I'm uncomfortable with how many people in these comments are chill with a ban All school districts curate their libraries to some extent, making it illegal for districts to have a book that they...
I'm uncomfortable with how many people in these comments are chill with a ban
All school districts curate their libraries to some extent, making it illegal for districts to have a book that they want but the state claims are "dangerous" and is some dystopian shit.
In the same way certain films are not appropriate for younger audiences, certain literature is not appropriate for younger audiences and shouldn’t be in school libraries. It’s really not...
In the same way certain films are not appropriate for younger audiences, certain literature is not appropriate for younger audiences and shouldn’t be in school libraries. It’s really not complicated and is far from “dystopian.”
The government forcing every school librarian in the state to come to the same conclusion about what books are appropriate for children is not as good a thing as you think it is. What if a queer...
The government forcing every school librarian in the state to come to the same conclusion about what books are appropriate for children is not as good a thing as you think it is.
What if a queer kid in Utah wants to find books about their experience? Do you think it's likely that there will be many queer-friendly books available that not even 3 school districts will consider inappropriate? In Utah?
I think we should let parents have more of a role in choosing what films their children can watch, and I do think that the government making those decisions for parents is a bit dystopian. TBH,...
I think we should let parents have more of a role in choosing what films their children can watch, and I do think that the government making those decisions for parents is a bit dystopian.
TBH, I’m also actually pretty skeptical of giving parents too much control over their children too for that matter. There’s a lot of bigotry and intolerance forced on children by their parents.
Uncensored libraries are a valuable resource for children. In particular, school libraries, which children can easily access. Many children don’t have the freedom to visit public libraries, but almost all children go to school, no matter how restrictive their circumstances are otherwise.
And I’m not for putting absolutely every book possible into school libraries, but I think we would be better served by deferring to school librarians when it comes to selection, and dealing with disagreements on a case by case basis at the local level rather than giving the government free reign to ban books based on opaque and arbitrary criteria.
So "punishing thoughtcrime is disturbing"? Except for The Anarchist Cookbook? That one specific thoughtcrime is objectively okay to punish? But also, governments banning books they don't like,...
So "punishing thoughtcrime is disturbing"? Except for The Anarchist Cookbook? That one specific thoughtcrime is objectively okay to punish? But also, governments banning books they don't like, such as The Anarchist Cookbook, is dystopian? I feel you've got some discordant (dissonant?) opinions here.
I don't think The Anarchist Cookbook should be banned. I'm not even convinced states and governments should have the authority to ban books at all, just like they should not have the authority to ban abortion. It simply is not a matter with which the state should be concerned.
That's really why The Anarchist Cookbook is great though. It's not a practically useful or even ideologically coherent book, but it does get authoritarians to take their masks off. It's like a lightning rod that directs state attention away from much more interesting, coherent, and effective books, like Recipes For Disaster
This is also a circumstance in which the difference between curation and censorship can be very effectively demonstrated -- even an inexperienced school librarian is competent enough at their job...
This is also a circumstance in which the difference between curation and censorship can be very effectively demonstrated -- even an inexperienced school librarian is competent enough at their job to decide that it's probably not the best choice to stock The Anarchist's Cookbook in their school library. That doesn't require the state to ban that book.
They really don't seem to like Sarah J. Maas in Utah! I'm not familiar with her myself, so I did some reading on Wikipedia and came across this: Which seems to me amazingly stupid use of...
They really don't seem to like Sarah J. Maas in Utah! I'm not familiar with her myself, so I did some reading on Wikipedia and came across this:
In 2023 a school district in Mason City, Iowa, made international news when they banned the book from library shelves after running a list of books through ChatGPT and asking it if the books, "contain a description or depiction of a sex act."
Which seems to me amazingly stupid use of generative AI.
Also; what a stupid law. Am I reading it correctly that it's enough for three school districts to ban a book for it to get automatically banned in all school disctricts, unless it goes through a convoluted reversal process?
Ironic as I’m sure they would give a student an F if they displayed such laziness on an assignment. We need to have classes on how to use an LLM. I know there is a lot of hate online for them, but...
Ironic as I’m sure they would give a student an F if they displayed such laziness on an assignment.
We need to have classes on how to use an LLM. I know there is a lot of hate online for them, but they are very useful when applied properly. For example, if you took the entire book’s content and ran it through an LLM in chunks - asking if that chunk has sexual content - you would achieve a high level of accuracy.
Ironically their own rules would mean the Bible needs to be banned as well. A group of sisters get their dad drunk and have sex with him, that's rape and incest right there. It contains the story:...
Ironically their own rules would mean the Bible needs to be banned as well. A group of sisters get their dad drunk and have sex with him, that's rape and incest right there. It contains the story: "Yet she multiplied her promiscuity, remembering the days of her youth, when she had prostituted herself in the land of Egypt and lusted after their lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of stallions," directly referencing prostitution, huge dicks and horse-sized loads of cum.
The biggest problem with the law is the way the bans are decided: Emphasis mine. In other words, it doesn't take a very large segment of public schools to outright ban content, there are 40 public...
The biggest problem with the law is the way the bans are decided:
The law, which went into effect July 1, requires that a book be removed from all public schools in the state if at least three school districts (or at least two school districts and five charter schools) determine it amounts to “objective sensitive material” — pornographic or otherwise indecent content, as defined by Utah code.
