Banning books in schools (1 Viewer)

[Optimus Prime]

Excellent article I thought deserved its own thread
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On the surface, it would appear that book censors and censored authors like myself can agree on one thing: Books are powerful.

Particularly books for children and teens.

Why else would people like me spend so much time and energy writing them?

Why else would censors spend so much time and energy trying to keep them out of kids’ hands?

In a country where the average adult is reading fewer and fewer books, it’s a surprise to find Americans arguing so much about them.

In this election year, parents and politicians — so many politicians — are jumping into the fray to say how powerful books can be.

Granted, politicians often make what I do sound like witchcraft, but I take this as a compliment.

I’ll admit, one of my first thoughts about the current wildfire of attempted censorship was: How quaint.

Conservatives seemed to be dusting off their playbook from 1958, when the only way our stories could get to kids was through schools and libraries.

While both are still crucial sanctuaries for readers, they’re hardly the only options. Plenty of booksellers supply titles that are taken off school shelves.

And words can be very widely shared free of charge on social media and the rest of the internet. If you take my book off a shelf, you keep it away from that shelf, but you hardly keep it away from readers.

As censorship wars have raged in so many communities, damaging the lives of countless teachers, librarians, parents and children, it’s begun to feel less and less quaint.

This is not your father’s book censorship…..

Here’s something I never thought I’d be nostalgic for: sincere censors. When my first novel, “Boy Meets Boy,” was published in 2003, it was immediately the subject of many challenges, some of which kept the book from ever getting on a shelf in the first place.

At the time, a challenge usually meant one parent trying to get a book pulled from a school or a library, going through a formal process.

I often reminded myself to try to find some sympathy for these parents; yes, they were wrong, and their desire to control what other people in the community got to read was wrong — but more often than not, the challenge was coming from fear of a changing world, a genuine (if incorrect) belief that being gay would lead kids straight to ruination and hell, and/or the misbegotten notion that if all the books that challenged the (homophobic, racist) status quo went away, then the status quo would remain intact.

It was, in some ways, as personal to them as it was to those of us on the other side of the challenge.

And nine times out of 10, the book would remain on the shelf.

It’s not like that now. What I’ve come to believe, as I’ve talked to authors and librarians and teachers, is that attacks are less and less about the actual books.

We’re being used as targets in a much larger proxy war.

The goal of that war isn’t just to curtail intellectual freedom but to eviscerate the public education system in this country.

Censors are scorching the earth, without care for how many kids get burned.

Racism and homophobia are still very much present, but it’s also a power grab, a money grab. The goal for many is a for-profit, more authoritarian and much less diverse culture, one in which truth is whatever you’re told it is, your identity is determined by its acceptability and the past is a lie that the future is forced to emulate.

The politicians who holler and post and draw up their lists of “harmful” books aren’t actually scared of our books.

They are using our books to scare people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/23/standing-up-new-censorship/

 

[cuddlemonkey]

I'll plead guilty to being cleverly snarky, but not to any poster on here.

No, but you could save time by just telling me why you think it is, instead of asking me if I really don't see it.

I'm a teacher, so I'll give you a sentence stem:

Your statement about the person who awarded the Alex award is tribal because __________________________ .

To me accusations of being "tribal" are just a way to stall the conversation with irrelevancies. FWIW, I first heard people on the right doing it, accusing "liberals" of being tribal. I thought it was just a stall the first time I heard it.

Your statement:

"Is the child gay sex in Lawn Boy a shocking obsenity to you? I don't find it so, just its explicitness and it's promoting to children by librarians. Which I still believe was a misunderstanding. The Alex Award description says nothing about sex. Whoever gave it the award probably is a left-leaning English major who liked the idea of real estate mogul as evil jerk. The smart people in college take engineering and business."

When you identify the person who gave this award that you don't like as a "probably left-leaning English major" and then comment that the "smart people in college take engineering and business", you imply that the English major is not smart (otherwise they would be in a STEM or business field). You then associate English majors with people on the left, which means you associate left-leaning people as being unintelligent.

Further, you have insinuated that librarians are pushing explicit homosexual material onto young children.

By your own words and their clear implications, you think people on the left are morons that provide (or support those that provide) gay porn to underage children. Others, right-wingers by default, are intelligent scientists and businesspeople doing their all to prevent that.

