A Gentle Reminder That Censoring Books Is Never A ‘Reasonable’ Solution
from the this-is-real-life dept
Conservatives are making the rounds again, placing op-eds and analytical pieces explaining how book bans aren’t really book bans. For example, Education Week published a column by a pair of authors from the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation trying to justify laws across the country that restrict and even remove certain texts from many public school libraries.
The authors, Max Eden and Jay Greene, wrote in their column that there is an overblown assumption that restricting particular texts for certain age groups is not banning. It is simply parental rights. Both go on to argue that these restrictions aren’t, well, restrictions at all. The term “book ban” is also utilized by critics of these policies for “partisan purpose.” They add that there is a considerable degree of these so-called restrictions being “reasonable.”
There is nothing reasonable about censorship, and you would have to be extremely misinformed if you assume that third graders are being required to read books the caliber of Fifty Shades of Gray.
At issue, in part, is LGBTQ+ subject material in books available to young adults. Greene is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He espouses the organization’s worldview that material, such as the prize-winning young adult graphic novel Gender Queer: A Memoir by illustrator Maia Kobabe, is somehow “pornographic” in nature and should ultimately be banned.
Greene has recently written that people shouldn’t be concerned over book bans because it is a manufactured hysteria propagated by the news media. Whether that’s true or not, he’s justifying an act that would make some conservatives a few decades ago squirm: censoring authors at the public schools in their communities. The media may have overblown some of this, but in no way has the narrative of conservatives banning books arisen from political elites controlling the news. It’s actually happening.
There is more than ample evidence to suggest that right-wingers, mainly social conservatives who have bought into the ‘gender ideology’ social contagion bullshit, are actively restricting and even prohibiting, in some cases, titles that deal with subject matter like sexuality, LGBTQ+, and related topics. Eden and Greene lose further credibility in their argument when their employers are actively supporting or tolerating the troubling screeds of conservative thought leaders laid out in a recent treatise on policy, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. I wrote about the Mandate for Leadership in August. Published by the right-wing astroturf outfit Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation is responsible for the book that openly calls for the First Amendment rights of those who propagate what they view as “porn” to be suspended and imprisoned. To wit, my dears:
“Look at America under the ruling and cultural elite today:…children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.”
“Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
Yeah, that’s totally reasonable. Greene works for the man who wrote this, Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts. Greene’s writing in Education Week is particularly telling as it is a means to verify that this is the real intention of the post-Trump conservative movement.
This type of advocacy is also antithetical to the spirit of the First Amendment. Censorship can be called many different things. Censorship is a method used by the politically powerful to impose incompatible views of a few on everyone else.
Censorship isn’t the solution. More education on these topics, including efforts to destigmatize certain groups and beliefs, is necessary.
Michael McGrady covers the tech side of the porn business, among other things.
Filed Under: book bans, censorship, libraries, schools
Companies: heritage foundation
Comments on “A Gentle Reminder That Censoring Books Is Never A ‘Reasonable’ Solution”
This is doubly absurd given that both AEI and Heritage actually are publishers in their own right. What would they say if Democrats suddenly decided that all think tank-published books should be removed from schools as libertarian ideas are deemed too subversive for democracy? Conservatives have lost the plot.
Re:
What will they say when one of their authors is banned because their name has sexual connotations? What would those pearl clutchers make of a female teacher with the surname Glasscock?
Re: Re:
Or “Wiener”. I have cousins with the “Wiener” surname, and for some reason their emails always get caught in the spam filter.
Re: Re:
That’s already happened in Alabama, apparently. A book about reading got false banned cause they were using keyword searching and the author’s last name was gay.
Re: Re:
Don’t be silly — it depends entirely on how they feel about the author. If they don’t like her, it will be presented as a deliberately provocative pseudonym. If she’s part of the tribe, they’ll condescendingly explain that it’s actually an ancient surname originating in 7th Century Warwickshire, England, relating to either a wooden hut and/or glass-blowing workshop.
