stuff I don't really want to talk about

OK, Becca's post on Caitlin Flanagan and the Rainbow Party review was so great that I have to say something, even though I really don't want to. I don't want to because I think the book is sensationalist and pornographic and, umm, ridiculous, and I don't really want it to get any publicity. I'm on a fabulous listserv for discussing children's lit and we "talked" about it there for a while--or other people did, as I hadn't read it, and won't--and I thought that was it.

But the more I thought about Caitlin Flanagan and her insistence that yes, these parties really are happening, or something like them is, or something else bad really is, I just flashed back on the mid-80s and the pre-school abuse stories. Does it strike anyone else that this panic is a lot like that one? That this is middle class parents worried about their own parenting, or lack thereof, and especially worried about how to think about children and sexuality, and projecting all those fears and anxieties onto someone else? Of course it's harder with teenagers, because--well, because they're teenagers, so probably sexuality is entering the picture in a lot more overt way than it was when they were toddlers, but in many ways the rest of it seems much the same.

Which is why I'm waiting for Jim Kincaid to chime in on this one, because this is the kind of thing he's really smart about.