Not 100% sure if this kind of post is allowed, but it relates to books and it looks like there are no rules that forbids posts like this, so I thought I would get the perspective of some people who like to read.
The tl;dr is, lots of places in the US (including many places that aren’t mentioned in this article) are having right-wing groups trying to ban books from schools and libraries. At first it seemed to be mostly around Florida, but it keeps happening more and more (particularly in Red States, but not limited to). This article talks about it a bit, but again, it’s a thing that has been happening for awhile now, this is just an example to give you some context.
[https://www.npr.org/2023/11/28/1214523941/library-books-bans-age-appropriate-movie-ratings](https://www.npr.org/2023/11/28/1214523941/library-books-bans-age-appropriate-movie-ratings)
Obviously, this sucks. And again obviously, the only reason why “concerned parents” are only now suddenly concerned about books in this way is because they’re trying to suppress LGBT+ people and to limit the access of information about the LGBT+ community and sex education as a whole (look at the books they want to ban).
So, what is the solution to this problem? In the article a book-rating system is mentioned, which I agree with the point that IF they do that, it 100% should not be the job of the government. Film, Games, and (sort of) Music all have their own self-regulated ratings boards. Would you want to see that for books as well? I’m not necessarily against it (although it’s kinda weird still), but of course, the problem being what they consider “age appropriate” for different levels. Is a kiss “not appropriate” just if it’s gay, or one of the characters is trans?
While again, I’m not necessarily strictly opposed to books having a self-regulated ratings board on principal which would (in theory) assign books G-R like ratings with maybe small warning descriptors. But I find it odd that they’ve been fine for centuries without it, and that it only now is a “problem”. And given who the people who see it as a “problem” are, I don’t know if I would trust them to be the ones making the rating call for a book. But you better believe they would throw a fit and continue their nonsense protests the moment that fox news tells them that the ones who are rating books are part of “the left”. So who does that leave to do the actual ratings? No one.
Then there are other issues, like how does this then affect self-published works, how does this affect the thousands of books already in publication, etc. There’s just so many questions and so many variables to this, and in a lot of ways I feel like it’s kind of way too late to practically implement a book rating system. The way too that this relates to libraries also gets into weird territory. How would they then classify books, decide what books should or shouldn’t get added, and so forth? Is prohibiting access to books ***really*** something we want libraries to be doing?
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What are your thoughts? Do you think a ratings-board would help this situation, or would it only exasperate things? Can you think of any other practical solutions to keep these people away from books and libraries, before they ruin what libraries are meant to be? Can you even count the layers of hypocrisy that right-wing people are jumping through in trying to limit freedom of speech and access to information while claiming to be patriotic?
by Merobiba_EXE
33 Comments
Sadly, no.
There isn’t any solution because the goal here is to pull every LGBT book and send a strong message to the LGBT community in the process. You’re talking about how to find middle ground with people who don’t want one.
No. The people who are trying to ban books are not acting in good faith. They’re not out to compromise.
The way to address this is at the ballot box. My town had a slate of MfL candidates try to take over the school board, and they got solidly trounced, because the non-crazy residents organized and outvoted the crazies.
These people’s aims aren’t a good faith effort to protect children from media they find age inappropriate, so no. If every book they didn’t like was “rated R,” they’d still find an issue.
Also, in my experience, libraries already do kind of “rate” books. Every library I’ve been in groups picture books for small children, books for grade school aged independent readers, YA, and adult fiction (at *least*). Nothing that any thinking person could consider pornographic is in those first two categories, and even suggestive YA books tend not to be explicit (Gossip Girl, etc). I guess there’s nothing stopping an 8 year old from picking up a YA or adult fiction book (I did it) the way an 8 year old can’t buy a ticket to an R rated movie, but most wouldn’t even try.
For anyone who isn’t already familiar — If there are any teens/young adults out there who would like completely free and uncensored access to books, and/or parents who are concerned about the direction this stuff is heading in, I would urge you to take a look at [Books Unbanned](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_Unbanned). There are five public libraries throughout the country participating, with hopefully more to come. You can get electronic library cards with these libraries and check the books out as ebooks, for two weeks at a time, just like you would at your local library. The books can be checked out via the [Libby app](http://libbyapp.com), or in some cases directly via the library’s website. The process is super simple. Of course, please consult with your parents if you are unsure about what’s appropriate for your age.
EDIT: Just want to clarify that it doesn’t matter where you are in the US (you don’t need to be in the local area of these libraries)
>So, what is the solution to this problem?
