[pfannkuchen]

Whenever the topic of “banned books” comes up, a bunch of people argue about whether they should be called “banned”.

What I haven’t seen mentioned in these discussions is where the mental association of “banned books” comes from.

In America, at least, the school curriculum spends a lot of time talking about dictators. It mentions, numerous times over many years of a child’s life, that something dictators often do is to ban books that could make people question them or that could make people support people the dictator doesn’t like, etc. In all such cases covered in the school curriculum, dictators’ “banned books” are not allowed to be sold in the country at all, and are often destroyed, sometimes even in mass burnings.

So, this is the psychological association people typically have with the phrase “banned books”.

The news articles over the past X years declaring something like “Government Y bans books!” seem to be leveraging this mental association to give people the emotional impression that Government Y is doing dictatorships things. I think this is why people get annoyed, since not allowing whatever books in the school library is not a dictator thing (okay dictators do it but it’s like drinking milk or being against animal cruelty, it’s not something that is primarily done by dictators).

So, when people say that not allowing a book in a school library is a type of ban, they are correct, but they ignore this association which most people have from school.

[Aurornis]

The “banned books” theme has become intentionally vague because it has become a marketing tool.

That’s how we got to Dua Lipa doing a promotional photo op holding up books that can be purchased on Amazon and delivered to your Kindle to read immediately. Attaching the “banned” word to a book turns the purchase into an act of rebellion and a reason to talk about it, and the marketers are not going to waste that opportunity.

That’s why the “banned books” category has been expanded so much to include not only books that governments or corporations have tried to suppress, but also books that some school board in Kansas decided shouldn’t be included in the elementary school library.

Unfortunately once a term becomes this overloaded it loses meaning. The original topics of government censorship and oppression get less attention because it’s drowned out by pop stars holding up Margaret Atwood books for photo ops and people buying books on Amazon as a form of slacktivism.

[mossTechnician]

Banning a book in a school district still signifies a form of authoritarianism. If someone is prevented from reading Maus[0] (or finding out they are in a cult, or a victim of domestic abuse), what is the effective difference to them between an authoritarian censoring it at the national level or the local one?

[0]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/holocaust-novel-maus-banne...

[Aurornis]

We "ban" things from school kids all the time, though: Pornography, gambling, smoking, alcohol, R-rated movies.

Dua Lipa wasn't doing a photo op with Maus. In the photos she's posing with modern books that are still being promoted by their publishers. I'm not familiar with all of them, but a quick search shows one of them is not appropriate for elementary schools because it includes essays debating which sexual acts are appropriate for feminists to perform and other adult topics. Why is it "authoritarianism" to say that a book like that doesn't belong in my kids' school library?

This is a promotional stunt, and I'm surprised more people aren't seeing through it.

[cauch]

> We "ban" things from school kids all the time, though: Pornography, gambling, smoking, alcohol, R-rated movies.

And no one really pretended that these cases were cases of "banned books".

The problem is when authority bodies (school, government, ...) start to include, in these "normal non-appropriate" books other books not because they have bad societal consequences when the reader is not mature enough, but because they don't like the content for ideological reasons.

I think it would be a very bad faith argument to argue that reading Maus will lead to people less socially adjusted.

And, sure, some "banned" books may be inappropriate. But as soon as these authorities have open the doors to arbitrary banning books, they poisoned their own well: maybe under "normal" evaluation this book should be removed from the list, but they removed it "the bad way", they failed the process, and therefore the ban itself is illegitimate.

It's a bit like the procedural miscarriage of justice: if you mess up when arresting someone, they can be freed even if it turns out they were guilty. Or in a more topical subject: the Fifa can reverse some decision, but if they do it in the context where they received phone calls from the US president, then it's a big failure in the process, even if a "normal" re-evaluation should indeed have concluded to reversing the decision.

[pfannkuchen]

> not because they have bad societal consequences when the reader is not mature enough, but because they don't like the content for ideological reasons

“Bad societal consequences” is entirely subjective, though. This is the crux of the issue.

