• UnculturedSwine@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I admire the students that are setting up book clubs for banned books. They are recognizing that they are being given a list of what they should read.

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They’re also evidence of why the book banning doesn’t really work as well today as conservatives would like it to.

      Book banning was an effective way of controlling what your young population was exposed to before the internet and social media. It worked best when the young weren’t even aware of the information they were being denied.

      But social media is making sure they’re all very much aware of what has been hidden from them. They know what’s going on. You will find teenagers in particular are kind of resistant to being told no by an authority, so they’re going to do something about it.

      Now, don’t feel too excited about this, because there’s a threat here. Every single time you see a conservative talking about more stringent age verification for things on the internet, part of what they’re actually trying to do is create an avenue to control the information kids are exposed to. They are pretty open about how LGBT issues, particularly the T ones, can be labeled as “sexual” and “inappropriate”. With very simple changes to the regulation, they can suppress children’s access to anything they like as long as they make a half-assed argument that it’s “inappropriate”.

  • Buffaloaf@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    My high school English teacher did this, although we didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t until I was doing an essay on banned books in college that I realized all of the ones we read in his class were banned. Really made me appreciate him more.

            • SoleInvictus@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              It’s legal. An annotated version, with neither the swastika nor a picture of the greasy Nazi fuck, was published a few years back and tens of thousands were sold, primarily to German libraries and schools. It’s a good study on how shitheads think.

              • bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 year ago

                I often buy books written by shitheads when I end up studying fascism or other radical right wing movements. Heck, even more mainstream conservative movements with radical imagery or frequent dogwhistles. Reading books by shitty people on shitty topics is very important on understanding how the movements work and think.

                Reading about fascism from antifascists is good and all, but understanding fascist movements when they are most active requires reading fascist works. Heck, even with books like Mien Kampf, a book with a ton of analysis done by antifascists could still be a potentially useful read for antifascists.

                • SoleInvictus@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  That’s smart. I can’t count how many times I’ve learned about new dogwhistles or the details of various ideologies and realized an acquaintance was a fascist and/or racist sack of shit, although I’ve never been surprised. This would help me realize in real-time, so I can call them out on their shit.

                  I do feel like I’d need a book cover with something like “I’m reading -book title- to understand scumbags. I do not support its ideology”.

                • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  “Mein Kampf” was never banned.

                  The copyright was held by the state of Bavaria as the official heir of Hitler and they simply said “Nope, no new printings.”

                  As the copyright ran out in 2015 everyone can copy and print it again. Though most don’t care, even the most right wing nutcracks realize that the book is rather badly written.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Parents: We must ban all the books we disagree with!

    Kids: That’s fine, no one reads physical books anymore anyways. Just don’t touch the library internet filter - we are getting tired of finding ways around the block list.

  • Setarkus.LW@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m assuming that getting books banned from libraries requires them to be there in the first place (in most cases at least), so any arguments using examples age rating issues should rather focus on why those books got into a school library in the first place.
    Surely the ones responsible don’t just blindly choose some books to fill the library without at least making sure they’re not as wildly inappropriate as some people like to say.

  • vegantomato@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is referring to a few books that were banned from school libraries a while ago (not sure what they were doing there in the first place).

    Anyway, one of the books that were banned showed males sucking each other off. That’s hardly something you would be eager to show a kid unless you are a groomer. A common theme between these books in general was that they were pornographic. The fact that there was, and still is an outrage from the LGBT community till this day because of the bans is telling.

    Also, do make note of the people here comparing the bans to Nazi Germany. Yeah, not showing kids gay porn is like being a Nazi, apparently. Disgusting.

    • kase@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      one of the books that were banned showed males sucking each other off.

      Which one is that?

        • kase@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Ok so I looked it up and ended up skimming through the entire book - I wasn’t planning to, but I got carried away because it’s really good! Anyway, I’m not sure if I found what you were talking about. I thought maybe it was the scene on page 168, but that wasn’t two males (one was cis female and the other was non binary and AFAB), and it wasn’t both sucking each other off, it was one character wearing a strap-on over clothes and the other giving a blow job. Was there a different scene that I glossed over somewhere?

          • HiddenLychee@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Nope, but that guy doesn’t get outraged with the idea of kids being exposed to sex acts. They just get outraged specifically by the thought of them being exposed to gay sex acts.

            • kase@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              you are arguing semantics

              I’m not arguing anything, just wanted to know if that was the scene you were talking about. Thanks for clearing it up.

    • vegantomato@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      For reference, one of the books was called Gender Queer. I’m not sure if that’s the one with the gay blow job though. That’s the gay blow job book.