Crush book banners politically. Get up and go vote for people who oppose book bans, every election.
>But I find it odd that they’ve been fine for centuries without it, and that it only now is a “problem”.
It’s not “only now” a problem. There have always been people fighting to destroy LGBT people and media that portrays them positively.
>Can you even count the layers of hypocrisy that right-wing people are jumping through in trying to limit freedom of speech and access to information while claiming to be patriotic?
No, and there wouldn’t be any point to counting if you could, because the right wing doesn’t care about hypocrisy in pursuit of power.
Maybe americans will wake up and notice all their “freedoms” are an illusion, book burnings and fascist rules to what you are allowed to read?
Of course it wouldn’t.
The entire point of the blocking is removing anything that goes against their worldview. Any ratings system that would placate them must do the same. Which, well, that’s literally just giving them what they want. There is no middle ground, they don’t want compromise as anything other than a pit stop towards total domination. Give them what they want and they’ll just be back for more.
At best we’d have the CCA. And that’s a very bad thing.
A book rating system can be a good tool for parents who want to know what their kids are reading about, but who might not have time to read everything themselves.
They aren’t much use when parents are trying to decide what other people’s children should or shouldn’t read, though, which is what is really behind all the book banning stuff.
No, because over and over again we’ve seen that the only people that want these rating systems are people whose goal is to move society towards accepting the removal of “controversial” material from public availability.
They start by banning “obvious” content (graphic sex, drugs, assault) as a way to get people on board, and to dismiss any opposition. You don’t support their ban, therefore you must want kids to read smut!
Then they go further, they want to remove “suggestive” material. You don’t support their ban, you must want teenagers to read about drugs then go look them up online and take them!
Then it’s everything they don’t like. The sweet coming-of-age story has a kiss? Banned. The fantasy book has the hero stab the villain? Banned. The YA novel has the heroine fighting against an oppressive government? Banned.
Don’t debate these people, because their goal is to be treated like they have a defendable position. Their only goal is censorship, and they should be treated as such.
Nope, Florida already has ways for parents to restrict what their kids can check out and they’re still banning books left and right
A rating system is useless. These people should not get anything in this war. They are not doing this because they oppose a particular book. It is simply a powerplay. They use religion and some sort of righteous rhetoric to gain power and stick it to the liberals.
The ONLY practical solution is that parents can monitor what their own children is reading whilst leaving everyone else the fuck alone. The people trying to ban books don’t want kids reading anything LGBTQ, and they’re just going to keep pushing until every LGBTQ book is rated 18+
No. Because they would want to rate non sexual g rated material that just happened to have a gay person as the equivalent of r or x. They literally think being gay is equivalent to porn.
You’re approaching this from a logical perspective when the “problem” they have isn’t logical to begin with. These idiots are just ideologues who want to impose their will/beliefs on others because they think they’re right always no matter what. You really can’t reason with them. Put in place some kind of guidelines to ameliorate some of their “concerns” and they’ll just move the goalposts further.
Reading inappropriate books is good for you. Anything that allows parents to restrict their kid’s reading should be strongly opposed.
I think it’s a terrible idea, but I also think the problem in the us is not with books, it’s a matter of politics and repression of certain ideas. For some reason, people feel threatened in their own identity by new ideas and these people try to remove those perceived threats by banning books or implementing a rating system. I fear similar things could happen even here in Holland, now we’re getting a far-right government.
I think it’s important to remain a positive and kind counterforce against the crushing waves of fear mongering. Encourage love, encourage curiousity and encourage diversity.
Love drives out fear. Empathy is a real, healing force. Books can enhance empathy.
Ignoring everything everybody else has already said.
A comprehensive rating system for books is just a wildly impractical idea and the publishing industry has successfully resisted attempt to institute one for a long time. I do think it’s interesting to consider why books have been so resistant to a ratings system when movies, music and video games all more or less caved to public pressure and created ratings boards.
The shear volume of books released each year is orders of magnitude more than any other medium, especially if you consider the time it would take to fully review everything. An independent reviewer or panel of reviewer would need to fully read and assign a rating to every book. That would be very expensive to implement. You also have the massive backlog of unrated books to consider and all of different book stories and libraries in the country that would be completely disinterested in enforcing any ratings system. And finally even if every book is given a rating, unless you shrinkwrap everything, there is very little that can be done to prevent people from just walking up to a shelf and start reading something regardless of their age and the books rating. It’s so much work for incredibly little benifit.