Re:
You think their books are in public schools in the first place?
I actually have an autographed copy of Gender Queer, by happenstance: Maia Kobabe was selling them at the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo last year, and I attended on a lark. The people who call it “obscene” or “pornographic” are really telling on themselves: It’s a memoir by a person who just doesn’t like sex all that much. There’s a page where two characters in a monogamous, affectionate relationship indulge in some mostly-clothed fooling around before deciding that the activity was hotter in the imagination than the actuality. Daniel Craig stepping out of the water in Casino Royale was more steamy and showed more skin.
Homophobes think gay people don’t love each other—to them, “being gay” is a sex fetish. They think of gay men not as “two men who love each other”, but as “two men who have sex with each other”. To those bigots, the existence of gay people is inherently, explicitly, and exclusively sexual. Of course that means kids have to be protected from even hearing about it. (Extend that thinking to trans people, and you see where all the current transphobia comes from.)
In this context, “protect the children” is often coded language for “kids shouldn’t learn that queer people are actual people”. Nobody with any sense of reason wants children exposed to hardcore pornography. But to say that any expression of non-hetero sexuality should be off-limits to children—even something as anodyne as a gay couple sharing a kiss—gives away the game.
Re: Not their REAL issue
Conservatives don’t care about LGBTQ+ any more than they care about abortions.
Fascism needs an enemy. The Other. With the repeal of Roe v. Wade, this is the new fascist strawman of choice.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
What, because conservatives famously never mentioned LGBT stuff before Dobbs? Talk about a strawman…
Re:
I’ve talked to some of these people and I don’t think they’re actually capable of thinking of gay people without picturing gay sex, or trans people without picturing a woman with a penis (always a woman with a penis; it’s only ever trans women, never trans men). They have an unhealthy fixation on other people’s private parts.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
Stop trying to show porn to minors, groomer.
Re: Re:
shut the fuck up revenge porn freak
Re: Re:
Now now, people who support CSAM on social media platforms shouldn’t try to throw bricks at people…
Re: Re:
He wasn’t. Gender Queer isn’t even porn, from what I can tell.
Stephen was talking about simply being gay or trans, not sex or nudity. Note that being gay includes just having a romantic relationship with someone of the same sex even if no sex actually occurs, or just two guys kissing. That’s not porn.
He also said this:
In other words, he’s not trying to show porn to children at all. Quite the opposite.
Re: Re:
…projects the fan of child porn.
Fear of the spread of knowledge is a serious affliction in some groups.
Why is not surprising that Matthew Bennett’s positions are not his own?
Censorship is ALWAYS wrong
A public library is PUBLIC, whether a traditional library or a school library, and nobody has the right to determine what is acceptable for ALL students.
If you want to control what is available to YOUR children, send them to a school with the Bible and Trump’s “Art of the Deal” as the only books in the library.
Re:
“If you want to control what is available to YOUR children, send them to a school with the Bible and Trump’s “Art of the Deal” as the only books in the library.”
Florida then ..
Re:
Bull. Schools make a determination that a book is acceptable every time they get a new book. Pretty sure the school library isn’t filled with romance novels even if they’re popular in the regular library. (And if the student wants to check out such a book from the regular library, the librarian isn’t going to stop them, so the student isn’t being prevented from accessing the book.)
Re: Re:
This isn’t about libriarians or school boards deciding what books are suited for their learning goals, asshole.
This is about states making laws that force libriarians to make certain ideologiacl decisions or face jail. Or worse.
One is censorship, and it isn’t librarians making the final choice to meet actual library or school goals.
Re: Re:
You obviously haven’t been following the news, as the same people are threatening to defund public libraries if they do not the same books remove from their shelves. I haven’t heard of the pressurizing sellers yet, but that must be their next target.
Re: Re:
We’re not talking about librarians or schools making such a decision; we’re talking about state governments.
