So youre in favor of books teaching 4th graders about anal sex?
Oh is that what they’re banning? I thought they were banning things like “
Novels for Students, Vol. 9: Presenting analysis, context, and criticism on commonly studied novels,” by Deborah A. Stanley (banned in Clay County, FL).
PEN America (a nonprofit org made up of authors, poets, journalists, editors and the like) has been tracking these bans. Let’s look at some data from the 2nd half of 2022. Are these “sexually explicit” books you speak of the most commonly banned? Nope.
Books about health topics, themes of grief and death, or books with characters of color were all banned more than books with sex between characters.
But we’re doing this for the children, right? Lol nope.
Young Adult books are the most commonly banned, followed by Adult books.
Just as dangerous as the types of books banned is the way that these bans work—
punishing teachers, and punishing ALL students as they frequently can’t read any books until the red-tape-filled bureaucratic bullshit is complete.
At the end of the day, it’s great to make a decision on what your kid should or shouldn’t read. It’s
not ok to make decisions about what everyone else’s kids should or shouldn’t read.
And please enlighten me on all these things that I can do that blacks and/or LGBTQ cannot….
Ah yes, you can always count on a right winger trying this awful argument. Accuse them of working to
restrict rights, and they’ll counter with “Oh yeah? What rights have we succeeded at
completely eliminating??”
That’s such a poor argument, and obvious shifting of the goalposts.
—It ignores things specific to some of these groups, such as receiving gender affirming care. It’s silly to ask what type of things you can do that they can’t in that context, as you’d have to be trans to need gender affirming care in the first place.
—It ignores the fact that restricting rights is unacceptable in and of itself. Republicans have proposed a whole litany of bills to
restrict voting rights and have succeeded in passing some of them. Trying to defend this by saying “Well, we haven’t *technically* completely taken away these people’s right to vote” is a pretty inadequate defense.
