Here We Go Again...

Them Moms For Liberty Are Back!

You might’ve heard that there was a House hearing about book bans this week, and as is usually the case, WAY too much time was spent talking about like 3 titles that are in SOME school libraries.

For some reason that I cannot fathom, Lindsey Smith from Moms for Liberty was given a chunk of time to talk.

Because I loathe MFL, let’s start by dismantling Lindsey’s argument.

The Big Lie

I would like to address the lie that parental groups and Moms for Liberty are ‘book banning”…If removing a sexual explicit book from school libraries is what you see as book banning, then you need to reevaluate your language.

No, Lindsey, you need to reevaluate YOUR language.

Take THAT very mature rebuttal!

And I thought you conservative types were the ones who were telling the rest of us to not get all butthurt over words. Huh.

Let’s start with the assumption placed within Lindsey’s statement: We are removing sexually explicit materials.

Lindsey’s not-so-sly trick is to start from the position that we all agree that the material being removed is sexually explicit to a degree that’s inappropriate for kids.

ANOTHER embedded assumption here is what we mean when we talk about “kids.” When I hear “kids,” I think of, probably somewhere around 12 and under.

So we’ve got two pillars (I imagine them being like big, veiny dicks) for this argument:

• The assumption of what a “kid” is

• The assumption that we agree these materials are sexually explicit

And those two factor dicks Voltron together to bring us to what Lindsay is ACTUALLY saying:

These books are sexually explicit in a way that’s inappropriate for the age group to which they are being presented.

Now that we see the actual argument, we can take it apart.

What is a Kid?

A 5 year-old is a kid. A 17 year-old is not a kid.

What’s appropriate to offer a 17 year-old, as an optional library checkout, is pretty different from what’s appropriate to offer a 5 year-old.

If we’re talking about Gender Queer being offered to 5 year-olds, yes, I think that’s inappropriate. The publisher and author would agree, Gender Queer’s intended audience is not 5 year-olds, and it’s probably not something that 5 year-olds all need access to.

But for the vast, VAST majority of libraries, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about this book being offered to high school students.

By “offered” I mean it sits on the shelf, waiting for someone to check it out because they want to. It’s not a book being added to required reading lists, it’s not being slipped into backpacks. It sits on a shelf for voluntary use.

You know, like someone exercising their personal liberties.

Are These Materials Sexually Explicit?

One of the problems with Moms for Liberty is that they absolutely suck.

Another problem is that when it comes to sexually explicit material, they make no distinction between a woman writing an account of a sexual assault and something designed to titillate, like 50 Shades or This Pumpkin Spice Latte Gets Me Off In A Fun And Sincere Way Because It’s Okay For People To Enjoy Popular Things Without Being Shamed For The Perceived “Basicness” Of Their Beverage Choices by Dr. Chuck Tingle.

Every time I think Chuck Tingle has jumped the shark, by god he does it again.

Here’s a cited passage from Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture edited by Roxane Gay, which is highlighted in a Moms For Liberty document as an example of something explicit:

When I was twelve years old, I was gang-raped in the woods behind my neighborhood by a group of boys with the dangerous intentions of bad men....Allowing myself to believe that being gang-raped wasn't "that bad" allowed me to break down my trauma into something more manageable, into something I could carry with me instead of allowing the magnitude of it to destroy me.

In the traditional sense of the word, this is “explicit” in that it’s plainspoken and leaves very little room for interpretation as far as the events go.

But I think the word “explicit” has come to mean something else in a lot of these book bans, and this is probably thanks to that stupid Parental Advisory label they put on CDs (BTW, Democrats are to blame for that one, just in case we’re keeping score).

To book banners, “explicit” means “salacious” or “lewd” or, a favorite of First Amendment discussions, “prurient.”

“Explicit” means “pornographic” to these folks, and it’s a handy word because, by dictionary standards, MFL are objectively correct. The above passage is fairly plainspoken. And agreeing to that sneaks the pornographic meaning in under the wire, because when we use the same word two ways, interchangeably, we equate the two uses.

So let’s look at the passage above again and ask ourselves with a real idea of what we’re looking for: Is this pornographic?

Not remotely. There’s nothing pornographic, there is no description of a sex act other than it happening, no mention of sex other than it existing, there’s no moment-to-moment description. It’s not just that it’s describing a non-titillating thing, it’s describing that non-titillating thing in a fairly chaste way.

No reasonable person finds this remotely pornographic.

Let’s try another passage:

When she carried on her whoring so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned in disgust from her sister. Yet she increased her whoring, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt and lusted after her lovers there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses. Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians handled your bosom and pressed your young breasts.

Yikes! That one is from…holy shit, Ezekiel 23:18-21.

From now on, when someone catches me reading Chuck Tingle and says I should put it down and pick up a Bible, I’ll know they’re just trying to clue me in to where the REAL action is at, with dudes hung like donkeys, ejaculating with the force of mighty stallions.

The truth is, Moms for Liberty wants to scrub the idea that sex exists, at all, from school libraries, but they won’t even take a moment to consider that there are mentions of sex that have a purpose or meaning outside of, “Kids, you should do sex!”.

