It "dives heavily" into the effect of pornography without depicting pornography. Which is extremely easy, and extremely common.
The one illustration under discussion here is of an effort by the protagonist to emulate a sex act despite not having the genitals, and concluding that it was ineffective.
You know, full well, that it's not intended to be arousing. Because you're not stupid, and it's completely obvious. And that's the single definitive characteristic of pornography and erotica, which is clearly lacking here.
The only scene you're willing to discuss is specifically labelled "this is the visual I'd been picturing". It is specifically representative of the imagery that had aroused the author. There is a drawing of the "latest ship" to imagine while masturbating (which is a dark haired boy and a blond hair boy, 99% chance it's alluding to Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy).
Like, Imma be blunt a moment. I am about the same age as the author. I participated in the same era of internet as the author. This book, as best I can describe it, is an illustrated autobiography of a sex-obsessed 30-year-old woman who would prefer to be a teenage boy because she spent all her formative years reading gay Harry Potter fanfiction. If you sold me that book as a cautionary tale on the deleterious effects of constant erotica on the human psyche, it could maybe be an appropriate thing for a teenager to read in some contexts, but that's not why it's in schools. It's in schools to normalize that sort of behavior, as some sort of relatable guide to the queer experience. But it isn't that. It's just the personal stories of a tumblr pervert.
(reads the last couple pages) And conservatives wonder why everyone else thinks of them as the anti-fun party.
"Here's a picture of a blowjob I didn't enjoy" isn't fun. I mean, straight teenage boys would probably have a laugh over it, but I don't think "mocking people's experience of sexuality and gender" is the sort of fun you want to encourage.
I would have thought a teenager not enjoying sex would be a good example of being abstinent
Unfortunately, that's never ever the conclusion. The author dresses like a teenage boy, then goes to a pride event and sees people in bright, sparkly clothing (like women wear regularly), and reaches the conclusion that asexuals have the best thing going, never thinking "oh, maybe straight, cis women do enjoyable things that I've been cutting myself off of for no reason." The author tries different ways to have lesbian sex while imagining different kinds of gay sex, and never seriously considers "maybe I should take half of each of these and put them together".
Like, I can credit the book's honesty, and from that honesty you can find some of the right messages, but not because the author tells them to you. In a similar vein, there is no shortage of women in the world writing opinion pieces about how they lived out female empowerment and ended up trapped in a stressful career they no longer wanted and had performed a bunch of sex acts they now regretted, but they still all find the conclusion that society just still hasn't gone far enough to empower these women, or else they'd be happy that way. Never do they realize that they had made themselves into the perfect illustration of how fashioning your entire life after a stereotyped, sex-obsessed, hyper-ambitious man isn't actually empowering (for anyone, not just women).