Emphasis mine. In other words, it doesn't take a very large segment of public schools to outright ban content, there are 40 public school districts in Utah according to wikipedia, this allows 7.5% of school districts to dictate the other 92.5%. Heck, due to population distribution, it would be possible for 3 districts with a total of 730 students between them to dictate the book bans for all ~634,000 students.
Which actually falls in line with typical conservative moralizing...dictating what's right for everybody based on an extreme minority opinion.
A law like this should mandate at least something like 12 districts, not 3.
To save a click: “Blankets” by Craig Thompson. “A Court of Frost and Starlight” by Sarah J. Maas. “A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas. “A Court of Silver Flames” by Sarah J. Maas. “A Court...
To save a click:
“Blankets” by Craig Thompson.
“A Court of Frost and Starlight” by Sarah J. Maas.
Of these books, I've only read ACOTAR. ACOTAR definitely includes explicit (hetero) sex scenes and glorification of abusive dynamics that, imo, doesn't need to be included in school library...
Of these books, I've only read ACOTAR. ACOTAR definitely includes explicit (hetero) sex scenes and glorification of abusive dynamics that, imo, doesn't need to be included in school library systems. These things are worth talking about, but probably in an arena more suited to them; e.g., among adults who have the vocabulary and context to talk about consent, drug & alcohol use and abuse, and power dynamics in relationships. While young people can (and probably should) talk about issues like these, the hype and consumer culture around ACOTAR makes it too easy to fall into romanticizing the text without applying critical thinking.
I'm generally not one for banning books, but if I had read ACOTAR before going through a questionable relationship myself... I worry that young me might have romanticized the unbalanced power dynamic even more. High school me was certainly not equipped with the real world context to see that the relationships in the book are unhealthy, and the book itself doesn't really show the main character question anything that happens to her in a meaningful way.
Anyway, I'm not familiar with the rest of the books on the list. It does make me wonder what types of materials might be excluded from school library catalogs by default, though.
I think leaving it to the judgment of school librarians is probably sufficient. That's literally their job, and I don't see any reason the legislature should be stepping in to do their job for them.
I think leaving it to the judgment of school librarians is probably sufficient. That's literally their job, and I don't see any reason the legislature should be stepping in to do their job for them.
Exactly, it's a tough line to draw, when the school system is a public one relying purely on public funds and thus management. I think it'd be better if it were a 'suggested removal list' and not...
Exactly, it's a tough line to draw, when the school system is a public one relying purely on public funds and thus management. I think it'd be better if it were a 'suggested removal list' and not a 'mandatory removal list', but in the face of limited floor-space for books it makes sense to cull the messiest of the messy first. The problem is that the moralizers tend to conflate self-discovery/exploration with borderline-pornography.
The right answer is in a public library separate from the direct school one, which does not have to adhere to the same requirements.
I agree it wasn't the reason (and definitely don't trust the legislators within this context). My wife works at a library now....there is constant churn of new books entering and old books...
I agree it wasn't the reason (and definitely don't trust the legislators within this context).
My wife works at a library now....there is constant churn of new books entering and old books leaving. Space is at a premium, and 18 books is a decent-sized shelf that could be filled with higher-quality age-appropriate content. Admittedly schools probably have much less churn.
To be clear, I'm not speaking in specifics because I don't know any of the books in particular, also because I don't trust Utah to pick correctly anyhow.
Agreed. Especially true for kids living in weird cult like neighborhoods where their local schools are weird, or private schools where they heavily sanitize any views that remotely challenge the...
Agreed. Especially true for kids living in weird cult like neighborhoods where their local schools are weird, or private schools where they heavily sanitize any views that remotely challenge the authoritative narrative.
Public libraries should be one of our most treasured institutions
I would assume these rating systems actually have an impact on the content of the media they are associated with. The film industry does a lot of odd things due to ratings, even if they make the...
I would assume these rating systems actually have an impact on the content of the media they are associated with. The film industry does a lot of odd things due to ratings, even if they make the story worse.
I thought these bans were mostly about any book that humanized gay people. I was surprised to see Oryx and Crake on the list until I thought about it a bit. I guess that book, and it's sequels...
I thought these bans were mostly about any book that humanized gay people.
I was surprised to see Oryx and Crake on the list until I thought about it a bit. I guess that book, and it's sequels have many elements that would bather the extreme right. Weird.
I recalled reading that book for my school summer reading in 12th grade. I actually just checked, and it's even still on their summer reading list for incoming 12th graders. It absolutely has...
I recalled reading that book for my school summer reading in 12th grade. I actually just checked, and it's even still on their summer reading list for incoming 12th graders. It absolutely has literary value -- frankly, it's heavily criticizing what it's portraying.
I personally don't believe Orxy and Crake belong in that list but I'm biased as a big fan of Margaret Atwood. On the other hand, as a parent I sort of understand the move. It's been over a decade...
I personally don't believe Orxy and Crake belong in that list but I'm biased as a big fan of Margaret Atwood.
On the other hand, as a parent I sort of understand the move.