There’s reproductive discussion that’s very clinical and basic, and it’s good for kids to know SOME stuff if there’s a younger sibling on the way. It’s probably good to give even fairly young kids SOME warning about ways they should and should not be touched by adults, even (especially) adults they trust.

For a teenager to read a story of rape that is about the victim and her way of getting through life afterward, that could be a very powerful, helpful thing.

In one sense of the wording, yes, some materials in school libraries are sexually explicit.

In a more realistic sense that actually takes the time to read the shit, yes, the materials are sexually explicit, and that brings us to our next SUPER IMPORTANT question…

Are These Materials Being Presented to an Inappropriate Audience?

[this whole section is reprinted from an earlier article I did]

I checked some Iowa schools (the schools profiled in the MFL report), and they DO make an effort to present material to the intended audience, not just by making good choices about what goes on the shelves, but even going so far as to divide the library catalogs for different schools.

When I searched the Linn Mar High School library catalog, sure enough, we’ve got Gender Queer, and it’s listed as having an “Adult Interest Level.”

When I searched in the catalog for the Excelsior Middle School Library (awesome name, Stan Lee would be proud), part of the same school system as Linn Mar, Gender Queer doesn’t come up at all.

Which tells me this: the library staffs in these schools have created separate catalogs, and these schools aren't offering Gender Queer to kids.

It's not schools and school libraries who are confusing what's appropriate for kids and what's appropriate for teens. It's Moms for Liberty.

Learned Behaviors

Alright, lefty friend, here’s the bit you’re going to hate:

We played our part in this, too.

When we do our book bans, we just, you know, shave off the rough edges.

Sometimes we debate that size is the most important aspect of a ban:

Sometimes we call it “creating friction.”

Sometimes we call it due punishment for bad behavior.

The fact is, creating any sort of barrier between a book and its INTENDED audience is banning behavior.

You might think you’re doing it for the right reasons, you might think your version still leaves lots of room for choice, and you might feel that while your bans aren’t your favorite thing, they are not as harmful or as widespread as conservative book bans.

And you need to recognize that conservative book banners think the exact same things, to the exact same degree, about their book bans.

When we do this, we give the book ban power. We create new avenues by which is appears reasonable, respectable, and an okay thing for average people to do.

And it’s not. It never was, never is, and you/we need to give up book banning as a tool we use, period.

Second Time

I considered copying the above section and pasting it here a second time. Because this mostly appeared in an article from a couple years back about the differences and similarities between conservative and progressive book bans, and nobody listened.

I also considered making you read it again because last time, the only pushback I got was from progressive people justifying their version of bans.

I’m not here to shit on you for participating in book bans in the past. I’m here to encourage you, strongly, to reconsider being involved in banning behavior in the future. Even if you think the author REALLY deserves it.

I would like to address the lie that parental groups and Moms for Liberty are ‘book banning” is a line straight from the progressive book banning handbook. We make it not about the ban, but an argument about how severe an action has to be to qualify as a ban. Which is to the banner’s huge advantage. They get to continue to do what they’re doing while we fight about degree.

It’s the argument about whether assault rifles and magazines with crazy amounts of bullets are the problem as opposed to the general ease-of-access to guns.

It’s the argument about abortion being legal SOME places and therefore we’re all good.

It’s taking the argument to a false, fake-ass place when the truth is that we’re just too petty to confront the real problem.

Don’t Fall for this Last Part

If removing a sexual explicit book from school libraries is what you see as book banning, then you need to reevaluate your language.

The big trick book banners use all the time is trying to make you seem like you’re a weird pervert for wanting to keep certain books in libraries.

They’re trying to knock you back on your heels so you spend all your time defending yourself as being, well, not a sick fuck, and you don’t get to spend time defending the materials on their own merits, of which there are many.

It’s a mash-up of so many logical fallacies at once that it’s like Girl Talk did a Best of Logical Fallacies mixtape.

Guilt By Association: Defending pornography is something perverts would do, and you’re doing what perverts would do.

Ad Hominem Attack: Your character is in question, therefore your arguments are invalid.

But I think the most important fallacy is the Straw Man here, which is when you misrepresent your opponent’s point of view to a ridiculous degree in order to get them defending the view you’ve placed on them, not their actual point of view.

It is not my point of view, nor is it anyone’s, that school libraries should offer pornography to children. I’m not here or ever going to defend that idea because it’s not one I believe.

Well, okay, when I was 12, if my writing assessment topic was “Why The School Library Should Let Kids Look at Playboy,” and if a very-convincing argument would’ve resulted in me being able to look at a Playboy, I would’ve written the best damn 5-paragraph essay you ever saw.

But that would be asking the wrong question: 12 year-old Pete, do you want to see boobs?

The correct question is not whether 12 year-old Pete should see boobs (to which the answer, by the way, was, “Well, he’s embarking on what will be a life-long quest to see boobs now and again, so while we don’t have to construct a ship for him to sail those seas, we can’t prevent him from gluing a bunch of popsicle sticks together and setting sail.”)

