to elementary school students when it held that parents had no such right with regard to high school students. See 68 F.3d at 532-34. (Parker v. Hurley. 474 F. Supp. 2d 26 (D. Mass 2007) at 21-23) However, towards the end of this long document, Wolf shifts to discussing the ideal child to suggest that youth and innocence has a vital part to play in inculcating correct values: As it is difficult to change attitudes and stereotypes after they have developed, it is reasonable for public schools to attempt to teach understanding and respect for gays and lesbians to young students in order to minimize the risk of damaging abuse in school of those who may be perceived to be different. (ibid at 31) He argues that the first knowledge about homosexuality the ideal child is given will be \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdifficult to change,\u00E2\u0080\u009D so adults must instruct them before the child is given incorrect information from another source. Wolf\u00E2\u0080\u0099s finding indicates an awareness of an ideal or 89 actual child who may be or may grow up to be queer, which is unusual in the discourse over this case. Most members of the debate agree that the first information given to children has the greatest impact. This belief aligns with an understanding of the ideal child as innocent, blank and absolutely vulnerable. Children hold almost no knowledge of gender and sexuality: in such an empty landscape information they are given will loom large. The Judeo-Christians, in particular, argue that giving children a very small amount of information will lead to them holding vast amounts of information. They argue that reading a picturebook about a fictional child with two mothers can provide an ideal child with knowledge about all sorts of gender and sexual \u00E2\u0080\u009Cperversions.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The impact of a small amount of information can be seen in the disconnect between the content of the picturebooks and the legal claims made about them. The plaintiffs sought to withhold any \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdiscussion of sexuality, gender identity, or forms of marriage\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker v. Hurley. 474 F. Supp. 2d 26 (D. Mass 2007) at 12). Snide remarks made in court documents suggest the audacity of the leap that the plaintiffs take when they link the picturebooks with these legal claims. The defendant\u00E2\u0080\u0099s lawyer, John Davis, described the offensive contents of Skutch\u00E2\u0080\u0099s picturebook thus: \u00E2\u0080\u009CLaura and Kyle [live] with two moms, Joyce and Emily, and a poodle named Daisy\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Defs.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Reply Br. to Pls. Opp\u00E2\u0080\u0099n Mo. Dismiss. No. 27. Civil Action No. 06-10751 MLW. at 18). The Judeo- Christians argue that even a description of fictional children living with two mums and a poodle provides that first vital contact with homosexuality, and that this small amount of information will open the door to a vast amount more. They elide information about same sex headed families with other forms of \u00E2\u0080\u009Csexual perversion\u00E2\u0080\u009D: Jeffrey Denner, the parents\u00E2\u0080\u0099 90 attorney, said [. . .] his clients would be equally disturbed if their young sons were learning about \u00E2\u0080\u0098heterosexual prostitution\u00E2\u0080\u0099 in school\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Price A02). Another indication of the leap taken between the material in the picturebooks and the discourse of the case is indicated in the constant attention to transgender issues. The Judeo-Christian discourse regularly includes \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctransgenderism\u00E2\u0080\u009D on their list of topics to which the Parker and Wirthlin children were exposed. For instance, their lawyer added it to his list of vetoed information: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthey did not wish to discuss the topic of homosexual marriage or homosexuality and transgenderism with Joshua or Jacob at their current ages\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker. et al. v. Hurley et al. Compl. and Jury Demand n. pag.). And later: In order to determine whether their child would receive additional information in school related to homosexuality and transgenderism, the Parkers initiated a dialogue via email with the Principal of the School, Joni Jay, and the Superintendent of Schools, William Hurley. (ibid n. pag.) However, despite this obsessive attention to transgender people, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe defendants dispute that Who\u00E2\u0080\u0099s In A Family? or Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Family address issues of transgenderism, and certainly the Parkers identify no transgender characters who appear in either book\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Defs.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Mem. Supp. Dismiss Compl. No. 19. Civil Action No. 06-10751-MLW at 5 footnote 10). In the Judeo-Christian discourse the fact that Skutch\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Who\u00E2\u0080\u0099s In A Family? contains only information about fictional children with two mums or dads doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t stop it teaching actual children, and the ideal child about gay marriage, and the fact that none of the picturebooks under discussion contain transgender characters doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t stop them teaching children about \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctransgenderism.\u00E2\u0080\u009D A small amount of knowledge about non- 91 normative genders and sexualities goes a long way. The strength of this knowledge is in a close binary relationship with the extent and vulnerability of childhood innocence. As the ideal child is so vulnerable and blank, and as the ideal child has so few intellectual defences, the information that Laura and Kyle live with two moms opens the child who hears it to a vast flood of knowledge about gender and sexuality. The queer-supportive discourse reinforces the potency of information about homosexuality and the vulnerability of childhood, although their views are less extreme and less clearly expressed. The best way to identify their views is to explicate the effect that providing knowledge about homosexuality will have on the ideal child, which is that they can be good participants in civil life. This information is \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpreparing them for citizenship\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker v. Hurley. 474 F. Supp. 2d 26 (D. Mass 2007) at 30). This conceptualisation is remarkably future-oriented; \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe child remains negatively defined - defined only by what the child is not but is subsequently going to be, and not by what the child presently is\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Alanen 56). Judge Wolf writes that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cunder the Constitution public schools are entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy\u00E2\u0080\u009D (ibid at 4). In addition to reinforcing the temporal conceptualisation of childhood, he repeats the construction of information on homosexuality as very powerful. A picturebook such as Garden\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Family has the ability make the ideal child a better citizen. Judge Lynch agrees: The Supreme Court has often referred to the role of public education in the preparation of students for citizenship. See, e.g., Bethel Sch. Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 681- 85 (1986) (upholding ability of schools to prohibit 92 lewd speech). Given that Massachusetts has recognized gay marriage under its state constitution, it is entirely rational for its schools to educate their students regarding that recognition. (Parker v. Hurley, 514 F.3d 87 (1st Cir. 2008) at 16) The defendants and their supporters agree that knowledge about homosexuality will have a significant impact on the ideal child. This argument reinforces the knowledge/ignorance binary in that the innocence of children makes them very vulnerable to information \u00E2\u0080\u0093 only someone with no intellectual defences could be so drastically altered by a small amount of information. This conceptualisation of childhood is focused on adult protection and intervention, and the futurity of children; the ideal child will reach her or his full potential by becoming an ideal citizen. Rights over Children or Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Rights? In this debate, the right of parents over the ideal child was an unchallenged and unexceptional backdrop. ABC World News Tonight succinctly explains the primary source of conflict between the different parties: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwho should have the final say in a child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s education, the parents or the teachers?\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CCulture Wars\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.). Later in the same program the question is simplified further, assuming that it is parents who should have the final say: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cis teaching kids about gays and lesbians tolerance or propaganda? And how much control do parents have over what their children get taught?\u00E2\u0080\u009D Participants in this debate shift between discussing actual parents and actual children to the broader rights of adults over the ideal child, but no one in this debate disagrees that parents should have rights over children. The participants in the case are arguing over whose definition of innocence is the one mandated for the child. That 93 parents should be able to control their children was accepted by all sides of the debate. The queer-supporters write: Yes, parents have the right to teach their children, and they may have some control over the timing of certain topics. But if they choose to send their children to public school, by doing so they accept the curriculum. (Micholet n. pag.) Judge Wolf agrees: Parents do have a fundamental right to raise their children. They are not required to abandon that responsibility to the state. The Parkers and Wirthlins may send their children to a private school that does not seek to foster understandings of homosexuality or same-sex marriage that conflict with their religious beliefs. They may also educate their children at home. (Parker v. Hurley. 474 F. Supp. 2d 26 (D. Mass 2007) at 6) The Judeo-Christian parents do not assert the right to control children, but rather assume it in their argument that it has been violated: Parker said Maine\u00E2\u0080\u0099s new gay-rights law will lead school officials to believe that it\u00E2\u0080\u0099s acceptable to teach that homosexuality is normal. \u00E2\u0080\u009CIt goes way beyond civil rights,\u00E2\u0080\u009D he said. \u00E2\u0080\u009CIt ends up eroding the civil rights of parents. And I am a walking example of that.