5 ms·
From the Texas legislator's proposed list of banned books, I fail to see why books such as "Bioethics Beyond the Headlines" or "V for Vendetta" should be banned
by kvathupo 5y ago
From the Texas legislator's proposed list of banned books, I fail to see why books such as "Bioethics Beyond the Headlines" or "V for Vendetta" should be banned. Indeed, it does concern me that much of the novels are fictional works portraying the LGBT experience. I can't imagine how alienating it must be to students of that group.
As an aside, I find it amusing that Shakespeare is never banned on the grounds of sexual content. Perhaps people don't pay attention in English class?
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago|Perhaps people don't pay attention in English class?| Funny enough, I always assumed this same thing of the people who were trying to get Mark Twain books banned for the misuse of language =) People who don't read books are always the ones who are the most afraid of the ideas contained within them, I suppose.
- hulitu 5y agoMark Twain shall definitely be banned. We don't need satire in school. And no books with racism. We have enough of the later.
- anigbrowl 5y agoSome parts of Shakespeare are so wordy that the sexual aspect isn't obvious enough to notice without advanced literary education, but there certainly used to be sanitized versions for school students that omitted more explicit passages on booze, lechery and so on.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- everybodyknows 5y agoMost are couched in the slang of Shakespeare's time, an effective filter. How many high schoolers get the Nurse's ribald joke about the very young Juliet learning to "fall backwards" once she had grown older? I didn't, not at all sure our teacher got the meaning either, or if she did, then chose not to explain it ... Check out the Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet to see it played well.
- shagie 5y agoSetting: Catholic high school, late 80s. Freshman English class. We were reading out loud in class the prologue for Romeo and Juliet... and the teacher would occasionally pause the reading to explain the text. A more full account of the events is in https://everything2.com/user/m_turner/writeups/Shakespearean+Humor https://everything2.com/user/m_turner/writeups/Shakespearean... which I wrote when it was closer to the present and more fresh in my mind. So yes, at least one class of Generation X high school students got every joke in Romeo and Juliet.
- everybodyknows 5y agoMiss P. was a rare sort of scholar indeed to be found at the 9th grade level. > ... wrote when it was closer to the present and more fresh in my mind. The thought came to me -- being now at an age a few years greater than yours -- that my own collection of memories on similar events has been fading, and those from youth of course being irreplaceable. Solution: Write them down, only those I'd want to savor again in years ahead. In the form of notes, at least. The act of writing slowly -- over the course of nearly a year now -- puts a light on others in the dusty attic. Next step is to work up the more amusing and less private of them into anecdotes, for sharing with trusted friends.
- shagie 5y agoEverything2 is an interesting (to me) entry in the Web 2.0 landscape and early crowdsourcing. The original implementation of it was in '98 - and its still around. It doesn't quite have the same rate of growth of content as it did back when I was writing - but its still there. Some of the people on there later went on to become professional writers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything2 > According to E2's "Site Trajectory", traffic has dropped from 9976 new write-ups created in the month of August 2000, down to 93 new write-ups in February 2017. https://everything2.com/node/superdoc/Site+Trajectory https://everything2.com/node/superdoc/Site+Trajectory and https://everything2.com/node/superdoc/Site+Trajectory+2 https://everything2.com/node/superdoc/Site+Trajectory+2 (It looks like its down to a small core of people) The key is to record it somewhere. Be it Storycorps ( https://www.npr.org/series/4516989/storycorps https://www.npr.org/series/4516989/storycorps ) or a second brain ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29188418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29188418 ). Spin up a Wordpress blog and write there (aside, one of my projects is digging through the files from a hard drive of a laptop a bit ago where I wrote using Apple's blogging / web hosting software. Writing without care of who (if anyone) reads it - for the sheer sake of writing - feels like a dying art form at times.
- rayiner 5y agoTo be clear, we’re talking about books that have graphic images of sex. They wouldn’t be appropriate even if they involved straight sex. Don’t use LGBT acceptance to promote sexualization of minors.
- BearsAreCool 5y agoThis is an easy excuse but one I find hard to believe as being at all legitimate. Out of all the things that lead to promoting sexualization of minors I highly doubt that anyone is going to look back on their chidlhood and blame a book. I also can't help but wonder if I was somehow super sexualized as a high schooler or not. Comments like this and people talking about banning books for high schoolers makes me wonder if somehow I'm the freak. Everyone I knew when I was that age had graphic (misconception filled) images of sex already, actual pornography was pretty easy to access. I almost wish I had instead gotten this from a book, maybe there would've been less damaging misconceptions. That said, I've been trying to find an example of a book in the "book ban" discussion that contains problematic graphic sex content. I've tried looking and so far everything has turned up pretty empty.
- rayiner 5y agoBlue state “book ban”: https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/school-system-pulls-books-graphic-sex-libraries-80219516 https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/school-system... Nobody thinks the book causes that sexualization. The point is that it’s an implicit sanction from parental and teacher authority.
- kvathupo 5y agoI fail to see the "graphic sex" in the aforementioned works, or others listed like "The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine." I'll take your word that there are books on the list with "graphic sex," but it's insulting to assume children cannot comprehend such topics. Not long ago, I was 13. At that age, I read books like Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, and A Clockwork Orange. The very fact I now have to type that I knew that sex was a natural part of life perhaps speaks to the deterioration of our educational standards. Regardless, even I understood then that the sexual perversion of those works weren't their raison d'étre. I'm grateful I had an English teacher who guided me in that respect. Likewise, I earnestly hope others have similar instructors, who don't define a work by its depictions of acts of reality, however sordid they may be.
- baryphonic 5y agoI, for one, was too busy hanging my bugle in it's invisible baldric during high school English. Or making the beast with two backs. Oh, wait.