7 ms·

> We'd often have "banned book week" where our librarians and English teachers would encourage us to read books that have either been banned in the past or were

by lurk2 2y ago

> We'd often have "banned book week" where our librarians and English teachers would encourage us to read books that have either been banned in the past or were currently banned from our schools. These titles are invariably widely accessible and banned from public schools because they contain graphic displays of sexuality that parents don’t want their children to be exposed to. The few exceptions I can think of were based on religious objections (e.g. Harry Potter). They’re never putting Mein Kampf or any book that has actually been banned by a national government on these displays.

LPisGood 2y ago
>They’re never putting Mein Kampf or any book that has actually been banned by a national government on these display That’s not my lived experience. Even if my experience wasn’t common, books banned by the local or state government or by other governments around the world certainly make it into those displays.
- lurk2 2y ago
  > Even if my experience wasn’t common, books banned by the local or state government or by other governments around the world certainly make it into those displays. For example?
  - LPisGood 2y ago
    1984, Animal Farm, and Fahrenheit 451 for starters.
    - lurk2 2y ago
      All of these books have always been widely accessible in the western world, and I suppose that’s my chief objection; these books have been banned, but they have never been seriously challenged in the west. They are safe to publish and distribute here, which is what makes the whole thing so performative. I threw out Mein Kampf as the only example I could think of where a book had faced an actual ban; it was illegal to sell in the Netherlands until about ten years ago. But even my regional library carries it. I haven’t been able to find any instances of a book being banned in the USA besides a dozen or so that were banned from being mailed or transported across state lines in accordance with the Comstock Act. I would imagine the list is more extensive than these dozen or so books, and while most were pornographic, a few were culturally notable, such as the Canterbury Tales. The idea that librarians are leading a resistance movement against the looming threat of Christian ultranationalism is a rhetorical cudgel used to undermine parental rights regarding children’s education. Virtually all of the books that have ostensibly been “banned” in America have been challenged for containing material inappropriate for children. A minority of the materials are objected to on purely religious grounds; that is, the material is not necessarily obscene or inappropriate, but contradicts the religious worldview of the challenging parents. While I personally feel the latter material should be accessible to students, the right to make that determination lies firmly with a student’s parents. There is maybe an argument to be made that the challenges not based on issues of obscenity violate the spirit of freedom of information (since the challenges result in all students losing access to the books, rather than just individual students), but it is hard to make this argument when so much of the “book ban” discussion is centered around works which most people would view as inappropriate for children. 1984 is a good example; while it is a culturally significant work, it contains two or three descriptions of sexual intercourse. The sorts of people who browse a forum like this might find that quaint, but most people do not want their children being exposed to this kind of thing.
soulofmischief 2y ago
I had access to Mein Kampf in my elementary school. > The few exceptions I can think of were based on religious objections (e.g. Harry Potter) I wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter at my home, but my librarian allowed me to anyway. I wasn't allowed to read books with sexual content, but my librarian allowed me to anyway. I was raised by massively abusive religious extremists. I didn't give a fuck about their attempts to control my mind then, and as an adult now I don't give a fuck about other idiots' attempts to control their kids minds now. My guardians did every single thing they could think of to stunt my growth and turn me into a good little Catholic extremist. You simply won't understand unless you have been through such a horrible experience, as a curious mind with a voracious appetite for knowledge.
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  "I had access to Mein Kampf in my elementary school." What's the best case for giving k-5 Mein Kampf? Makes no sense, doubt it's true, and obviously inappropriate just at a difficulty level, let alone content.
  - Animats 2y ago
