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On censorship and what about the children
Allow me to hold forth on some unstructured thinky-thoughts that have been brewing in my head and came to an absolute boil when I checked Twitter this morning.
The Durham District School Board is currently engaged in a US-style school book banning, and one of the books that it pulled from its shelves is The Great Bear by Cree author David A. Robertson. I haven't read it as it targets a younger age group than I teach, but I have several of Robertson's other works and attended his talks and I can not possibly overemphasize how significant he is as an author and educator. His work speaks to young people, Indigenous and settler, in an accessible, direct, and authentic way. His work is particularly important for young people who struggle with reading. He's an absolute gift to English teachers.
Their rationale for censoring this book (sorry, conducting a fulsome review) is as follows:
In other words, the bean-counters don't like that a book by an Indigenous author might expose children to a specific trauma experienced by Indigenous children on a regular basis. Won't someone think of the children?
If you know me, you know that I'm quite far from being a free-speech absolutist. But I lean more in that direction when it comes to literature, because in general it's better to be able to have these works accessible and critiqued than to remove them from the discourse. And I am very skeptical when social justice language is severed from its meaning, which is to strive for a better, more just world. I am skeptical that school boards are in any way qualified to determine which texts can be taught in service of achieving that better, more just world. If you are so twisted up in your own rhetoric that you silence marginalized voices in your quest for safety, you are on the wrong side of history.
P.S. I am banning the word "fulsome," though. Along with "kind."
The Durham District School Board is currently engaged in a US-style school book banning, and one of the books that it pulled from its shelves is The Great Bear by Cree author David A. Robertson. I haven't read it as it targets a younger age group than I teach, but I have several of Robertson's other works and attended his talks and I can not possibly overemphasize how significant he is as an author and educator. His work speaks to young people, Indigenous and settler, in an accessible, direct, and authentic way. His work is particularly important for young people who struggle with reading. He's an absolute gift to English teachers.
Their rationale for censoring this book (sorry, conducting a fulsome review) is as follows:
Ooookay then. Robertson thinks it's because the main character gets bullied and cuts off his braid. Which is an experience that many Indigenous youth have had. Then he regrows his hair as he gains self-confidence and connects with his culture.An email, obtained by the Star, that was sent by the board to school principals says the books “do not align with the recently updated DDSB Indigenous Education policy and procedure.”
In other words, the bean-counters don't like that a book by an Indigenous author might expose children to a specific trauma experienced by Indigenous children on a regular basis. Won't someone think of the children?
I am increasingly concerned about the weaponization of social justice language to achieve aims that are antithetical to social justice, particularly but not exclusively by institutions like school boards. In order to protect children from ever encountering a negative or uncomfortable emotion, the reading list has to be sanitized and purged of authentic experiences.
In the US, this looks like Don't Say Gay bills, the Critical Race Theory scare, and banning Maus because of its depiction of mouse genitalia. In Canada, of course, we are Enlightened Progressives. So school boards, for example, do not want teachers using materials that have the N-word in them, because that might traumatize Black students. Except that this means I can't use films like I Am Not Your Negro or The Skin We're In, both of which are brilliant films by Black creators and centre the authentic experiences of Black people, and both of which use the N-word. The rhetoric used to justify this in Canada is always about social justice, anti-racism, equity, and diversity, but it's really about legal liability and the result is the silencing of important diverse voices.
Tangentially, I am absolutely fascinated by this excellent post about antis in fandom. The protection of theoretical children (in fandom, this means anyone in their 20s or even older, depending on their physical appearance) has taken on a hysterical tone in recent years, where some people are demanding protection from encountering work that may make them upset. These demands take the form of large-scale harassment campaigns, and notably, the targets of these campaigns are frequently labelled pedophiles.
At the root of most censorship campaigns, the urge to protect children from pedophiles (frequently combined with Satanists and/or Jews, depending on whether the quiet part is being said out loud or not) features prominently. It's notable to me that the "groomer" meme is weaponized both in fandom spaces, by ostensibly queer and marginalized young people for purposes of, supposedly, social justice, and by the far-right in demonizing queer and trans people. Obviously the latter group has much more political and legal clout, not to mention a higher body count, but the underlying impulse and structures are the same. Protect me from the thing that makes me, personally, uncomfortable, by making it unavailable to everyone. And use rhetoric about children and pedophiles to do so.