The correct question is: Because it’s appropriate for kids and teens to have access to materials that discuss some matters of human sexuality, pitched at their level, escalating in frankness or meaning as the reader ages, how do we decide what the line is in a way that is not too restrictive while also not being a simple on/off switch?

Moms for Liberty isn’t asking questions. They’re telling you how it should be, and if you disagree with their exact version of it, they’re trying to make it seem like it’s because you’re a pervert of some kind, or one of their favorites, a “groomer.”

It’s a trick. Get an axe.

A METAPHORICAL axe, people, to chop down their argument.

A Plea

Can we stop looking to Moms for Liberty as anything approaching an authority on the issues of books and book bans?

Can we find someone who has some reasonable level of authority on the issue, like maybe someone who, I don’t know, works in a library or something? Someone who has some form of certified expertise in childhood education? Someone who has actually read most of these books and could share a nuanced opinion, like, “Gender Queer is probably fine for teens, but I would not necessarily find it appropriate for a kindergartener”?

There HAS to be at least one person out there who thinks there is SOME merit to SOME of these ideas, vaguely, maybe, possibly.

I think the real issue with MFL, though, is that this is not something they know or CARE about. It’s a springboard. They’re stepping on your library books in order to raise their own political banners.

School board elections are more recently being viewed as an entrance point into the world of politics. Which is TERRIBLE, because while it might seem like a good thing in that we have contested elections for once, the people running are not so much in it to help students and make their communities better as they are to do it as a career move.

Real quick, a rundown of the MFL founders:

Tiffany Justice: Tiffany is a mom and was on a School Board, and her tenure seemingly was mostly about infighting and squabbling, and one other Board member had this to say:

The ongoing cat-fighting was both toxic and embarrassing to me as an elected member of the School Board…More significantly, though, it took both time and attention from the far more important school board matters around actual education governance…It was undignified, it was unprofessional and, in my opinion, it was juvenile.

Another person interviewed for the same article says:

Throughout her term, Justice proved she was ill-equipped for – and overmatched by – a job that required more than simply caring about children.

Tina Descovich: Won a school board seat. Once. She lost her reelection bid in 2020.

Marie Rogerson: Marie ALSO lost a school board campaign in 2020.

The primary thing that seems to bring these three women together is that they all lost school board elections IN FLORIDA.

FLORIDA.

I love to give Florida some shit, but in this case, point for Florida.

Look, I’m not here to say that you must have a PhD in Comparative Lit. to be someone who knows a lot about this stuff, but I think if I put out a book about parenting, a lot of folks would scratch their heads when they found out I don’t have kids.

What I’m here to say is that we should at least consider the possibility that these folks are engaging in political activity, which is different from engaging in what’s best for kids as far as books and libraries are concerned, and maybe bringing politicians to talk to other politicians on matters of intellectual freedom, freedom to read, and childhood development—it’s like making a version of the movie Hitch where the Will Smith role is played by Woody Allen: who is supposed to be the knowledgeable person here?

Being loud and having opinions on books does not make you an authority on the topic.

The Reality

Here’s a revealing interview question asked to MFL co-founder Tina Descovich, italics added by me for emphasis:

…If a parent wanted the right to stand up and say, “We need a mask mandate,” or “We need mandatory vaccines,” they could not be part of your organization, correct?

So, I think that we would diverge when it came down to the issues of individual liberty. I mean, our title is Moms for Liberty. So … once a parent wants to make decisions for other children, and force things on them, I think that’s where it would divert and our values would separate. If they want to go in and fight for … a better curriculum that targets a certain demographic, you know, we would support that all day long.

“We don’t co-parent with the government,” is MFL’s favorite slogan, and it’s so unbelievably ironic because every move MFL makes is a proposal regarding co-parenting with the government.

Not co-parenting with the government, advocating for parents’ right to make decisions for their own kids, would look like a school library with a wide open array of options that let parents decide what was appropriate for their household. If Parent A wanted to let their kids read Stephen King’s IT, they can. If Parent B wants their kids reading Magic School Bus until they’re 18, hey, they can push that way.

If there are governmental rules preventing the library from buying certain materials or making certain materials available to kids…I struggle to consider it from an angle that makes it look like anything BUT co-parenting with the government.

In my estimation, leaving parents with the full array of options and letting them make their own decisions is liberty.

MFL, by creating a ruleset for school libraries, you’re removing your own right to choose as well as the rights of every other parent. You might not see it that way, but here’s how your actions function:

How you see it: I’m not removing anyone’s right to choose by removing some of the options. They still get to choose, just from a different set.

How I see it: You’re not removing anyone’s right to choose explicitly (OH how your own word has come back to haunt you!), but you’re removing the options so that it appears to the deciding parties that there is no choice to be made.

Although…now that I parcel this out, maybe MFL is onto something. They don’t want to co-parent with the government, they want the government to do it all. Maybe they’re right, they don’t co-parent with the government because the government is doing all the damn work in their ideal world.

I guess that leaves more time for, I don’t know, losing school board elections?