Also, have you been to a school library? There are tons of romance novels there.
i been wondering that my self
'The characters aren't straight OR being shamed for it? It must be porn!'
Greene has recently written that people shouldn’t be concerned over book bans because it is a manufactured hysteria propagated by the news media.
I mean half of that is right, just not the half he wants people to think it is.
People very much should be concerned over the attempted widespread censorship because the freakout over ‘porn in libraries’ very much is a ‘manufactured hysteria propagated by the news media’, pushed by anti-LGBTQ bigots on their trans-bashing crusade that not-so-coincidentally seems to be hitting any group not heterosexual as additional ‘collateral damage’.
Re:
I remember, after a TBI wandering the local town wandering if I’d bothering continuing after the accident, ducking into a bookshop, and finding Allen Ginsberg’s poems in a book titled “Contemporary American Poetry” published by Penguin. It’s one of the turning points in my life – not that I’m gay, but that he wrote with love and humor and I needed that just then.
The unmentionables who would happily censor publishers, libraries, writers, poets, and the rest of the world, would’ve also been happy to have me die. As long as people didn’t find Allen Ginsberg and discover for themselves that homosexuality’s not a bogy monster, it’s just the way some people are wired. (And having read all the way through both the Bible (both Jewish and Christian) and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, I can assure you, if you want to censor sexual speech, those are two good places to start.)
Greene has recently written that people shouldn’t be concerned over book bans because it is a manufactured hysteria propagated by the news media.
Why yes, it is manufactured hysteria, so why don’t you knock it off with the ridiculous book banning?
Re: Even more worrying
“Greene has recently written that people shouldn’t be concerned over book bans because it is a manufactured hysteria propagated by the news media.”
Really we should be deeply worried about manufactured hysteria, because that happens before pogroms, lynchings, and genocides.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
“ There is nothing reasonable about censorship, and you would have to be extremely misinformed if you assume that third graders are being required to read books the caliber of Fifty Shades of Gray”
Wait, I thought you said censorship was unreasonable? Should they not be required to read 50 shades of gray.
Re:
Your reading comprehension needs work. I think you’ll find that your local library has plenty of books for people working on their reading skills.
Re:
Why do you believe that anything not banned is mandatory?
Re: Re:
It reminds me of Christian Nationalist thinking: If the government can’t promote Christianity (per the principle of the separation of church and state), obviously it’s promoting atheism. For proof, I point to Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Re: Re:
Ummm… because that’s classic authoritarian thinking.
Re:
There’s only two good excuses to be exposed to that insult to writing and literature.
First, as an object lesson (to adults) on how to NOT write BDSM literature. That’s a three week long course AT LEAST, twice a week, with actual writing assignments AND assessment.
And lastly, if certain comedians would make an audiobook out of it. Sadly, Gilbert Gottfried has crossed the rainbow bridge and is presumably regaling tales about how he one recorded lines from this literary farce to an unsuspecting public to other souls.
Re:
Not requiring a given text to be read is not censorship. The point is that no one is doing the thing the censorship is supposedly trying to prevent, so the alleged reasons given make no sense.