In the US, this looks like Don't Say Gay bills, the Critical Race Theory scare, and banning Maus because of its depiction of mouse genitalia. In Canada, of course, we are Enlightened Progressives. So school boards, for example, do not want teachers using materials that have the N-word in them, because that might traumatize Black students. Except that this means I can't use films like I Am Not Your Negro or The Skin We're In, both of which are brilliant films by Black creators and centre the authentic experiences of Black people, and both of which use the N-word. The rhetoric used to justify this in Canada is always about social justice, anti-racism, equity, and diversity, but it's really about legal liability and the result is the silencing of important diverse voices.
Tangentially, I am absolutely fascinated by this excellent post about antis in fandom. The protection of theoretical children (in fandom, this means anyone in their 20s or even older, depending on their physical appearance) has taken on a hysterical tone in recent years, where some people are demanding protection from encountering work that may make them upset. These demands take the form of large-scale harassment campaigns, and notably, the targets of these campaigns are frequently labelled pedophiles.
At the root of most censorship campaigns, the urge to protect children from pedophiles (frequently combined with Satanists and/or Jews, depending on whether the quiet part is being said out loud or not) features prominently. It's notable to me that the "groomer" meme is weaponized both in fandom spaces, by ostensibly queer and marginalized young people for purposes of, supposedly, social justice, and by the far-right in demonizing queer and trans people. Obviously the latter group has much more political and legal clout, not to mention a higher body count, but the underlying impulse and structures are the same. Protect me from the thing that makes me, personally, uncomfortable, by making it unavailable to everyone. And use rhetoric about children and pedophiles to do so.
If you know me, you know that I'm quite far from being a free-speech absolutist. But I lean more in that direction when it comes to literature, because in general it's better to be able to have these works accessible and critiqued than to remove them from the discourse. And I am very skeptical when social justice language is severed from its meaning, which is to strive for a better, more just world. I am skeptical that school boards are in any way qualified to determine which texts can be taught in service of achieving that better, more just world. If you are so twisted up in your own rhetoric that you silence marginalized voices in your quest for safety, you are on the wrong side of history.
P.S. I am banning the word "fulsome," though. Along with "kind."
no subject
Everywhere I look these days, it feels like people are weaponising the internet. We've only had it in widespread use for a couple of decades -- how is it such a cesspit already? :-(
(I'm keeping/reclaiming "kind" for as long as I can.)
no subject
I think some is parenting—I see a direct line from crunchy mommablogging to this—and some is litigation-shy school boards. But I think there are a whole bunch of different interesting and horrifying factors.
For one thing, queer youth of today have had their formative years (in which they definitely knew they were queer) during the Trumpist backlash against the modest social justice gains made by previous generations. They have been told that they're bad and sick and wrong. They were already the victims of neoliberal schooling and a shrinking public sphere. And the last few years have obviously been trauma hell.
But of course there are even bigger forces at work. This is a lengthy video essay that I think is great for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that he wears a shirt that I designed the whole time. It's about the trucker convoy but it goes into the degree to which political debates have shifted from economic to cultural. And with the decline of Actual Activist Movements With Community Roots In the Streets, politics is increasingly a social group. And that's inaccessible for a number of reasons.
The result of this stew is likely a lot of mostly middle class, mostly young, mostly white people without tons of political analysis forming algorithm-based echo chambers on social media and believing that reblogging the correct political line is in itself activism. This is very vulnerable to infiltration from bad actors, and so it's quite easy for a TERF or a Nazi to get in there with "queer is a slur, I do not consent to seeing your BDSM gear at Pride" and have that catch on as a meme.
Of course, young white middle class progressives have always been dumb as shit. I was one once too. The big difference is that I had Movement Mommies and Daddies to knock some sense into me with a book or 10, and that's what I see lacking when you move from primarily real spaces to primarily online spaces.