Show Me! - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Show Me! is a controversial sex education

Sex education

Sex education refers to formal programs of instruction on a wide range of issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, contraception, and...

book by photographer Will McBride

Will McBride (photographer)

Will McBride is a photographer in reportage, art photography and book illustration. He is also known as a painter and sculptor....

. It appeared in 1974 in German under the title Zeig Mal!, written with psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

Helga Fleischhauer-Hardt for children and their parents. It was translated into English a year later and was widely available in bookstores on both sides of the Atlantic for many years, but later became subject to expanded child pornography

Child pornography

Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...

laws in jurisdictions including the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. In Germany, the book was followed in 1990 by a second edition that included, among other additions, a discussion of the AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

epidemic.

Publication history

While many parents appreciated Show Me! for its frank depiction of pre-adolescents discovering and exploring their sexuality

Child sexuality

Child sexuality is the sexual feelings, behaviors, and development of children.-Freud:Until Sigmund Freud published his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1905, children were often regarded as asexual, having no sexuality until later development. Freud was one of the first researchers to...

, others called it child pornography

Child pornography

Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...

. In 1975 and 1976, obscenity

Obscenity

An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...

charges were brought against the publisher by prosecutors in Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, New Hampshire

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

, Oklahoma

Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

, and Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. In all four cases, the judges ruled as a matter of law that the title was not obscene.

However, starting in 1977, some states began to criminalize the distribution of even non-obscene so-called "child pornography," or "images of abuse," which arguably is not protected by the First Amendment.

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

State, home of the publisher, St. Martin's Press

St. Martin's Press

St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in the Flatiron Building in New York City. Currently, St. Martin's Press is one of the United States' largest publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under eight imprints, which include St. Martin's Press , St...

, criminalized the distribution of non-obscene "child pornography" in 1977, but the publisher promptly went to court and obtained an injunction

Injunction

An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...

against the State. The court granted the injunction because the First Amendment

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

was interpreted to permit the banning of only obscene material.

In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

issued a decision, New York v. Ferber
New York v. Ferber
New York v. Ferber, , was a United States Supreme Court decision. The Court ruled unanimously that the First Amendment right to free speech did not forbid states from banning the sale of material depicting children engaged in sexual activity....

, which allowed the government to constitutionally ban the knowing distribution of even non-obscene "child pornography". Citing a chilling effect, St. Martin's Press then pulled the book, stating that though they believed Show Me! was not pornographic, they could no longer afford the legal expenses to defend it, and they did not want to risk criminal prosecutions of their own personnel and/or vendors who sold the book. The Court overruled a decision of the New York Court of Appeals

New York Court of Appeals

The New York Court of Appeals is the highest court in the U.S. state of New York. The Court of Appeals consists of seven judges: the Chief Judge and six associate judges who are appointed by the Governor to 14-year terms...

, The People v. Paul Ira Ferberhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15562951158866016402, which held that the First Amendment

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

protected the dissemination of non-obscene sexual depictions. Show Me! was not the direct subject of the Ferber case, but the book was prominently featured by both sides in the litigation, and it played a significant role in the oral argument

Oral argument

Oral arguments are spoken presentations to a judge or appellate court by a lawyer of the legal reasons why they should prevail. Oral argument at the appellate level accompanies written briefs, which also advance the argument of each party in the legal dispute...

before the U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court of the United States

.

In its country of origin, Germany, the book first won several awards, even from church organisations, but due to rising pressure from a newly arising "moral majority" the publishers and McBride decided to take it off the market in 1996. By then over one million copies in seven languages had been sold. It was never officially banned in Germany. Public libraries there keep it on hand and out of print copies are openly sold at collectors' premium prices.

In New Zealand the book was banned by the Indecent Publications Tribunal in 1976. The ban was upheld in 1996.

Critical reception

Show Me! received mixed reviews from the mass media when it was first published. The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

called the photographs "beautiful...graceful, charming, and elegant," yet accurately predicted, in a severe understatement of what actually happened, that the book "may start (an) uproar." The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

, on the other hand, described the photographs as "beautiful, assaultive, grotesque, and seductive," and concluded that Show Me! was only suited for "avant garde" parents. Reviewer Linda Wolfe was more hostile in the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, calling the book a "child-abusive joke." The 13-year-old daughter of Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

reviewer Carol Kleiman commented:

"I'm too old for it myself. The last part, though, with no pictures, looks interesting to read. The book is good for little kids because they don't know what society terms 'dirty' yet. You know, Mom, it's PARENTS I'm worried about. They're not ready yet."

Recent reviews

A recent review by Dr. Russell A. Rohde claims that the book, "appropriately delves into the issues of breast feeding, adolescence, pubertal changes, menses, sexual anatomies, pregnancy, masturbation, contraception, sexual behavioral disturbances and venereal disease. [...] I am not aware of any book comparable to this illustrated primer that fills the needs of sexual education so well."

D. F. Janssen places it at the one extreme of a late twentieth century visual and textual revolution that enabled parents to illustrate information that up to that time had been transmitted orally. He sees the work as subversive not for its "too frank" portrayal of childhood sexuality, but instead for the primacy that the image takes over the text. In his eyes, the work "comes out of a culture with a long history of pathologising so-addressed 'primal scene

Primal scene

In psychoanalysis, the primal scene is the initial witnessing by a child of a sex act, usually between the parents, that traumatizes the psychosexual development of that child...

s,'" a history that became manifest in particular with regard to the works of Will McBride.

The book is also analyzed in an article on "Picturing Sex Education" (Discourse Volume 27, Number 4 / December 2006).

Bibliographic details

1974: Zeig mal. Ein Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern Foreword by Helmut Kentler. Wuppertal
1975: Show Me!: A Picture Book of Sex for Children and Parents St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-72275-3
1975: Laat 's zien!: een fotoboek over sex voor kinderen en ouders Amsterdam: Kosmos. ISBN 9021505282
1978: Fais voir ! Un livre illustré sur la sexualité Montreal: Quinze. ISBN 0885651715
1979: Fammi Vedere! un libro fotografico di educazione sessuale non conformista per bambini e grandi Perugia: Savelli
1979: ¡A ver!: un libro de imágenes para niños y padres Salamanca: Lóguez Ediciones. ISBN 848533406X
1981: Få se: seksualopplysning i tekst og bilder for barn og foreldre Oslo: Aschehoug i samarbeid med Hverdag. ISBN 8203104630
1990: Zeig mal. Ein Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern (2nd. ed.) 195 p. Wuppertal: Hammer. ISBN 3-87294-301-4
1990: Ukaž mi to! : Mezinárodní osvětová obrázková kniha pro děti a rodiče s informací o AIDS, translated by Jiří Kostelecký, Czech introduction by Jiří Raboch, 1st. ed., 199 p., Praha : Kredit ; Wuppertal : Peter Hammer, 1990, ISBN 80-85279-05-3, 20.000 copies
1995: Zeig Mal Mehr (5 ed.). 176 p. Beltz. ISBN 3-407-85106-5

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.