That is some ridiculous, tribal bullshirt and you either know it and refuse to admit it, which makes you dishonest, or you don't know it, which makes you ill-equipped to carry on a conversation with adults.

 

[brandon]

Then for safety's sake, we should not be letting people who you would look at and say, "I don't know which, but they are either atranswomen or a heterosexual male sex offender" into girls bathrooms.

So your solution to heterosexual sex offenders is to punish either a) transgender women or b) literally everyone.

Maybe we could just instead acknowledge that the possibility of being raped in a public bathroom is pretty negligible and that, as stated before, you’re being intentionally manipulated by right-wing media for votes.

Lia doesn't look self-respecting to me. What's to self-respect? he was a mediocre mens college swimmer who took advantage of the latest absurdity to become a champion "women's" swimmer. He's a shameless opportunist.

Your idea that we can trust their self-respect seems to be an invitation to ruining girl's and women's sports.

Occam's razor tells me that if a guy has a penis, has had no surgery to alter his body, is never seen in public dressed as a woman, and went from being a mediocre athlete to a champion just by claiming to be a woman in a time of deliberate gullibility over that idea, that he is not a transwoman.

Your whole Lia Thomas diatribe is honestly pretty weak.

Yes, I'm just not sure why it matters. If a bisexual male pretended to be a transwoman and raped a woman in prison, she's not any less raped, is she?

Your question was about tribalism. I was merely pointing out that acknowledging reality is not tribalism.

If you want to protect women, your issue is almost always with heterosexual men.

 

[Snarky Sack]

Your statement:

"Is the child gay sex in Lawn Boy a shocking obsenity to you? I don't find it so, just its explicitness and it's promoting to children by librarians. Which I still believe was a misunderstanding. The Alex Award description says nothing about sex. Whoever gave it the award probably is a left-leaning English major who liked the idea of real estate mogul as evil jerk. The smart people in college take engineering and business."

When you identify the person who gave this award that you don't like as a "probably left-leaning English major" and then comment that the "smart people in college take engineering and business", you imply that the English major is not smart (otherwise they would be in a STEM or business field). You then associate English majors with people on the left, which means you associate left-leaning people as being unintelligent.

Further, you have insinuated that librarians are pushing explicit homosexual material onto young children.

By your own words and their clear implications, you think people on the left are morons that provide (or support those that provide) gay porn to underage children. Others, right-wingers by default, are intelligent scientists and businesspeople doing their all to prevent that.

That is some ridiculous, tribal bullshirt and you either know it and refuse to admit it, which makes you dishonest, or you don't know it, which makes you ill-equipped to carry on a conversation with adults.

Now at least that is an actual argument that I can respond to with a counter argument. Thank you.

I get what you're saying.

I don't like the phrase "tribal," because the implication is that tribal people are inferior. I imagine Custer telling his men, "Look at those tribal people and their pathetic effort to gather a large enough group to to defeat us, the far superior civilized people. Bugler, sound "Charge" so we can go teach them the futility of their tribal ways!"

It seems almost - almost - to be a racial slur.

But, giving you the benefit of the doubt, you only mean that you don't like when I refer to the group that people are part of when I look for explanations for their actions.

In the case you cited of the English major, it was intended as a throwaway humorous mental image of a person working from home for Alex Award, perhaps a half step above a basement-dwelling Facebook Fact Checker, thinking that she is making an important decision. It was not intended as evidence for anything.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with that, but if you do, I'll try to avoid it in debating you.

 

[Snarky Sack]

So your solution to heterosexual sex offenders is to punish either a) transgender women or b) literally everyone.

I don't see logical safety precautions as a punishment to anyone at all.

Maybe we could just instead acknowledge that the possibility of being raped in a public bathroom is pretty negligible and that, as stated before, you’re being intentionally manipulated by right-wing media for votes.

As a heterosexual male, I will not, in front of the women who are on this board, "acknowledge" that any number of rapes in a public bathroom is "pretty negligible." You'll have to go it alone on that one.

Your whole Lia Thomas diatribe is honestly pretty weak.

Opinions vary.

Your question was about tribalism. I was merely pointing out that acknowledging reality is not tribalism.

Yeah, I was pulling your leg a little. See my convo with @cuddlemonkey

If you want to protect women, your issue is almost always with heterosexual men.

