12 ms·

I grew up in an extremely repressed and abusive household. I wasn't allowed to watch the majority of television or film, and my room was regularly searched for

• aj7 2y ago
  See my comment about 612.6 above.
• protocolture 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • huijzer 2y ago
    > I also dont get why whenever I bring this up I am immediately asked if I have kids and whether I would support some random fascist book being shelved. That escalated quickly
  • squigz 2y ago
    Censorship is an American thing? Boy do I have news for you...
    • ndr42 2y ago
      Well, yes, it is clearly a thing in the USA [1]. I hope I get you right, but you seem to insinuate that somebody else is worse and therefore its not "an American thing"? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_the_United_...
      • squigz 2y ago
        > Censoring raw information seems like such a seppo thing and I really dont want it imported. This implies it's primarily or originally an American thing - ignoring literally thousands of years of censorship by countries all over the world, very likely including GP's own.
        • ndr42 2y ago
          I had to look up what "seppo" is. Now I get why you were offended. I just would have thought that a nation that's proud of its first amendment and build on the foundations of enlightment would not go down to the darkness where others for "literally thousands of years" had been.
          • squigz 2y ago
            I'm not offended, because I'm not American. I just thought it was absurd to think this was a somehow uniquely American thing. I'm also not sure why you quoted that bit of my response - we have indeed been burning books for thousands of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning
        • protocolture 2y ago
          [flagged]
          • protocolture 2y ago
            "US supreme court leans toward religious parents who object to elementary school LGBT storybooks The US supreme court appeared inclined to rule in favor of parents in Maryland seeking to keep their elementary school children out of certain classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read, Reuters reports."
  • notarobot123 2y ago
    What about books that amount to propaganda or indoctrination? There's obvious potential for harm in books that promote dangerous ideologies or things like self-harm and suicide. In the age of self-publishing and AI authoring, a book can contain pretty much anything without the quality/safety filters that publishing used to imply - maybe it's time to revise your stance?
    • fsloth 2y ago
      The only harm books cause is they stimulate thinking and erode powerbase of societies whose political structure is based on unquestioned deference.
      • notarobot123 2y ago
        A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.
        • Y_Y 2y ago
          > In Greek mythology, the Pierian Spring of Macedonia was sacred to the Pierides and the Muses. As the metaphorical source of knowledge of art and science, it was popularized by a couplet in Alexander Pope's 1711 poem An Essay on Criticism: "A little learning is a dang'rous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."
      • immibis 2y ago
        What about when people take on unquestioning deference to certain books, such as (for illustrative purposes and I'm not saying this particular book is actually likely to cause this) Mein Kampf? What's the difference between Alex Jones preaching antivaxism on his internet podcast that you listen to, or in a book that you read?
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
  • moffkalast 2y ago
    It's always exasperating to see parents with their "well you don't have kids so you don't understand" excuse to do whatever, like we weren't all kids who had parents at some point. And also I guess then we can't criticize politicians because we never ran for office, or judge a murderer because we never killed anyone. Like show me your graduation diploma from parent school that makes you a qualified expert on parenting and I'll concede the argument.
    • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
      Heh. I will take this one. << like we weren't all kids who had parents at some point. When I was a young impressionable boy, I read through just about every book in our household. I remember "Painted Bird" by Kosinski making an impression and looking back it may have been inappropriate for my age. By today's standards, stuff there is nothing like the crap available to young minds. I am fairly permissive, but I also do not simply allow my kid to browse the world wide web; stuff is heavily curated by me. In a sense, I am effectively replicating the approach of my parents adjusted for current tech. edit: To be clear, librarians are effectively that world wide web, which means someone else is curating for you, which means you are bound to disagree on the actual output.
  • resource_waste 2y ago
    I personally think religious books should be basically destroyed. Corrupting people to listen to the words of old men in power seems like a bad idea.
    • yusina 2y ago
      Bad examples are important examples.
    • protocolture 2y ago
      Arguments with my religion teachers helped form my critical thinking skills. Even in grade 1 I remember asking if there were dinosaurs on noah's ark and getting sent out of class. This shits formative I wouldnt remove it for anything.
