As reported at Locus and by Auntie Gwenda, John Kessel's novella "Stories for Men," which won the 2002 Tiptree Award for boldly "exploring and expanding gender roles in science fiction and fantasy," has been dropped from the curriculum of a high school English class in Seaside, Oregon, following a parent protest.

The story was originally reported on the Seaside Signal website earlier today, but it has been pushed off in favor of one about a guy rebuilding a picnic shelter. This is unfortunate, because the reporter gave a fairly balanced account of the controversial issue from both sides. Thankfully, Gwenda retained some of the text in her blog, and I will cheerfully steal from it now.

Here's how the story starts:

The right to intellectual freedom came under fire recently when a science-fiction short story was removed from an English class at Seaside High School. SHS English teacher Jan Priddy has taught her science-fiction course as an elective for several years. In the class, Priddy gives her students a choice between the short story "Stories for Men" by John Kessel, or a short story by Mark Twain. Because each student was able to choose which work they wished to read, the arrangement worked out well for everyone.

This year, however, one of her students upset by the content of "Stories for Men," shared the story with her mother, Kathy Wilson, who was similarly upset over the sexual content of the short story. Wilson contacted Seaside High School Principal Don Wickersham to discuss her concerns over the short story’s content. Initially, Wickersham was not familiar [with] the work, but, after reading the passages in question, found them to be "inappropriate." Wickersham next met with Priddy who "saw where it could be deemed inappropriate and chose to remove it from her class," Wickersham said.

I've known John Kessel for ten years now. He's my mentor, my advisor, and my friend. He's one of the most compassionate people I know, and I'm betting it's killing him right now that out in Oregon, his work is being characterized as smut. It bothers the hell out of me that one reactionary parent gets to decide the curriculum for a whole school. But instead of coming back with an attack or trying to wave the Bill of Rights in this parent's face, this is what John does, the guy is so classy:

Upon hearing of the situation here in Seaside, the work’s author, John Kessel, has offered to talk with parents, teachers and administrators, "should they wish to understand what I think this story is about and how I hope that it would cause young people to think about their attitudes toward men and women in society."

"It is unfortunate when students are prevented from reading and discussing work in the classroom," Kessel continued. "The English classroom is one of the last places in our society where young people who are going to be the citizens of the future are challenged to think, to develop their values, to test their understanding of people and society against what thoughtful people have written in times before them and in our own."

"A good story — especially a good science fiction story — should make you question and think about things that you might otherwise take for granted."

I'll say up front that "Stories for Men" is not my favorite of John's recent stories - "The Invisible Empire" is much better written and had more emotional resonance for me as a reader - but I do think it is important story. The Tiptree judges did too, calling it, "a story about masculinity, about how individuals define themselves in the context of kinship and community, and about how we construct gender roles by telling ourselves stories. The story begins with a female-centered society that mirrors some of our assumptions about social power relations between men and women, and then explicitly refers to our own society's assumptions (in the main character's encounter with a twentieth-century fiction anthology) in a way that makes those assumptions seem new and strange. It reexamines those tales of outcasts and lone heroes and manly individualism within the context of a story of community. It raises questions about the links between connectedness and exclusion, consensus and stifling conformity, patriarchal protectiveness and sociopathy. 'Stories for Men' is a short work, one that's more subtle than it first appears."

And, as the newspaper article pointed out, this controversy ironically happened during the American Library Association's Banned Books Week.

How backward do you have to be in this day and age to ban books in a public high school? How narrow-minded do you have to be to look at a story that involves gender issues and label it as smut? And how naive do you have to be to think that high school kids aren't being bombarded by sexual imagery on a daily basis?

"Stories for Men" deals with what it means to be a man in a female-dominated society, and John deals with this issue thoughtfully and with grace. Don Wickersham should be ashamed of himself.

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