It's been over a decade since I've read O&C, but off hand I remember a few things that might have gotten it flagged:
(1) Scales and Tails sex club (2) Snowman's briefly mentioned sexual relationships (3) Crake an Snowman surfing specifically for CSA material when they themselves were children, and circumstances around how the material is generated in a late stage capitalistic/tech bro dystopian society (4) violence committed by Crake, both worldwide and personal (5) other dark web materials Crake and Snowman found
It also doesn't explicitly comment on the healthiness of Crake's relationship. I'm now of the adult opinion that it was abusive from beginning to end, but I can also clearly remember not understanding that as a teenaged reader. I went through a phase where I idolized Crake in a way that I guess kids these days do for Musk et al. (Joke: in my defense Crake is fictitious and built his compound on good old earth, not Mars.)
I'm surprised they left Handmaid's Tale in there if O&C is banned.
Edit - it seems I have been misunderstood -- (1) Chocobean is for book bans in a school system provided these caveats are met. (2) The caveats have NOT been met. (Therefore:) Is Chocobean for or...
Edit - it seems I have been misunderstood -- (1) Chocobean is for book bans in a school system provided these caveats are met. (2) The caveats have NOT been met. (Therefore:) Is Chocobean for or against the state book ban?
Honestly, I am completely okay with schools banning a dozen books. Ban hundreds. With some caveats:
(1) There is a publicly available list of which ones are banned. Preferably for what reasons.
(2) The libraries are otherwise very well stocked, and staffed with qualified librarians. And the schools otherwise are filled with qualified teachers who encourage reading as much, and as in depth, as possible.
(3) That providing kids with banned books itself isn't made illegal or deemed abusive. Let the parents decide when their kids are ready.
(4) Have clear guidelines for what will get your YA book banned, so authors can make adjustments.
(5) That classroom reads are thorough and guided and talk about how to approach challenging literature, how to discover intent behind the text, how to evaluate works from a different time and culture, unreliable narration, veiled criticisms, and how to form one's own judgement on right and wrong even if not explicit in the text. Heck, it's how the Bible should be read.
Plus an outright fantasy:
(*) That families are provided with enough quality of life minimum standards so that parents can be involved with their kids, gauge their maturity, reading and readiness levels, and know how to get their kids additional materials outside of school and yes stuff on the ban lists, and hold ongoing discussions on the nature of book bans, mature topics and how to expand knowledge from outside of someone's geopolitical / language barriers.
The fact is that there are many thousands of very good books published every single year. Ban some here and there, okay, as long as the library is still of a good quality, and how to read with analytical thought is taught, sure, stick the kids in a play garden until they're ready. How many college kids are told to read Lolita that don't even understand what an unreliable narrator is? The problem isn't the banned books, it's poorly raised children who aren't ready, with parents so busy surviving they're not there to guide. If they're used as a two stop approach: ban + protect, while nurturing for readiness, it's not an issue.
But. I hate that they're using banned books as a means to that first end without doing anything else for the second. It's like parents who pull their kids from sex ed, but instead of teaching it themselves they're just gonna not.
Leave slippery slope counter arguments out please.
"Mandatory curation in a public school" is different from "We'll arrest librarians, booksellers, and parents that provide those books outside of the public school" And the way the country is...
"Mandatory curation in a public school" is different from "We'll arrest librarians, booksellers, and parents that provide those books outside of the public school"
And the way the country is headed, the second is becoming an increasingly possible reality.
Yes, but chocobean was discussing under what conditions they find censorship an acceptable thing, more than directly commenting on the specifics of the law. And in fact, you can see their primary...
Yes, but chocobean was discussing under what conditions they find censorship an acceptable thing, more than directly commenting on the specifics of the law. And in fact, you can see their primary criticism of the law:
But. I hate that they're using banned books as a means to that first end without doing anything else for the second. It's like parents who pull their kids from sex ed, but instead of teaching it themselves they're just gonna not.
Because this one is about moral policing more than preventing genuine harm from truly obscene material. The next list of books is going to be much larger and much more moralizing. That's how you get censorship laws in place: You highlight the truly horrible stuff most people weren't stocking anyway, and then you turn the dials up to remove any and all "objectionable" material, which in Utah means gay erasure more than anything. Say goodbye to pretty much any book that features more than a passing reference to a possibly-gay character, mark my words.
Thanks Vord, that's exactly what I meant to say in not as clear wording :) I very much object to what the intent of the Utah law is really about, but i don't object to public school book bans by...
Thanks Vord, that's exactly what I meant to say in not as clear wording :)
I very much object to what the intent of the Utah law is really about, but i don't object to public school book bans by itself.
I also agree that the next step is going to be sweeping. Saving graces: (1) kids have the internet and the Open Seas now, and (2) push come to shove, all kinds of critical reading skills (translation problem, authorship debates, intent across time and space, history, interpretation wars etc) can still be taught using "problematic" passages of the Bible. My prediction is that Atwood's Handmaid's Tale will be on the next list precisely because of this reason.
Money never sleeps. As long as Utah is open for trade with other states and then other states have trade with the greater world, information will find its way in, and kids will want to and be able to get out. My hope is that we as a greater society wildly improve outreach for kids and young adults who need mentors and a healthy community. Be ready for them when they get out of authoritative, abusive, neglectful homes
Seeing that at least two banned books are about discovering atheism and abusive households this checks out. Can't let the kids discover that they're not living God's perfect dream life. Hopefully...
Be ready for them when they get out of authoritative, abusive, neglectful homes
Seeing that at least two banned books are about discovering atheism and abusive households this checks out. Can't let the kids discover that they're not living God's perfect dream life.