And finally, virtually all of the books these people are complaining about, would probably be rated as age appropriate by any objective rating system. Society has not suddenly been hit by a plague of mainstream authors inserting erotica into children’s books. These people are just treating the existence of LGBT themes in books as obscene by definition.
No, its stupid. book ratings is just a step in censoring books. the books these nutjobs want to censor deal with groups of people they hate.
The only solution is not doing what book banners say. they are all hypocrites anyway
Absolutely not. That would be giving them a ready-made list of new books to ban. We should at least make them put effort into it.
I think this issue has been brewing for a while because there is no official age rating system for books, which has indeed lead to abuse. Conservatives are targeting LGBT books when there are plenty of actually pornographic straight books sneaking onto the younger age group shelves because they are stupid, but an actual rating system would probably be a good idea. Do it the same as TV or video games. There: problem solved.
If it was an actually consistent, fact-based approach to correctly labeling books with an age-rating, then sure.
If it was a subjective, meaningless sham like the MPA’s film ratings, then no.
Not one inch should be given to book banners or burners, especially when it is based on bronze age superstition combined with performance politics.
A parallel to the movie industry’s G-PG[13]-R-X designations, is as far as that needs to go. The nutters will protest anyway, it hasn’t shut down the MPAA and the movie rating system has weathered progressive ideological shifts (particularly around LGBT+ issues) pretty well over the past 20 years.
Self-published books are in the same position as self-produced movies: you still need a distributor unless you’re selling direct from your own webshop. The Amazons and Lulus will do some level of rating validation before you go live, or else they’ll drop you if complaints of mis-rated content start cropping up.
Nope. The people doing this are like 2 year olds throwing a tantrum. They won’t care about a rating system at all if they disagree with it. And they WILL disagree with it. They have oppositional defiant disorder, which is a diagnosis that is only allowed for teenagers, but should be allowed for them.
I don’t think ratings will help the situation. IMHO the whole controversy is full of hypocrisy. I live in a purple state, so we don’t have a clear cut dominant party, so I feel like both side are quite vocal. I’ve lived in both red and blue states in the past and I feel like one side is drown out by the other, so this situation is new to me.
The Republicans in my state love to shout that they want to prevent government interference, let people make their own choices, we can regulate ourselves, don’t tell parents what to do with their children etc. Yet these are the same people who want the government to be very heavy handed with anyone who doesn’t align with their conservative beliefs.
Keep in mind, the vast majority of these books are not part of the curriculum, they are books in libraries, either in a classroom paid for by the teacher, or the school or public library. These are all books that a minor can choose to ignore or read without any consequences. Parents need to have conversations about what they allow their own children to read and not take away the choices that other parents don’t have an issue with. But like anything else in the world, the bigger of a deal parents make of it, the more enticing it often becomes and the more likely their child will find a way to read the book. Because I’m the parent who would have extra copies on hand for my kids curious friends.
The book banners don’t care about books, education or children. This is all culture warring and an attempt to impose their beliefs on the rest of society.
It wouldn’t solve it. It would just lead to a systemic method of censorship that people can hide behind in the guise of some arbitrary rating.
They have age ratings on books in libraries in Ireland and the bigots still complain about the books being present in the library at all. As others have said, they do not care about children. They want to silence and erase the LGBTQ community.
For this situation specifically it will only make things worse. Because they don’t want the books gone because they are not age appropriate, they want them gone because the books go against their politics. So either the rating system will be super racist, homophobic, bigoted and have the rating enforced as censorship or the ratings will be somewhat racist, homophobic, bigoted and people will still want to ban the books because their children will still have the possibility to experience worldviews different from theirs
Books about race, reproduction, LGBT people, and whatever else they’re sneaking in while people focus their outrage on the more prominent examples…any books that teach acceptance, equality, or other moral issues threaten government power.
It doesn’t serve the government for the people to think. If it had its way, it’d just promote people to government from the same few rich families, not unlike how government often works on every level now.
Plus, films and video games have ratings yet it doesn’t stop people from complaining they exist and scapegoating them for their/their kids own hateful actions. I wouldn’t trust an algorithm either because they’re already trained to discriminate.
I don’t think it would help. There was a teacher in the US who got in trouble for showing her class a PG Disney film that happened to have a gay character in it. The parents had all signed consent forms allowing their kids to be shown PG films, but they still kicked off about it afterwards. It’s not actually about whether or not things are “age appropriate”.
No, because the people demanding books be banned are the same ones who piss and moan about movies too and never bother to actually use the rating system.