Too Fucking Close For Comfort

[diane_kepler]

 
Erotica writer outed by angry parents.

Fuck! Could the judgemental busybodies in this po-dunk town be on any more of a witch hunt for Judy Mays, high-school teacher and author for Ellora's Cave? This woman writes under a pen name. She's never mentioned her writing in class. She made a good-faith effort to hide her work from the world, and still

Comments

[janice_lester]

OMG, what would they say if they knew that not only does this woman WRITE about SEX, but she's also HAD SEX? How COULD such a person be TRUSTED with TEACHING our CHILDREN? (The complaining parents, of course, all had virgin births. And have never read any book or seen any film containing any depiction of sexuality. So they've never seen, say, Gone With the Wind or read, say, the Bible. Obviously. Otherwise they'd be hypocrites. And of course they didn't look at this woman's website in order to identify her, even though that's what they said they did, because if they had they would have been exposed to material concerning EROTICA, quite likely with BLURBS and EXCERPTS, and seeing those would make them UNFIT to RAISE their CHILDREN!)

Yeah, I saw the coverage of this maybe a week ago? On the little local TV station's site? And all the comments I looked at were to the effect of "how dare this station waste time and money on this ridiculous witch-hunt. They should be ashamed of themselves."

Similar case in NZ recently: a young primary school teacher was fired after it transpired that she'd posed for Playboy or similar before becoming a teacher. She's appealing the decision. I think that's slightly different, in that Mays's track record of publication actually demonstrates abilities relevant to her profession, not to mention time management skills, etc., whereas posing nude just shows you meet the current definition of attractiveness. But in either case, I don't see how either woman is rendered less capable or suitable a teacher by this other work, and the moral argument is dodgy to say the least. I wonder if a male teacher would be similarly treated if it was discovered that he, say, had a share in a Hooters restaurant, or edited manuscripts professionally on the side (some of which might be EROTIC).

[diane_kepler]

A comment at one of the websites caught my eye. A lady said it reminded her of the days when women were routinely fired once they got pregnant.

This is exactly the kind of thing that has made me paranoid all these years.