Hopefully kids will still have internet at home. Internet censorship is extreme in schools and still pretty bad in libraries in the name of keeping people from using them for porn.
(4) is never going to happen, because (I assert) it is impossible to create any objective set of content criteria which excludes any book, which does not also exclude the Bible. (Reminder for...
(4) is never going to happen, because (I assert) it is impossible to create any objective set of content criteria which excludes any book, which does not also exclude the Bible.
(Reminder for anyone not in the know: Ezekial 23:20, which I guess I should say is very NSFW, in case that wasn't clear from context.)
While I am very comfortable with the idea that children absolutely should not be reading the Bible, I really, really don't think the Utah legislature would agree.
I grew up in a denomination where bible study was very heavily emphasized, and it was very common for adults and teachers to ask kids what their favorite bible verse was. When I was a teenager, me...
I grew up in a denomination where bible study was very heavily emphasized, and it was very common for adults and teachers to ask kids what their favorite bible verse was. When I was a teenager, me and my friends would often respond with this verse. You could always tell which people knew what it said, and their reactions were pretty consistently hilarious.
The number of adults who were concerned, vs not, were about even, when I answers my favorite book of the Bible was Ecclesiastes. Also, that wasn't even the wildest thing the Prophet Ezekiel...
The number of adults who were concerned, vs not, were about even, when I answers my favorite book of the Bible was Ecclesiastes.
Also, that wasn't even the wildest thing the Prophet Ezekiel experienced:
“eat the food as you would a loaf of barley bread; bake it in the sight of the people, using human excrement for fuel.”
Yep, turns out dry poop actually makes a pretty good fuel for fire. In America, pioneers heading west used "buffalo chips" as fuel, since they were often dozens or hundreds of miles from the...
Yep, turns out dry poop actually makes a pretty good fuel for fire. In America, pioneers heading west used "buffalo chips" as fuel, since they were often dozens or hundreds of miles from the nearest tree, and couldn't load their wagons with enough wood to last the entire trip.
Tasting History actually did a video about pioneer food not too long ago that mentions this:
Upvoted for good old Ezekiel. Hey never say never. Cults that ban the private reading of their own holy texts, or not allowing girls to learn how to read at all is very common.
Upvoted for good old Ezekiel.
Hey never say never. Cults that ban the private reading of their own holy texts, or not allowing girls to learn how to read at all is very common.
Those aren't content criteria. But even then, I don't think you could create a plausible objective set of context criteria that permits the Bible but excludes the Kama Sutra (as I will take the...
Those aren't content criteria. But even then, I don't think you could create a plausible objective set of context criteria that permits the Bible but excludes the Kama Sutra (as I will take the mental step of assuming these people would like to do). In particular, by age, there's significant overlap between the plausible earliest composition dates of the Kama Sutra and the latest of certain books of the New Testament.
(The Kama Sutra is probably better for children to be reading, too, but I digress.)
(Of course, blatant hypocrisy and flagrant disregard of the separation of church and state are pretty much foundational tenets of American Christian nationalism, so it's not really useful to observe that intellectual dishonesty is required to arrive at their conclusions. It can be a convenient intellectual shortcut to identify that you have left the universe of rational discourse, though.)
If a library has qualified librarians, there should be no need to ban books. One of the (many) duties of a librarian is to curate the library's collection to its audience. If these books are...
(2) The libraries are otherwise very well stocked, and staffed with qualified librarians. And the schools otherwise are filled with qualified teachers who encourage reading as much, and as in depth, as possible.
If a library has qualified librarians, there should be no need to ban books. One of the (many) duties of a librarian is to curate the library's collection to its audience. If these books are inappropriate for the school, then the librarian will come to that conclusion on their own. If the books need a content warning and/or an adult to explain some concepts to them before they start reading, the librarian can require a teacher or parent's permission (e.g. a note saying that the adult has already explained these concepts to the child) before the student can check out the book.
For a school assignment to read a book of my choice, I read A Clockwork Orange (a book that has been banned in many places over the years) in grade 9. It wasn't available at my school library (for good reason), but it wasn't banned. My teacher did ask for a note from my parents saying that they understood the content and that I could read it, and everything was fine.
Leave slippery slope counter arguments out please.
I don't think you can have a conversation about banning books without talking about the slippery slope. What subjects are okay to ban, and how do you define them sufficiently narrowly? I don't think it's possible, and that's exactly where the slippery slope comes in. But if you can, please give an example of a well-defined rule for banning a book per caveat 4 (you don't have to agree with the rule) and we'll see how many well-intentioned books are caught in the crossfire.
It seems I have been misunderstood (1) Chocobean is chill with book bans in a school system provided these caveats are met. (2) The caveats have NOT been met. (Therefore:) Is Chocobean for or...
It seems I have been misunderstood
(1) Chocobean is chill with book bans in a school system provided these caveats are met.
(2) The caveats have NOT been met.
(Therefore:) Is Chocobean for or against the state book ban?
It's certainly possible I misunderstood you. It seems like Chocobean is against this specific book ban but still okay with a book ban given those caveats. I'm happy for the first part, but still...
It's certainly possible I misunderstood you.
It seems like Chocobean is against this specific book ban but still okay with a book ban given those caveats. I'm happy for the first part, but still disagree with bans, even given your caveats. I think banning books is bad, full stop.
