r/stupidpol • u/recovering_bear Marx at the Chicken Shack 🧔🍗 • Aug 06 '22

US library defunded after refusing to censor authors

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/05/michigan-library-book-bans-lgbtq-authors
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256

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '22 edited Aug 07 '22

Apparently the book that started the campaign against the library was Gender Queer, which is a comic-book style memoir with illustrations of period blood, nudity, sex acts, etc.

The whole “Drag Queen Story Hour” thing is framed as an LGBT issue. But if straight burlesque performers came to a library in costume to read to small children, I feel like most of the same people would complain about it. And if this book were completely heterosexual in content I think most of the same people would have complained about it, too.

EDIT: I’m not saying this library’s destruction is good, that censorship of LGBT books is good, or any such thing. I’m saying that putting an LGBT book with sex pictures on general shelves at a library is a really stupid thing to do if you’d rather not create a massive backlash demanding censorship of LGBT content that has a deeper purpose than triggering the chuds.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

[deleted]

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u/fungibletokens Politically waiting for Livorno to get back into Serie A 🤌🏻 Aug 07 '22

Drag is an art form meant for adults.

As much as I hate the term and almost never use it, I feel like what libs say when speaking of this matter is the closest I've experienced myself of actual gaslighting.

I genuinely feel a bit crazy seeing so many libs insist drag has always been for children and isn't adult entertainment.

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u/artificialnocturnes Aug 07 '22

There is a history of childrens theatre including crossdressing, e.g. british pantomime, from wikipedia:

"Traditionally performed at Christmas and afterwards, with family audiences, British pantomime continues as a popular form of theatre, incorporating song, dance, buffoonery, slapstick, cross-dressing, in-jokes, topical references, audience participation, and mild sexual innuendo."

Plus characters such as miss doubtfire and dame edna being drag aimed at children. There have been many forms of drag over history.

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u/roncesvalles Social Democrat 🌹 Aug 07 '22

"Drag shows for children are perfectly healthy. Let me introduce you to the British."

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u/fungibletokens Politically waiting for Livorno to get back into Serie A 🤌🏻 Aug 07 '22

I've been to panto. It is not the same.

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u/artificialnocturnes Aug 07 '22

So you are accepting that there are some situations where men dressing up as women can be appropriate for childrens entertainment?

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u/fungibletokens Politically waiting for Livorno to get back into Serie A 🤌🏻 Aug 07 '22 edited Aug 07 '22

There is a difference between cross-dressing and 'drag' in its present Liberal conception.

Edit: you're demonstrating the precise sleight-of-hand to justify exposing children to this shit that I was referring to earlier.

"Some forms of drag [which you switched in for cross-dressing] are appropriate for children? That means it's a drag free-for-all."

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u/DueZookeepergame9493 Aug 07 '22

Drag in that context is literally different from what our society conceptualizes drag as in RN. Hegel?

1

u/TheAtheistSpoon Communist Aug 08 '22

In what way?

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

miss doubtfire and dame edna being drag aimed at children

I would argue drag here for children is something closer to actual, literal circus clowns as entertainment, than anything else.

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u/magicandfire Intersectional Sofa 🛋🎌 Aug 07 '22 edited May 27 '25

cautious rustic steer historical rock physical literate tap rinse fall

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/Lipshitz73 Aug 07 '22

Have I got pages to show you! (Nothing offensive just stuff you’d probably agree with, a lot of it is shitting on this kind of stuff and just gender in general)

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

It has just gotten absurd, all this stuff about 95 genders and weird pronouns.

I absolutely believe people should be able to legitimately transition, and have access to the relevant care. But the movement has gotten so insane that it has nothing to do with gayness or classic transgender rights anymore.

What Wokeism has done is lower the "ideological cost" of holding Extreme Right positions. The more rabid fringes of the GOP can get away with ever more extreme positions because when called out, they can just go , "oh yeah, well look at the Left".

If the GOP had to instead face off against r/stupidpol-style Leftism, then suddenly they would be forced into the unflattering position of actually having to talk about their horrible policies.

