Can you imagine some of these titles being discussed in libraries? Thinking about the false dichotomies hate groups fabricate to position their personal prejudices as relevant to the larger culture. In the examples above, the oppositions of “blacks” to “white women” and “Jews” to “children” are political ploys. If you don’t support the Ku Klux Klan, you must be against white women; if you’re anti-Nazi, you’re an enemy of the children. But, of course, you aren’t. You see through the false claims and rightly reframe the opposition as “hate group vs. target,” “society at large vs. hate group.”
Both of Meredith Farkas’s articles open with the news of transphobic speakers lecturing in public libraries, first Megan Murphy at the Toronto Public Library (TPL) and then the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) at the Seattle Public Library (SPL). TPL and SPL fall back on neutrality to excuse their decisions to host the anti-trans events. Farkas says that this is a betrayal of public libraries’ duty to take the side of the marginalized, to maintain a welcome and safe space for society’s most vulnerable.
0 Comments
Banned Books Week announced several days ago that George by Alex Gino—a middle-grade book about a trans-girl who, though she is known as a boy, wants to play the female lead in the play Charlotte’s Web—was the #1 banned or challenged book in 2019. There are many cogent criticisms of Banned Books Week as a library event and plenty of analyses of particular banned books, including George. But I want to focus on one issue in particular.
On the website Common Sense Media, George has its defenders, including the official reviewer for the site. Of course, it has its detractors too, most of whom worry about young children being exposed to sex. I agree that early exposure to sex can be detrimental to a child’s development and lead to all kinds of problems. In fact, I have personal experience in support of that fear. |
AuthorJeffrey Babbitt, MLIS, is a graduate of the School of Library and Information Science at Wayne State University who is pursuing a career as a librarian in Michigan. Subject Headings
All
Inter- Library Loan004.02020025.431027.62090813.009Archives
June 2021
|