This actually has a lot of parallels with the "debate" on abortion. Is "abortion is banned but with some caveats/exceptions" ever a good idea? If we ask the legislators in Texas, yes. If we ask all the doctors in Texas, no. Or should we leave it to the professionals (e.g. librarians and doctors) to decide what is appropriate given the circumstances and environment?
Interesting. All book bans are bad all the time? You can't imagine good and honest and useful ways for books to be off limits for specific population groups for a brief time? Not even if they're...
Interesting. All book bans are bad all the time? You can't imagine good and honest and useful ways for books to be off limits for specific population groups for a brief time? Not even if they're okay to be read at home, or heck even in the school, just not available for every kid from the school library?
What if there was a book that was honestly written by a pedophile to groom children? Incel stuff? Copy of autobiography from your least favorite dictator just as winds of authoritarian cheer is gripping the school? What if we have the above situation happening, but we have no librarians, only lending robots pushing what the district benefits from? What if schools are now funded by big oil and gas and the shelves have been cleared to make way for sponsored materials? Still not okay to limit what's on the shelves?
What if a religious cult came and in the name of renewing materials, replaced all library books with copies that highlight cult interpretation on every page? And remember we don't have good librarians anymore. You wouldn't want to see certain things not available in school libraries even then?
Censorship is a tool, it is often bad because of who wields it, not because it is bad all the time everywhere.
You can restrict access to books without banning them. I don't think something like Mein Kampf belongs in an elementary school library, and I hope school librarians agree with me, but if they...
You can restrict access to books without banning them. I don't think something like Mein Kampf belongs in an elementary school library, and I hope school librarians agree with me, but if they don't, then it's their prerogative as the authority on the subject to include it in their collection.
If the school library system gets taken over by pedophiles/robots/O&G as you suggest, I'm not sure how a book ban would actually stop them. Who is implementing this ban, and what is going to compel the gas-powered robotic pedophiles to follow the rules? And if such a ban were possible, wouldn't it be a better idea to ban pedophiles, robots, and large corporations from replacing librarians in the first place?
There's an infinite number of hypotheticals that sound bad, but a book ban isn't actually the solution to any of them. Banning a bunch of bad books isn't going to fix anything, because the books aren't the problem, they're simply a very small symptom of the larger systemic issues that caused you to want those bans in the first place.
Note that the previous sentence holds true even if we look at it from the perspective of the people who want to ban LGBTQ+ books. They can try to ban as many books as they want, but that won't actually change the overall system which is trending towards accepting LGBTQ+ people as people. They can ban all the books they want, and while it may slow down the systemic transition towards acceptance, it won't stop it.
I'm uncomfortable with how many people in these comments are chill with a ban
All school districts curate their libraries to some extent, making it illegal for districts to have a book that they want but the state claims are "dangerous" and is some dystopian shit.
In the same way certain films are not appropriate for younger audiences, certain literature is not appropriate for younger audiences and shouldn’t be in school libraries. It’s really not complicated and is far from “dystopian.”
The government forcing every school librarian in the state to come to the same conclusion about what books are appropriate for children is not as good a thing as you think it is.
What if a queer kid in Utah wants to find books about their experience? Do you think it's likely that there will be many queer-friendly books available that not even 3 school districts will consider inappropriate? In Utah?
I think we should let parents have more of a role in choosing what films their children can watch, and I do think that the government making those decisions for parents is a bit dystopian.
TBH, I’m also actually pretty skeptical of giving parents too much control over their children too for that matter. There’s a lot of bigotry and intolerance forced on children by their parents.
Uncensored libraries are a valuable resource for children. In particular, school libraries, which children can easily access. Many children don’t have the freedom to visit public libraries, but almost all children go to school, no matter how restrictive their circumstances are otherwise.
And I’m not for putting absolutely every book possible into school libraries, but I think we would be better served by deferring to school librarians when it comes to selection, and dealing with disagreements on a case by case basis at the local level rather than giving the government free reign to ban books based on opaque and arbitrary criteria.
So "punishing thoughtcrime is disturbing"? Except for The Anarchist Cookbook? That one specific thoughtcrime is objectively okay to punish? But also, governments banning books they don't like, such as The Anarchist Cookbook, is dystopian? I feel you've got some discordant (dissonant?) opinions here.
I don't think The Anarchist Cookbook should be banned. I'm not even convinced states and governments should have the authority to ban books at all, just like they should not have the authority to ban abortion. It simply is not a matter with which the state should be concerned.
That's really why The Anarchist Cookbook is great though. It's not a practically useful or even ideologically coherent book, but it does get authoritarians to take their masks off. It's like a lightning rod that directs state attention away from much more interesting, coherent, and effective books, like Recipes For Disaster
This is also a circumstance in which the difference between curation and censorship can be very effectively demonstrated -- even an inexperienced school librarian is competent enough at their job to decide that it's probably not the best choice to stock The Anarchist's Cookbook in their school library. That doesn't require the state to ban that book.
Likewise.
They really don't seem to like Sarah J. Maas in Utah! I'm not familiar with her myself, so I did some reading on Wikipedia and came across this:
Which seems to me amazingly stupid use of generative AI.
Also; what a stupid law. Am I reading it correctly that it's enough for three school districts to ban a book for it to get automatically banned in all school disctricts, unless it goes through a convoluted reversal process?
Ironic as I’m sure they would give a student an F if they displayed such laziness on an assignment.