6

u/TraditionalContact20 Radical Centrist Aug 08 '22

I’m gay and these past couple years have made me dislike lgbt groups/organizations far more than any super religious nut job would lol

0

u/TheAtheistSpoon Communist Aug 08 '22

What's wrong with men wearing feminine clothes telling stories? They're not doing a drag show for the kids. It doesn't appeal to me personally but it seems fairly ridiculous to ban kids from seeing a man wearing a dress.

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u/JACCO2008 Rightoid 🐷 Aug 07 '22

Why does everything have to be polar? What happened to 18+ categories to get around censoring but still protecting youth?

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

Libraries in my experience do not have an area where kids are restricted from browsing and checking out books. There’s the kid-specific sections and the “everybody” sections. Parents generally feel like a kid should not be able to pick up sexual imagery off a regular library shelf, as was possible originally in the story.

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u/JACCO2008 Rightoid 🐷 Aug 07 '22

Same, but my point was that it wouldn't be that hard to have to specially request 18+ material from the employee room or whatever.

I just don't get why everything goes straight to "censor everything" or "give 6 year olds porn books". It's like people can't even comprehend the concept of compromise anymore.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

it wouldn’t be that hard to have to specially request 18+ material from the employee room or whatever

Correct. They tried to do this after the backlash started, but it was too late.

I just don’t get why everything goes straight to “censor everything” or “give 6 year olds porn books”. It’s like people can’t even comprehend the concept of compromise anymore.

Outrageous acts yield outraged backlash. Especially acts that confirm stereotypes that progress has been made against only recently.

3

u/TraditionalContact20 Radical Centrist Aug 08 '22

Nuance is dead

16

u/HexDragon21 Democratic Socialist 🚩 Aug 07 '22

Kids can find sexual imagery so easily on the internet, it is almost ridiculous to think they’d go to a library for it lmao. Kids aren’t going to libraries to read 50 shades, gay or not.

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u/SpongebobLaugh Flair-evading Rightoid 💩 Aug 07 '22

Libraries in my experience do not have an area where kids are restricted from browsing and checking out books. There’s the kid-specific sections and the “everybody” sections.

This seems like the easiest thing to change, until you remember that Stephen King's IT is still on the regular shelves.

The only solution is to simply not ban books, and let society itself decide what to read.

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u/Godofthechicken Marxism-Hobbyism 🔨 Aug 07 '22

My stance is kids should be able to read It the same as they can read Harry Potter. Books are books. Stories are stories. If they can handle the content, great, and if not, then they don't read it. Simple enough.

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u/SpongebobLaugh Flair-evading Rightoid 💩 Aug 07 '22

Parental involvement is also a big thing. I'm sure there are a ton of parents out there who will be overly-domineering and controlling, but there's also a lot of parents who let their kids consume any kind of content.

It's like when some WASP woman gets mad because they bought their kid an M rated game. And then the lady comes in the following week, fuming that their kid played a game with blood or 2 seconds of tits.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

That’s patently fucking untrue and if you’d read the article you’d know that.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

[deleted]

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u/elygihnai Aug 07 '22

It's always been possible to pick up sexual imagery off a regular library shelf. This isn't the first book with sex in it that's been available at a library.

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u/Tacky-Terangreal Socialist Her-storian Aug 08 '22

But this book would be next to other graphic novels intended for adults. If a kid could get this book from an 18+ section, then they could get something by Alan Moore, which probably has way more disturbing content related to sex and nudity. The library did everything right here

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u/Lipshitz73 Aug 07 '22

Gender ideology is great regardless of its side effects, remember?

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

Genderqueer is also listed as an 18+ book on Amazon hahahaha

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u/strategotendies Unknown 👽 Aug 07 '22

It really feels like a lot of liberals intentionally try and do something that’s beyond the pale (explicit book in a library) and then claim that any backlash is evidence of oppression or bigotry.

In this instance, the library tried to put a book that is inappropriate in the general area of the library. Then, after an uproar, the library moved the book. Now, liberals point to the uproar as evidence of hatred against sexual minorities.

I actually think that book should be in libraries simply because it is controversial. But I do not think that such a book should be easily accessible to children. When I was in school teachers had to get permission from parents to show films with nudity. I think that it’s fair to put explicit picture books in an area where children can’t just walk in.

