OK, here it is again. As I wrote about earlier this week, there’s been a fake list of books banned in Florida schools making the rounds. Snopes rated it as “Originated as Satire,” which is what the original poster tried to claim it was after being called out for faking the list.
There is one book, though, that I see come up over and over again, but I usually don’t post tweets about it, because Twitchy isn’t a porn site and the images that people are attaching are graphic. This “untouchable” book is “Gender Queer,” a graphic novel that’s graphic in more ways than one: There are graphic illustrations of oral sex and more, and if you try to read aloud from the book at a school board meeting you’ll be shut down for being inappropriate.
Now Danielle Paquette at the Washington Post is fretting over a library in Jamestown, Michigan, that lost its funding after it refused to remove “Gender Queer.” She writes:
Two librarians had quit since the trouble began, and Kaitlin McLaughlin didn’t want to be the third.
But the same term kept coming up in board meetings and on yard signs, making her feel awkward and wrongly accused: grooming.
People in this western Michigan farming town said the Patmos Library was “grooming” children and, according to fliers that one group printed, promoting an “LGBTQ ideology.” They said bookshelves meant for young readers featured same-sex pornography. They called the staff pedophiles, McLaughlin said. Then one August morning, they voted to defund Jamestown’s only public library, jeopardizing the institution’s future as neighbors clashed over who gets to decide free speech in this deep-red corner of America.
“I’m not a ‘groomer,’ ” said McLaughlin, 34, gathering children’s books for a lunchtime story hour. “I’m not a pedophile. I’m afraid of what people see when they look at me.”
…
Nobody complained about McLain until last November, after video of a Virginia mother condemning “Gender Queer” as “pornographic”
took off on social media and protests against the memoir spread nationwide.The 239-page graphic novel contains illustrations of masturbation, a sex toy and oral sex, as well as depictions of menstrual blood. Fans saw the scenes as part of the author’s coming-of-age experience, while critics blasted them as sabotage to developing minds. “Gender Queer” became the most banned book of 2021.
There really is no need for the quotation marks around “pornographic.” How about we make a deal, Washington Post: You publish the scenes of oral sex in your newspaper and … well, that’s it. But of course, the Post wouldn’t publish the illustrations, because they’re sexually explicit.
It's curious how stories about "Gender Queer" never show why people object to it. Hint: Because it is, in fact, straight-up porn. https://t.co/FhGNMNgkfo
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) August 24, 2022
The New York Times did the same thing in its own story about the book a few months ago. Complete whitewash. https://t.co/iiVqJsEL0A
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) August 24, 2022
One school board cut off a parent's mic because the parent was simply going to read a passage from the book.
It's too offensive for a school board meeting, but suitable for a school library?
— Neil Stevens (@presjpolk) August 24, 2022
That Dispatch editor says it's just like a Judy Blume novel
— Chris (@chriswithans) August 24, 2022
That’s a real shame about those two librarians quitting.
Related:
American Booksellers Association apologizes profusely for the ‘harm’ they caused by exposing ‘horrified’ members to Abigail Shrier’s book on transgenderism https://t.co/nFkKRpPCBK
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) August 10, 2021