We need to have classes on how to use an LLM. I know there is a lot of hate online for them, but they are very useful when applied properly. For example, if you took the entire book’s content and ran it through an LLM in chunks - asking if that chunk has sexual content - you would achieve a high level of accuracy.
Ironically their own rules would mean the Bible needs to be banned as well. A group of sisters get their dad drunk and have sex with him, that's rape and incest right there. It contains the story: "Yet she multiplied her promiscuity, remembering the days of her youth, when she had prostituted herself in the land of Egypt and lusted after their lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of stallions," directly referencing prostitution, huge dicks and horse-sized loads of cum.
The biggest problem with the law is the way the bans are decided:
Emphasis mine. In other words, it doesn't take a very large segment of public schools to outright ban content, there are 40 public school districts in Utah according to wikipedia, this allows 7.5% of school districts to dictate the other 92.5%. Heck, due to population distribution, it would be possible for 3 districts with a total of 730 students between them to dictate the book bans for all ~634,000 students.
Which actually falls in line with typical conservative moralizing...dictating what's right for everybody based on an extreme minority opinion.
A law like this should mandate at least something like 12 districts, not 3.
To save a click:
“Blankets” by Craig Thompson.
“A Court of Frost and Starlight” by Sarah J. Maas.
“A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas.
“A Court of Silver Flames” by Sarah J. Maas.
“A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas.
“A Court of Wings and Ruin” by Sarah J. Maas.
“Empire of Storms” by Sarah J. Maas.
“Fallout” by Ellen Hopkins.
“Forever” by Judy Blume.
“Milk and Honey” by Rupi Kaur.
“Oryx & Crake” by Margaret Atwood.
“Tilt” by Ellen Hopkins.
“What Girls Are Made Of” by Elana K. Arnold.
Of these books, I've only read ACOTAR. ACOTAR definitely includes explicit (hetero) sex scenes and glorification of abusive dynamics that, imo, doesn't need to be included in school library systems. These things are worth talking about, but probably in an arena more suited to them; e.g., among adults who have the vocabulary and context to talk about consent, drug & alcohol use and abuse, and power dynamics in relationships. While young people can (and probably should) talk about issues like these, the hype and consumer culture around ACOTAR makes it too easy to fall into romanticizing the text without applying critical thinking.
I'm generally not one for banning books, but if I had read ACOTAR before going through a questionable relationship myself... I worry that young me might have romanticized the unbalanced power dynamic even more. High school me was certainly not equipped with the real world context to see that the relationships in the book are unhealthy, and the book itself doesn't really show the main character question anything that happens to her in a meaningful way.
Anyway, I'm not familiar with the rest of the books on the list. It does make me wonder what types of materials might be excluded from school library catalogs by default, though.
curation is different from censorship. the content of the censored material is neither here nor there
How do you think something like this should be curated in a school?
I think leaving it to the judgment of school librarians is probably sufficient. That's literally their job, and I don't see any reason the legislature should be stepping in to do their job for them.
Exactly, it's a tough line to draw, when the school system is a public one relying purely on public funds and thus management. I think it'd be better if it were a 'suggested removal list' and not a 'mandatory removal list', but in the face of limited floor-space for books it makes sense to cull the messiest of the messy first. The problem is that the moralizers tend to conflate self-discovery/exploration with borderline-pornography.
The right answer is in a public library separate from the direct school one, which does not have to adhere to the same requirements.
Floor space sounds like a weak argument for legislatively acting on what I would guess to be about one half of a square foot of books.
I agree it wasn't the reason (and definitely don't trust the legislators within this context).
My wife works at a library now....there is constant churn of new books entering and old books leaving. Space is at a premium, and 18 books is a decent-sized shelf that could be filled with higher-quality age-appropriate content. Admittedly schools probably have much less churn.
To be clear, I'm not speaking in specifics because I don't know any of the books in particular, also because I don't trust Utah to pick correctly anyhow.
Agreed. Especially true for kids living in weird cult like neighborhoods where their local schools are weird, or private schools where they heavily sanitize any views that remotely challenge the authoritative narrative.
Public libraries should be one of our most treasured institutions
MPAA/ESRB ratings for books? Not as regulations, but guidelines/suggestions from a standardized structure that school admins/boards/parents can use.
And tags. I would appreciate ahead of time if this is rated, say, YA-17 for crude language or because there's description of sexual assault
I would assume these rating systems actually have an impact on the content of the media they are associated with. The film industry does a lot of odd things due to ratings, even if they make the story worse.
every school should have free choice of what books to stock its library with
I thought these bans were mostly about any book that humanized gay people.
I was surprised to see Oryx and Crake on the list until I thought about it a bit. I guess that book, and it's sequels have many elements that would bather the extreme right. Weird.
I recalled reading that book for my school summer reading in 12th grade. I actually just checked, and it's even still on their summer reading list for incoming 12th graders. It absolutely has literary value -- frankly, it's heavily criticizing what it's portraying.
I personally don't believe Orxy and Crake belong in that list but I'm biased as a big fan of Margaret Atwood.
On the other hand, as a parent I sort of understand the move.