No, my issue is with anyone who would rape a woman, whether they wear a skirt to do it in a bathroom, or lurk in a dark alley. I can tell the women in my life not to walk by dark alleys, but I can't tell them not to go into the bathroom in public.

 

[SystemShock]

As a kid who read the Bible frequently, I knew what the phrase “lie together” meant at a very early age, because that phrase shows up a lot in the Bible. Enough times that I had to go and ask an adult what it meant.

It's interesting to me, the many interpretations of Bible passages in one's language, ignoring that the Bible was not written in one's language, so one makes an interpretation of a translation that's been "massaged" throughout versions.

In this case, however, if you look at the Spanish translation, the idiom corroborates sex. It uses "acostó con el" , clearly implying sex; it's not used any other way, and just like you knew what "lie with him" meant when you were a kid, so did I knew what "acostó con el" meant when I was a kid.

 

[SystemShock]

I don't like the phrase "tribal," because the implication is that tribal people are inferior. I imagine Custer telling his men, "Look at those tribal people and their pathetic effort to gather a large enough group to to defeat us, the far superior civilized people. Bugler, sound "Charge" so we can go teach them the futility of their tribal ways!"

It seems almost - almost - to be a racial slur.

Inigo and I agree in that we don't think that word means what you think it means. Tribal, of a tribe. Tribe, a political, ethnic, or ancestral division of ancient states and cultures, any of the three divisions of the ancient Romans, namely, the Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan.

And didn't Custer get his arse kicked?

 

[brandon]

No, my issue is with anyone who would rape a woman, whether they wear a skirt to do it in a bathroom, or lurk in a dark alley. I can tell the women in my life not to walk by dark alleys, but I can't tell them not to go into the bathroom in public.

Who rapes women?

Gay men? Trans women? Straight women? Lesbians?

I mean sure, the list above may have between them raped a woman in some weird one-off news story I’m sure you can find.

But the reality is, if you want to protect women from rape, your issue is with heterosexual men. They’re the ones who might dress up as a woman to get into the bathroom to prey upon women, not trans women.

In fact, that’s the whole crux of your argument - that someone is pretending to be a woman to gain access to the women’s restroom to prey upon women. The only people who could pretend to be a woman, and would have the desire and capacity to rape women, are, you guessed it, heterosexual men.

Either you’ve got to shift your priorities when it comes to who you’re targeting in your crusade to protect women, or you’ve got to admit this isn’t about protecting women at all.

And by the way, most of the right-wing political operatives have dropped the bathroom conversation, because it doesn’t stand up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny. The whole position is illogical, as it’s straight men, not trans women, that would be dressing up to attack women in the bathroom.

You were supposed to move on to drag shows like 6 months ago. Didn’t you get the talking points?

 

[Saintamaniac]

I don't like the phrase "tribal," because the implication is that tribal people are inferior.

No, that's just your interpretation of tribal, an expected interpretation I might add. The implication in the context is being part of a tribe or team and the goal is to show how teams and tribes stick together no matter what. "As long as you are part of MY team, you are okay."

It seems almost - almost - to be a racial slur.

Once again, your interpretation shows your bias and the fact that your interpretation of "tribal" led you to use Custer as an example. YOU actually made it racial associating Native Americans with "tribe" hence your example.

In the case you cited of the English major,

Once again, YOU cited the English major example in your comment. YOUR comment was meant to be taken as English majors not being as smart as STEM majors. Your bias shows through so clearly. Either you realize and don't care or you don't realize it and don't care.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with that, but if you do, I'll try to avoid it in debating you.

Typical response from folks with your tribe mentality.

 

[Snarky Sack]

It's interesting to me, the many interpretations of Bible passages in one's language, ignoring that the Bible was not written in one's language, so one makes an interpretation of a translation that's been "massaged" throughout versions.

In this case, however, if you look at the Spanish translation, the idiom corroborates sex. It uses "acostó con el" , clearly implying sex; it's not used any other way, and just like you knew what "lie with him" meant when you were a kid, so did I knew what "acostó con el" meant when I was a kid.

Exactly.

So, I didn't need to read something like "Lot's daughter took Lot's Salamander into her mouth and sucked it until it was fully erect so that she could put it into her tight virgin vagina."

Inigo and I agree in that we don't think that word means what you think it means. Tribal, of a tribe. Tribe, a political, ethnic, or ancestral division of ancient states and cultures, any of the three divisions of the ancient Romans, namely, the Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan.

