Gaslighting, Disingenuousness & Exaggeration: The "Book Banning" Debate

There are a lot of disingenuous and exaggerated statements being made by both sides when it comes to certain books being allowed in schools for instruction and libraries.

We should be able to discuss them without gaslighting people & being mature about both arguments.

Unfortunately, this topic of what is appropriate to be in schools has become a political topic, meaning, if you are for or against a particular book or instruction, you must be of a certain political persuasion: this is NOT true.

A perfect example is Fairfax County, where there have been huge fights with the school board over school bathrooms, instructional content, and books, which is a majority-Democrat voting county. To be exact, the county took 69.9% of the vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

On the other end, not everyone who is for certain books being in school is a malicious groomer who wants to pervert your children. This is an oversimplification of what is going on.

What we are witnessing is a complex issue regarding various factors:

What is considered appropriate for children, claims of freedom of speech, care for child safety (from both sides), and the fear of a slippery slope towards increasingly more censorship.

The most good-faith argument for these particular books, which are generally LGBT-themed, is for the purpose of being inclusive to children who happen to fit under this umbrella. There are all types of books that don't feature them, so why not have these?

The most good-faith argument for preventing or removing these books is that they depict graphic sexual acts or feature graphic sexual imagery. They have no problem with these books existing but they are not appropriate for them to remain in schools.

Personally, I am of the camp that if any book features sexually graphic content, no matter the sexual orientation, it's best to err on the side of caution when it comes to exposing children to these things & the majority who are against these books in school feel this exact way.

Contrary to how we are told to think about this topic, I don't think most people who would disagree with me are malicious people and I understand some of their concerns about the slippery slope of going down the rabbit hole of banning innocent things for censorship's sake.

However, I believe many who disagree with my position have simply never seen the content that is inside these books. A handful of years ago, you would be pressed to find any sane person to be cool with images of blowjobs or stories with in-depth details about sexual encounters.

People have been trained to dismiss anyone who slightly disagrees with them as being an extremist and not listening to their points being made. Instead, we gaslight them despite our ignorance of what is going on.

They simply don't believe these books are graphic because it's inconceivable that they would be. They were told that it's just a bunch of puritanical extremists who watch Fox News too much. They've politicized it to the point of making regular people defend the indefensible.

These images are real images of books that are accessible to children within these schools. This is from a book that is in many schools in Texas, including El Paso, called "Sex Plus".

I've noticed that if they aren't arguing about the graphic content (because they know it is), they argue that these books aren't in schools anyways. Even further, they will use a word trick by saying that no one is "teaching" with these books. But that's not the argument.

The argument is that these books are ACCESSIBLE. We're not claiming a book like "Sex Plus" is part of a curriculum, we're saying that it's accessible in libraries; a major difference. Although some libraries do restrict checking out certain books per request, it's hard to monitor.

The gaslighting over it not being in schools at all is damn near insulting. As a journalist, all I do is talk to people, read the news, and ask questions to come up with my commentary. I've talked to people, some face to face, from all over the country who are fighting to have these graphic books removed.

These books are absolutely in schools across the country. Now, is it in every school? No. And no one should be implying that it is. But there are school districts where this fight to remove inappropriately sexual books is a real fight.

A perfect example is Dearborn, MI, where seemingly the entire community came out to speak in front of their school board, in multiple meetings, because of the content of some of the books featured in their libraries.

https://nypost.com/2022/10/11/dearborn-michigan-school-board-meeting-ends-after-parents-boo/

In the end, they created a book review board for parents to dispute any books that come through that may have been accidentally overlooked.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2022/10/13/these-are-the-6-library-books-being-reviewed-by-dearborn-public-schools/

The public school system is supposed to be an educational environment that supports the community and the community has a right to voice their displeasure about anything that's going on within their schools. If that wasn't the case, why have these public meetings?

People on both sides of the argument have a right to give their viewpoints on these books because the public is allowed to have a say. If the school board isn't doing what you feel is necessary, Americans have the capability of running for the school board to steer it appropriately.

You need to have more curiosity about why people feel the way they do before you begin defending the indefensible because you're too hubristic to question a narrative.