[cauch]

Saying "entirely subjective" is a bit BS, don't you think?

On one hand, you have someone who says that exposing children to sexual or violent content can have an impact on them. This is something that has been studied, sociologists, psychiatrists, doctors, ... have concluded that this is true.

On the other hand, you have someone who says that an ideology they don't like will lead to the ruin of the society. At the same time, communities, and often whole countries themselves, don't see the problem with these ideologies, and the catastrophe that this person has predicted does not occur. The only reason they claim that is because they are intolerant and want to impose their ideology, not because they want what's good for others.

So, yes, there are __some__ subjectivity. The same way that there is subjectivity around "good and bad" and yet "murdering" is universally considered as "bad" but "not going to the catholic mass" is not.

[mossTechnician]

I don't understand the scare quotes: per my previous reply, is a ban not a ban regardless of who does it? Maus has nudity and curse words; that's why it was banned in Tennessee. 1984 has multiple sex scenes - the well-funded Christian publication PluggedIn[0] rates it 18+.

Two things can be true at the same time: a book can be both banned in one place, and used to promote someone's brand in another. Somebody in a deeply repressive and abusive home will not have a better or worse life if Dua Lipa did not exist.

[0]: https://www.pluggedin.com/book-reviews/1984/

[anthk]

In Europe every kid over 13 would buy both with no issues at all. 1984's sex scenes are so-so and something that just happens in the background like nothing.

[bananaflag]

Indeed, after reading the book I was surprised that the movie has explicit frontal nudity.

[miyoji]

> one of them is not appropriate for elementary schools because it includes essays debating which sexual acts are appropriate for feminists to perform and other adult topics. Why is it "authoritarianism" to say that a book like that doesn't belong in my kids' school library?

Who exactly are you to say what is or isn't appropriate for elementary school libraries?

It's authoritarian because it's about people with authority (parents, teachers), telling people without (students) what kinds of media they are and aren't allowed to consume, which is about controlling which ideas they're allowed to think about. You don't like children thinking or learning about sex, but there is no moral or rational reason for that. You just don't like it, and you wish to use your authority to impose your preferences on people who have no power to stop you. That's authoritarian.

And no, I don't think parents should be able to control their children's media diets, the idea that parents get to control their children is itself authoritarian. You don't own your kids.

[AlexandrB]

You should think this through. The logical endpoint is that all age based content restrictions are "authoritarian".

So it should be ok to stock movies like Martyrs[1] or Men Behind the Sun[2] in elementary school libraries, because who are parents and teachers to decide whether seeing a woman flayed to death or a child vivisected is something that a 6 year old should be allowed to see?

My real takeaway here is that you probably don't have children.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_(2015_film)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Behind_the_Sun

[grahamburger]

That type of media was never in schools to begin with. The problem here is that schools and districts made their own, informed curation decisions, and those decisions are being overridden by zealous parents informed only by their religious and political persuasions.

[miyoji]

> You should think this through. The logical endpoint is that all age based content restrictions are "authoritarian".

I do think that. It's rude to assume that I haven't thought my position through.

> So it should be ok to stock movies like Martyrs[1] or Men Behind the Sun[2] in elementary school libraries, because who are parents and teachers to decide whether seeing a woman flayed to death or a child vivisected is something that a 6 year old should be allowed to see?

Sure.

> My real takeaway here is that you probably don't have children.

I don't, but I was one, and I accessed all kinds of stuff on the internet that my parents and teachers didn't want me to see. Including gross violence and sex stuff. It didn't kill me. It didn't even hurt me. I'm fine. I'm a better person for having exposed myself to those things than I would be if I'd been sheltered from them.

[throwitaway222]

This take is pretty extreme.

> Who exactly are you to say what is or isn't appropriate for elementary school libraries?

parents

If you want to go full anti-authoritarian, you are literally advocating anarchy. One in which you have no right to jail someone for killing someone else.