    It's not a difficult read. It's the historical context that's hard to get. The major political players of a century ago are mostly gone now. In the early 20th century, there were still a lot of kings, emperors, and princes hanging onto power. The era of monarchy was on the way out, but it wasn't over yet. WWI started after an archduke was killed by an inept but lucky assassin. The ancient noble families still mattered. The Marxists were quite active. They were the anti-monarchists. Today, Marxists are nearly extinct. There are still some Communist states around, but no Marxist mass movements. The Catholic Church was still a major political power. That's gone. Hitler was a competent craftsman and had done construction work. This was an era which required a huge number of people doing manual labor in big groups to get things done. That's when unions arise, by the way. "Working class" was very real, and that's where Hitler started. The term "macho" wasn't available yet, so he wrote: "In times when not the mind but the fist decides, the purely intellectual emphasis of our education in the upper classes makes them incapable of defending themselves, let alone enforcing their will. Not infrequently the first reason for personal cowardice lies in physical weaknesses." There's a long rant about Jews, which seems to come from clerk jobs in the WWI German army being dominated by Jews, described as physically weak and overly intellectual. Today, that might be a rant about AI. There's a similar grumble about parliamentarians, elected legislators and their staffs, who talk too much and don't exercise enough. The ideal is a muscular, disciplined society run by strong working people. He writes approvingly of how the US exercises quality control on immigrants, rejecting the sick and weak ones. Now, this is where a librarian can help. Someone reading this needs background reading on Europe from 1900 to 1925. Searching with Google for "The World in 1900" turns up a terrible essay on Medium that looks like LLM-generated clickbait. A good librarian will offer better choices. Kids who get all that background will question the way things are today, of course. Which scares some people.
Loughla 2y ago
What? There are a shit load of books banned for being "offensive" that aren't because of graphic displays of sexuality. The perks of being a wallflower has been banned. 13 reasons why. Slaughterhouse 5. The Decameron. Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Grapes of Wrath. Do I need to keep going? The sexual nonsense has been used recently to ban lgbt books, as if queer kids aren't a thing that exists.
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  Every single one of the books you listed were suggested to me by a teacher. It often felt like some of my teachers latched onto my strong ethical stances and continual disregard for the brand of institutional authoritarianism common in the Deep South, and felt compelled to nurture it. Of course, it goes both ways. Plenty of teachers fixated on the idea of breaking me and making me fall in line. By middle school I had over 50 write-ups, a few suspensions, and had been subject to corporal punishment (literal State violence) mainly for "willful disobedience", a derogatory term which always confused me because I felt it positively described exactly what I was doing. In middle school, that number exploded as some authoritarian teachers became fixated on forcing me to adhere to school uniforms or demanding that I stood and participated in the cult-like Pledge of Allegiance, attempting to embarrass me in front of the class or to get my guardians to whip and punish me at home. Public school was a battleground for the future of our society. It felt like 99% of people at the time simply didn't understand that. The few teachers who "saw" me and did what they could to help me navigate my abusive and restrictive home life became the most important people in the world to me, and I owe everything to them.
  - losergotabused 2y ago
    [flagged]
- lurk2 2y ago
  Where have these books been banned?
  - Loughla 2y ago
jeremyjh 2y ago
They also are banning books that are critical of authoritarian governments, because they don’t want their children to resent the one they’ve chosen to install here.
- lurk2 2y ago
  Which specific books are being banned? Where are they being banned?
  - areyourllySorry 2y ago
    here is an example https://youtu.be/G0XWn6S1_iA https://youtu.be/G0XWn6S1_iA
    - lurk2 2y ago
      Which specific books are being banned? Where are they being banned?
      - areyourllySorry 2y ago
        go back to lurking man.
        lurk2 2y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        Both of those things are literally in the video description. You don't even have to watch the video!
        lurk2 2y ago
        It was a plain question and not immediately obvious from the first few seconds of the video nor the title of the video what the answer was. The video itself had no relevance to the discussion. The appropriate response was “The Perks of Being a Wallflower in Oxford, Pennsylvania,” along with a non-video citation showing that the book was pulled from circulation. Even if it was, it would be a non-issue. No ordinary person understands the removal of obscenity from a children’s library to be a “book ban.” The people who advance this narrative know this and lie about it anyway.
const_cast 2y ago
> because they contain graphic displays of sexuality This is literally always the excuse used when censoring content from people. At the end of the day, we need to acknowledge A LOT of the bans were because of racism, homophobia, and other prejudices, and that these "safety" arguments are just made to conceal that.
- i80and 2y ago
  My mom when I was growing up found any expression of same sex relationships to be outright pornographic. I find it is best to be deeply deeply skeptical of anybody defending book censorship because frankly the most common pro-censorship movements in the present US use words like "sexualization" to mean things like "gay couples and trans people exist". Normal people wouldn't agree with that definition, but they'll nod along with "kids shouldn't have access to sexual material", so that's the code word that pro-censorship camps used.

