”Anal Plugs!“
THUNDERS NORTH DAKOTA REPUBLICAN representative Bernie Satrom. “Anal sex. Mutual masturbation. Rimming!” He’s just issued a rare warning in the North Dakota House chamber: “To anyone listening at home with children, you might want to turn off the sound.” A small child is sitting within spitting distance, and a group of high school students (who are, predictably, losing their shit at all this) are seated a few rows behind me in the House balcony.
Satrom is reading from Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human, a work of graphic nonfiction for teens. He’s making the case that this sex-ed book and others like it aren’t educational but pornographic and should therefore be banned from public libraries. “On page 82,” he continues, “the book says, ‘The anus is chock-full of sensitive nerves.’” He lists terms mentioned in Naked: Not Your Average Sex Encyclopedia in rapid-fire, machine-gun style: “blowjob, doggy style, fisting, glory hole, golden shower, queening, kinging, rimjob, scissoring, threesome, trimming.” He takes a breath and goes on. “Anal sex, ejaculation, cunnilingus, foreplay, and f-u-blank-blank buddies.” The high schoolers are now openly howling and snorting as I shrink further in my seat. Satrom has hit his stride, full of bravado: “masturbation, one-night stands, oral sex, palyamory [sic], pornography, sex games, sexual positions, and sexting.”
He’s listing this menu of sexual delicacies as part of an endorsement of HB 1205, one of two North Dakota bills that sought to restrict “explicit sexual material” in libraries. (The other was the Senate bill SB 2360.) Proponents said they wanted to protect children from pornography. Critics said the bills encouraged censorship and specifically targeted the LGBTQIA+ community. An early version of HB 1205 banned depictions of “sexual identity,” “gender identity,” and “sexual perversion,” which the bill’s coauthors didn’t bother to define.
At the time of this writing, in late April, both bills had been through several rounds of revisions. HB 1205 focused on children’s sections and required that some books be moved into the adult section, even those aimed at teen audiences. The broader SB 2360 aimed to impose criminal liability on librarians who displayed the books in any establishment where a minor “may be invited as part of the general public.” Until recently, schools were the battleground for book bans. But now the book-ban movement is targeting the one place a kid should be able to access vetted and potentially lifesaving information for free. They’re targeting the books but also the librarians; SB 2360 actually threatened to throw librarians in jail. As North Dakota author Taylor
