GO ASK ALICE AGAIN
by Marylaine Block
I was distressed to read that yet again, a library has gotten in trouble for linking to the Go Ask Alice web site <http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/>. That's because this doctor-run site, which promises to provide honest and medically accurate answers to whatever questions teens wish to ask them, has the nerve to answer their questions about sex. Often when that link on library web pages has been challenged, the library has meekly backed down and removed it.
I wonder why I don't hear very many librarians defending young adults' right to information. I will grant that much of this situation is beyond our control, since library policy is often constrained by state legislatures and local governments, and set by library boards. We have no choice but to abide by those laws.
But we do have a choice about CIPA, since it applies only to libraries that accept federal aid. Why aren't more librarians educating their boards about how filters interfere not only with the legitimate information needs of adults but those of teens as well? Why have so many librarians accepted filters for everyone under 18, when they know teens have different information needs than children? Why have so few voices in the library community spoken out and said, "Look, teens need good information about sex, and if we require them to use filtered workstations, we're failing to serve them."
Teens, after all, are people who don't understand the strange things that are happening to their own bodies and emotions, people who are desperately worried about whether their experiences and thoughts and feelings are normal. Of course they want to know about sex.
And yet it's something they have a hard time getting good answers about. Many parents don't want to talk about it, at least not in the kinds of specifics that would answer the real questions their sons and daughters have. Teachers and school counselors might help, but many of them are constrained, by law or school policy, in how much they're allowed to tell teens. And teens might not ask them in any case, since they can't ask anonymously; they know a teacher or counselor could call their parents.
That's the beauty of Go Ask Alice -- teens can preserve their anonymity and ask their real questions, and they can get honest, non-judgmental, medically informed answers. They might not even have to ask their questions at all, because the answers might already be there in the site's archive.
And it's the beauty of a library collection, whether of books or web sites; young adults can consult either without having to ask a grown-up a personally embarrassing question.
The library and the internet could be teens' final resort for good information about sexuality. Or would be, if people weren't demanding that the library remove even as mild a book as Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret just because it portrays a girl's confusion about menstruation, or if they weren't insisting that any information about sex be filtered for everyone under 18.
The idea that censoring library materials and websites somehow protects teens from sex is preposterous, as anyone who settled down to watch the Super Bowl with their family last week realizes. Sex is sold with every car, every beer, every can of soda, every swimsuit issue. It's the theme of soap operas and sit coms, the heart of song lyrics and music videos, the teaser used to promote new movies and TV shows. Graphic sex has even made its way into political news and government documents. It saturates our culture and pushes teens toward an early sexual precocity. All the more reason to give teens valid information to help them make good decisions.
Unfortunately, what does not saturate our culture is reliable information about sex. And the problem with that is: keeping teens ignorant about sex in no way keeps sex from happening to them, with or without their consent. Often without their consent.
When I was twelve, a classmate of mine got pregnant by her uncle, who had been sexually abusing her for years. She was old enough for those things to happen to her, just not old enough to be allowed to find out the correct word to describe what he was doing to her, or that it was illegal, or that her symptoms were a sign of pregnancy. She wasn't even old enough to be given good information about pregnancy and childbirth.
If librarians claim to be the people with answers, and then say to teens, "but not for you, of course," we are discriminating against them. We are teaching them that we are just another part of the adult conspiracy to deny them knowledge they need.
I think that's sufficient reason all by itself to do the right thing. Refuse the federal funds and CIPA, and stand up against censors to defend young adults' right to information. But if you need another reason, consider this: they are future taxpayers. The time may come when they will say, "Why should I stand up for you when you wouldn't stand up for me?"
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COOL QUOTE:
The last twenty years were about technology. The next twenty years are about policy. It's about realizing that all the really hard problems -- free expression, copyright, due process, social networking -- may have technical dimensions, but they aren't technical problems. The next twenty years are about using our technology to affirm, deny and rewrite our social contracts: all the grandiose visions of e-democracy, universal access to human knowledge and (God help us all) the Semantic Web, are dependent on changes in the law, in the policy, in the sticky, non-quantifiable elements of the world. We can't solve them with technology: the best we can hope for is to use technology to enable the human interaction that will solve them.
Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing, December 22, 2003 http://boingboing.net/2003_12_01_archive.html
#107215324306229904
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