I’m perfectly fine with not having every book on the shelf.
Devils advocate here.
First, these are high school students, if they’re not already sucking and fucking each other, they’ve already watched it all go down on the internet-enabled iPads you gave them as toddlers to shut them up.
Second, removing every book that has any description of sex or a blowjob would leave you with a giant hole in your fiction section. If we’re going to remove anything a pearl-clutching parent could take offense to, we might as well just have encyclopedias (as long as they don’t mention sex).
Third, reading this book is NOT going to turn your teenager gay, or incestuous. It just doesn’t work like that. If you did anything to raise your kids you shouldn’t be afraid of them reading fiction. Just words.
Fourth, BANNING BOOKS IS BAD. Banning literature is a tool of control. Literally 1984.
Fifth, there are some people with situations in their life that may benefit from being able to identify with the characters in this book. Maybe they have had someone in their family act inappropriately with them and don’t know how to process it.
Sixth, no one has to read it. No ones being forced.
@criitz @OnlyTakesLs You’ve probably made the best points in favor of keeping these books in schools that I’ve seen so far, particularly that first point.
I’ll say on the second point, the issue in the article seems to be that the scenes depicted underage sexual activity. Sex scenes and smut in books is pretty standard, it’s not hard to find them in public libraries.
@criitz @OnlyTakesLs And the fourth argument is a little silly. If there are going to be cartoons showing nude children in schools in a way that borders child porn, a case can be made that it should be banned. Books with actual child porn in them should certainly be banned.
Censorship is generally banned, but some things should still be banned. A book that says “kill all your neighbors if they disagree with you” should also be banned.
Would you argue that online censorship is bad?
@OnlyTakesLs I think worse than this being in a library is that anybody would write this in the first place.
@OnlyTakesLs Okay maybe that’s unfair, art is art. But that’s pretty disturbing, and I don’t know why an underage incest scene would be necessary even if underage incest is a theme of the story