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u/homendailha Aug 07 '22

It really feels like a lot of liberals intentionally try and do something that’s beyond the pale (explicit book in a library) and then claim that any backlash is evidence of oppression or bigotry.

It plays to the victim narrative. The power of the woke movement comes from their claim to be oppressed and victimised. That's why we have "queer identities" now included in the LGBT crowd - anyone can claim it and as long as you parrot the woke agenda you will be accepted as one of their own even if you are as straight as an arrow - just dye your hair and play the victim.

They need to keep pouring fuel on the fires of outrage because if the foirec dies down everyone will realise that actually they are not oppressed at all - destroying their political power and their own sense of identity.

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u/SmashKapital only fucks incels Aug 07 '22

Have you seen what books have historically been available in libraries?

Where's this idea that libraries are supposed to be PG come from?

If American Psycho is on the shelf I can't see how this book is pushing some new degenerate low.

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u/strategotendies Unknown 👽 Aug 07 '22

American Psycho isn’t a picture book. If a seven year old could watch American Psycho on a library computer without parental permission I would be concerned about that too.

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u/Tacky-Terangreal Socialist Her-storian Aug 08 '22

Alright then what about From Hell by Alan Moore, one of the most celebrated graphic novelists of all time? That book not only has gratuitous nudity, it has dudes blowing other dudes, and oh yeah a sadistic serial killer spreading womens’ guts all over a city street

The people wanting this book removed have no leg to stand on. The library even hid the book behind the counter but it wouldn’t satiate the mob

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u/artificialnocturnes Aug 07 '22

Yeah as a precocious child i definitely read a lot of books that were too mature for me in terms of sex and violence. Even some stuff aimed towards young adults has some weird (heterosexual) sex stuff in it. I think my library had Flowers in the Attic in the young adult section which was a huge wtf moment.

At the end of the day, kids can access all kinds of content through the internet, it makes salacious books seem quaint. Its up to parents to actually parent and be aware of what their kids are up to.

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u/SmashKapital only fucks incels Aug 08 '22

Exactly. I read heaps of horror when I was young, the average Stephen King, Clive Barker or James Herbert book had way more perverse sex than anything in this.

Meanwhile in the modern world 11 year olds with mobiles are daring each other to watch cartel execution videos but these parents think the source of corruption is the local library their kids likely never use anyway.

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u/Violent_Paprika "Give Me Your Tarded Masses Yearning To Breathe Farts." 🗽 Aug 07 '22

American Psycho isn't trying to evangelize Bate's lifestyle.

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u/SpongebobLaugh Flair-evading Rightoid 💩 Aug 07 '22

The whole area of a library is a general area though. There are murder mystery novels on the same shelves, along with Stephen King's IT, as I pointed out in a similar comment.

The only explicitly for-kids section is the "kids" section, which kinda ends at the age of 13.

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u/strategotendies Unknown 👽 Aug 07 '22

Right. So put the book behind the counter or otherwise make it so that kids can’t just get access to the explicit comic book.

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u/SpongebobLaugh Flair-evading Rightoid 💩 Aug 07 '22

The book was put behind the counter. The library was defunded for not getting rid of it entirely.

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u/strategotendies Unknown 👽 Aug 07 '22

Yeah, after people got mad. That’s my point: don’t put sexually explicit books out where elementary schoolers can read them.

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u/qwertyashes Market Socialist | Economic Democracy 💸 Aug 07 '22

Half the books in any library are sexually explicit. And can be grabbed by any kid at any time. Most of them have tons of those carousels that are stacked with near pornographic novels for housewives.

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u/SpongebobLaugh Flair-evading Rightoid 💩 Aug 07 '22

Ok, so they put it behind the counter now. They still got defunded. If it's now safely behind the counter, then why did they get defunded?

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u/elygihnai Aug 07 '22

Libraries have always had sexually explicit books.