There are many moral systems! Some of them are based in Christian ethics, which many people prescribe to. In fact it's the one the United States is based on. You can also choose something like liberalism. Many or most people would at least agree that "killing randon people at random times" being advocated in a book is not a good thing. And if that's not a good thing, then there is a moral judgement to be made to "ban" said book. I'm not saying that book exists, but if it did - would you "ban" it?

No one "owns" another person, but there are many other forms of relationships between people that allows for one person to dictate a media diet for another.

[neetle]

> parents

Parent-based rights arguments are perfectly adequate for the 80%, but degenerate in some horrific ways for the rest of the population. We need community-level input on how to raise kids so that the leftover 20% don’t just get fucked up by parents that “know best for their kid”.

Anecdotally know of a few times where kids were taught that their molestation was their own fault (both sub-10yo), and had friends whose parents actively pushed them to kill themselves

[carlosjobim]

The effective difference is of course that they could easily get that book from somewhere else if they want it.

If I'm prevented from bringing my dog into a restaurant, that doesn't mean that dogs are banned. It means I have to go to the restaurant on the other side of the street.

If McDonald's doesn't serve any hard liquor it doesn't mean that alcohol has been banned in the country.

[mossTechnician]

Is it really that cut and dry? A technically competent person might easily access a book while living in an authoritarian country, while someone who grows up in an authoritarian family in a "free" country might be prevented from reading a book both at home and at the school where their parents lobbied to ban the book. (It's quite hard to access suppressed information if you lack the knowledge it exists in the first place.)

[carlosjobim]

Authoritarian family? Parents have the authority over their children until they are old enough to make their own decisions. It is up to them how they raise their kids.

They will have all the time and opportunity in the world to read and try anything they want to when they're older.

[mossTechnician]

The specific examples I provided included domestic abuse; most sexual abuse is done by a family member. I hope it's not contentious to say that parental control should not be as authoritarian as to allow that, let alone suppress the victim's knowledge of what it is.

[amanaplanacanal]

So you are suggesting that kids should just go to a different public school?

[carlosjobim]

You can get books from other places than your public school.

[pfannkuchen]

By that definition everywhere throughout all time is authoritarian.

Everywhere throughout all time is obviously not authoritarian, so the definition fails. Sorry, you are wrong.

[grahamburger]

Authoritarian is an adjective. A thing can be authoritarian without all things being so. Yes, authoritarian things have always existed, and yes, a powerful religious group joining forces to make sure kids continue to hate themselves for being gay or trans is authoritarian.

[ZeroGravitas]

Everywhere being authoritarian throughout all time seems a fairly good summary to me?

The Romans nailed Jesus to a cross, the American south bred human slaves, Europe regularly had crusades and pogroms, post-war America supported a crazy number of military dictatorships, the Iron curtain, Communist China and so on.

[grahamburger]

On the other hand, there is a persistent idea that schools are just making curation decisions for the children in their district, and people are calling that book banning. That's what you seem to be suggesting here. In all cases I'm aware of, that's not what's happening either; it's generally a parent, or a small group of parents, generally all from the same religious group and political party, bullying the library or school district into reversing curation decisions they had already made. A small, vocal group ultimately makes decisions about what all the kids in the district can read at school, based on their own religious and political affiliation. That comes much closer to your "banned book mental association" than I think you give it credit for.

[JuniperMesos]

You're more likely to be aware of a library book curation decision where parents are publicly fighting to remove a book the school library management wants to keep; compared to a curation decision where the school library management simply never decides to make a book available to begin with.

[grahamburger]

Personally, I am OK with the library making their own curation decisions. That's part of how a library functions, I understand that they can't carry everything. I have a problem when zealous parents try to override those decisions, especially when they are motivated by political or religious worldviews.

I think the Bible should be in school libraries (and it always has been), but if you're keeping it while removing other books for sex, violence, genocide, pedophilia, rape, homosexuality, or other objectionable things that are also included in the Bible, I think you're being inconsistent and overzealous.

