Calls to ban books hit highest level ever recorded in US | Hacker News Reader

Calls to ban books hit highest level ever recorded in US

theguardian.com

17 pointsanigbrowl20 comments

Alternative headline could be more inappropriate books being pushed on pre teen & teen children. If the people doing most of the stocking of books were fans of Rush Limbaugh )https://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Books-Rush-Limbaugh/s?rh=n%...) or The Turner diaries, I am sure a different set of people would be angry about indoctrination and would want the books out.

This debate needs a lot of context added. HN I hope is more savvy than that other news aggregation site.

The most banned book, according to the article, is an autobiography with an emphasis on the author questioning gender identity during their adolescence. Over two decades ago my middle school library had three copies of The Color Purple, an autobiography featuring multiple pedophilic rapes, and no member of my cohort was harmed by that.

Instead of idealising the children of today and attributing unrealistic levels of vulnerability to them, consider whether the work sitting on a shelf would have harmed your generation when you were a teenager. It wouldn't, because the human mind is resilient to anything short of Dianetics, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The Secret.

Love how you implicitly equate a book advocating a white supremacist violent overthrow of the government with Judy Bloom.

Do "Mein Kompf" and "The Audacity of Hope" next, please.

There's a complete moral panic of those who worry that if we tolerate or are comfortable with the idea that there are people who question their gender identity, or are gay, or trans or many other things it will be the end of the world.

Can you add some more context on what you mean by “inappropriate”?

Do you think there is content that is inappropriate for 9 to 14 year olds? What would that be?

I'd definitely accept there is content that some 9-14yos wouldn't have the necessary mental or emotional development to deal well with, and that risks negatively impacting their mental health and turning them towards troublesome behaviour if their home environment is less than ideal. But we've been exposing kids to religious texts that are full of all sorts of horrific descriptions for centuries and it doesn't seem to have done so much harm as to justify removing such books from libraries completely. From what I've read the new books mostly seem rather innocuous - is there really reason to believe they're likely to stir up never- before-seen levels of angst or self-doubt among schoolkids? Or encourage dangerous experimentation with irreversible downsides? That there may be some temporary negative side-effects I'd think is just a price all kids have to pay learning about the more complicated world of adulthood and sexual desires etc., and you can hardly hide that world from them forever.

It was a reasonable question. I think you should answer it rather than counter-interrogate.

Also, you started out mentioning 'teen and pre-teen children', then narrowed it to 'children age 9-14'. Most people assume 'teen' to cover anyone up to the age of 18, at which point they're no longer legally a child.

Why didn’t you simply answer the question?

No doubt made by people who would screech at any whiff of their own First Amendment rights being infringed. What are we to do about these folks? Ban the Bible for child rape content?

That’s such a disingenuous argument because the books that the ”book banning” critics are talking about involve visual depictions of, among other things, fellatio between men. It’s hardly anything a grownup that’s not engaged in grooming would show a kid.

Calling it ”book banning” as if ideas are being surpressed or something, is very dishonest and it’s getting quite transparent at this point.

At what age do you think it’s appropriate to read about sex, and at what age do you think it’s appropriate to read about gay sex? If those are different.

For my part I read It, by Stephen King, when I was pretty young. Maybe 13-14 ish. There’s an edgy scene at the end of the book involving the young protagonists. I read it, I thought it was odd, and moved on. If it were more a popular book these days perhaps it would be banned too. Curious if you have thoughts on that.

>read

Visual depictions.

This framing ignores the agency of the teenagers who read the books. Do you think the only media in their lives are media that an adult shows them, with no capacity to seek things out themselves?

Do you think that showing a minor pornography is okay because they can seek it out themselves?

Furthermore, do you think that buying alcohol to a minor is okay if they can seek it out themselves?

There's a big difference between showing something to a person and that thing being available in a library whey they can seek it out or encounter it at random. You seem to be implying that library curators are leading minors to shelves and telling them to look at something they otherwise wouldn't.

They may not be actively showing this material, but at the very least they are facilitating porn use by minors. The same way as when a person offers to buy a minor alcohol, they are facilitating alcohol consumption by minors.

There is no acceptable reason to keep pornography in a school library.

You think it's porn, many other people do not. I grew up in a hyper-conservative milieu where commercial porn was simply not available, everything I learned about sex came from books. I discovered the existence of sexuality through reading the Bible; I literally had no idea there was anything more complicated to life than moms and dads until I I happened across all these stories of people being killed for engaging in 'abominations'.

Magnetic poetry can 'facilitate porn use by minors'. I think you work toward a better-defined standard that doesn't pre-empt the rights of other people who don't share your point of view.

Responding with bans won't help -- their whole identity is tied to victimhood (a lot of them wear a symbol to that effect). I think the only way to truly resolve this is to elect better representatives/school board members, or become one yourself.

What is and is not acceptable for minors to access is decided by parents or by politics. This is pretty standard and applying 1A concerns is weird.

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