I researched books on puberty for my 10 year old daughter extensively before before buying the most well-reviewed book. Not one of the reviews I read asked ‘what heteronormative, misogynistic hellscape is this?’ so I’m asking it for you.
The book I bought covered menstruation, breasts, pubic hair, crushes and sex, all as expected, but of those topics, the first chapter was ‘Sex’ and the first subheading, with diagrams, in that first chapter - in a book about puberty for girls - was the ‘the male sex organs’. Excuse me?!?
Momentarily ignoring whether sex is actually the *most* important of those topics to a pre-teen child, in what fucking world is the first, and presumably most important, part of sex the penis? My 10 year old may not even like penises; we don’t know, but we are *definitely* setting an expectation about what sex is and what takes priority.
From my sample size of one, body changes and menstruation seem to be the most enticing topics. I would have loved if these held higher priority than the penis and heterosexual sex but, even maintaining the author’s priorities ,why so basic?
I mean, sure, keep sex as Priority One but talk about the vulva, the amazing clitoris, normalise masturbation and getting to know your own body, normalise female pleasure to our pre-teens so that when they do have sex, mutual pleasure is a perfectly normal expectation. Maybe that comes later in the book, I don’t care, the implicit messaging was a hard no from the contents page.
I know I can be overly political but this matters. I’m a therapist who works with women, I have shelves of books like ‘She Comes First’ and ‘Cliterate’, I have endless conversations about sexual pleasure and the interplay of social norms and expectations that emerge in our relationships and sexual expression. It matters and I will be damned if the most important thing my daughter learns about puberty, sex, and relationship expectations - above her anatomy, above her changing body, above knowing her own body and what may feel good to it - is the priority of the penis in the act of sex. Do better.