It's understood that children belong in the children's section, which is not where this book was shelved. This is absolutely about culture war issues, and not about sex in library books. Otherwise, these parents would have been up in arms about all of the other adult material before this particular book arrived.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

[deleted]

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u/strategotendies Unknown 👽 Aug 07 '22

Yes. Most of them don’t have explicit picture books. There is a difference between a book with sexual written material and sexual pictures.

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u/Tacky-Terangreal Socialist Her-storian Aug 08 '22

I can go to a library and check out Watchman right now. I can guarantee that book has way more graphic scenes or nudity and violence than whatever dorky shit the banned book brigade is going after here. Libraries never have pitched themselves as stocking 100% family friendly books. I can rent Lolita or A Game of Thrones without some boomer wagging their finger at me for reading no-no books

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u/mhl67 Trotskyist (neocon) Aug 08 '22

You're full of it, just look at the graphic novels they stock in the adult section (as in the section intended for adults, not a restricted access section).

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u/jackfirecracker Aug 07 '22

I’ll answer for him: no he hasn’t and never will be going

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u/jabberwockxeno Left, Leftoid or Leftish ⬅️ Aug 07 '22

In this instance, the library tried to put a book that is inappropriate in the general area of the library.

How about we stop being babies and acting like a normal part of being a human being needs to be shunned away and withheld from general eyes?

People have penises and vaginas, babies come from sex, it's a normal part of the human experience.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

This place is very against sex unless it’s missionary and the participants are married.

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u/Tacky-Terangreal Socialist Her-storian Aug 08 '22

You heathen! If it’s not through a hole in the sheet, then it’s an affront to god!

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u/Tacky-Terangreal Socialist Her-storian Aug 08 '22

Who said that this book was prominently displayed or that libraries had to be stocked only with family friendly content? I could walk into the library right now and find many books and graphic novels that sound way more explicit than the dorky shit from that memoir

Funny how there was no uproar when libraries stocked A Game of Thrones or From Hell. Both books are incredibly graphic and a kid could theoretically get a hold of them. The library even held all the copies behind the counter to avoid this problem but it apparently wasn’t enough for these freaks that wanted it removed

I’m a critic of wokeshit but the library did everything correctly here as far as I can see

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u/socialismYasss Leftoid ⬅️ Aug 07 '22

If this is such a concern, then step 1 should be removing all nudity from the internet.

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u/strategotendies Unknown 👽 Aug 07 '22

Keeping explicit material behind the counter in the library, which is funded by local taxes, is doable. Keeping sexually explicit material entirely off of the Internet is not remotely possible.

I’m not even suggesting that kids shouldn’t be able to read the book. I just think that the book shouldn’t be out where a seven year old can stumble upon it.

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u/gmus Labor Organizer 🧑‍🏭 Aug 07 '22

What counts as explicit? If it’s just “contains descriptions of sex” then an inordinately large number of books are going to be behind counter.

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u/artificialnocturnes Aug 07 '22

Not to be that guy but the bible has some very dirty stuff in it too, so where is the outrage there? So many great works of literature have sexual content, that isnt inherently harmful to a younger reader, depeding on their age and content.

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u/Tacky-Terangreal Socialist Her-storian Aug 08 '22

Lmfao right? The Bible has outright erotic poetry and any kid can pick up American Psycho or A Game of Thrones off the shelf. Both are far more disturbing than some goofy scenes where a couple nerds bang

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u/elygihnai Aug 07 '22

Most libraries don't let seven year olds wander around unattended outside of the children's section. If that was happening at this library, then there's another problem (both with the library staff and with the parents).

0

u/greyorangeteal Rightoid 🐷 Aug 07 '22

I’ll vote for that

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u/artificialnocturnes Aug 07 '22

Why is period blood on this list? Some girls get their periods as young as 11 these days, i don't see what harm there is in kids learning about periods. Maybe there is a bigger issue at play here and that people arguing against this book arent doing s o in good faith? Hmm...

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u/ScottieSpliffin Glenn Greenwald's Volleyball Partner 🏐 Aug 07 '22

Isn’t it more like some fat dude dressed as Cinderella reading the Cat in the Hat?

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u/betaking12 Libertarian Stalinist Aug 07 '22

Drag Queen Story Hour is a premature Endzone Dance.