Re:
“required”
There’s a lot of words that indicate that you don’t understand the arguments, but I think that’s the most obvious one
The even more hilarious thing about these book bans is that people are assume first-graders are being taught about gender and sex. And these very same people never think about the fact that a first-grader, or kindergartner, or even second/third/fourth/fifth-graders, even care about gender and sex. To them, kissing is icky. Literally children don’t even start thinking about sex until 8th-9th grade, at least typically. Some children think about dating before then (one of my friends was thinking about dating in 6th grade) but there’s a very, very big difference between dating and sexuality, and it’s questionable whether a 6th-grader even truly understands what dating even really means. There is absolutely no reason why a teacher would want to teach a first-grader or third-grader about gender/sexuality/sex because the children wouldn’t even understand it and would just think it’s icky, and the teachers know this, and that’s why it (isn’t) happening. If teachers are indeed being furries around third-graders (as one republican I know is claiming), I’m pretty sure the response from the kids is something like, “ooooooo, teacher, you look really cool!” Like, these kids seriously don’t give a fuck about anything even remotely close to sex. Which is why this hysteria is so ridiculous and hilarious: if an 8/9-year-old actually does read books like “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” they’ll definitely not be thinking about how it could be sexual. Not even remotely. And that’s assuming they don’t look at the pictures, go “iwww,” and put it back on the shelf and move on. So next time you hear a republican bitching about book bans and how these books are pornographic, remember these two things:
Re:
These book bans have very little to do with actually protecting the children from (allegedly) “inappropriate materials” , but a great deal to do with protecting some parents from “feeling uncomfortable”.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
No books are being “censored.” Parents who want their minor-aged children to have access to filth like Gender Queer can buy it for them from Amazon.
Re:
Running with that logic would you be in favor of any and all bibles being removed from all public and school libraries since people can always purchase such filth online?
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
That’s a local question for each community to address.
I am in favor of activist librarians being liquidated from their positions if that’s what a community supports, however.
Re: Re: Re:
Would you also, by extension, be in in favor of “liquidating” activist judges as well?
I mean, there’s a 6-3 split in the Supreme Court Bench, and at least one of them have been caught taking, ahem, bribes…
Re: Re: Re:
“This book where people abandon the idea of having sex is evil pornography! But my book? That has multiple sex scenes and explicit dialogue? Let’s leave that to the community.”
Your deflection is rather telling.
Re: Re: Re:
Better idea is liquidating the dozen fugitive mental patients demanding the censorship.
Re: Re: Re:
How can the presence of the Bible—a book rife with depictions of sex, including rape—be “a local question for each community to address” if you believe any book with any level of sexual content deserves to be banned from library shelves across the nation?
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re: Re:2
You’re confused.
I believe that books that specifically promote homosexuality, the queer lifestyle, and gender identity ideology generally should not be accessible to children in public or school libraries.
Re: Re: Re:3
shut the fuck up homophobic transphobic loser
Re: Re: Re:3
What reason can you possibly offer that would make your argument convincing? (Note: Saying “all those books are porn” or an equivalent of that bad faith argument won’t work here.)
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re: Re:4
You’re deluded if you think I care about trying to convince you of anything, let alone the rightness of protecting children from radical gender ideology.
I just enjoy denouncing communists and arguing with you and the other pinkos here.
Re: Re: Re:5
shut the fuck up right wing transphobic homophobic low life no body
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re: Re:6
Cry harder, bigot.
Re: Re: Re:7
me bigot? how?
Re: Re: Re:8
Projection; it’s Hyman’s only weapon.
Re: Re: Re:5
Do tell me, where’s the fucking commies?
Oh wait.
THEY DON’T FUCKING EXIST.
Re: Re: Re:5
[Projects facts contrary to extensive evidence]
Re: Re: Re:5
Says a lot about you that you devote your time to going to a site you hate, reading articles you hate written by people you hate, and arguing in the comments with people you hate for no reason other than to stir up more hate and anger.
None of it is good.
Re: Re: Re:6
It’s amazing that there exists such sad pathetic losers that their only social stimulation consists of being assholes to get a reaction out of people.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re: Re:6
Shut up, Hamas-sympathizer.
Re: Re: Re:7
…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
Re: Re: Re:3
What about on display in bookshops, or visibly listed on Amazon? Would you remove all mention of LGBT people from Wikipedia and other online resources?
You are not about censorship other than driving the material and people so far into the closet that LGBT people cannot exist in public.
Re: Re: Re:3
For what reason?
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
It would be entirely legal for all public libraries to refust to carry the bible. It certainly would not be “banning” the bible. It just would be the library choosing not to carry it. (keep in mind, again, that library is part of the government)
The thing is, most people wouldn’t be for that. They are however for public libraries not carrying porn.
