If it weren’t for the potential of serious harm to our already wounded constitution, I’d say let the House approve the book-banning bill HR-7661. This is the one that will ban books with sexual content from school libraries, especially those involving transgender and similar themes. The idea being that it will protect delicate young minds from bad, bad ideas.
Uh-huh.
You see, there’s a very basic problem with banning books. It does not work. It simply doesn’t. I know so many people who would never have heard of Gender Queer, let alone read it, if it hadn’t become the target of certain groups. I certainly wouldn’t have.
When I joke that I wish some of these groups would ban my novels, people get it because banning can and often does create interest in the banned materials. And that’s just the anecdotal evidence. There’s been some study in this area. Check out this study from Carnegie Mellon a few years ago: https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/media/2023/October/book-bans-may-have-unintended-consequences-in-increasingly-polarized-united-states#:~:text=Circulations%20of%20banned%20books%20increased,coverage%20of%20the%20book%20bans.
- “Circulations of banned books increased 12% on average compared to similar non-banned titles after the ban.
- Banning a book in one state led to an 11% increase in circulation of the book in states of different political leanings that did not ban the book; this increase often featured books by lesser-known authors, suggesting that new and relatively unknown authors gained from rise in consumer support.
- Banned books with high visibility on social media saw increased readership, indicative of social media-driven political consumerism.”
And that’s just one study.
I could go on about all the potential harm that banning can do, particularly to those same delicate minds that they’re trying to protect. The poor kids whose gender identities don’t conform. The good librarians who might lose their jobs because they didn’t see a book the way the narrow, dirty-minded community member did. But in the same way that an academic study won’t affect the banners’ ideology, making all those wonderful arguments about why banning books is such an absolutely terrible idea won’t have an effect, either.
Because this is not about protecting our children. There are so many other, better ways of protecting our kids from inappropriate sexual material, such as genuine pornography, than banning it. How about teaching children to value other human beings as they are? How about teaching our children to appreciate themselves and not judge or bully others? How about teaching them empathy and compassion?
Kids who value themselves and others appropriately, who know the values of compassion and empathy, are not going to find porn that interesting. Kids who believe in acceptance can make some surprisingly good decisions on their own about what reading matter is negative and what reading matter is life-giving. Kids who are allowed to be curious and find things out will find good stuff and weigh it against the bad, and won’t be as interested in seeking out hurtful reading matter because it just won’t raise enough of a fuss to be worth slogging through it.
HR-7661 is not about protecting children. It’s about controlling us, and the federal government deciding that it knows what’s best for us better than we do. Whatever your feelings are about gender non-conformity, the big problem isn’t that a few kids might find a book about it in their school library. The big problem is a government that is making that choice for those children and for us.
Which, given that you’re reading this, you probably already know and agree with. If making logical, rational arguments won’t sway book banners, then what is the point of this essay? Because it’s up to those of us who do read and love reading. We can do something about this. We can contact our local representatives and remind them that this bill is a really, really bad idea. And, yeah, if you take the trouble to email or call, then trust me, your rep will take notice.
And if, as in my case, your rep is already dead set against HR-7661, you can also get it out on social media that this is happening. Even if your feed is another echo chamber, there are plenty of folks out there who do not know about this bill. They need to know. The word needs to be spread. We need as many people to take action against it as we can. No matter how staunchly your representative is for banning books, if that person realizes a large part of their constituency is against it, that person will think twice about supporting that bill.
Yes, there is a part of me that would love to see this whole book-banning thing blow up in the faces of the people who support it. But letting the banners win this one is simply too dangerous.