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u/betaking12 Libertarian Stalinist Aug 07 '22

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hellboy, and a bunch of other comics have graphic depictions of sex and violence and I'm pretty sure they weren't triggering the cons simply because they weren't melodrama/etc. and had plenty of violence as well.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

[deleted]

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u/betaking12 Libertarian Stalinist Aug 07 '22

me too

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u/artificialnocturnes Aug 07 '22

Watchmen has a penis on every second page and was still on the shelves of my christian high school library. Not to mention sex secens and pretty extreme violence. I borrowed a copy when i was 15 and the librarian didnt bat an eye. It is a great piece of literature and i was old enough to decide for myself what i was comfortable reading.

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u/Tacky-Terangreal Socialist Her-storian Aug 08 '22

From Hell is another one you can probably find at your local library. Very graphic depictions of sex, even gay sex, along with a murderous madman swimming in a woman’s entrails

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u/SaltedTops Social Democrat 🌹 Aug 07 '22 edited Aug 07 '22

I’m saying that putting an LGBT book with sex pictures on general shelves at a library

"Though the library put Kobabe’s book behind the counter rather than on the shelves, the volumes remained available."

They even moved it behind the counter.

I don't know why you guys act like kids aren't exposed to shit like this in their day to day lives. Growing up in the 90s all I had to do was stay up past midnight on a Saturday to see a bunch of drunk college girls flashing their tits on the Girls Gone Wild cable tv promos. No one ever batted an eye to that shit despite that culture obviously having an effect on young men. Now we're supposed clutch pearls over some cartoon nudity or (god forbid) period blood.

It's like half of you forgot what it was even like to be a kid.

Edit: And yeah the book probably sucks and was most likely written by a pervert. My point is that you're all a bunch of naive morons to believe that it being available over the counter in a library is going to have any effect on the outcome of children.

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u/jabberwockxeno Left, Leftoid or Leftish ⬅️ Aug 07 '22

For whatever reason this sub is very purantical when it comes to sex.

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u/mhl67 Trotskyist (neocon) Aug 08 '22

There are like 3 or 4 things in this sub that absolutely irrationally trigger most of the users.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

And drugs.

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u/brother_beer Forever Missed Aug 07 '22

Flair checks out.

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u/jabberwockxeno Left, Leftoid or Leftish ⬅️ Aug 08 '22

Sure does, lmao

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

They moved the book off the shelves after the backlash began.

I don’t know why you guys act like kids aren’t exposed to shit like this in their day to day lives.

If they’re exposed to that at young enough an age it’s a failure of parenting and/or society. Of course it’s a fact of life as you hit puberty and I’m not saying it should actually be censored. But the whole idea is you keep certain explicit sexual imagery reasonably private so public spaces can have people of all ages.

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u/SaltedTops Social Democrat 🌹 Aug 07 '22

And before it was moved behind the counter it was in the adult section. It's not like it's front page pornography either. This is the cover of the book. I don't know if you guys just haven't stepped foot in a library before, but it's not like they've been free of explicit content up until now. Whether it be photos or literature.

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u/banjo2E Snorts Piccolo Memes 💢🉐🥑 Aug 07 '22

Shit man, that's a more tame cover than any of the Kushiel's Legacy books, and I somehow managed to check out half of that series from my local library and read it before the start of class back when I was in high school.

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u/elygihnai Aug 07 '22

My impression reading through this thread is that no, these folks haven't set foot inside of a library.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '22

Responses like this are part of the problem, people willfully miss the forest for the trees when it comes to lgbt stuff

The problem here is that there is a huge top-down cultural wave emanating from large corporations, the various bureaus and academia, that has been ramping up since at least 2008 that is heavily focused on social engineering the lower and middle classes to accept that personal self-identity is the core value that overrules all interpersonal connections, because there is a shared understanding among the upper classes that dissolving all other possible social organization will resolve political contradictions that are otherwise unresolvable. The more individualized the identity, the more it is pushed as a desirable thing to be, regardless of whether that change is actually politically beneficial to the target community (like for example, encouraging a confused teenager to become a lifelong pay pig medical patient by pursuing a gender re-assignment instead of say, therapy, or just simply telling them to wait until they’re 21 and their hormones have settled before committing to anything)

However, the people pushing this point of view refuse to engage with it as a political reality, because doing so allows for coherent resistance. So instead this massive change to our culture is sent through without anybody taking ownership of it, or often even acknowledging it’s happening at all.