\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Aull and Bell B1) Parker says in a different interview that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgay marriage is being used as a battering ram against parental rights\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Swift n. pag.). Missing from this debate are the rights of the ideal child to knowledge or information. The lack of willingness to argue that children have rights to knowledge and choices is related to adult understandings of the ideal child as 94 blank, malleable and incapable of critical thought. One could argue that, according to this discourse, the only right the ideal child has is the right to innocence and protection. One significant article in this discourse promoted the rights of actual and ideal children: the Memorandum Amicus Curiae Of The American Civil Liberties Union Of Massachusetts, Lexington C.A.R.E.S, Lexington Teachers Association, Massachusetts Teachers Association, Respecting Differences, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, Human Rights Campaign, And The Human Rights Campaign Foundation. This proposed memorandum was written on the 20th of September 2006 in Support of Defendants\u00E2\u0080\u0099 motion to dismiss. It begins thus: The amici listed above [. . .] represent a diverse group of Lexington parents, teachers, and religious and community leaders, as well as civil rights organizations who share common interests in the creation of a safe learning environment for all children, where they may be taught to grapple with a wide variety of ideas and information needed in a complex, democratic, and pluralistic society. (Proposed Mem. Amicus Curae. No. 23. Civil Action No. 06-CV-10751- MLW. at 1) This opening sentence offers a provocative understanding of the ideal childhood \u00E2\u0080\u0093 one in which children be taught how to deal with complex information. Although this piece creates an actively learning and debating ideal child, the group still reinforces the rights of parents to teach children their own values: Alternatives exist for parents who wish to limit their children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s exposure to ideas which they find offensive, and to educate their children about their chosen religious values and beliefs. These parents are free to supplement their children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 95 public education with religious programs and training, to instruct their children at home about moral and religious matters, to enrol their children in parochial or religious schools, or even to home school their children. (ibid at 2) However, later in the piece, they argue that children have a right to a broad range of unsanitised information: If a parent chooses to have his or her child attend the public schools, that child has a right to a broad and high quality public education, not one constrained by individual parental beliefs. (ibid at 8) They argue that children have the right to read and seek out information independently: Finally, a parental right to demand prior notice of ideas that children are exposed to in public school would also jeopardize longstanding principles about freedom to read and access to materials in school libraries. [. . .] As the courts have recognized, in a library, \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca student can literally explore the unknown, and discover areas of interest and thought not covered by the prescribed curriculum.... Th[e] student learns that a library is a place to test or expand upon ideas presented to him, in or out of the classroom.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Right to Read Defense Committee v. School Committee of Chelsea, 454 F.Supp.703, 715 (D. Mass. 1978), quoted approvingly in Bd. Of Education, Island Trees Free School Dist. v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 869 (1982). (ibid at 17-18) This claim is one of the few times in this discourse that the ideal child was constructed as able to take the ideas presented to her or him by adults and challenge or explore them independently. The Memorandum Amicus Curiae offers an understanding of childhood in which independent thought and research is not only possible \u00E2\u0080\u0093 it is a right. Their 96 emphasis on the role of libraries is apt. As librarians know, \u00E2\u0080\u009Chowever much these parents and citizens would like libraries to stand in loco parentis as guardians of what children and young adults should read, this is clearly not the school or library\u00E2\u0080\u0099s role. Rather the role of these institutions is that of vanguard of the right to read\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Reiman and Greenblatt 259). This role protects children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s intellectual capacity. This assertion of the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s right to think and know demonstrates the instability of the knowledge/ignorance binary. The binary could further be troubled if actual children in the debate asserted their knowledge. However, voices of actual children were almost entirely absent: no Estabrook Elementary students wrote to the Lexington Minuteman, neither Jacob Parker nor Joey Wirthlin participate in television or radio interviews, and children did not write blog posts about how their innocence was stolen by Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Family (Garden). There were two significant moments in this discourse in which actual children did speak. One child plays a prominent role in a YesOn8 television broadcast produced by ProtectMarriage during the Proposition 8 debate. The child comes bouncing home from school bearing de Haan and Nijland\u00E2\u0080\u0099s King and King and says to her mother, \u00E2\u0080\u009CMom, guess what I learned in school today? [. . .] I learned how a prince married a prince. [. . .] And I can marry a princess!\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CYes on 8\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.). The shot freezes on the mother\u00E2\u0080\u0099s horrified face as a voice over says: \u00E2\u0080\u009CThink it can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t happen? It\u00E2\u0080\u0099s already happened.\u00E2\u0080\u009D This popular and widely disseminated campaign piece places a child in a prominent position. However, this child is speaking words written by an adult, not her own \u00E2\u0080\u0093 she is arguably an ideal, fictional child. Her role is to be cute and pig-tailed, to visualise and verbalise the innocence that needs protecting. 97 A more telling instance of a child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s voice is found in a 2006 National Public Radio report. It features multiple sound clips of Robin Wirthlin explaining her son\u00E2\u0080\u0099s confusion and agitation on receiving the knowledge of homosexuality, and some sound clips of Superintendent Ash discussing the need to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmake sure that kids of gay families don\u00E2\u0080\u0099t feel like they\u00E2\u0080\u0099re being treated differently\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CTeacher, School Sued\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.). It also includes a short interview with \u00E2\u0080\u009C44-year-old Lexington mom Anne Needleman.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Needleman claims to be conflicted about the issue, and bashfully professes: \u00E2\u0080\u009CThey\u00E2\u0080\u0099re just so, you have to accept me. And it\u00E2\u0080\u0099s like, you\u00E2\u0080\u0099re starting to annoy me in a way. You know what I mean? That sounds really mean, but that\u00E2\u0080\u0099s just how I feel about it.\u00E2\u0080\u009D She claims that her daughter, Taylor, would also be confused and troubled by knowledge about homosexuality. However, NPR includes an interjection: Smith: But a minute later six year old Taylor chimes in and says she already knows about kids with two daddies or two mommies. Ms. Taylor Needleman (Daughter of Ms. A. Needleman): Noah, right? Ms. A. Needleman: Who\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Noah? Ms. T. Needleman: Remember the Noah from the Kid Stock? Ms. A. Needleman: Yeah. Noah\u00E2\u0080\u0099s moms are married to each other. Ms. T. Needleman: Yeah. This actual child literally interrupts a conversation about protecting her idealised innocence by asserting her actual knowledge, thereby demonstrating how the knowledge/ignorance binary does not hold. 98 Conclusion The reinscription of the adult/child and knowledge/ignorance binaries relies on denying and restricting the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s abilities to access a range of knowledge, to share it, or to critically challenge it. The binaries refuse any knowledge actual children may have of their own desires, and do not provide tools for dealing with non-normative gender identities or sexualities in a cissexist and heterosexist world. Conceptualising the ideal child as innocent does not respect actual children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s ability to take in knowledge from the world around them, to challenge or test this information or to disseminate this knowledge. The knowledge/ignorance binary undervalues children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s critical facilities and intelligence. It is, as I discussed in my literature review, a binary which revolves around the desires of adults, rather than actual children. In the Lexington case, the constant resincription of the knowledge/ignorance binary refused the ideal child and, subsequently, actual children, the right to seek out and challenge a range of information, the ability to think about complex and important issues, resist bullying or initiate meaningful discussion about non-normative genders or sexualities. It especially refused the possibility of children who have or will grow up to have non-normative genders or sexualities. All of these negations were effects of the reinscription of adult/child power dynamics, and they do not acknowledge the abilities and intellectual capacity of actual children. The conception of the ideal child promoted in the discourse of this debate was one in which children are entirely vulnerable to adult intervention, rather than one in which children have tools to challenge and use the knowledge that they receive from the world. 99 The emphasis on adults as the bearers of knowledge and the vulnerability of the ideal child leads to intense scrutiny of information about non-normative genders and sexualities. This information comes to bear a huge symbolic burden \u00E2\u0080\u0093 it may create a good citizen or destroy Christianity. Due to these high stakes the content, mood and timing of this lesson is a source of anxiety for the participants in this debate. Even those participants who wish the ideal child to have information about homosexuality construct it as very powerful information which must only be delivered in small, carefully timed doses. Mis-application may have dire consequences. If adults acknowledged the instability of the binary and refused to participate in the construction of the ideal child as innocent then the knowledge of homosexuality would not be such a source of tension. As I will discuss in Chapter 5, actual children have the ability for critical thought and complexity, so interacting with information about non- normative genders or sexualities is just one more piece of information that children can hold, challenge and explore in their lives. If both adults and children could bear and share information then this information about non-normative genders and sexualities would just be one piece of information among many. It would make the sharing of this information a much less fraught activity, which would be better for both adults and children. Acknowledging the instability of the knowledge/ignorance binary would better serve all participants. 