Well, then you and Inigo enjoy agreeing with each other. I'll celebrate a world in which we are still allowed to disagree.

And didn't Custer get his arse kicked?

Yes, which makes his mocking of the inferior tribal people very ironic, as was my point.

 

[Snarky Sack]

No, that's just your interpretation of tribal, an expected interpretation I might add.

Yes, the correct interpretation should be no surprise.

The implication in the context is being part of a tribe or team and the goal is to show how teams and tribes stick together no matter what. "As long as you are part of MY team, you are okay."

Yes, I know the implication. It is wrong in my case. I analyzed one person's actions and speculated that she had certain traits that influenced her motivation. You might have a point if I knew that she was an English Major and I said, "what do you expect from an English major?"

Once again, your interpretation shows your bias and the fact that your interpretation of "tribal" led you to use Custer as an example. YOU actually made it racial associating Native Americans with "tribe" hence your example.

Bias against Tribal people has always been racial. Even when it was Romans decrying the blue painted tribes of white men and women on the isle of Britain, the Roman's viewed themselves as superior people.

Once again, YOU cited the English major example in your comment. YOUR comment was meant to be taken as English majors not being as smart as STEM majors.

English majors are not as smart as STEM majors. I believe I said that pretty explicitly.

Your bias shows through so clearly. Either you realize and don't care or you don't realize it and don't care.

Everyone is biased. We come to a message board to argue that our bias is more valid than the biases of others.

Typical response from folks with your tribe mentality.

All of us?

 

[brandon]

English majors are not as smart as STEM majors. I believe I said that pretty explicitly.

I’m an English major with a masters in education leadership.

I’ll also be graduating with a second bachelors in information technology and masters in information technology management in December.

I also was a band director for 14 years and am an arts administrator for a school district.

So fork right off. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

 

[Snarky Sack]

Who rapes women?

Gay men? Trans women? Straight women? Lesbians?

Men with a lot of anger issues.

I mean sure, the list above may have between them raped a woman in some weird one-off news story I’m sure you can find.

It was not a one-off, and it was not weird to the women and girls that it happened to. It was traumatic.

But the reality is, if you want to protect women from rape, your issue is with heterosexual men. They’re the ones who might dress up as a woman to get into the bathroom to prey upon women, not trans women.

I want to protect women from any man that would rape them.

What about a transwoman who is a lesbian? Mightn't they rape a woman since they have a penis?

In fact, that’s the whole crux of your argument - that someone is pretending to be a woman to gain access to the women’s restroom to prey upon women. The only people who could pretend to be a woman, and would have the desire and capacity to rape women, are, you guessed it, heterosexual men.

Or lesbian transwomen. Again, you insist that there is no way to tell the difference between a transwoman and someone pretending to be a woman. That pretty much ends your argument. The rest is filler.

Either you’ve got to shift your priorities when it comes to who you’re targeting in your crusade to protect women, or you’ve got to admit this isn’t about protecting women at all.

How would you propose I target heterosexual men who pretend to be women without also targeting transwomen who look no different, and lesbian transwomen rapists?

And by the way, most of the right-wing political operatives have dropped the bathroom conversation, because it doesn’t stand up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny. The whole position is illogical, as it’s straight men, not trans women, that would be dressing up to attack women in the bathroom.

You were supposed to move on to drag shows like 6 months ago. Didn’t you get the talking points?

I don't need talking points to not want women to be raped. I guess they are collateral damage to you.

Since you're making it personal, I'll ask this: You have been careful to say that you are a heterosexual male. Do you have sex with transwomen? Or if you have some reason not to have sex with any women, would you have sex with transwomen? I don't need details. Just a yes or no.

 

[Saintamaniac]

You might have a point if I knew that she was an English Major and I said, "what do you expect from an English major?"

I have a point because you jumped to a stupid conclusion.

Bias against Tribal people has always been racial

Only to people whose first thought when someone uses the word "Tribal" in a sentence makes them think about Native Americans instead of the actual context in which it was used. It actually accents your "bias"

English majors are not as smart as STEM majors. I believe I said that pretty explicitly.

I'm just astounded that you believe such stupidity -- Even seem to be proud of having such a stupid belief.

Everyone is biased. We come to a message board to argue that our bias is more valid than the biases of others.

