OMFG SEXIST BOOKS!!! BURN THEM ALL!!!
Body is invalid; try to be a little more descriptive…ummmm kay
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Exactly. Although as some on here already said, banning something they disagree with is A-OK. Cause you know, it could never work the other way.
In other news, dumb girl-pink VS boy-blue stereotypes is now classified as “horrific” instead of just ass-backwards and deserving of mockery.
Here’s an idea for the parent to actually do some valuable parenting:
Have some brains and buy your daughter both books. Let her know that “knowledge” doesn’t care about whether you’re a girl or a boy, and that it’s up to her to define the kind of person she wants to become. Instead you threw a helicopter-parent tantrum and showed her that dumb ideas are scary and must be banned to keep from harming our fragile little minds.
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Teaching your child to recognize sexism: Very important!.
Teaching your child to ban books they don’t agree with: Who could put a price on something as wonderful as that?
Arthur
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Good thing she got those pulled - the boys were going to be really p.o.ed when they found out the girls were getting to learn how to make cats sit. Heck, I want to know how to do that.
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For once, it is. Somebody else is deciding what other people should read. You don’t like the books, don’t buy 'em. If the store owner doesn’t wanna sell 'em, great. But if you or your kid think they’re worthless, how does that give you or your kid the right to decide that for everyone else?
It doesn’t.
Does the “nearby employee” have the right to make that decision? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on how much discretion that employee is given by the employer to decide what gets stocked and what does not. The article does not make that clear. In any case, I’m slightly taken aback that an American author (of all people) thinks this was the appropriate course of action.
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Don’t you think your 8-year-old-self would have at least OPENED the book?
When I was 8, I always opened the books I was looking at…unless they were shrink-wrapped…then I burned them!!! who the fuck do they think they are shrink wrapping books!!!
Never judge a book by its cover.
The truth is out there…
Fuck the police!
I thought it demonstrated a lack of understanding on both the part of the parent (who lost a teachable moment).
The kid but I don’t blame 8 year olds for much except breaking shit in my house.
The employee who was such a pushover to say yeah that’s do a mini book banning of our own!! FIGHT THE POWER!!!
The manager who was just as much of a pussy and caved to the whims of an 8 year old and her whiny mom.
nevermind JUST BURN BOOKS YOU DON"T LIKE1!1!!! (hit that shift key mtherfukr - learn 2 type) (how many spelling/grammmher nazis will jump on this post??I hope manyeezz)
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I’d like to see that New Yorker article. I have a 6yo and am convinced that the people who market sugary breakfast cereals have completely taken over certain children’s publishing houses.
My 6yo comes home from school with piles of terribly written story books he gets from the school library, starring every manner of licensed character and branded derivative thereof. It’s all superheroes, cartoon characters, Lego, Star Wars, Angry Birds, Lego/Star Wars, Angry Birds/Star Wars, Lego/Angry Birds/Star Wars… I’m still waiting for him to find the book where a Lego Lightning McQueen dresses up like Batman to fight “Pork Vader.” Because I’m convinced it’s out there.
Hopefully the employee gave a nice eyeroll and put 'em right back on the shelf after this lady left.
Perhaps the Gods of Irony will assign her daughter ‘Farenheit 451’ for her next book report.
“The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!.. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.” — Captain Beatty
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It doesn’t strike me as real censorship anyway. Bookstores always decide on their own what to sell and what not to sell. For example, most of them don’t carry hardcore porn magazines because most customers don’t want them around. This case is just another customer saying I think these books suck so you should toss them, and the bookstore agreeing.
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How to Turn a No into a Yes
The girls’ book sounds a little rapey.
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A business volunteered to respond to consumer feedback. How is that censorship, again? I’m a little hazy on that.
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Indeed - I’d expect the main survival approach to dealing with an invasion would be avoiding situations that could lead to an attack. But, since I’m not likely to buy either book, I guess I’ll never know.
That decision is not up to the customer. You think a book sucks, you simply don’t buy it. That is the end of your responsibility and the end of your authority as Civic Tastemaker and Arbiter of Class. I don’t want someone bitching at the management of Vroman’s because they carry Huckleberry Finn right out there in the open on shelves where kids can reach it. Actually, I don’t care if someone bitches about it (people can bitch till they’re blue in the face for all I care), but if Vroman’s caves into that busybody’s demands, then they suck and I won’t shop there.
It’s a bookstore, not a library, so it makes sense that the management will exercise some discretion about what they want to sell, but I don’t believe for a second that Constance Cooper would have behaved any differently had her kid found these books in the library. And that bugs the hell out of me.
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It bothers me that the mother is an author. There might be children somewhere who would find her books offensive. Would they have the right to get them taken off the shelves too?
Who knows, someone might want to buy these books as “camp”. Now they won’t be able to.
So you’re fine with someone producing, say, a Porn for Kids! series, and putting that alongside these books?
If we recognize that porn is bad for kids, and so we do what we can to bar their access to it, why not bar their access to rampant, potentially damaging sexism?
Valuing Free Speech as a basic principle doesn’t mean that we should allow all speech everywhere.
So you’re saying that every child should have the right to get the store to pull any book he/she finds offensive?
See how that “false dichotomy” thing works?
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Bespeaks the watering down of the meaning of “ban” underlying “banned books week”, doesn’t it? From government censors banning publication, sale, or possession of a book (under threat of incarceration), to public libraries being pressured by government not to carry them (under threat of losing their funding), to public libraries being pressured by citizens not to carry them (under threat of receiving another grumpy letter next week), to private bookstores being pressured by citizens not to carry them (under threat of, at most, losing that customer).
Somewhere along that continuum, we stopped talking about something that can reasonably be called a ban.
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Millie, you usually have a much better leg to stand on than this. These books are not pornography, but they are offensive to a certain sensibility… and yet obviously there are a pretty large number of people who think this kind of stuff is perfectly okay for kids (otherwise these books might have had a tougher time getting published).
There are other, subtler, and less draconian ways of fighting sexism than banning books.
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Right? What right?
The kid made a request and the store complied. No one forced the store to do that.
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