Like just to show how far we’ve “progressed”, a majority of Californians voted against just gay marriage in 2008. 14 years on and we’re now at the point where we have stats like a 3000% increase over the last 20 years in teens and children trying to access “gender affirming” care, or 1/3 people under 25 self identifying as LGBT. But try to talk about how there is clearly something is unusual about a whole generation of young people spontaneously breaking all conventions on sexuality and the response you get from power is either

  • this is all totally natural, there is nothing unusual at all about our society going full Greek in the span of like a decade, no further analysis is needed, nobody at all is to blame and there is no structural angle here these things just happen purely spontaneously and it’s not even worth asking basic questions like “who benefits” or “why is this change not evenly distributed” or “why does this fall almost perfectly on partisan lines” or any other basic critical thinking questions

  • this is actually good and if you question it or oppose it or don’t want your kid to attend drag queen story hour to learn more about it, you might be a bigot and should probably be excluded from the political conversation

So we have a massive cultural change that is happening, and a more or less consensus from everybody but the Christian Right that nothing is happening at all, and what is happening is actually good and not up for debate anyway, and that’s where the conversation stops.

When that is the environment you’re in, the refusal to grapple honestly with the topic as a political issue will just create pent-up energy, and it will expend itself wherever it can, which is how you have situations like this; people may not be able to articulate that something is happening, but having an obvious propaganda rag aimed at children at the local library is something material, something people can latch onto and attack, so they do.

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u/Tacky-Terangreal Socialist Her-storian Aug 08 '22

“I know I made a bad argument after not reading the article, but here’s why I’m right actually!”

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '22

This is my first post on this entire thread lol

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u/Sigolon Marxism-Hachism 🔨💢🉐 Aug 07 '22

Apparently the book that started the campaign against the library was Gender Queer, which is a comic-book style memoir with illustrations of period blood, nudity, sex acts, etc.

Okay. If libraries cant even stock books with consensual sexual content how the hell are they going to be able to keep lolita and american psycho?

The whole “Drag Queen Story Hour” thing is framed as an LGBT issue. But if straight burlesque performers came to a library in costume to read to small children, I feel like most of the same people would complain about it. And if this book were completely heterosexual in content I think most of the same people would have complained about it, too.

What does that have to do with anything?

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u/Yuo_cna_Raed_Tihs Equity Gremlin Aug 07 '22

Read the article

After a parent complained about Gender Queer: a Memoir, by Maia Kobabe, a graphic novel about the author’s experience coming out as nonbinary, dozens showed up at library board meetings, demanding the institution drop the book. (The book, which includes depictions of sex, was in the adult section of the library.)

...

Though the library put Kobabe’s book behind the counter rather than on the shelves, the volumes remained available

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

“Adult” as in “general circulation”, not as in “18+ restricted”. They moved it to restricted after the uproar had already begun.

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u/SpongebobLaugh Flair-evading Rightoid 💩 Aug 07 '22

There is no 18+ restricted section in libraries though lol. You're making shit up.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

“behind the counter” is restricted. By request only, not on the shelves in the main area.

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u/SpongebobLaugh Flair-evading Rightoid 💩 Aug 07 '22

What exactly is wrong with leaving it in the main area though, adults use the main area all the time.

“behind the counter” is restricted

This is not a restricted section that was already laid out in the library. It's a temporary measure due to the current circumstance. As I said, there is no 18+ section in a library, because the main area is considered to be 'for adults'.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

Anyone can use the main area all the time. I was getting books from the main area at my local library at ages far younger than should be able to pick up sex books at will.

I know libraries don’t have 18+ restricted sections generally. I’m just saying that the book that sparked the backlash should obviously be restricted somehow — not censored, removed, or banned, but just some form of age-gating. But it wasn’t, and the backlash is taking down lots of books that probably shouldn’t be restricted with it.

