That’s the worst thing about this. They do realize other people have a use for books about LGBTQ+ people and they want to make sure those people do not get to read those books.
They want to force everyone to not have those books. They can’t just pass them by themselves or restrict their own children from reading them. They fear LGBTQ+ people so much they want to deny their very existence and force every single child to act heterosexual. And eventually every adult too
This goes for all the books they want to ban. Books about racism, sex, pregnancy, abortion. The book banners want these books taken away from everyone
14 Likes
Gee, thanks; I can tell you’re really rooting for us.
That… sounds an awful lot like a weak sauce excuse for dismissing bigotry.
Do we all have preconceived notions about other people from other places who are unlike ourselves? Sure.
Do we all let them define us and control how we each choose to act?
Absolutely fucking NOT.
No group is a monolith.
And carrying on as if anyone is does everyone here a huge disservice.
6 Likes
Sure, but that reason is often “someone wanted very much to tell you this story, and not the other stories”.
Stories like this generate more ad revenue that good news and small quiet victories. It’s not a conspiracy to say “media companies will try to optimize revenue”. It’s really important to remember that you’re not hearing a dry, calm history. You’re hearing from a business that’s trying to optimize its revenue in a very tight market.
8 Likes
Blockquote
It would be great if all they got was a standard reply that their concerns were noted but that the books would remain on the shelf.
i like it.
10 Likes
Repeating myself:
OH God, wait till they learn how Neil Gaiman pronounces his name. 
3 Likes
Yeah. Not just yourself. You’re also repeating @Kii, again…
6 Likes
Hmm, has anyone mentioned Philip K. Dick? That’s an even more “sexually explicit” name.
3 Likes
Even if only a small percentage of Americans are lazy, right wing, racist assholes, that still makes for a lot of lazy, right wing, racist assholes.
While I’ll occasionally argue about whether Cleveland should count as part of the Midwest, I’m generally outvoted, so I guess I’m in the Midwest too. I don’t think I’ve made it through a conversation outside of the workplace that didn’t return to the topic of some political thing in the past few months. Every third yard has a sign up for a school board candidate.
As someone sitting in Ohio, with an Ohio public school student, I can assure you this is false. That might be their memory, but it wasn’t true a few decades ago when I was a student and isn’t true now. Looking at my local high school a little over half of the history courses are US focused. This is driven up slightly because my district was an early district to roll out AP African American Studies and AP Native American studies, so the balance is more US-centric than when I attended and more than I would like, but about half.
That’s another one that is more tied to your conversation partner’s memory than the actual content. I just pulled up the course standards for the last couple of geography classes my kid had and most of the material isn’t the US. They had material on dams on the yellow river, the migrations into Zaire following the Rwandan genocide, and the Songhai empire alongside the role of the Mississippi in the economic development of the US.
He got there by outdated quirks of our electoral system that need to go. He got roughly an Albanian population fewer votes than Hillary Clinton and about a Nicaraguan population fewer votes than Joe Biden. They weren’t particularly close elections by vote totals.
Boebert is actually a counter argument in a lot of ways to your point. Her district is very Republican over the past decade or so. The margin in most recent races in the district runs something like 50,000 votes. She just won her recent reelection by under 600 votes.
This is factually inaccurate. About half have a passport. Who Owns a Passport in America? – American Communities Project The 10% number was based on very old survey data, data that importantly was before 9/11. Prior to that it was possible to travel to Canada, Mexico, and most of the Caribbean nations without any passport (you still can in some cases by land with the right alternative ID). Given the relatively small amount of vacation time most American workers have those were also the most popular travel destinations. Lots of the remaining people aren’t in a financial position to travel internationally, but would love to.
This gets at what people are telling you, that kind of stat is grossly inaccurate. Using positive views of MAGA as a proxy for the things under discussion, your numbers are almost exactly backwards. Trump's ‘MAGA movement’ widely unpopular, new poll finds The media loves talking about them because they hit every media box for an audience. For the far right media ecosystem, showing them as omnipresent hypes up the base. For most media with a concern for a functioning democracy they represent a threat that needs to be focused on. For comedy media they represent an easy pop to fill ten minutes of a monologue.
12 Likes
Yes they are. The reason is lazyness. Using stereotypes means you don’t need to recognize individuals. If “all x are y, and you are x, the conclusion follows” is never a good way to go through life. Every one of us has some characteristic that would get us stereotyped. 90% of the time it’s wrong, and typically they are used to kick down at folks seen as lesser-than. Be better than that.
10 Likes
That doesn’t mean that ALL Americans are, which is MY POINT… Yes, I’m really aware of those people. I’m rejecting that we’re all that… 
8 Likes
Not that I’ve seen yet.
Nor Tucker Carlson, which…low hanging fruit. They’ll boycott Target for trans-friendly swimsuits but happily get all their opinions from a Tucker?
7 Likes
Man Charles Dickens is gonna be in Truuuu-bleeee
5 Likes
2 words:
“Moby Dick.”
7 Likes
9 Likes
Tell me about it;
Despite not being particularly close to “the middle,” and nowhere near ‘the west,’ Ohio got saddled with the designation of “Midwest” simply because it wasn’t part of the original 13 colonies:
That describes the majority of that person’s comments on this thread, IMHO.
6 Likes
We were taught in school that WV was “the easternmost of the western states, the westernmost of the eastern state, the northernmost of the southern states and the southernmost of the northern states.” We took that to mean that nobody wanted us, and we got kicked out of every club. So, OH, at least you got a club.
13 Likes
“Long thin skinny ones, big fat juicy ones…”
8 Likes
The common clay of the new west.
2 Likes
Western Virginia was created in the American Civil War because the Unionists realised they could get a pro-north majority there compared to the chunk of the original state east of the mountains, and split away a big area of otherwise Confederate land.
2 Likes