100 Chapter 5. The Knowledge/Ignorance Binary in Both Censorship and the Picturebooks Lesbian and gay picturebooks are inherently disruptive of adult constructions of childhood as asexual and ignorant in that they are about sexuality and they provide information to their implied child reader. They make apparent the impossibility of the knowledge/ignorance binary because they acknowledge that a child reader, implied or actual, can be interested in sexuality, may have a sexuality (even a non-heterosexual one), and that a child reader can want, need and be capable of sharing information about sexuality. Although the effect of both the picturebooks and those defending them is that of minimising both sexuality and information, the picturebooks are fundamentally about both. In this section I will build on the previous chapters by discussing the picturebooks and the discourse of the Lexington challenge together. I argue that the effects of the discourses reinforcing knowledge/ignorance and adult/child binaries are negative for both adults and actual children. I propose that the picturebooks and those defending them instead embrace their role as disruptive of the knowledge/ignorance binary. I will consider the elements of this claim separately. First, I will address the question of whether the picturebooks are about sexuality. I will consider Nodelman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s theory of the shadow text of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature and the debate in Lexington about the designation of the picturebooks as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cprimarily concerning human sexuality.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Second, I will address the nature of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature as didactic, or primarily concerning providing information to children. I will consider children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature criticism on didacticism and the debate in Lexington over \u00E2\u0080\u009Cindoctrination.\u00E2\u0080\u009D 101 Picturebooks are About Sexuality In Chapter Three, I argued that the picturebooks reproduce the adult/child binary in their depiction of sexuality. The books address the topic of non-normative sexualities without showing visible difference, physical affection or queer community, and without using specialised vocabulary. The adult construction of ideal childhood innocence means that this information about sexuality must be evacuated of all information and sexuality. Despite these absences, I argue that the picturebooks are certainly about sexuality. Put simply, they must be about sexuality because they are not about anything else. Without an understanding of the context of sexuality, the books don\u00E2\u0080\u0099t make any sense. In his The Hidden Adult Perry Nodelman describes this larger context as a \u00E2\u0080\u009Cshadow text,\u00E2\u0080\u009D that a \u00E2\u0080\u009Creader can access by reading the actual simple text in the context of the repertoire of previously existing knowledge about life and literature it seems to demand and invite readers to engage\u00E2\u0080\u009D (77). An example of a text defined by the shadow text of homosexuality is Uncle Bobby\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Wedding, written and illustrated by Sarah S. Brannen. Uncle Bobby\u00E2\u0080\u0099s favourite pastimes are boating, going to the ballet, taking long walks through rose-scented fields, toasting marshmallows in the fireplace, and playing board games with his young niece. He and his partner, Jamie, aspire to be married and have children. They have family photos of heterosexual couples up in their house (near the open fireplace), and, if the dancing couples at their wedding reception are representative, have no lesbian or gay friends. Brannen\u00E2\u0080\u0099s picturebook has some slight narrative tension\u00E2\u0080\u0094will Chloe feel secure in her uncle\u00E2\u0080\u0099s affections after he is married?\u00E2\u0080\u0094 but not enough to carry the picturebook as a whole. The book\u00E2\u0080\u0099s central point is the 102 message that gay people are friendly, inoffensive and aspire to heterosexual values. This message, and the book itself, would make little sense without a larger context of homophobia. Here we can see how the shadow text of homosexuality and homophobia defines Brannen\u00E2\u0080\u0099s text. Uncle Bobby\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Wedding demonstrates perfectly the asexual, innocent presentation of homosexuality common to most lesbian and gay picturebooks. Uncle Bobby is so inoffensive he is actually represented as a guineapig. However, despite this blandness, the picturebook was number eight on the American Library Association\u00E2\u0080\u0099s list of most frequently challenged books in 2008, the year it was published, and has garnered wide condemnation as an instrument to recruit children. A \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpowerful conservative voice\u00E2\u0080\u009D for Human Events magazine writes on the picturebook, explaining that \u00E2\u0080\u009Csince homosexual activists cannot reproduce their own children, recruitment to their cause (especially at a young age, before parents have raised such sensitive and controversial topics with their children) is essential\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Hemenway n. pag.). The shadow text of Uncle Bobby\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Wedding has obviously over-ridden its innocent asexuality. Other reasons we can assume that the picturebooks are about sexuality exist outside the text completely. The picturebooks are marketed as about sexuality. They appear in online bibliographies of LGBT books for children and in LGBT bookstores. In chain bookstores they are filed under \u00E2\u0080\u009CFamily Issues\u00E2\u0080\u009D rather than \u00E2\u0080\u009CFiction.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The picturebooks were originally published by lesbian and gay publishing houses such as The Gay Men\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Press in London, and Alyson Wonderland, which is an imprint of Alyson Publications, a LGBT speciality press. These early picturebooks were often written by people who self-identified as lesbian or gay, such as Leslea Newman. The more recent 103 picturebooks are published often by mainstream publishing houses, but also by publishers such as Second Story Press, which is \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdedicated to publishing feminist-inspired books for adults and young readers\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Second Story), and Two Lives Publishing, which creates books \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfor children in alternative families\u00E2\u0080\u009D (copyright information on Combs). The more recent books are often written or endorsed by psychiatrists specialising in sexuality. Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, the authors of And Tango Makes Three, are both MDs. Richardson is identified in the jacket biography as \u00E2\u0080\u009Can assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia and Cornell and co-author of Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid They\u00E2\u0080\u0099d Ask).\u00E2\u0080\u009D Vanita Oelschlager\u00E2\u0080\u0099s A Tale of Two Daddies contains a positive review on the back cover written by \u00E2\u0080\u009CSteve,\u00E2\u0080\u009D who is identified as \u00E2\u0080\u009CStephen L. Cosby, M. D. Division Director, Paediatric Psychiatry and Psychology, Akron Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Hospital, Akron, Ohio.\u00E2\u0080\u009D These extraordinary details are presumably intended to establish the credibility and trustworthiness of the authors. They also have the effect of identifying the books with the topic of sexuality. The extra-textual details of the picturebooks suggest that the picturebooks are about sexuality . The reactions the books have generated also suggest that the books are about sexuality. The question of whether the books are about sexuality was a key point in the legal discourse in the Lexington case. Massachusetts\u00E2\u0080\u0099s law allows parents to opt out their children from any discussion \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwhich primarily involves human sexual education or human sexuality issues\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 71, \u00C2\u00A7 32A). Therefore, the plaintiffs attempted to prove that the picturebooks in question were primarily about human sexuality, and the defendants attempted to prove that they were not. The plaintiffs\u00E2\u0080\u0099 104 argument relied on an incomplete understanding of sexuality, and the defendants\u00E2\u0080\u0099 on an inadequate representation of homophobia and heterosexism. The plaintiffs\u00E2\u0080\u0099 argument defined \u00E2\u0080\u009Chuman sexuality\u00E2\u0080\u009D purely in terms of behaviour, rather than including identification. This definition coheres with their understanding of homosexuality as an immoral choice rather than an identification, but rather weakens their argument that the books are about sexuality. The problem with their argument plays out primarily in their repeated description of de Haan and Nijland\u00E2\u0080\u0099s King and King as containing \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgraphic physical homosexual\u00E2\u0080\u009D content. The final page of the book does picture the two kings kissing, but their mouths are conspicuously covered by a red heart. This kiss was raised consistently when the book was mentioned. The Supreme Court Judge\u00E2\u0080\u0099s report has perhaps the most amusing description of it: \u00E2\u0080\u009CPlaintiffs [. . .] request injunctive relief that would require the defendants to [. . .] prohibit \u00E2\u0080\u0098materials graphically depicting homosexual physical contact,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 evidently including King and King, from being submitted to the students until seventh grade\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker v. Hurley 474 F. Supp. 2d 261 (D. Mass 2007) at 12). The judge appears to be mocking this claim, slightly, but many of the other reports do not. The reports differ as to whether they report that the kings\u00E2\u0080\u0099 mouths are covered. Many simply say that \u00E2\u0080\u009CSecond-graders at the same school were read a book, King and King, about two men who marry each other, with a picture of them kissing\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Frye A14).The defendants responded to this claim at one point by including the illustration of the two men kissing behind the heart as \u00E2\u0080\u009CExhibit A\u00E2\u0080\u009D in a legal memorandum (Defs.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Mem. Supp. Dismiss Compl. No. 19. Civil Action No. 06-10751- MLW. at 29-30). 105 While the question of whether or not the picturebook contains \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgraphic homosexual physical contact\u00E2\u0080\u009D may be easily dismissed, the question of whether or not it primarily concerns human sexuality issues is more complex. The defendants generally argued that \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca book like King and King does not require parental notification because it has no more to do with human sexuality than Sleeping Beauty, for example, or Cinderella\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CTeacher, School Sued\u00E2\u0080\u009D n. pag.). They also drew a parallel between presentations of homosexuality and heterosexuality: The argument that depictions of gay characters constitute sex education or \u00E2\u0080\u009Csexual\u00E2\u0080\u009D content would mean that depictions of families with a husband and wife as parents are also about sexuality education, a plainly absurd notion. The promotion of tolerance, acknowledgement of diversity, and discussion of equal treatment and rights of gay people in society is not \u00E2\u0080\u009Csex education.