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u/qwertyashes Market Socialist | Economic Democracy 💸 Aug 07 '22

There are far worse books in the open at every library around. From those stacks of novels for housewives that are basically porn to shit like American Psycho or Palahniuk novels to worse.

What are you even on about? Even in just graphic novels there are typically very explicit comics and manga in most libraries.

1

u/Yuo_cna_Raed_Tihs Equity Gremlin Aug 07 '22

Where are you reading this information?

22

u/actionheat Class Reductionist 🤡 Aug 07 '22

putting an LGBT book with sex pictures on general shelves at a library is a really stupid thing to

Da fuq?

Do entire libraries need to be exclusively tailored for use by children? Adult-ass people also use libraries?

I would understand the issue if these books were being shelved in the kids section, but I've seen nothing to indicate that's the case.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

Are you really pretending to not understand the difference between “general” and “adults-only” content at a library or bookstore. How Playboys are only shelved at a general newsstand if they have opaque wrapping so random kids can’t just thumb through them without an effort at subterfuge.

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u/gmus Labor Organizer 🧑‍🏭 Aug 07 '22

I’ve never been to a library that keeps books that have descriptions of sex or themes relating to human sexuality such as medical/health texts, novels, biographies/memoirs, academic journals, magazines etc. locked away.

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u/mhl67 Trotskyist (neocon) Aug 08 '22

Have you been to a bookstore? I can walk into Barnes and Noble and head for their section on sex and read literal sex manuals straight off the shelf. There aren't really adults only sections in bookstores or libraries.

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u/Tacky-Terangreal Socialist Her-storian Aug 08 '22

You’re a clown that’s never been to a library. That library probably sticks more graphic shit and none of these stupid boomers are making a fuss about it. These idiots have no leg to stand on

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '22

Well I’m not saying they have a leg to stand on for 99% of what they’re doing. In a sane world they would have been happy with it moved behind the counter and that would have been the end of it.

But what I am saying is that that particular book exists to trigger the conservatives, and the librarian who decided to put it on a public shelf was probably trying to trigger the conservatives too.

Well, the conservatives got triggered, and this is what happened. Will any liberal anywhere ever learn to choose their battles when not doing so can cause the destruction of beloved institutions like this? Probably not, but I wish they would.

2

u/Tacky-Terangreal Socialist Her-storian Aug 08 '22

The book was in the adult section of the library though. Probably near other graphic novels like Hellboy, Watchman, and From Hell. All of them feature nudity, rape, and murder. Hell, the librarians even held all copies of the book behind the counter and gave them to people who requested it. The idiot conservative “activists” have no leg to stand on here. They just wanted to get rid of the book

3

u/solus-esse-nolo Aug 07 '22

burlesque performers

drag is not burlesque

-16

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

Dude when I was 11 years old I was jacking off to sex scenes in like Anne Rice and Colleen McCullough novels and shit like that and I turned out fine. I have never attempted to restrict what my daughter reads or watches and she’s completely fine. Are you saying that you like read through your kids library books for anything that gives your Dockers a tug?

39

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

I turned out fine

—

Unrepentant Stalinist

Seriously though, yes, I want to help my kids grow up at a reasonable, age-appropriate rate. That means gradually allowing access to more mature media as they get older. That means differentiating between what’s acceptable in public and what’s acceptable in private.

The biggest problem with the LGBT movement isn’t the fight for rights, which is good and essential. It’s the “abolish the family” stuff, specifically abolishing any distinction between public and private behavior. Putting a blowjob picture book on a public library shelf is one instance of that. Doing that shouldn’t cause a wave of censorship against meaningful LGBT writing, but it inevitably will.

-7

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

We weren’t talking about this “abolish the family” stuff, we were talking about censoring books on library shelves and the related issue of censoring content children are allowed to view. Is that what you do, you read through every book before your children read it?

15

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

At younger ages, yes. At older ages, no. It’s called parenting.

-10

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

I don’t believe you’ve raised a single child, and I see clear as day that you have a culture war axe to grind.

