How did we miss this story? Any chance that she's related to Kate Hall?
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Inspired by the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment, Mrs Sarah Hall, a 40 year-old British PR consultant, was reading a version of Sleeping Beauty to her six-year-old son and decided that it promoted unacceptable non-consensual kissing, reports The Times. She is reported to have said:
“I think it’s a specific issue in the Sleeping Beauty story about sexual behaviour and consent. It’s about saying, is this still relevant, is it appropriate? In today’s society, it isn’t appropriate — my son is only six, he absorbs everything he sees, and it isn’t as if I can turn it into a constructive conversation."
In the original version of the story the Prince awakened the Sleeping Beauty with something much stronger than a kiss. He impregnated her and she woke during childbirth. The brothers Grimm bowdlerised the story.
The Prince was committing several crimes at once, in fact. He was a white man, in a position of unfair power in an utterly unjust, unmeritocratic, undemocratic, patriarchal system, first objectifying and then sexually assaulting a woman in a coma.
The 40-year-old contacted her son's school asking for books featuring the story to be removed from the younger children’s classes and Tweeted about the offending book.
"In today's society, it isn't appropriate,” she added. “My son is only six, he absorbs everything he sees, and it isn't as if I can turn it into a constructive conversation.”
"I don't think taking Sleeping Beauty books out of circulation completely would be right. I actually think it would be a great resource for older children, you could have a conversation around it, you could talk about consent, and how the Princess might feel."
“But I'm really concerned about it for younger children, would really welcome a conversation about whether this is suitable material.”
Hall also spoke about the ongoing #MeToo campaign against sexual assault, saying that without such coverage she may have not noticed the messages contained within the story.
"These are indicative of how ingrained that kind of behaviour is in society,” she said. “All these small things build up, and they make a difference."
Many people have taken issue with Hall's response to the story, one Tweeter replying to Hall: "I feel so sorry for the young children of today who are having adult perceptions forced on them. Let them be children!" Another wrote: "You know that bears don't really eat porridge, right?"
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...-a8071951.html
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