[JuniperMesos]

Do you think the librarians' choice about what books to stock in their library aren't motivated by political or religious worldviews? What kind of person becomes a school librarian? One motivation is that they want to influence what kinds of written information young people do and do not readily have access to.

[grahamburger]

I've known enough librarians to come to a belief that, in general, their curation decisions are more motivated by a love of books and learning than they are by the more divisive political issues of the day.

Of course, none of us can completely escape our own biases. That said, librarians aren't airdropped in to small towns from San Francisco; generally, they're local. If they're in a religious conservative community, it's pretty darn likely they are also religious and conservative. They have probably also had some education that helped them understand biases and how to practice avoiding them.

I find your implicit suggestion that there is some underground network of Leftys descending on small town America to become librarians and put LGBTQ books on the shelves laughably unserious. If you want to influence kids, go on tiktok or become a youth pastor or something. It's hard enough to get kids to read books they're actually interested in, you're not gonna get far as a librarian.

[citadel_melon]

Is there a valid reason to ban a book? On one hand, I agree there are books which are dangerous. But usually the most dangerous ones are one’s that are more innocuous. I think Catcher in the Rye is dangerous as I have seen grown men misread Holden as a hero to look up to rather than as a flawed mis-socialized man child. On the other hand, I have seen people go too far the other way and say that this book proves that everyone who rejects authority is just a bitter, poorly-socialized man baby. How painfully common these two misreadings provide me reason to ban my children from reading this book outside of my supervision.

However, Catcher in the Rye is banned not primarily for these nuanced misreadings, but instead primarily for its profanity. Meaning if we stripped the profanity out, this dangerous book would likely never have been banned in the first place. When you allow these bureaucratic institutions to ban books, they are not going to Socraticly reason through what should and should not be banned in a rigorous manner. They are going to ban books that vibe against their “sensibilities”.

Given that we do not have philosopher kings making these ban decisions, the least bad option is to not have any ban. Encourage kids to read broadly and get many different perspectives. More importantly, teach them to act as a scouts who should be proud/excited when they find a new opinion other than their own — and even more excited to find an opinion better than their own to adopt — rather than a warrior who is proud that their previous opinion was “right the whole time”. Sometimes your old opinion was proven right by new information, but that should not make you excited/proud. I’m confident that if all children are taught this scout-mindset that solving the intractable problem of banning books “correctly” would be completely unnecessary. Matter of fact, having children build immunity to bad ideas through learning how to be a “good scout” would be strictly better than making little bubble-boys who are safe from bad ideas only because the thin bubble the “philosopher kings” set up for them. The latter bubble makes children’s immune system unprepared for the real world while the scout mindset helps build hyper-capable, curious, and civically engaged adults.

[glimshe]

I've banned a number of books from my household as I don't want my child exposed to them. And I support banning them from the school. Children aren't adults. It's reasonable to expect that education caters to a common denominator within society. I would only have a problem if adults couldn't acquire these books.

[Aurornis]

A family we know got swept up in the "banned books" movement. They repost banned book content on their Instagram and even got T-shirts with witty sayings about supporting banned books.

They bought some books for their kids from a banned books list thinking they were "banned" for thought-control reasons, but opened one up to find an illustrated guide to using mobile phone apps to find partners for anonymous hook-ups and a guide to following through with it.

The book clearly wasn't appropriate for their young children, so they hid it away. Now we joke that they've also banned the book.

[amanaplanacanal]

A lot of books are getting banned from schools because they mention gay characters or other "woke" content. Not at all the same thing.

[mossTechnician]

Can you list some of these books you want removed from school libraries, along with why?

[BJones12]

Mein Kampf?

[croes]

No, make it part of the curriculum. Read it and shown how boring and stupid it is.

Demystify such nonsense

[stronglikedan]

> Read it and shown how boring and stupid it is.

