'Premature Sexualization' Narrative: How Educational Materials Are Misrepresented

Claim: Viral 2018 posts showed images from a sexually explicit book, claiming it was part of the Brazilian school curriculum.

Reality: Brazil's Ministry of Education publicly denied any link to the book, stating it was a commercial title from publisher Companhia das Letras with no ministry connection or classroom use ^[3].

UK statutory guidance requires primary schools to teach Relationships Education, which the Department for Education describes as building "the key building blocks of healthy, respectful relationships," covering families, friendships, personal boundaries, and online safety ^[4].

Primary schools may, but are not required to, additionally teach sex education; explicit sexual content is not part of the compulsory primary curriculum, and parents may request their child be withdrawn from any optional sex-education component, though not from Relationships Education itself ^{[4] [5]}.

PEN America has documented 22,810 instances of book removals in U.S. public schools between 2021 and 2025, with titles by LGBTQ+ authors, authors of color, and women disproportionately targeted ^[6].

Not every challenge is straightforward, though: the National Coalition Against Censorship finds many challenged titles — such as And Tango Makes Three and King and King — contain no explicit sexual content and are contested over LGBTQ+ themes alone, while a smaller number of challenged titles do include sexually explicit passages ^[7].

Two of the most viral "premature sexualization" claims examined here — Brazil's 2018 "kit gay" hoax and the accompanying "explicit book" claim — were directly refuted by Brazil's own electoral court, its Ministry of Education, and an independent fact-checker ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

In the UK, the compulsory primary curriculum verifiably does not include sexual content, contrary to some viral claims ^{[4] [5]}.

The US picture is more mixed: book removals are real and large in scale, and disproportionately touch LGBTQ+ titles, but not every challenged book is free of explicit content — critics and defenders of specific titles are sometimes arguing about different books ^{[6] [7]}. That mixed record counsels checking a specific claim before sharing it, rather than assuming every case is either a hoax or a legitimate concern.