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Cf. Colin v. Orange Unified School District, 83 F. Supp. 2d 1135, 1144-45, 1148 (C.D. Cal. 2000). (Proposed Mem. Amicus Curae. No. 23. Civil Action No. 06-CV-10751- MLW. at 19) Their argument relies on an erasure of heterosexism and homophobia. The picturebooks have the effect of maintaining ignorance of homophobia, and they erase a history of activism that lead to, for instance, gay marriage becoming legal in Massachusetts, and in the Netherlands, where King and King was originally published. Until queer sexualities actually are equally unremarkable as heterosexuality in mainstream culture, a book such as King and King will always be more remarkable, and more about sexuality than Cinderella. As I have identified, the picturebook is one of the few pieces of media aimed at a child audience about non-normative sexualities, and the incidents that sparked the 106 court cases were one of the few times that a book about a sexuality other than heterosexuality was read in that Estabrook Elementary classroom. The alignment of the two fairytales is inaccurate, as it fails to acknowledge the ubiquity of heterosexuality, and a heterosexist culture of discrimination against LGBT people. Regardless of the intentions of the authors and of the presence or absence of explicitly sexual language or images, the picturebooks\u00E2\u0080\u0099 extra-textual characterisation and the public response to them mean that they are, effectively, about sexuality. These books disrupt understandings of the ideal child as asexual, as they are books intended for an implied child audience that, denuded and bland as they may be, are centrally about sexuality. Picturebooks Provide Information The second part of my claim is that, although the effect of the picturebooks and the arguments of those defending them is to obscure or deny the role of the picturebooks as providing information, the picturebooks offer information about sexuality. Doing so disrupts the knowledge/ignorance binary in that it creates an implied reader who wants to have and is capable of holding information. As I argued in Chapter 3, the picturebooks contain very little by way of actual information. They do not contain specific vocabulary, information about homophobia or information about the range of possible queer lives. However, they are, as I established, about sexuality. I argue that, as the books are children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, they are inherently pedagogical, and therefore they have the effect of teaching their implied child reader about non-normative genders and sexualities. I will 107 argue this claim using children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature theory and an analysis of the topic \u00E2\u0080\u009Cindoctrination\u00E2\u0080\u009D in the Lexington case. In the classic text The Pleasures of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature, Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer argue that \u00E2\u0080\u009CChildren\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature is almost always didactic: its purpose is to instruct\u00E2\u0080\u009D (198). Their logic is that children \u00E2\u0080\u009Chave not lived as long [as adults], and therefore \u00E2\u0080\u0093 and this is what really matters \u00E2\u0080\u0093 they\u00E2\u0080\u0099ve had less opportunity to encounter the sorts of experiences that might lead them to obtain knowledge and understanding\u00E2\u0080\u009D (100). A children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s text is written by someone with more experience and knowledge for a younger, less knowledgeable, less experienced audience. Therefore, children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature is inherently educational. The lesbian and gay picturebooks provide information about sexuality to their implied child audience, just by virtue of the fact of having been written by someone with more experience of sexuality, and more contact with people of different sexualities, to someone with less experience. In Language and Ideology in Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Fiction John Stephens argues that \u00E2\u0080\u009CWriting for children is usually purposeful, its intention being to foster in the child reader a positive apperception of some socio-cultural values which, it is assumed, are shared by author and audience\u00E2\u0080\u009D (3). Stephens expands the idea of experience to include moral or social values that must be passed down to the less experienced child reader. Nodelman and Reimer agree, describing this teaching as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmaking it possible for children to live successfully in a community with others\u00E2\u0080\u009D (97). The lesbian and gay picturebooks attempt to provide socio-cultural values of tolerance, though they are hampered by their inability to name or realistically represent the members of the community which must be tolerated. As Nodelman points out: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe often proclaimed distaste for the didactic is usually 108 actually just dismay about the obviously didactic, on the assumption that, ideally, children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature ought to teach without seeming to do so\u00E2\u0080\u009D (The Hidden Adult 158). The development of unobtrusively didactic children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature has simply driven the message underground. John Stephens argues that an implicit ideology is far more effective than an explicit one: \u00E2\u0080\u009Cimplicit, and therefore invisible, ideological positions are invested with legitimacy through the implication that things are simply \u00E2\u0080\u0098so\u00E2\u0080\u0099\u00E2\u0080\u009D (9). An unspoken ideology adheres to understandings of children as innocent\u00E2\u0080\u0093 no information is visible. Paulo Freire argues that \u00E2\u0080\u009Ceducation has politicity, the quality of being political. [. . .] Because education is politicity, it is never neutral. When we try to be neutral [. . .] we support the dominant ideology\u00E2\u0080\u009D (148). The most \u00E2\u0080\u009Cneutral\u00E2\u0080\u009D children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature reinscribes an understanding of the ideal child as asexual and ignorant. Acknowledging that all children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature is pedagogical, and all pedagogy is ideological leads us look for the implicit, invisible ideologies in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s texts. This process proves the lie that children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature should be innocent of politics. When it is argued that a children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s book is inappropriately political, what is actually being argued is that this book doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t support the dominant ideology, which is unspoken and unrecognisable in a text. An \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinappropriately political\u00E2\u0080\u009D book about the joys of communism merely points to the capitalist agenda of children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s books about the joys of consumption. The question of politics and ideology in children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature was addressed in the Lexington case primarily through the question of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cindoctrination.\u00E2\u0080\u009D As one of the lawyers sarcastically pointed out, the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cplaintiffs are so enamoured of the term \u00E2\u0080\u0098indoctrination\u00E2\u0080\u0099 that it appears, in one form or another, seven (7) times in their Complaint, and twenty-two (22) times in their Memorandum\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Defs.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Mem. Supp. Dismiss Compl. No. 19. Civil 109 Action No. 06-10751-MLW. at 4). Judge Lynch engaged with the topic quite seriously, finding that: On the facts, there is no viable claim of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cindoctrination\u00E2\u0080\u009D here. Without suggesting that such showings would suffice to establish a claim of indoctrination, we note the plaintiffs\u00E2\u0080\u0099 children were not forced to read the books on pain of suspension. Nor were they subject to a constant stream of like materials. [. . .] The reading by a teacher of one book, or even three, and even if to a young and impressionable child, does not constitute \u00E2\u0080\u009Cindoctrination.\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker v. Hurley, 514 F.3d 87 (1st Cir. 2008) at 41-42) Lynch applies a traditional definition of indoctrination to the classroom incidents and finds it doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t hold. Judge Wolf, in contrast, takes up the idea that all adult/child interaction is pedagogical. He writes that \u00E2\u0080\u009C\u00E2\u0080\u0098Indoctrination\u00E2\u0080\u0099 is a pejorative term for \u00E2\u0080\u0098teaching.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Among other things, \u00E2\u0080\u0098indoctrination\u00E2\u0080\u0099 is defined as \u00E2\u0080\u0098to teach to accept a system of thought uncritically.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Websters New Riverside Dictionary (1984 ed) at 624. It is, obviously, the duty of schools to teach\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Parker v. Hurley. 474 F. Supp. 2d 26 (D. Mass 2007) at 26). He claims that adults must teach, and the Judeo-Christians\u00E2\u0080\u0099 emphasis on indoctrination is merely a use of \u00E2\u0080\u009Copprobrious epithets.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Wolf\u00E2\u0080\u0099s argument allows for the inherent power and experience imbalance between adults and children, and acknowledges the pedagogical impact of the picturebooks, although he does not accept the claim of indoctrination. The picturebooks in my sample, by virtue of being children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature, provide information to their implied and actual child readers, and disrupt the knowledge/ignorance and adult/child binary. As I discussed in my introduction, literature 110 review and previous chapter, childhood innocence is constructed by adults in view of specific knowledges (primarily sexual) of which adults wish to keep the ideal child innocent. In fact, the fundamentalist Judeo-Christians in the Lexington case wished to keep their actual children and the ideal child innocent of all complex knowledge, most knowledge of sexuality and even of the act of thinking. In this situation children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature offering information about the \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccomplex\u00E2\u0080\u009D topic of non-normative genders and sexualities fundamentally disrupts this understanding of childhood. Picturebooks Provide Information About Sexuality In previous chapters I have established that most adults construct the ideal child as innocent (of sexuality) and ignorant (of knowledge about sexuality). In this chapter I have established that the lesbian and gay picturebooks in my sample are about sexuality, and they offer information. Therefore, lesbian and gay picturebooks inherently prove the impossibility of the knowledge/ignorance binary and the adult/child binary. They are a form dedicated to providing information about sexuality to an audience constructed as too innocent to receive it. The picturebooks show how these binaries implode as the innocent child relies on sexual knowledge for definition. The books demonstrate an awareness, muffled as it is by absence, that the implied child reader and the actual child reader may have a sexuality, a present (not just a future), and an ability to take in and share knowledge. They work to reinforce the knowledge/ignorance binary, but their existence