It's been over a decade since I've read O&C, but off hand I remember a few things that might have gotten it flagged:
(1) Scales and Tails sex club (2) Snowman's briefly mentioned sexual relationships (3) Crake an Snowman surfing specifically for CSA material when they themselves were children, and circumstances around how the material is generated in a late stage capitalistic/tech bro dystopian society (4) violence committed by Crake, both worldwide and personal (5) other dark web materials Crake and Snowman found
It also doesn't explicitly comment on the healthiness of Crake's relationship. I'm now of the adult opinion that it was abusive from beginning to end, but I can also clearly remember not understanding that as a teenaged reader. I went through a phase where I idolized Crake in a way that I guess kids these days do for Musk et al. (Joke: in my defense Crake is fictitious and built his compound on good old earth, not Mars.)
I'm surprised they left Handmaid's Tale in there if O&C is banned.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/196uS
Edit - it seems I have been misunderstood -- (1) Chocobean is for book bans in a school system provided these caveats are met. (2) The caveats have NOT been met. (Therefore:) Is Chocobean for or against the state book ban?
Honestly, I am completely okay with schools banning a dozen books. Ban hundreds. With some caveats:
(1) There is a publicly available list of which ones are banned. Preferably for what reasons.
(2) The libraries are otherwise very well stocked, and staffed with qualified librarians. And the schools otherwise are filled with qualified teachers who encourage reading as much, and as in depth, as possible.
(3) That providing kids with banned books itself isn't made illegal or deemed abusive. Let the parents decide when their kids are ready.
(4) Have clear guidelines for what will get your YA book banned, so authors can make adjustments.
(5) That classroom reads are thorough and guided and talk about how to approach challenging literature, how to discover intent behind the text, how to evaluate works from a different time and culture, unreliable narration, veiled criticisms, and how to form one's own judgement on right and wrong even if not explicit in the text. Heck, it's how the Bible should be read.
Plus an outright fantasy:
(*) That families are provided with enough quality of life minimum standards so that parents can be involved with their kids, gauge their maturity, reading and readiness levels, and know how to get their kids additional materials outside of school and yes stuff on the ban lists, and hold ongoing discussions on the nature of book bans, mature topics and how to expand knowledge from outside of someone's geopolitical / language barriers.
The fact is that there are many thousands of very good books published every single year. Ban some here and there, okay, as long as the library is still of a good quality, and how to read with analytical thought is taught, sure, stick the kids in a play garden until they're ready. How many college kids are told to read Lolita that don't even understand what an unreliable narrator is? The problem isn't the banned books, it's poorly raised children who aren't ready, with parents so busy surviving they're not there to guide. If they're used as a two stop approach: ban + protect, while nurturing for readiness, it's not an issue.
But. I hate that they're using banned books as a means to that first end without doing anything else for the second. It's like parents who pull their kids from sex ed, but instead of teaching it themselves they're just gonna not.
Leave slippery slope counter arguments out please.
Isn't that like definitionally the opposite of "banned" in this context?
"Mandatory curation in a public school" is different from "We'll arrest librarians, booksellers, and parents that provide those books outside of the public school"
And the way the country is headed, the second is becoming an increasingly possible reality.
Sure, but that isn't what is meant by the article that we are discussing.
Yes, but chocobean was discussing under what conditions they find censorship an acceptable thing, more than directly commenting on the specifics of the law. And in fact, you can see their primary criticism of the law:
Because this one is about moral policing more than preventing genuine harm from truly obscene material. The next list of books is going to be much larger and much more moralizing. That's how you get censorship laws in place: You highlight the truly horrible stuff most people weren't stocking anyway, and then you turn the dials up to remove any and all "objectionable" material, which in Utah means gay erasure more than anything. Say goodbye to pretty much any book that features more than a passing reference to a possibly-gay character, mark my words.
Thanks Vord, that's exactly what I meant to say in not as clear wording :)
I very much object to what the intent of the Utah law is really about, but i don't object to public school book bans by itself.
I also agree that the next step is going to be sweeping. Saving graces: (1) kids have the internet and the Open Seas now, and (2) push come to shove, all kinds of critical reading skills (translation problem, authorship debates, intent across time and space, history, interpretation wars etc) can still be taught using "problematic" passages of the Bible. My prediction is that Atwood's Handmaid's Tale will be on the next list precisely because of this reason.
Money never sleeps. As long as Utah is open for trade with other states and then other states have trade with the greater world, information will find its way in, and kids will want to and be able to get out. My hope is that we as a greater society wildly improve outreach for kids and young adults who need mentors and a healthy community. Be ready for them when they get out of authoritative, abusive, neglectful homes
Seeing that at least two banned books are about discovering atheism and abusive households this checks out. Can't let the kids discover that they're not living God's perfect dream life.
Hopefully kids will still have internet at home. Internet censorship is extreme in schools and still pretty bad in libraries in the name of keeping people from using them for porn.
(4) is never going to happen, because (I assert) it is impossible to create any objective set of content criteria which excludes any book, which does not also exclude the Bible.
(Reminder for anyone not in the know: Ezekial 23:20, which I guess I should say is very NSFW, in case that wasn't clear from context.)
While I am very comfortable with the idea that children absolutely should not be reading the Bible, I really, really don't think the Utah legislature would agree.
I grew up in a denomination where bible study was very heavily emphasized, and it was very common for adults and teachers to ask kids what their favorite bible verse was. When I was a teenager, me and my friends would often respond with this verse. You could always tell which people knew what it said, and their reactions were pretty consistently hilarious.
The number of adults who were concerned, vs not, were about even, when I answers my favorite book of the Bible was Ecclesiastes.