Re: Re: Re:
ok revenge porn enjoyer
Re: Re: Re:
Okay, Matthew.
By your logic, public libraries can also choose to stock porn if they so desire. The fact that they have chosen not to stock Debbie Does Dallas or Playboy or any of the commercially available porn titles seems to have been lost on you.
Instead, they have been, under pressure from white supremacist governors and senators and the like, to not stock books that normalize LGBT+ behavior because fascism.
Again, Matthew, by your own logic, libraries should be free to choose whatever they want to stock. And so far, outside of Sports Illustrated they have NOT chosen to stock any commercially available pornographic title, movie, comic or what have you.
Such lack of trust in librarians… wonder if it’s because they let people have access to information they would never afford to get?
Re:
Except they are… by definition. Do you need a dictionary? You could probably find one in a library.
You might even be able to find the book you’re talking. Which, as another commenter has already pointed out, is “a memoir by a person who just doesn’t like sex all that much.”
Re:
That assume that they have access to the Internet and can afford to but the book. The idea of a library is that it allows people to explore ideas beyond what are taught at school, while you appear to want to thought control them to approved ideas only..
Re:
Banning a book from public libraries is censorship. It’s the government imposing the restriction, and the presumption is that public libraries don’t refuse to stock texts if they receive them.
Also, I’m pretty sure that Gender Queer isn’t porn, and I don’t see why it should be removed from high schools.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
This is funny, cux the lot of you insisted that censorship on Twitter wasn’t “censorship” cuz you could say that shit somewhere else.
Of course you can call it censorship but it’s still fine, it’s just the people donm’t want to sponser that. Is the the radio refusing to play your song “censorship”? Not generally. what it definitely isn’t is “banning”. Nothing was fucking banned. The library (government) is just refusing to distribute your porn.
You seem awfully hung up on whether “X” is porn, but the thing is, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that the majority of people don’t want it to be in the library.
Re: Re: Re:
That you’re illiterate does not make anyone else a hypocrite.
Re: Re: Re:
Perhaps you’re not familiar with the First Amendment? The first few words were “CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW…”
State governments are also implicitly included there. It’s what Ron Desantis BROKE with his library bullshit.
A radio station is effectively a capitalist endeavor. To your fascist idiot brain, that means it receives (presumably white supremacist) cash to air certain things.
A library… doesn’t do that.
And regardless, Ron Desantis and his ilk have enacted laws effectively banning certain books from being stocked. Why then does Desantis and his ilk distrust librarians to do their jobs? Porn already isn’t on library shelves.
And personally, I’d also prefer that they also throw out lad mags (like FHM, is that still in print?), any tltabloid that features scantily-clad human being, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit editions and, uh, Men’s Health as well. Topless men are just as sexy as bikini-clad females, yanno. Just to be fair to the no-porn clause, you know. No sexualization of the human form.
That’s weird, I seem to remember you advocating for CSAM on Twitter… Do you really want to push that?
Again, so little trust for libriarians…are you sure it’a because you’re against uplifting the poor?
Re: Re: Re:
And because the government wasn’t imposing it.
The library isn’t refusing to do so. The government is refusing to allow the library to do so. And the government is bound by the first amendment, which says that they can’t discriminate speech based on content, which this absolutely is. And that is absolutely a ban.
It’s not the majority of people, but either way, that doesn’t matter. The government cannot discriminate based on content, with obscenity being the only real, relevant exception there. If it’s not porn, it necessarily isn’t obscene.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Censorship Hypocrisy
Yeah, I sense the indignance is only because of the content. Can I solicit everyone’s support to stop banning Uncle Remus books and Dr. Seuss’s McElligot’s Pool?
How about some Huckleberry Finn?
The left is about nothing but book bans and censorship and are now angry they’re being stopped from sexually grooming children.