demonstrates that this binary is impossible. Even \u00E2\u0080\u009Cconstant vigilance\u00E2\u0080\u009D cannot make the ideal child the asexual, ignorant being adults desire, and \u00E2\u0080\u009C[i]t is impossible for any picturebook to be \u00E2\u0080\u0098innocent\u00E2\u0080\u0099 111 because implicit and explicit expressions of ideology are present in all children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s literature\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Haynes and Murris 40). Therefore, the knowledge/ignorance binary cannot hold in these books. Conclusion: Queer Picturebooks The picturebooks interact with childhood innocence and knowledge about non- normative genders and sexualities in a remarkably similar fashion to that of participants in the Lexington challenge. However, the picturebooks actually destabilise the knowledge/ignorance binary in their basic role as a conduit for information about non- normative genders and sexualities. The normalising, absence-based and innocence- focused effects of both the picturebooks and the discourse of the challenge do not respect the intellect or agency of the actual child. As my discussion of the changing, shifting and overlapping conceptualisations of the child in my introduction explored, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe child\u00E2\u0080\u009D is far more contradictory and changeable than the knowledge/ignorance binary allows. In Joanna Haynes and Karin Murris\u00E2\u0080\u0099s work on doing philosophy with children, they write: In the wider world and in the spheres of teaching children, training teachers, and childhood studies, the last thirty years have been all about the realisation that children are far more competent than usually given credit for and that they are able to contribute actively to everyday life when asked or permitted to do so. (166) As much educational theory attests, actual children are capable of thinking: not only absorbing complex information, but testing and challenging it. Harry Brighouse and 112 Eamonn Callan both write persuasively on children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s rights and the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdeeper principle [. . .] that education should aim at enabling people to lead flourishing lives\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Brighouse 15). They discuss the competing rights of parents and children in terms of what a \u00E2\u0080\u009Cflourishing life\u00E2\u0080\u009D might entail. Brighouse argues \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchildren have a right to learn about a range of ways of living and to the kind of education that will enable them to reflect on their own way of life in light of these alternatives, and, ultimately, to revise or reject the way of life their parents would pass down to them\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2). Both critics place an emphasis on the ideal child\u00E2\u0080\u0099s right and ability to absorb and challenge information from a range of sources, arguing \u00E2\u0080\u009C[t]o be denied a sympathetic understanding of ethical diversity by parents who seek to preserve unswerving identification with the primary culture they favour is to be denied the deliberative raw material for independent thought about the right and the good\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Callan 226). They maintain that the ideal child and actual children must be given the opportunity and means to critique their parents\u00E2\u0080\u0099 values, and the information given to them by parents and teachers. Haynes and Murris agree that it is \u00E2\u0080\u009Cvital, and in the common interest, for people to learn to think for themselves and approach moral judgments critically and meaningfully\u00E2\u0080\u009D (160, original emphasis). They add that adult cultural constructions of the ideal child can inhibit this process, as \u00E2\u0080\u009C[w]e cannot seriously engage with children in authentic searches for understanding if we have already determined that they lack the authority to speak from their experience or the competence to make choices about which questions to pursue\u00E2\u0080\u009D (155). The knowledge/ignorance binary disrespects and disables actual children in that it conceptualises them as ignorant and incapable of thinking. Therefore, 113 The path ahead is respect for children: listening and letting them be confident, articulate, independent thinkers; removing obstacles to their full and meaningful participation in everyday life at school; and encouraging their agency in their learning, in their lives, and in their communities. (Haynes and Murris 228) Actual children would be better off if childhood were understood as complex, knowledgeable, sexual, thoughtful, and expressive, and if picturebooks were written to meet these needs. In addition to the more crucial benefits for actual children, if the picturebooks deliberately disrupted the binary it would release pressure from adults to provide the perfect, innocent initial introduction of information about non-normative genders and sexualities. Adults could acknowledge that children already have knowledge about genders and sexualities, and that children have the ability to challenge or modify information. As Jen Gilbert points out, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwhen children are seen as vulnerable and pure, adults become the source of a dangerous, corrupting sexuality\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CRisking a Relation\u00E2\u0080\u009D 51). Inscribing the ideal child as ignorant means she or he can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t protect her- of himself, and any information provided by adults must loom large and have significant consequences, so adults must either constantly protect the ideal child from information or wrestle with which pieces of information to provide children at which time. Failure on either count can destroy the ideal child. The exhausting task of constant vigilance over children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s intake of knowledge, and the mandate to provide only the perfect information at the perfect time both seem impossible. Maintaining a construction of childhood as ignorant must surely be a source of adult anxiety over the ability to complete difficult or impossible tasks. 114 Inscribing the ideal child as asexual means that adults must constantly protect the ideal child from sexuality. Adults may suffer anxiety over the possibility that children are incurring non-normative genders or sexualities. As actual children exist in larger culture, the requirement of keeping the ideal child ignorant of sexuality is an impossible burden, and the attempt to keep children from identifying or naming their own genders or sexualities must be provoke anxiety, and possibly, guilt, if children fail to conform to the heterosexual matrix. The adult desire for childhood asexuality does not benefit adults or children. As I discussed in chapter 4, there are large and important anxieties that cause our culture to reinscribe the adult/child and knowledge/ignorance binaries. Debate in the Lexington case covered topics such as: the role of education, the place of religion in a secular state, the rights of parents and teachers, the role of the individual and the state, the relationship between art and politics. Other censorship cases raise issues about the best way to represent and respect competing or simply different social and cultural groups in shared space, and questions about national identity. Discussions of sexuality and childhood often raise anxieties about adults\u00E2\u0080\u0099 ability to protect children from unwanted sexual contact. There are serious and important reasons why adults might desire to reinscribe adult/child and knowledge/ignorance binaries. Even so, I argue that embracing a position of destabilising the knowledge/ignorance binary would allow adults release from some of the anxiety and guilt around the ideal child. While the reasons why our culture seeks to defend adult/child and knowledge/ignorance binaries are important, paradoxically, doing so does not benefit adults or children. 115 Refusing the binary would mean adults working with children to help them defend themselves, evaluate information themselves and identify and name their own genders and sexualities. All of these activities would be considerably more pleasurable and less anxiety-producing than seeking to redefine current understandings of childhood. It would also allow creators of picturebooks to play with words and images, and write more interesting, creative picturebooks than are currently available. It would allow picturebook creators to focus on the content and style of their books, rather than on what must not be represented. Rather than shoring up an impossible adult/child binary, adults could enjoy the contradictions and complexities of both adulthood and childhood. If we acknowledged that the binary doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t hold, and, in fact, lesbian and gay picturebooks disrupt the binary by their very nature, such books could provide implied and actual child readers with more specific and accurate information about different genders and sexualities. They could also provide a range of information, acknowledging that their intended readers are capable of comparing and rejecting ideas. The picturebooks could offer representations of real difference and otherness. The books could offer information about possible futures for actual child readers, writing for an implied reader who has an ability to try on, then accept or reject different elements of these futures without harm. Such information would respect the intellectual ability of their implied reader and actual children. A picturebook that disrupted the knowledge/ignorance binary would be a queer picturebook, queer as in resisting normalisation and writing about real difference. A queer picturebook could be about confronting homophobia, and could offer conceptualisations of the ways in which Western culture is constructed around 116 heterosexuality, and different models for dealing with institutionalised inequality. A queer picturebook could be about queers as role models, going to the barber to get your head buzzed \u00E2\u0080\u009Clike mummy!\u00E2\u0080\u009D A queer picturebook could about what it feels like when two of your three parents no longer love each other (but still love you); about the experience of learning new pronouns to respect dad\u00E2\u0080\u0099s genderqueer best friend; about deciding whether or not to explain your relationship with your surrogate birth parent to your class mates, about the blessing of growing up in a big, engaged, diverse, political queer community. A queer picturebook would not be innocent, but neither are children. Further Avenues for Research I have touched on gender throughout this dissertation, but have been unable to give it the full attention it deserves. Much useful work could be done on the sissy boy, princess boy, pink boy and trans girl picturebooks, which is an increasing body of self- published literature promoting tolerance for feminine behaviour in young boys, often with the subtextual assumption that they will grow up to be gay or transgender. Studies could also be done on the relative absence of tomboy and trans boy picturebooks, and the challenges that have arisen and surely will continue to arise to picturebooks which address non-normative genders. Comparative studies of the ways in which the knowledge/ignorance binary was enacted and undone in challenges such as the Surrey case in Canada and the Hardings/Playschool case in Australia would provide greater breadth and depth to this study\u00E2\u0080\u0099s analysis of cultural understandings of sexuality and childhood. In future research I would like to explore these and other censorship challenges to see the ways they 117 engaged with questions of knowledge and ignorance, and which other cultural anxieties were the focus of discussion. My sample largely comprised U.S.