by lurk2 2y ago

LPisGood 2y ago

>They’re never putting Mein Kampf or any book that has actually been banned by a national government on these display That’s not my lived experience. Even if my experience wasn’t common, books banned by the local or state government or by other governments around the world certainly make it into those displays.

lurk2 2y ago
> Even if my experience wasn’t common, books banned by the local or state government or by other governments around the world certainly make it into those displays. For example?
- LPisGood 2y ago
  1984, Animal Farm, and Fahrenheit 451 for starters.
  - lurk2 2y ago
    All of these books have always been widely accessible in the western world, and I suppose that’s my chief objection; these books have been banned, but they have never been seriously challenged in the west. They are safe to publish and distribute here, which is what makes the whole thing so performative. I threw out Mein Kampf as the only example I could think of where a book had faced an actual ban; it was illegal to sell in the Netherlands until about ten years ago. But even my regional library carries it. I haven’t been able to find any instances of a book being banned in the USA besides a dozen or so that were banned from being mailed or transported across state lines in accordance with the Comstock Act. I would imagine the list is more extensive than these dozen or so books, and while most were pornographic, a few were culturally notable, such as the Canterbury Tales. The idea that librarians are leading a resistance movement against the looming threat of Christian ultranationalism is a rhetorical cudgel used to undermine parental rights regarding children’s education. Virtually all of the books that have ostensibly been “banned” in America have been challenged for containing material inappropriate for children. A minority of the materials are objected to on purely religious grounds; that is, the material is not necessarily obscene or inappropriate, but contradicts the religious worldview of the challenging parents. While I personally feel the latter material should be accessible to students, the right to make that determination lies firmly with a student’s parents. There is maybe an argument to be made that the challenges not based on issues of obscenity violate the spirit of freedom of information (since the challenges result in all students losing access to the books, rather than just individual students), but it is hard to make this argument when so much of the “book ban” discussion is centered around works which most people would view as inappropriate for children. 1984 is a good example; while it is a culturally significant work, it contains two or three descriptions of sexual intercourse. The sorts of people who browse a forum like this might find that quaint, but most people do not want their children being exposed to this kind of thing.

soulofmischief 2y ago

I had access to Mein Kampf in my elementary school. > The few exceptions I can think of were based on religious objections (e.g. Harry Potter) I wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter at my home, but my librarian allowed me to anyway. I wasn't allowed to read books with sexual content, but my librarian allowed me to anyway. I was raised by massively abusive religious extremists. I didn't give a fuck about their attempts to control my mind then, and as an adult now I don't give a fuck about other idiots' attempts to control their kids minds now. My guardians did every single thing they could think of to stunt my growth and turn me into a good little Catholic extremist. You simply won't understand unless you have been through such a horrible experience, as a curious mind with a voracious appetite for knowledge.

WillPostForFood 2y ago
"I had access to Mein Kampf in my elementary school." What's the best case for giving k-5 Mein Kampf? Makes no sense, doubt it's true, and obviously inappropriate just at a difficulty level, let alone content.
- Animats 2y ago
  It's not a difficult read. It's the historical context that's hard to get. The major political players of a century ago are mostly gone now. In the early 20th century, there were still a lot of kings, emperors, and princes hanging onto power. The era of monarchy was on the way out, but it wasn't over yet. WWI started after an archduke was killed by an inept but lucky assassin. The ancient noble families still mattered. The Marxists were quite active. They were the anti-monarchists. Today, Marxists are nearly extinct. There are still some Communist states around, but no Marxist mass movements. The Catholic Church was still a major political power. That's gone. Hitler was a competent craftsman and had done construction work. This was an era which required a huge number of people doing manual labor in big groups to get things done. That's when unions arise, by the way. "Working class" was very real, and that's where Hitler started. The term "macho" wasn't available yet, so he wrote: "In times when not the mind but the fist decides, the purely intellectual emphasis of our education in the upper classes makes them incapable of defending themselves, let alone enforcing their will. Not infrequently the first reason for personal cowardice lies in physical weaknesses." There's a long rant about Jews, which seems to come from clerk jobs in the WWI German army being dominated by Jews, described as physically weak and overly intellectual. Today, that might be a rant about AI. There's a similar grumble about parliamentarians, elected legislators and their staffs, who talk too much and don't exercise enough. The ideal is a muscular, disciplined society run by strong working people. He writes approvingly of how the US exercises quality control on immigrants, rejecting the sick and weak ones. Now, this is where a librarian can help. Someone reading this needs background reading on Europe from 1900 to 1925. Searching with Google for "The World in 1900" turns up a terrible essay on Medium that looks like LLM-generated clickbait. A good librarian will offer better choices. Kids who get all that background will question the way things are today, of course. Which scares some people.