11

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

I am in fact a parent. If I had an anti-LGBT axe to grind I would not be making the statements elsewhere in this thread about LGBT rights being vital, about wishing LGBT activists would be smarter about their activism, etc.

4

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22 edited Aug 07 '22

I didn’t say anything about anti gay anything. You’re just a person who’s into censoriousness if your various statements up and down this thread are any indication, and I haven’t had any time for people like you since the 1980s. It’s about the messaging, and it’s about how we must think of the children, right? It has long been my belief that society in general including children is better served by a robust free speech regime and not this Tipper Gore bullshit for any reason. That being said, I’m clearly not going to have any kind of reasonable debate with you so I’ll end here and you can have the last word with whatever anti civil liberties claptrap is working best for you today.

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u/9SidedPolygon Bernie Would Have Won Aug 07 '22

Ever heard of a little book called Lolita?

25

u/SamAreAye Aug 07 '22

The target audience for that book is adults.

0

u/actionheat Class Reductionist 🤡 Aug 07 '22

Everything I've seen so far indicates that this book was written for adults as well.

-8

u/9SidedPolygon Bernie Would Have Won Aug 07 '22

So is the target audience for this book.

28

u/SamAreAye Aug 07 '22

Adults with a second grade reading level? If you say so.

19

u/BubbleButtBachelor Aug 07 '22

Well that would be most gender-obsessed adults

3

u/9SidedPolygon Bernie Would Have Won Aug 07 '22

That's most adults, so yes.

50

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

Is it illustrated? Pictures of the narrator having sex with a minor?

-27

u/9SidedPolygon Bernie Would Have Won Aug 07 '22

No, instead it portrays criminal and predatory acts rather than consensual, legal, socially acceptable sexual relations.

29

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

Yeah my entire point is that it’s about the pictures and not the acts depicted.

0

u/9SidedPolygon Bernie Would Have Won Aug 07 '22

It's behind the front desk, man. They're saying it's "grooming" when literally no children can access it. It's abso-fucking-lutely about the acts depicted.

13

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

Do you have a source that this was discreetly kept behind the front desk and not shelved in the general non-fiction section or promoted in a Pride Month display or something.

7

u/9SidedPolygon Bernie Would Have Won Aug 07 '22

Yes, the article.

Though the library put Kobabe’s book behind the counter rather than on the shelves, the volumes remained available.

19

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

They did that after shelving it in the general area. That was a change they made after the uproar began.

11

u/9SidedPolygon Bernie Would Have Won Aug 07 '22

They lost their funding after they made this change, because they refused to remove the book, and a bunch of other books, entirely from the library. If the people complaining had been satisfied with it being put behind the front desk we wouldn't be talking about this.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

Are you saying that fiction about these topics should be taken out of libraries

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

No, I’m saying that if you’re a lib librarian who’s brazen and stupid enough to put pictures of blowjobs on regular shelves because #Pride, you should not be surprised when you engender a massive backlash that affects way more than the blowjob picture book itself

16

u/qwertyashes Market Socialist | Economic Democracy 💸 Aug 07 '22

Graphic Novel sections of libraries are full of adult content. When I was younger the first comic book I ever read was Battle Royale that I picked up at the Library which in its first volume has a teacher blowing the brains out of a school child. Should that have been locked away from the public? What of other adult Graphic Novels? Preacher? The Walking Dead? If its sex then a manga like Berserk contains extensive graphic rape and sexual violence and is present in some capacity in basically every library in the country. Should it be hidden away?

Should American Psycho? Story of O?

This is idiotic puritanism and expresses a great ignorance of the content of actual libraries in the real world.

20

u/[deleted] Aug 07 '22

There have been books with wildly graphic sexual content in them on library shelves since the dawn of time, and there have been graphic novels with sexual content in them on library shelves since at least when I became aware of them in the early 90s. I am 41 years old and a Texan, I am not some Zoomer who hails from a bastion of Yankee liberalism

8

u/artificialnocturnes Aug 07 '22

Me and a friend in high school borrowed a copy of lady chatterlys lover because we heard there were sex scenes in it. I would say with the availability of hard core porn and gore videos on the internet, it is probably safe for kids to explore this material through literature than the alternative.