  • toofy 2y ago
    > I am immediately asked if I have kids and whether I would support some random fascist book being shelved. i see people often claim "the left" wants to ban fascist content, but reality just doesn't seem to back this up. im sure it happens sometimes, but i read this soooo often, that "the left" is running rampant to ban everything. this just doesn't seem to be based in any kind of reality--it seems like the exact opposite is true--maga governments around the country are feverishly, in reality, banning books as we speak. and a wild amount of these bans are because they're trying to suppress lgbtq, "woke", or poc content. deep red states are going to town banning books, the top 3 according to Pen [0] and pen's index of book bans which you can download here [1]: - florida: 33 districts have banned 4561 books [1] - iowa: 117 districts have banned 3671 books [1] - texas: 12 districts have banned 538 books [1] notorious liberal/left states don't seem to be attempting to ban content at all, and when they do, it seems like its in maga strongholds: - california: 1 district has banned 2 books. this is escondido, the 11th most conservative city in *the country*. both banned books seem to be lgbtq. [1] - washington: 0 book bans [1] - illinois: 2 districts, 1 banned for lgbtq content, the other for racial justice content. [1] - new york: the district that has banned books, clyde-savannah, voted overwhelmingly maga. [1] - massachusetts: 1 district banned 1 book called "Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice". [1] - hawaii: 0 [1] - rhode island: 0 [1] again, compare this to florida, iowa, and texas who have 1000s of banned books across the states. over 10,000 instances last year of book bans and i didn't find mein kampf in this list at all--while The Color Purple is one of the most banned. yeah, the novel The Color Purple... [0] https://pen.org/report/beyond-the-shelves/ https://pen.org/report/beyond-the-shelves/ [1] https://pen.org/book-bans/pen-america-index-of-school-book-bans-2023-2024/ https://pen.org/book-bans/pen-america-index-of-school-book-b...
    • PaulRobinson 2y ago
      As an outsider (UKian), looking in, it's been obvious to me for a while that what the far right accuses the radical left of doing, is rarely actually done by the radical left, and ironically, the thing that they themselves are up to. Book banning and other "free speech" impediments? You've covered that. Vote rigging? The data on 2024 is wild... [0] Tight control of opinion through the media? The right trust Fox and few other places, the left tend to look for more varied input [1]. Basically if Trump is saying somebody is attacking him/the right on something, chances are that the right is doing to the left far bigger, far harder, and far further away from media scrutiny... [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/somethingiswrong2024/comments/1iei2dt/monthly_recap_thread/ https://www.reddit.com/r/somethingiswrong2024/comments/1iei2... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/ https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/political-...
• swagmoney1606 2y ago
  I had a very similar childhood, my condolences
• js2 2y ago
  > I can't understate how important Overstate?
  • soulofmischief 2y ago
    Whoops! Thanks for the catch :)
  • sunshowers 2y ago
    It's like "could care less": not perfectly logical but quite idiomatic I think, and in any case the meaning is clear.
    • sheepdestroyer 2y ago
      The meaning is likely understood/inferred by many if not most, sure. It's still a "contresens" (can't find the right word in English, literally counter to its meaning), and should absolutely be avoided for clarity. Let's not just say that it's alright
      • cenamus 2y ago
        Sounds vaguely similar to Jesperson's cycle and double negatives, the "couldn't care less" idioms. And "absolutely avoided for clarity" is a bit harsh, language is by its nature imprecise and telling people how to speak has (thankfully) almost never worked to avert language change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jespersen%27s_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jespersen%27s_cycle
      • sunshowers 2y ago
        It's alright. Human languages aren't really logically tight the way computer languages are. An example that goes completely unremarked on is "near miss", which logically means something that came close to missing but actually hit, and yet in idiomatic use means the opposite. People also get upset at "literally" to mean "figuratively", another one I find strange because it's an intensifier. Clarity matters more in formal writing, and "couldn't care less" isn't particularly formal in any case.
