Anti-transgender activist slams library book describing sex act by six-year-old

A book targeted at transgender teens featuring descriptions of sex acts carried out by children as young as six has sparked outrage. WARNING: Sensitive content

WARNING: Sensitive content

A book targeted at transgender teens featuring descriptions of sex acts carried out by children has sparked outrage among conservatives, with calls for it to be pulled from local library shelves.

The 2014 book, Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, features first-person interviews with six transgender or gender-neutral young adults conducted by US author Susan Kuklin.

Photos of the book, copies of which are available in a number of Australian libraries, were posted online on Friday by Kirralie Smith, a right-wing anti-halal activist who now campaigns against transgender issues through an organisation called Binary Australia.

The book quotes one interviewee saying they were “sexually mature” from the age of six and would “kiss other guys in my neighbourhood, make out with them” and perform a sex act, and that they “used to love” it.

“We were really young, but that’s what we did,” they said.

Another passage reads, “Guys used to hit on me — perverts — paedophiles. I’d see guys giving me a look, and it kinda creeped me out. They would touch themselves, saying, ‘Come here, sweetie.’”

Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin. Picture: Binary.org

In 2016, Beyond Magenta was named as one of the top 10 “most challenged books” in the American Library Association’s State of American Libraries report, alongside three other LGBT titles.

In an interview with CBS at the time, Kuklin was asked by anchor Vinita Nair, “What do you think it is that people are afraid of, that they wouldn’t want their kids exposed to, that maybe your book touches upon?”

Kuklin replied that it was “dangerous knowledge”. “It’s scary to people because they don’t understand it,” she said. “Once you get to understand it, it’s no longer frightening. But there’s that period before it happens, where there’s so much pushback and so much fear. And I think that’s what happened with my book.”

She added, “I think what we’re learning is the country is more frightened than we thought it was. We’re afraid of going forward. Life is changing, science is making changes, politics are changing — everything’s changing. And we can either choose to grow as human beings or stay the same.”

The book is available in NSW libraries. Picture: Binary.org

Binary Australia, which says its goal is to “protect our children from those who would seek to indoctrinate them with programs designed to promote the LGBTI agenda”, hit out at the book for “explicit language, violent acts, and graphic descriptions” of sex that fail to mention “the illegal nature of their activities or the consequences of certain behaviours”.

“These stories are being promoted to young people who may not have the capacity to judge whether this is good or bad behaviour,” Ms Smith said in a statement.

“And despite the illicit nature of their accounts, each concludes by celebrating their transition. Such material has no place in taxpayer-funded libraries and should certainly never be promoted to children.”

Beyond Magenta was one of the ‘most challenged’ US library books in 2015.

A spokeswoman for transgender lobby group Trans Health Australia said while she was “alarmed” at the reported content of the book and suggested it carry “some sort of advisory warning”, she was not aware of the full context.

“Why is this a transgender issue?” she said. “I’ve never read the book so I’ve got no idea what context those passages relate to, but there are other resources in public libraries that are not being scrutinised because they don’t relate to the transgender topic.”

She drew a comparison with the controversial 1979 book Puberty Blues by Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette — later made into a film — which “delves right into adolescent sex” and is widely available in public libraries.

“Why is Kirralie Smith out there on a witch hunt chasing transgender resources? (She is) trying to destroy our rights and identities and our access to healthcare,” she said.

“It’s very dangerous times we live in. I’ve been living with death threats from far-right extremists. (The transgender community) is experiencing high levels of hostility because of Binary Australia and Kirralie Smith, our health and wellbeing is being affected and people are getting suicidal. That’s why this is a serious issue.”

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