-published picturebooks. I have been unable to give proper attention to the handful of more (often more interesting) European-published picturebooks which have been translated into English. Few as they are, these books are ripe for academic attention. One could also study the vast and rapidly increasing number of self-published, internet-distributed picturebooks about gender and sexuality. A significant absence in this dissertation is the voices of actual children. A fascinating and important study could be done on how actual children read and respond to these picturebooks, and the ways in which children participate in challenges. 118 Bibliography Texts for Children Aldrich, Andrew R. How My Family Came to Be \u00E2\u0080\u0093 Daddy, Papa and Me. Illus. Mike Motz. Oakland: New Family, 2003. Atkins, Jeannine. A Name On The Quilt: A Story of Remembrance. Illus. Tad Hills. NY: Aladdin, 1999. Bosche, Susanne. Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin. Photos by Andreas Hansen. Trans. Louis Mackay. London: Gay Men\u00E2\u0080\u0099s, 1983. Trans. of Mette bor hos Morten og Erik. Copenhagen, 1981. Brannen, Sarah S. Uncle Bobby\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Wedding. NY: G.P. Putnam\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Sons, 2008. Carle, Eric. Mister Seahorse. NY: Philomel, 2004. It\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School. Dir. Debra Chasnoff. Women\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Educational Media. 1996. It\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Still Elementary. Dir. Debra Chasnoff. Women\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Educational Media. 2007. Combs, Bobbie. 123: A Family Counting Book. Illus. Danamarie Hosler. Ridley Park, Two Lives, 2000. ---. ABC: A Family Alphabet Book. Illus. Desiree Keane and Brian Rappa. Ridley Park, Two Lives, 2000. de Haan, Linda and Stern Nijland. King and King. Berkley: Tricycle, 2000. Trans. of Koning & Koning. Harlem, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij J. H. Gottmer/ H. W. Becht bv, 2000. ---. King and King and Family. English adapt. Abigail Samoun. Berkeley, Tricycle, 2004. 119 Elwin, Rosamund and Michele Paulse. Asha\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Mums. Illus. Dawn Lee. Toronto: Women\u00E2\u0080\u0099s, 1990. Ewert, Marcus. 10,000 Dresses. Illus. Rex Ray. NY: Seven Stories, 2008. Fierstein, Harvey. The Sissy Duckling. Illus. Henry Cole. NY: Simon and Schuster, 2002. Garden, Nancy. Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Family. Illus. Sharon Wooding. NY: Farra Straus Giroux, 2004. Gonzalez, Rigoberto. Antonio\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Card: La Tarjeta de Antonio. Illus. Cecilia Concepcion Alvarez. San Francisco: Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Book Press, 2005. Kay, Verla. Rough, Tough Charley. Illus. Adam Gustavson. Berkeley: Tricycle, 2007. Kilodavis, Cheryl. My Princess Boy. Illus. Suzanne DeSimone. NY: Aladdin, 2009. Kressley, Carson. You\u00E2\u0080\u0099re Different and That\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Super. Illus. Jared Lee. NY: Simon, 2005. Lindenbaum, Pija. Else-Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies. Adapt. Gabrielle Charbonnet. Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 1991. Trans of Else- Marie och smapapporna. Bonniers Juniorforlag AB, 1991. ---. Mini Mia and Her Darling Uncle. NY: F, S &G, 2007. Trans. Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard. Trans. of Lill-Zlatan och morbror raring. Stockholm: Rab\u00C3\u00A9n and Sj\u00C3\u00B6gen, 2006. Meyers, Susan. Everywhere Babies. Illus. Marla Frazee. San Diego and NY: Red Wagon, 2001. Moore, Inga. Six Dinner Sid. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1991. Newman, Leslea. Daddy, Papa and Me. Illus. Carol Thompson. Berkeley: Tricycle, 2009. ---. Donovan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Big Day. Illus. Mike Dutton. Berkley: Tricycle, 2011. ---. Gloria Goes to Gay Pride. Illus. Russell Crocker. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1991. 120 ---. Heather Has Two Mommies. Illus. Diana Souza. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1989. ---. Heather Has Two Mommies. Illus. Diana Souza. 10th anniversary ed., LA: Alyson Wonderland, 2000. ---. Heather Has Two Mommies. Illus. Diana Souza. 20th anniversary ed., LA: Alyson Wonderland, 2009. ---. Mommy, Mama and Me. Illus. Carol Thompson. Berkeley: Tricycle, 2009. ---. Too Far Away to Touch. Illus. Catherine Stock. NY: Clarion, 1995. Oelschlager, Vanita. A Tale of Two Daddies. Illus. Kristin Blackwood and Mike Blanc. Akron, Ohio: 2010. de Paola, Tomie. Oliver Button is a Sissy. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979. Pendleton Jim\u00C3\u00A9nez, K. Are You a Boy or a Girl? Toronto: Green Dragon, 2000. Polacco, Patricia. In Our Mothers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 House. NY: Philomel, 2009. Richardson, Justin and Peter Parnell. And Tango Makes Three. Illus. Henry Cole. NY: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Skutch, Robert. Who\u00E2\u0080\u0099s in a Family? Illus. Laura Nienhaus. Berkeley: Tricycle, 1995. Setterington, Ken. Mom and Mum are Getting Married! Illus. Alice Priestley. Toronto: Second Story, 2004. Tomboy. Dir. Barb Taylor. Coyle Productions, 2008. Valentine, Johnny. The Duke Who Outlawed Jelly Beans and Other Stories. Illus. Lynette Schmidt. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1991. ---. One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads. Illus. Melody Sarecky. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1994. 121 Willhoite, Michael. Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Roommate. 10th anniversary ed., LA: Alyson Wonderland, 2000. ---. Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Wedding. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1996. ---. Uncle What-Is-It is Coming to Visit! LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1993. Valentine, Johnny. The Duke Who Outlawed Jelly Beans and Other Stories. Illus. Lynette Schmidt. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1991. ---. One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads. Illus. Melody Sarecky. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1994. Zolotow, Charlotte. William\u00E2\u0080\u0099s doll. Illus. William Pene du Bois. n.p. Harper, 1972. Primary Sources for Chapter 4 Aiello, Dan. \u00E2\u0080\u009CMass. Couple Pushes Prop 8.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Bay Area Supporter. 23 Oct. 2008: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 29 Dec. 2011. \u00E2\u0080\u009CAnti-Gay Proponents Focus on Schools.\u00E2\u0080\u009D 10:14 a.m., 15 Feb. 2006: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Aull, Elbert and Tom Bell. \u00E2\u0080\u009CGay-Rights Question Gathers The Religious; From Bangor To Wells, Question 1 Prompts Emotional Arguments As Election Day Nears.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Portland Press Herald [Maine] 6 Nov. 2005, final ed.: B1. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Brodner, Bonnie. Letter. Lexington Minuteman 12 May 2005: n. pag. Lexington C.A.R.E.S. Web. 12 Feb 2012. Brown, Dave. Letter. The Boston Globe 4 March 2007: n. pag. Lexington C.A.R.E.S. Web. 12 Feb 2012. 122 Camenker, Brian. \u00E2\u0080\u009CMassResistance.\u00E2\u0080\u009D MassResistance Blog. n.p. n.d. Web. 8 March 2012. \u00E2\u0080\u009CCulture Wars: A Father\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Protest.\u00E2\u0080\u009D World News Tonight. ABC. 19 Oct. 2005. Print. Transcript. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Defs.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Mem. Supp. Dismiss Compl. No. 19. Civil Action No. 06-10751-MLW. MassResistance. n.d.. Web, 23 Feb 2012. http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker/ Defs.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Reply Br. to Pls. Opp\u00E2\u0080\u0099n Mo. Dismiss. No. 27. Civil Action No. 06-10751 MLW. MassResistance. n.d.. Web, 23 Feb 2012. http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker/ \u00E2\u0080\u009CFight Over California\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Prop. 8 on Gay Marriage.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Day to Day. National Public Radio. 23 Oct. 2008. Print. Transcript. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Frye, David. \u00E2\u0080\u009CSame-Sex Marriage: Civil Right Or Moral Wrong?\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Maryland Gazette 5 March 2011: A14. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Hemenway, Margaret. \u00E2\u0080\u009CAyers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Agenda: First-Grade Guinea Pigs.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Human Events. 22 Oct. 2008. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29130 Web. 21 March 2012. \u00E2\u0080\u009CKindergarten Same-Sex Talk Angers Parent.\u00E2\u0080\u009D UPI 20 Oct. 2005: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Knight, Al. \u00E2\u0080\u009CElementary Schools Shouldn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t Be Teaching Homosexuality.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Denver Post 17 Aug. 2005, final ed.: B07. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Lavoie, Denise. \u00E2\u0080\u009CMassachusetts School Asks Judge To Dismiss Lawsuit Over Gay Classroom Discussions.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Associated Press 11:29 p.m., 7 Feb. 2007: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. 123 Leal, Fermin. \u00E2\u0080\u009CProp. 8 Backers Raise Teaching Issue; But Many School Officials Doubt Gay Marriage Will Be On Curriculum.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Orange County Register [California] 22 Oct. 2008, 1st ed.: A1. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. LeBlanc, Steve. \u00E2\u0080\u009CGroup Wages Battle Against Gay Culture In Massachusetts.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Associated Press State & Local Wire 6:28 p.m., 29 June 2006: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Lexington C.A.R.E.S. \u00E2\u0080\u009CAbout Us.\u00E2\u0080\u009D N.d. Web. 30 Dec 2011. Lindsay, Jay. \u00E2\u0080\u009CGay Marriage Opponents Say Ruling Stifles Their Rights In Schools.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Associated Press State & Local Wire 7:52 p.m., 5 May 2006: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Llana, Sara Miller. \u00E2\u0080\u009CNew Flash Point In Sex Ed: Gay Issues.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Christian Science Monitor 15 Feb. 2006: 2. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. \u00E2\u0080\u009CMajor National Gay Groups, ACLU, And Others File Brief In Federal Court Opposing David Parker\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Civil Rights Lawsuit On Teaching Homosexuality In Elementary School.\u00E2\u0080\u009D MassResistance. n.d.: n. pag. http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker_lawsuit/motion_to_dismiss_2007/pres s_release_100506.html Web. 1 March 2012. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 71, \u00C2\u00A7 32A. The 187th General Court of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. n.d. Web. 12 February 2012. http://www.malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXII/Chapter71/Sectio n32a McDonald, Matt. \u00E2\u0080\u009CActivists See Chance To Extend Alliance.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Boston Globe 9 June 2005: 4. Factiva. Web. 12 February 2012. 