Except it's not, or it couldn't have continued to radicalize people to this very day.

[croes]

I doubt that most owner have read it completely.

Like the bible people mostly know the parts of it that fit their own agenda.

And don’t underestimate the effect it has if you are forced to read a book in school from front to back and write essays about it.

[subscribed]

People choose to commit atrocities in the name of the famous holy books - you either support banning them as well or concede there's something more to it.

[rsynnott]

... Wait, are you claiming that people are, having not previously been exposed to Nazism, reading it, and going "well, this seems like a pretty good idea really"? I'm fairly sure that's not a thing. No-one's being radicalised by it; rather the only people who really read it are already radicalised, because, otherwise, why would you bother?

There may be books which radicalise people. But I'm fairly sure Mein Kampf is not one of them.

[quaddoggy]

The irony of Mein Kampf suffering the streisand effect is not lost.

[vasco]

To a common denominator yes but if you aim for too much breath then you miss out on a lot of good things if you ban until almost everyone is satisfied. And some fads that get popular to ban things I disagree with like when people said violent games were the reason for violence or that rock and metal music made teenagers angry or that grunge makes them kill themselves. Many times some groups latch on to some popular culture topic as the reason for X pre-existing problem of the world.

[grahamburger]

Note that children do become adults while in (high) school. It's common for book-banners to imply that they are removing books from elementary school kids when they are actually removing them from adults and almost-adults in high schools.

[glimshe]

Sure. The place for these adults to get books is the county/city library and not the school library. As I said, there's a certain common denominator that we need to respect when talking about public schools.

[ozgung]

Banning and burning books is from an era when there was no digital publishing. Only way of distributing text/thoughts was by printing press. Today we don't burn books but we constantly ban/shadow ban digital content. This is independent of which country you are from. Corporations do the censorship mostly, in place of the governments. Try writing a Reddit comment opposing mainstream politics. You are only allowed to play in a sandbox. AI shadow-burns your comments automatically and blacklists you if you go out of your human guiderails. No human dictators to blame. So yes, if this is a dictator thing (I think it is), we all live in a kind of modern dictatorship.

[Levitz]

I think it's a little bit naive to think they ignore the association. They know it perfectly well, which is why they are using it. Same thing with concentration camps, same thing with mentions of Gestapo.

[pohl]

Is it useful to limit these thoughts to a dictator doing dictator stuff, though? What would be the material difference be between that and operatives of his political party astroturfing local school boards to remove books that teach about the racial history of the country or the existance of trans folk, to make it appear as though the local community decided to do it?

[iamtheworstdev]

book burnings like this? https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/09/gop-lawmakers-hold-symbo...

[jt2190]

> In America, at least, the school curriculum spends a lot of time talking about dictators.

I don’t think this is actually true. What’s your source for this? States set K-12 curriculum.

[tough]

One can only wonder how American Schools will talk about the current US Gov and presidents in a few decades...

[suburban_strike]

Given the track we're on, in 80 years Americans will be extinct and whoever's occupying my current space will be living in the Managed Democracy of Monocolored Benetton.

Their kids will be taught that's all it ever was since the first colony was established in this otherwise-uninhabited land on Stardate 2302.5.

[frumplestlatz]

Declining to buy and stock a book in a school library is not a ban at all.

The book can still be printed, bought, and read. It can be brought into that same school, and read there. It’s not banned.

[amanaplanacanal]

If the school declines to put a book in the library, that's not a ban. If people outside the school with power over the school demand that books be removed, that's a ban.

The groups demanding books be removed are often not even parents of children in the school. It external parties driving this stuff.

[frumplestlatz]

Removing a book from the library is not a ban any more than a publisher rejecting a manuscript is a ban.

Declining to provide a book is not the same as prohibiting the possession, use, or distribution of a book.

As for “external parties”, schools in the US are public institutions.

[amanaplanacanal]

If rather have folks that are trained in childhood education doing that job than randos.