Reading Shouldn’t be Age Censored
Young people are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves when they are ready to read about difficult subjects, says Anne Cassidy – so let’s not limit their choices
- by Anne Cassidy
My book No Virgin and its sequel No Shame deal with rape and its aftermath. What happens to the main character Stacey is grim and told explicitly, and I make no apology for that.
Sexual exploitation and rape are real dangers and just as we warn children about keeping safe on the road we should also warn young teenagers about the unpleasantness of sexual predators.
But well-meaning parents and teachers and some librarians shy away from this. There have been reviews for my books which categorize them as suitable only for ages 15 plus.
Being a teenager is like living in two parallel universes.
In one life they are still viewed, by doting parents, as the children they once were.
The surly daughter or son is seen through the rose-tinted glasses of a decade of childhood; making dens, playing with dolls and soft toys, laughing at dad’s jokes and being prepared to wear the clothes that are bought for them.
This teenager will be developing physically and most certainly be changing in personality, and his or her parents will long for the days when a Cornetto or an action figure solved a lot of problems.
The other universe in which the teenager lives is the one where they are struggling to become a young adult. They’re trying to shed their childhood, wriggle out of their old behaviours, cast off their younger selves. This happens in school and with friends and through the myriad of outlets on social media.
Looking for answers
When I was a teenager, 13 or 14, I wanted to say to my mum and dad, ‘Let me grow up!’ I was hungry to find out about the adult world. I was completely fascinated by things I wasn’t supposed to know about.
My mum had told me about the facts of life so I knew about them in theory but the actuality of love and sex I could know nothing about. So I spent a lot of time thinking about it, wondering, building up imaginary situations. It wasn’t that I wanted sex (not until later) but I wanted to know about it.
And the only books where I could read about it were adult books. So at a tender age I pinched my mum’s paperbacks: Valley of the Dolls and The Carpetbaggers. My introduction to fictional sex was misogynistic and crude.
I was aghast, horrified, spellbound. I didn’t try to interpret any of it but passed the details on to my friends with a suaveness that showed I had shrugged it off. This is grown-up life, my shrug seemed to say, get on with it.
It wasn’t really ‘grown up life’ but it was all I could get hold of.
Nowadays teens don’t have to pinch their parents’ paperbacks to find out about adult activities. The internet is there and herein lies the problem. Like my mum’s racy novels, online content, including pornography, gives a skewed and unrealistic view of sex and relationships.
Personal choice
If only teenagers had fiction that was written for them; stories that examined what it was like to be a young adult in a changing world; stories that grappled with love and sex and relationships and protection and friendship and finding an identity and showing what actually happens when two young people get together.
Young Adult fiction is filling this gap, and it’s written by a range of brilliant and responsible, informed writers. It’s aimed at teenagers who want to read, who are interested in the subject matter, who can deal with the many different and difficult storytelling techniques.
These teens might be 12 or 13 or 17, it doesn’t matter. They should feel confident that the only censorship they come across is that of their own choice.
If a teenager reads No Shame they may be dismayed by the story, by what happened to the girl who was raped. But it may also alter their world view a tiny little bit – and perhaps even influence their behaviour when they get to that age where just reading about sex and relationships is not enough.
Anne Cassidy is the author of No Shame (Hot Key Books).