Maybe you do but most of us come here to give our opinion and conclusion based off facts that support our position regardless of our bias. Not because of our bias. You are a poor representation of academia.

 

[Snarky Sack]

I’m an English major with a masters in education leadership.

I’ll also be graduating with a second bachelors in information technology and masters in information technology management in December.

Oh, we're doing that? I have a BA in communications, a Masters in Special Education, and a Masters in Educational Psychology. That's not STEM or Business or Accounting, but according to scores on the LSAT, and the Foreign Service Exam, I'm no dummy.

None of that changes the fact that - on average - people who go into STEM, and Business or Accounting are smarter than people who go into English, which is often their native language, to get a degree.

I also was a band director for 14 years

If you were a band director, particularly in middle school, my hat is off to you. It amazes me when they take 6th graders who have never played anything except maybe a week or two on the recorder, and have them playing recognizable music in six weeks.

and am an arts administrator for a school district.

So fork right off. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

You're taking it personally, when I was talking in generalities. If this board gets you so angry that you have to say "fork right off," instead of "I disagree with you because," you might consider another pastime.

 

[Snarky Sack]

I have a point because you jumped to a stupid conclusion.

Only to people whose first thought when someone uses the word "Tribal" in a sentence makes them think about Native Americans instead of the actual context in which it was used. It actually accents your "bias"

I'm just astounded that you believe such stupidity -- Even seem to be proud of having such a stupid belief.

Repetitive insults show your bias.

Maybe you do but most of us come here to give our opinion and conclusion based off facts that support our position regardless of our bias. Not because of our bias. You are a poor representation of academia.

So everyone who agrees with you has no bias, but everyone who disagrees with you is biased?

Do you know how idiotic that sounds?

 

[Saintamaniac]

Repetitive insults show your bias.

So everyone who agrees with you has no bias, but everyone who disagrees with you is biased?

Do you know how idiotic that sounds?

I insulted no one. I stated that the conclusion you jumped to was stupid.
I'm surprised again that you are a teacher. You really have a problem with reading comprehension.

 

[Snarky Sack]

I insulted no one. I stated that the conclusion you jumped to was stupid.
I'm surprised again that you are a teacher. You really have a problem with reading comprehension.

Was that an insult?

I'm trying to figure out if you know what the word means.

 

[brandon]

It was not a one-off, and it was not weird to the women and girls that it happened to. It was traumatic.

I want to protect women from any man that would rape them.

Spare me. You’re using women as a pawn in your crusade against trans people. If you cared about reducing the number of rapes, you’d be crusading against heterosexual men.

What about a transwoman who is a lesbian? Mightn't they rape a woman since they have a penis?

Or lesbian transwomen. Again, you insist that there is no way to tell the difference between a transwoman and someone pretending to be a woman. That pretty much ends your argument. The rest is filler.

I look forward to your statistics supporting the argument that the rape threat to women is actually transgender lesbians, and not heterosexual men.

How would you propose I target heterosexual men who pretend to be women without also targeting transwomen who look no different, and lesbian transwomen rapists?

That’s literally the entire point. You can’t, which makes bathroom laws in the name of rape prevention useless and simply a vector for your hate.

Since you're making it personal, I'll ask this: You have been careful to say that you are a heterosexual male. Do you have sex with transwomen? Or if you have some reason not to have sex with any women, would you have sex with transwomen? I don't need details. Just a yes or no.

I married my high school sweetheart, who is literally the only woman I’ve slept with. So I can’t really participate in your transgender fantasy hypotheticals.

But this does reveal what this is really about. You find transgender people icky, and that’s enough reason to discriminate against them.

Oh, we're doing that? I have a BA in communications, a Masters in Special Education, and a Masters in Educational Psychology. That's not STEM or Business or Accounting, but according to scores on the LSAT, and the Foreign Service Exam, I'm no dummy.

So by your own admission, since I am a STEM major and you aren’t, you aren’t as smart as me.

Knowing this, I’m sure you’ll now defer to my much greater intellect when I tell you your argument is horse shirt.

You're taking it personally, when I was talking in generalities. If this board gets you so angry that you have to say "fork right off," instead of "I disagree with you because," you might consider another pastime.

Nah, I’m not taking it personally. Just the argument that STEM majors are naturally smarter than English majors is a stupid argument with little relevance to the topic at hand.