Also, that wasn't even the wildest thing the Prophet Ezekiel experienced:
Yep, turns out dry poop actually makes a pretty good fuel for fire. In America, pioneers heading west used "buffalo chips" as fuel, since they were often dozens or hundreds of miles from the nearest tree, and couldn't load their wagons with enough wood to last the entire trip.
Tasting History actually did a video about pioneer food not too long ago that mentions this:
What Pioneers ate on the Oregon Trail
Wikipedia also has a pretty interesting link on using old poop as fuel:
Dry dung fuel
Upvoted for good old Ezekiel.
Hey never say never. Cults that ban the private reading of their own holy texts, or not allowing girls to learn how to read at all is very common.
Even now, church leaders really dodge the topic about no archelogical evidence of Exodus occuring. It really throws a wrench in the narrative.
They would just say it excludes works of cultural significance, or books over a thousand years old, or something similar.
Those aren't content criteria. But even then, I don't think you could create a plausible objective set of context criteria that permits the Bible but excludes the Kama Sutra (as I will take the mental step of assuming these people would like to do). In particular, by age, there's significant overlap between the plausible earliest composition dates of the Kama Sutra and the latest of certain books of the New Testament.
(The Kama Sutra is probably better for children to be reading, too, but I digress.)
(Of course, blatant hypocrisy and flagrant disregard of the separation of church and state are pretty much foundational tenets of American Christian nationalism, so it's not really useful to observe that intellectual dishonesty is required to arrive at their conclusions. It can be a convenient intellectual shortcut to identify that you have left the universe of rational discourse, though.)
If a library has qualified librarians, there should be no need to ban books. One of the (many) duties of a librarian is to curate the library's collection to its audience. If these books are inappropriate for the school, then the librarian will come to that conclusion on their own. If the books need a content warning and/or an adult to explain some concepts to them before they start reading, the librarian can require a teacher or parent's permission (e.g. a note saying that the adult has already explained these concepts to the child) before the student can check out the book.
For a school assignment to read a book of my choice, I read A Clockwork Orange (a book that has been banned in many places over the years) in grade 9. It wasn't available at my school library (for good reason), but it wasn't banned. My teacher did ask for a note from my parents saying that they understood the content and that I could read it, and everything was fine.
I don't think you can have a conversation about banning books without talking about the slippery slope. What subjects are okay to ban, and how do you define them sufficiently narrowly? I don't think it's possible, and that's exactly where the slippery slope comes in. But if you can, please give an example of a well-defined rule for banning a book per caveat 4 (you don't have to agree with the rule) and we'll see how many well-intentioned books are caught in the crossfire.
It seems I have been misunderstood
(1) Chocobean is chill with book bans in a school system provided these caveats are met.
(2) The caveats have NOT been met.
(Therefore:) Is Chocobean for or against the state book ban?
It's certainly possible I misunderstood you.
It seems like Chocobean is against this specific book ban but still okay with a book ban given those caveats. I'm happy for the first part, but still disagree with bans, even given your caveats. I think banning books is bad, full stop.
This actually has a lot of parallels with the "debate" on abortion. Is "abortion is banned but with some caveats/exceptions" ever a good idea? If we ask the legislators in Texas, yes. If we ask all the doctors in Texas, no. Or should we leave it to the professionals (e.g. librarians and doctors) to decide what is appropriate given the circumstances and environment?
Interesting. All book bans are bad all the time? You can't imagine good and honest and useful ways for books to be off limits for specific population groups for a brief time? Not even if they're okay to be read at home, or heck even in the school, just not available for every kid from the school library?
What if there was a book that was honestly written by a pedophile to groom children? Incel stuff? Copy of autobiography from your least favorite dictator just as winds of authoritarian cheer is gripping the school? What if we have the above situation happening, but we have no librarians, only lending robots pushing what the district benefits from? What if schools are now funded by big oil and gas and the shelves have been cleared to make way for sponsored materials? Still not okay to limit what's on the shelves?
What if a religious cult came and in the name of renewing materials, replaced all library books with copies that highlight cult interpretation on every page? And remember we don't have good librarians anymore. You wouldn't want to see certain things not available in school libraries even then?
Censorship is a tool, it is often bad because of who wields it, not because it is bad all the time everywhere.
You can restrict access to books without banning them. I don't think something like Mein Kampf belongs in an elementary school library, and I hope school librarians agree with me, but if they don't, then it's their prerogative as the authority on the subject to include it in their collection.
If the school library system gets taken over by pedophiles/robots/O&G as you suggest, I'm not sure how a book ban would actually stop them. Who is implementing this ban, and what is going to compel the gas-powered robotic pedophiles to follow the rules? And if such a ban were possible, wouldn't it be a better idea to ban pedophiles, robots, and large corporations from replacing librarians in the first place?
There's an infinite number of hypotheticals that sound bad, but a book ban isn't actually the solution to any of them. Banning a bunch of bad books isn't going to fix anything, because the books aren't the problem, they're simply a very small symptom of the larger systemic issues that caused you to want those bans in the first place.
Note that the previous sentence holds true even if we look at it from the perspective of the people who want to ban LGBTQ+ books. They can try to ban as many books as they want, but that won't actually change the overall system which is trending towards accepting LGBTQ+ people as people. They can ban all the books they want, and while it may slow down the systemic transition towards acceptance, it won't stop it.