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https://medium.com/thing-a-day/people-who-ban-books-are-never-right-6a1043c14235>
"I can’t believe that I have to say this at all, but banning and burning books
is, broadly and generally speaking, a bad thing. As in it is never acceptable,
like, ever. Why are we even having this discussion?
First off, it’s incredibly ineffectual in the modern age. We have things like
Amazon, where we can download a truly incredible number of e-books on a variety
of topics, including an absolutely jaw-dropping amount of smut. Do you really
think that banning a handful of books about being queer is going to stop kids
from getting their grubby little hands on them?
I know parents whose kids can manage to get through whatever parental controls
they have established to buy loads of stuff on their parents’ credit cards.
Failing that, many teenagers will simply buy things they want with allowance
money and hide them from their parents, assuming their parents aren’t
supportive and wouldn’t just buy that thing for them anyway.
Barring that, there’s always petty crime, a favorite of teenagers everywhere.
An author I follow heard from a librarian that the most stolen books are the
ones that kids need to read at that point in their lives. Do you really think
that kids who want to find out what is happening with them won’t just steal
those books from a bookstore if it came down to it? I’m not a big fan of crime
in general, but I am also willing to bet that a bunch of queer authors would
rather lose a sale to theft if it means a kid survives high school.
Second, the books that the current crop of banners and burners are targeting
are generally focused on queerness and BIPOC rights. Why, you might ask, are
they targeting these books? Because, and this is the quiet part that gets said
out loud a lot, they view these populations as not equal to white people."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