124 McGlinchey, Sara. Letter. The Boston Globe 4 March 2007: n. pag. Lexington C.A.R.E.S. Web. 12 Feb 2012. Micholet, Margaret. Letter. Lexington Minuteman 11 May 2006: n. pag. Lexington C.A.R.E.S. Web. 12 Feb 2012. Mulvihill, Geoff. \u00E2\u0080\u009CTales From 2 States May Influence N.J. in Gay Marriage Decision.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Associated Press State & Local Wire 4:50 p.m. 28 Oct. 2006: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Murphy, Ian B. \u00E2\u0080\u009CPublic School Lawsuit Runs Out of Federal Appeals.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Lexington Minuteman 7 Oct. 2008: n. pag. Web. 27 Feb 2012. Parcells, Patricia (Rubin). Letter. Lexington Minuteman 5 May 2005: n. pag. Lexington C.A.R.E.S. Web. 12 Feb 2012. Parker, David. \u00E2\u0080\u009CDavid Parker Cares.\u00E2\u0080\u009D David Parker Fund. n.d. Web. 30 Dec 2011. Parker, Vickey. \u00E2\u0080\u009CWhy Inclusion Matters For All Types Of Families.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Lexington Minuteman 12 May 2005, n. pag. Lexington C.A.R.E.S. Web. 12 Feb. 2012. Parker v. Hurley. 474 F. Supp. 2d 26. (D. Mass 2007) Parker v. Hurley, 514 F.3d 87. (1st Cir. 2008) Parker. et al. v. Hurley et al. Compl. and Jury Demand. n. pag. MassResistance. n.d. Web. 23 Feb 2012. http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker/ Pato, Joe and Jeri Zeder. Letter. Lexington Minuteman 23 June 2005: n. pag. Lexington C.A.R.E.S. Web. 12 Feb 2012. Pls.\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Mem. Opp. Amicus Br. Civil Action No. 06-CV-10751-MLW. MassResistance. N.d.. Web. 23 Feb 2012. http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker/ 125 \u00E2\u0080\u009CPress Conference on Gay Marriage and Public Education (Part 1).\u00E2\u0080\u009D Florida4Marriage Uploaded 23 Oct 2008. YouTube. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. Price, Joyce Howard. \u00E2\u0080\u009CParents Sue School Over Gay Storybook; Boston-Area Class Denied Opt-Out.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Washington Times 30 April 2006: A02. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. Proposed Mem. Amicus Curae. No. 23. Civil Action No. 06-CV-10751-MLW. MassResistance. n.d.. Web, 23 Feb 2012. http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker/ Rose, Carol. \u00E2\u0080\u009CLawsuit Challenging Curriculum Frivolous.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Lexington Minuteman 4 May 2006: n. pag. Lexington C.A.R.E.S. Web. 12 Feb. 2012. Soens, Meg. \u00E2\u0080\u009CDrawing Circle Around One or Sending Message To All?\u00E2\u0080\u009D Lexington Minuteman 12 May 2005: n. pag. Lexington C.A.R.E.S. Web. 12 Feb. 2012. Southern Poverty Law Centre. \u00E2\u0080\u009CHate Map.\u00E2\u0080\u009D n.p. n.d. Web. 8 March 2012. Swift, Mike. \u00E2\u0080\u009CQuestions Raised Over Yes On Prop. 8 Ads.\u00E2\u0080\u009D San Jose Mercury News [California] 18 Oct. 2008: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. \u00E2\u0080\u009CTeacher, School Sued over Gay Prince Fairy Tale.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Day to Day. National Public Radio. 27 Apr. 2008. Print. Transcript. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. \u00E2\u0080\u009CThere's No Class in This Video.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Good As You 20 Oct. 2008: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. \u00E2\u0080\u009CTimeline Of Events & Email Correspondence Leading Up To April 17 Final Meeting & Arrest.\u00E2\u0080\u009D MassResistance. n.d.. Web, 23 Feb 2012. http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker/timeline_events.html#top \u00E2\u0080\u009CUpholding Diversity Lessons.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Boston Globe 24 February 2007: A10. Web. Factiva, 27 126 February 2012. \u00E2\u0080\u009CYes on 8 TV Ad: It\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Already Happened.\u00E2\u0080\u009D VoteYesonProp8. Uploaded on 7 Oct. 2008. YouTube. Web. 8 March 2012. Viser, Matt. \u00E2\u0080\u009CKan. Group Protests Homosexuality in Lexington.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Boston Globe. 6 June 2005: B3. Factiva. Web. 12 Feb. 2012. Zirkel, Perry A. \u00E2\u0080\u009CTrue Diversity?.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Phi Delta Kappan 89.3 (2007): 238-239. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Feb. 2012. Other Material Abate, Michelle Ann and Kenneth Kidd, eds. Over The Rainbow: Queer Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s and Young Adult Literature. Ann Arbor, U of Michigan P, 2011. ---. Introduction. Over The Rainbow: Queer Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s and Young Adult Literature. Eds. Michelle Ann Abate and Kenneth Kidd. Ann Arbor, U of Michigan P, 2011. 1-14. Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. NY: Routledge, 2004. ---. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2006. Alanen, Leena. \u00E2\u0080\u009CRethinking Childhood.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Acta Sociologica. 31.53 (1988): 53-67. Aries, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood. NY: Vintage Books, 1962. Bader, Barbara. American Picturebooks from Noah\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Ark to The Beast Within. NY: MacMillan, 1976. Biesta, Gert. \u00E2\u0080\u009CWitnessing Deconstruction in Education: Why Quasi-transcendentalism Matters.\u00E2\u0080\u009D What Do Philosophers of Education Do? (And How Do They Do It?) Ed. Claudia Ruitenberg. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 73-86. 127 Berlant, Lauren. \u00E2\u0080\u009CLive Sex Acts: (Parental Advisory: Explicit Material).\u00E2\u0080\u009D Bruhm and Hurley 57-80. Booth, David. \u00E2\u0080\u009CCensorship.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Keywords for Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature. Ed. Philip Nel and Lissa Paul. NY and London: NYUP, 2011. 26-30. Brighouse, Harry. On Education. NY and London: Routledge, 2006. Bruhm, Steven and Natasha Hurley, eds. Curiouser: On the Queerness of Children. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota P, 2004. ---. \u00E2\u0080\u009CCuriouser: On the Queerness of Children.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Curiouser: On the Queerness of Children. Ed. Steven Bruhm and Natasha Hurley. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2004. xxii-xxiii. Bunkers. Suzanne. \u00E2\u0080\u009C\u00E2\u0080\u0098We are not the Cleavers\u00E2\u0080\u009D: Images of Nontraditional Families in Children's Literature.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Lion and the Unicorn. 16.1 (1992): 115-133. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. NY and London: Routledge, 1997. ---. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. NY: Routledge, 1990. ---. Undoing Gender. NY and London, Routledge, 2004. Callan, Eamonn. \u00E2\u0080\u009CThe Great Sphere: Education Against Servility.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Journal of Philosophy of Education. 31.2 (1997): 221-232. Chambers, Aidan. \u00E2\u0080\u009CThe Reader in the Book.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. Ed. Peter Hunt. Vol. 1. London: Routledge, 2006. 354\u00E2\u0080\u009374. Chick. Kay. \u00E2\u0080\u009CFostering an Appreciation for all Kinds of Families: Picturebooks with Gay and Lesbian Themes.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature. 128 46.1 (2008): 15-22. Collins, Damian. \u00E2\u0080\u009CCulture, Religion and Curriculum: Lessons from the \u00E2\u0080\u0098Three Books\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Controversy in Surrey, BC.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Canadian Geographer / Le G\u00C3\u00A9ographe Canadien, 50.3 (2006): 342\u00E2\u0080\u0093357. Clyde, Laurel A. and Marjorie Lobban. \u00E2\u0080\u009CA Door Half Open: Young People's Access to Fiction Related to Homosexuality.\u00E2\u0080\u009D School Libraries Worldwide. 7.2 (2001): 17- 30. ---. Out of the Closet and Into the Classroom. Sydney: D.W. Thorpe, 1996. Crisp, Thomas. Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature in Education: An International Quarterly. 40.4 (2009): 333-348. Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. 25th ed. Ithica, NY: Cornell UP, 2007. Day, Frances Ann. Lesbian and Gay Voices: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to Literature for Children and Young Adults. Westport: Greenwood, 2000. De Man, Paul. \u00E2\u0080\u009CSemiology and Rhetoric.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Leitch, et al. 1365-1378. Derrida, Jacques. \u00E2\u0080\u009CLetter to a Japanese Friend.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Trans. D. Wood & A. Benjamin. Derrida and Difference. Ed. D. Wood and R. Bernasconi. Warwick: Parousia Press, 1988.1-5. ---. \u00E2\u0080\u009CNegotiations.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews, 1971-2001. Ed. and trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002. 11-40. Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read. Chicago: American Library Association, 2010. 129 Duggan, Lisa. The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and The Attack on Democracy. Boston: Beacon, 2003. Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. Freire, Paulo. \u00E2\u0080\u009CReading The World and Reading the Word: An Interview with Paulo Freire.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Philosophy of Education: Introductory Readings. W. Hare & J. P. Portelli, ed. 3rd ed. Calgary, AB: Detselig Enterprises, 2001: 145\u00E2\u0080\u0093152. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1. NY: Vintage, 1990. Fogarty, Vivianne. \u00E2\u0080\u009CGLBTQ Picture Books: An Elusive Search.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Teacher Librarian Today. 14.1 (2007): 22-27. Ford, Elizabeth A. \u00E2\u0080\u009CH/Z: Why Leslea Newman Makes Heather into Zoe.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Abate and Kidd 201 \u00E2\u0080\u0093 214. Gilbert, Jen. \u00E2\u0080\u009CAmbivalence Only? Sex Education in The Age of Abstinence.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning. 10:3 (2010): 233-237. ---. \u00E2\u0080\u009CRisking A Relation: Sex Education And Adolescent Development.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Sex Education. 7.1 (2007): 47-61. Giroux, Henry A. Stealing Innocence: Youth, Corporate Power, and the Politics of Culture. NY: St. Martin's P, 2000. Gittins, Diana. The Child in Question. NY: Palgrove Macmillan, 1997. Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. NY and London: NYUP, 2005. Harding, Vicki. ed. Learn to Include Teacher\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Manual: Teaching and Learning About Diverse Families in a Primary School Setting. Dulwich Hill: Learn to Include, 2005. 130 Haynes, Joanna and Karin Murris. Picturebooks, Pedagogy and Philosophy. New York and London: Routledge, 2012. Higonnet, Anne. Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal. NY: Thames and Hudson, 1998. Hunt, Peter. Preface. Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature: An Illustrated History. Oxford and NY: OUP, 1995. ix-xiv. ---. \u00E2\u0080\u009CCensorship and Children's literature in Britain Now, or, The Return of Abigail.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature in Education. 28.2 (1997): 95-103. Hunt, Peter and Sheila G. Bannister Ray. International Companion Encyclopaedia Of Children's Literature. London: Taylor and Francis, 1996. Huskey, Melynda. Queering the Picture Book. The Lion and the Unicorn. 26.1 (2002): 66-77. Irvine, Janice M. \u00E2\u0080\u009CDoing It with Words: Discourse and the Sex Education Culture Wars.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Critical Inquiry. 