Loughla 2y ago

What? There are a shit load of books banned for being "offensive" that aren't because of graphic displays of sexuality. The perks of being a wallflower has been banned. 13 reasons why. Slaughterhouse 5. The Decameron. Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Grapes of Wrath. Do I need to keep going? The sexual nonsense has been used recently to ban lgbt books, as if queer kids aren't a thing that exists.

soulofmischief 2y ago
Every single one of the books you listed were suggested to me by a teacher. It often felt like some of my teachers latched onto my strong ethical stances and continual disregard for the brand of institutional authoritarianism common in the Deep South, and felt compelled to nurture it. Of course, it goes both ways. Plenty of teachers fixated on the idea of breaking me and making me fall in line. By middle school I had over 50 write-ups, a few suspensions, and had been subject to corporal punishment (literal State violence) mainly for "willful disobedience", a derogatory term which always confused me because I felt it positively described exactly what I was doing. In middle school, that number exploded as some authoritarian teachers became fixated on forcing me to adhere to school uniforms or demanding that I stood and participated in the cult-like Pledge of Allegiance, attempting to embarrass me in front of the class or to get my guardians to whip and punish me at home. Public school was a battleground for the future of our society. It felt like 99% of people at the time simply didn't understand that. The few teachers who "saw" me and did what they could to help me navigate my abusive and restrictive home life became the most important people in the world to me, and I owe everything to them.
- losergotabused 2y ago
  [flagged]
lurk2 2y ago
Where have these books been banned?
- Loughla 2y ago

jeremyjh 2y ago

They also are banning books that are critical of authoritarian governments, because they don’t want their children to resent the one they’ve chosen to install here.

lurk2 2y ago
Which specific books are being banned? Where are they being banned?
- areyourllySorry 2y ago
  here is an example https://youtu.be/G0XWn6S1_iA https://youtu.be/G0XWn6S1_iA
  - lurk2 2y ago
    Which specific books are being banned? Where are they being banned?
    - areyourllySorry 2y ago
      go back to lurking man.
      - lurk2 2y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      Both of those things are literally in the video description. You don't even have to watch the video!
      - lurk2 2y ago
        It was a plain question and not immediately obvious from the first few seconds of the video nor the title of the video what the answer was. The video itself had no relevance to the discussion. The appropriate response was “The Perks of Being a Wallflower in Oxford, Pennsylvania,” along with a non-video citation showing that the book was pulled from circulation. Even if it was, it would be a non-issue. No ordinary person understands the removal of obscenity from a children’s library to be a “book ban.” The people who advance this narrative know this and lie about it anyway.

const_cast 2y ago

> because they contain graphic displays of sexuality This is literally always the excuse used when censoring content from people. At the end of the day, we need to acknowledge A LOT of the bans were because of racism, homophobia, and other prejudices, and that these "safety" arguments are just made to conceal that.

i80and 2y ago
My mom when I was growing up found any expression of same sex relationships to be outright pornographic. I find it is best to be deeply deeply skeptical of anybody defending book censorship because frankly the most common pro-censorship movements in the present US use words like "sexualization" to mean things like "gay couples and trans people exist". Normal people wouldn't agree with that definition, but they'll nod along with "kids shouldn't have access to sexual material", so that's the code word that pro-censorship camps used.