• squigz 2y ago
  And this is why things like requiring identification to access the Internet is a bad idea, and the narrative it's wrapped in - "protecting the children" - is really more about keeping children away from differing viewpoints
  • ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    Kids should have to identify themselves to access the Internet. I echo part of a previous comment from a ways back: > I would not be the person I am today without early unfettered access to an uncensored Internet, and I say that both as a blessing, and a curse. It gave me at once access to early technology that's turned into a prosperous career, while also afflicting me with a lifetime of mental scars of varying severity and intrusive thoughts of things I saw and cannot forget. I struggle to label this trauma, but it's certainly not a good thing I carry. And having reflected on this, yes, it's trauma. It's the dictionary definition of trauma. And crucially, none of this has anything to do with viewpoints. I wish I had found more shit about different viewpoints, and less about animals and people being tortured. But identification as a child doesn't need to stop you from accessing opposing viewpoints, it needs to stop you from accessing... that. And I don't think anyone is going to argue that seeing some of the shit I saw was a growth moment for me or contributed in any way positively to me being a more well rounded person. I think a far more effective actionable path here is disentangling the stranglehold that parents have regarding how their children are raised. We still ascribe very diligently to the Western notion that children effectively "belong" to their parents, and that their parents are the single authority figure that decides how this person is raised. Most of the time that's benign to a bit obnoxious on the part of entitled parents, but it also very very easily ramps up into straight up abuse. The notion that, for example, a heavily Evangelical parent feels entitled to and is endorsed by the system to be able to deny their child knowledge of anything outside their specific sect and it's religious text, and enshrine that as a reasonable choice, is horrendous. This is a whole other person, this child is, and in our current system they are effectively a resident of a totalitarian mini-state until the age of 18 (and given economic challenges, potentially much longer now) that is largely reinforced by our surrounding systems. A child has basic rights, sure, to food, water and shelter, but even the enforcement of those can be inconsistent due to a combination of poor funding and an overall deference to parents that frankly is not deserved. We have reams upon reams of evidence of parents doing inconceivable evils to their children. It is not a given that a parent wants to care for their child and see them succeed. And advanced rights? They're a joke. A child doesn't have the right to consume and learn knowledge their parents find adversarial. They do not have the right to free association, parents destroy relationships their children have all the time, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of neglect, sometimes out of cruelty. Children's desires, identities, and interests are not able to be pursued if their parents disagree with them because there is nowhere a child can go (save for perhaps a Library, relevant to our thread) where they can freely do so, and their economic disadvantages put a hard limit on even that. The notion that parents should have 100% authority to effectively shape other, new people into being whatever they think they should be is frankly unhinged if you think about it for more than a few moments. This isn't a matter of coming to grips with a child different from yourself, and learning who they are, and helping them be the best them that they can be: this authority grants parents the right to determine what a child can be, with ZERO oversight, and no ability for the child themselves to speak on the subject until it's possibly a decade or more too late. It's incredibly frustrating as well because the same Evangelicals who will claim that every woman must be ready to lay down her life to bring a child into the world will then out of the direct other side of their mouths claim that that child, once born, has effectively no rights if said rights are potentially to be utilized against this unquestionable authority wielded by their parents.
• grandempire 2y ago
  > I had a collegiate reading level since i was 6 or 7 They told me that one too.
  • soulofmischief 2y ago
    And? I was literally reading high school and college texts then, are you indirectly claiming that this wasn't the case?
    • grandempire 2y ago
      No I don’t doubt your ability to read. I just happened to grow up in a similar time and culture with libraries, child prodigies, etc and it seems quaint and a little silly in retrospect.
      • Aeolun 2y ago
        It’s not all that hard to read high school texts for kids that know how to read. It just exposes them to many words they have to infer from context. I think that’s either something you enjoy, or don’t.
      • soulofmischief 2y ago
        I see, thanks for clarifying. I don't know. I still think the most important thing we can do is empower children to be as smart and well-rounded as they can be. As the only intellectual, atheist, etc. in my entire living family I experienced a near-constant struggle for growing myself despite my circumstances. I lived in poverty and abuse, under constant surveillance, and was subject to a cultural war for my own mind against my family and government. This led to strong feelings about my own capabilities and intellectualism, and a desire to prove others wrong about my limitations. Maybe on one side it might seem a little silly, but the child in me still takes all of this extremely seriously even now in my 30s. The cultural and intellectual war against children never ended, we just stopped paying attention or became complicit with the system.
        • 2y ago