Re:
Somehow you are confusing public opinion with government action, one has the force of law and the other the market pressures. Also, one is prohibited under the first amendment, the other is not.
Re:
Remind me, who has been planning and carrying out tightly coordinated efforts to ban dozens of books by and about queer people and people of color around the entire United States for the past two years: right-wingers or left-wingers? (And no, saying that groups like Moms for Liberty are “left-wing psy-ops” is not a valid argument.)
Re: Re: 'This torch I'm holding is their fault, not mine!'
Seeing republicans/conservatives accusing ‘the left’ of censorship and book bans is like looking at someone dousing a house with gasoline as you watch all the while complaining about how their neighbor is a pyromaniac who needs to be stopped.
Re:
So, where are these Communists in America? Or any left-leaning intellectual?
I don’t see any trace of the former, and there are very few of the latter left…
Meanwhile, how’s Dershowitz holding up?
Re:
Ah yes, cause all the non-sexual books that were also banned (like And Tango Makes Three) are ‘pornographic’ to you.
All you’re saying is “I need therapy and refuse to get it, because I think I’m justified by cherry picking my own holy book and ignoring the parts that don’t support my bigoted arguments”
Re:
Considering I genuinely don’t care about the content except to note that it’s not actually porn or the library also serves adults or older teens, and I’d be okay with things like Mein Kampf or other racist or far right content being even in elementary school libraries, I think you’re full of it.
I’m not aware of anyone banning those in the first place. I’m aware that some publishers/authors’ estates have decided not to publish at least some of those, but that’s not a ban. A refusal to publish additional copies of a given book is not a book ban if the government is not involved. That’s just discretion on the part of the publishers/estates. I’m never happy when someone stops publishing a book, but it was bound to happen someday, and it’s ultimately their decision, not mine.
If you’re blaming people pressuring these companies to do so, a) I have seen no evidence that that is even the case, and b) that’s their right under the 1st Amendment. Either way, though, it’s still not a book ban.
If you have evidence that the government is banning (or attempting to ban) these books, please present it. If that is the case, I will happily support efforts to stop those bans to the extent I am able. Otherwise, there’s nothing relevant for me to support ending here.
The left isn’t trying to groom children. That is a myth, and propagating this myth is doing a massive disservice to victims of actual grooming.
Re: Re:
“Funny” thing is, right-wingers are the ones who are more likely to want indoctrination in schools. After all, they’re the ones who keep trying to insert one specific religion into public schools.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
Why do you support encouraging vulnerable children and young people to pay doctors to physically mutilate and chemically castrate them?
Just curious.
Re: Re: Re:
shut the fuck up jhon you trans phobe loser
Re: Re: Re:
Your meth habits, Jhon.
Re: Re: Re:
How much money is Xi paying you to spew such filth, Jhon?
I don’t think you qualify for any sort of parole…
Re: Re: Re:
I don’t, especially not for young children.
Re:
Nobody mentally competent asserts a publisher not wanting to publish something is “censorship” the way you do.
Wait, huh?
Isn’t the general Democrat position on content that, as long as it’s available elsewhere, it’s not censorship?
Don’t both articles and commentators here say there is no such thing as localised censorship?
Guess the opinion changes now that something you care about has been published out of places you want it.
I stand by what I’ve said most of my life, once it’s removed, it’s been censored. Be careful what you wish for.
When you can distinguish between what conversations you do not allow in your own home, and somebody else telling you what conversations to prevent you will understand the difference between censorship and moderation.
Re:
No mater how localised or limited, intentional removal of content is censorship.
Be it legal censorship (X, FB, etc) or questionable (as here in a school library), or illegal (the government demanding removal of “misinformation”)
Sony censors games. Just because I can get that title on Switch or Xbox uncensored doesn’t change the fact that it was censored by Sony
Blockbuster used to rent censored movies. Just because I could go down the street to XYZ video (yes a real shoppe) doesn’t make the blockbuster edits any less censorship.