27.1 (2000): 58-76. Jenkins, Christine. \u00E2\u0080\u009CFrom Queer to Gay and Back Again: Young Adult Novels with Gay/Lesbian/Queer Content, 1969-1997.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Library Quarterly. 68.3 (1998): 298-334. Jenkins Henry. ed. The Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Culture Reader. NY: NYUP, 1998: Jenkins, Henry. Introduction. The Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Culture Reader. Jenkins 1-37. Kidd, Kenneth. \u00E2\u0080\u009CSexuality and Children's Literature.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Editorial. Lion and the Unicorn: A Critical Journal of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature 23.3 (1999): 114-19. ---. \u00E2\u0080\u009CQueer Theory\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Child and Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature Studies.\u00E2\u0080\u009D PMLA 126.1 (211): 182- 188. 131 Kincaid, James. Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture. NY and London: Routledge, 1994. ---. Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting. Durham and London: Duke UP, 1998. ---. \u00E2\u0080\u009CProducing Erotic Children.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Jenkins 241-253. King, Margaret L. \u00E2\u0080\u009CConcepts of Childhood: What We Know and Where We Might Go.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Renaissance Quarterly. 60.2. (2007): 371-407. Leitch, Vincent, B. and William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John McGowan, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and Jeffrey J. Williams, eds.. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. NY and London: W.W. Norton, 2010. ---. Introduction to Butler. Leitch, et al 2538-2541. ---. Introduction to Derrida. Leitch, et al 1680-1688. Lesnik-Oberstein, Karin. \u00E2\u0080\u009CEssentials: What is Children's Literature? What is Childhood?\u00E2\u0080\u009D Ed. Peter Hunt. Understanding Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature: Key Essays from the International Companion Encyclopaedia of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature. NY: Taylor & Francis, 1999: 15-29. Levine, Judith. Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 2002. Lewis, David. Reading Contemporary Picturebooks: Picturing Text. London and NY: Routledge/Falmer, 2001. Magnuson, Marta L. \u00E2\u0080\u009CPerceptions of Self and the \u00E2\u0080\u0098Other\u00E2\u0080\u0099: An Analysis of Challenges to And Tango Makes Three.\u00E2\u0080\u009D School Library Media Research. 14 (2011): n. pag. McRuer, Robert. \u00E2\u0080\u009CReading and Writing \u00E2\u0080\u0098Immunity\u00E2\u0080\u0099: Children and the Anti-Body.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Abate 132 and Kidd 183-200. Moon, Michael. A Small Boy and Others: Imitation and Initiation in American Culture from Henry James to Andy Warhol. Durham and London: Duke UP, 1998. Naidoo, Jamie Campbell. Rainbow Family Collections: Selecting and Using Children's Books With Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Content. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited, 2012. Newman, Leslea. \u00E2\u0080\u009CHeather and Her Critics.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The Horn Book Magazine. 73.2 (1997): 149-153. Nikolajeva, Maria and Carole Scott. How Picturebooks Work. NY and London: Garland, 2001. Nodelman, Perry. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2008. ---. Words About Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Picture Books. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1988. Nodelman, Perry and Mavis Reimer. The Pleasures of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature. 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003. Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. 3rd ed. London and NY: Routledge, 2002. Norton, Jody. \u00E2\u0080\u009CTranschildren and The Discipline of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Literature.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Abate and Kidd 293-313. Proctor, Robert N. and Londa Schiebinger, eds. Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. Stanford: SUP, 2008. 133 Reiman, Laura and Ellen Greenblatt. \u00E2\u0080\u009CCensorship of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s and Young Adult Books in Schools and Public Libraries.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Serving LGBTIQ Library and Archives Users: Essays on Outreach, Service, Collections and Access. Ed. Ellen Greenblatt. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland, 2011: 247-265. Reimer, Mavis. \u00E2\u0080\u009CReaders: Characterized, Implied, Actual.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 2.2 (2010): 1-12. Rofes, Eric. \u00E2\u0080\u009CInnocence, Perversion, and Heather\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Two Mommies.\u00E2\u0080\u009D International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies. 3.1 (1998): 3-26. Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan or The Impossibility of Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Fiction. Hampshire: MacMillan, 1984. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of The Closet. NY: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990. ---. Tendencies. Durham: Duke UP, 1993. ---. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Stephen M. Barber and David L. Clark. \u00E2\u0080\u009CThis Piercing Bouquet: An Interview with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Barber and Clark 243-262. Second Story Press. N.p. n.d. Web. 14 May 2012. Stafford, Anika. \u00E2\u0080\u009CBeyond Normalization: An Analysis of Heteronormativity in Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Picture Books.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Ed. Rachel Epstein. \u00E2\u0080\u009CWho\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Your Daddy?\u00E2\u0080\u009D And Other Writings on Queer Parenting. Toronto: Sumach, 2009: 169-178. Stephens, John. Language and Ideology in Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Fiction. London and NY: Longman, 1992. Stockton, Kathryn Bond. The Queer Child Or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2009. 134 Warner, Michael. The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. Harvard: Harvard UP, 2000. ---. \u00E2\u0080\u009CIntroduction.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Ed. Michael Warner. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 1993: vii-xxxi. Watney, Simon. \u00E2\u0080\u009CSchool\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Out.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Imagine Hope : AIDS and Gay Identity London: Routledge, 2000: 37-49. Whalen-Levitt, Peggy. \u00E2\u0080\u009CPursuing \u00E2\u0080\u0098The Reader in the Book.\u00E2\u0080\u0099\u00E2\u0080\u009D Children and Their Literature: A Readings Book. Ed. Jill P. May. West Lafayette: ChLA, 1983. 154\u00E2\u0080\u0093 59. 135 Appendix: Lesbian and Gay Picturebooks, Organised Chronologically 1983 Bosche, Susanne. Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin. Photos by Andreas Hansen. Trans. Louis Mackay. London: Gay Men\u00E2\u0080\u0099s, 1983. Trans. of Mette bor hos Morten og Erik. Copenhagen, 1981. 1989 Newman, Leslea. Heather Has Two Mommies. Illus. Diana Souza. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1989. 1990 Elwin, Rosamund and Michele Paulse. Asha\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Mums. Illus. Dawn Lee. Toronto: Women\u00E2\u0080\u0099s, 1990. Willhoite, Michael. Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Roommate. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1990. 1991 Newman, Leslea. Gloria Goes to Gay Pride. Illus. Russell Crocker. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1991. Valentine, Johnny. The Duke Who Outlawed Jelly Beans and Other Stories. Illus. Lynette Schmidt. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1991. 1993 136 Willhoite, Michael. Uncle What-Is-It is Coming to Visit! LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1993. 1994 Newman, Leslea. Too Far Away to Touch. Illus. Catherine Stock. NY: Clarion, 1995. Valentine, Johnny. One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads. Illus. Melody Sarecky. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1994. 1995 Skutch, Robert. Who\u00E2\u0080\u0099s in a Family? Illus. Laura Nienhaus. Berkeley: Tricycle, 1995. 1996 Willhoite, Michael. Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Wedding. LA: Alyson Wonderland, 1996. 1999 Atkins, Jeannine. A Name On The Quilt: A Story of Remembrance. Illus. Tad Hills. NY: Aladdin, 1999. 2000 Combs, Bobbie. 123: A Family Counting Book. Illus. Danamarie Hosler. Ridley Park, Two Lives, 2000. ---. ABC: A Family Alphabet Book. Illus. Desiree Keane and Brian Rappa. Ridley Park, Two Lives, 2000. 137 de Haan, Linda and Stern Nijland. King and King. Berkley: Tricycle, 2000. Trans. of Koning & Koning. Harlem, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij J. H. Gottmer/ H. W. Becht bv, 2000. Newman, Leslea. Heather Has Two Mommies. Illus. Diana Souza. 10th anniversary ed., LA: Alyson Wonderland, 2000. Willhoite, Michael. Daddy\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Roommate. 10th anniversary ed., LA: Alyson Wonderland, 2000. 2001 Meyers, Susan. Everywhere Babies. Illus. Marla Frazee. San Diego and NY: Red Wagon, 2001. 2003 Aldrich, Andrew R. How My Family Came to Be \u00E2\u0080\u0093 Daddy, Papa and Me. Illus. Mike Motz. Oakland: New Family, 2003. 2004 de Haan, Linda and Stern Nijland. King and King and Family. English adapt. Abigail Samoun. Berkeley, Tricycle, 2004. Garden, Nancy. Molly\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Family. Illus. Sharon Wooding. NY: Farra Straus Giroux, 2004. Setterington, Ken. Mom and Mum are Getting Married! Illus. Alice Priestley. Toronto: Second Story, 2004. 138 2005 Gonzalez, Rigoberto. Antonio\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Card: La Tarjeta de Antonio. Illus. Cecilia Concepcion Alvarez. San Francisco: Children\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Book Press, 2005. Richardson, Justin and Peter Parnell. And Tango Makes Three. Illus. Henry Cole. NY: Simon and Schuster, 2005. 2006 Lindenbaum, Pija. Mini Mia and Her Darling Uncle. NY: F, S &G, 2007. Trans. Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard. Trans. of Lill-Zlatan och morbror raring. Stockholm: Rab\u00C3\u00A9n and Sj\u00C3\u00B6gen, 2006. 2008 Brannen, Sarah S. Uncle Bobby\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Wedding. NY: G.P. Putnam\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Sons, 2008. Ewert, Marcus. 10,000 Dresses. Illus. Rex Ray. NY: Seven Stories, 2008. 2009 Newman, Leslea. Daddy, Papa and Me. Illus. Carol Thompson. Berkeley: Tricycle, 2009. ---. Heather Has Two Mommies. Illus. Diana Souza. 20th anniversary ed., LA: Alyson Wonderland, 2009. ---. Mommy, Mama and Me. Illus. Carol Thompson. Berkeley: Tricycle, 2009. Polacco, Patricia. In Our Mothers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 House. NY: Philomel, 2009. 139 2010 Oelschlager, Vanita. A Tale of Two Daddies. Illus. Kristin Blackwood and Mike Blanc. Akron, Ohio: 2010. 2011 Newman, Leslea. Donovan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Big Day. Illus. Mike Dutton. Berkley: Tricycle, 2011."@en . "Thesis/Dissertation"@en . "2012-11"@en . "10.14288/1.0073028"@en . "eng"@en . "Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education"@en . "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en . "University of British Columbia"@en . "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International"@en . "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"@en . "Graduate"@en . "Just like everyone else : the knowledge/ignorance binary in censorship and lesbian and gay picturebooks"@en . "Text"@en . "http://hdl.handle.net/2429/42990"@en .