Reject All Obscenities

Learning to not ignore the insidious in the name of being “nice”

Firstly, I say this- a woman acting on the behalf of children is a woman acting on behalf of us all, past, present, and future. Not just “a force to be reckoned with”, THE source. After all, wouldn’t the source of the children be the source of the solution?

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Literary Tokenism

I took my kids to the local library the other day, as we do several times a week. I’m a library person. I worked in a library for 7 years. My mother worked in a library for a good majority of my childhood. My sister is a librarian. I appreciate the services they offer. I have met people in my community that I wouldn’t have otherwise at the library. I delight in flipping through cookbooks whilst my children play with the trains and puppets they have in the children’s section. I am fully Team Library.

What I am not though, is team youth-indoctrination-by-way-of-poorly-stewarded-community-resources.

While allowing my 2 year old to climb up and down the wooden platform that houses the “gaming area” in the YA section, I perused the small nonfiction section. The priority of this particular section seemed to be books on controversial subjects. Books on intersectional feminism, sex advice, race, the breaking up of families, social media, drugs and addiction, eating disorders, activism, trans identity abound. There is a lack in books on skills or heritage or family or hobbies or science or history or nature, topics to at least balance out the controversial ones.

I suppose I understand teens have a hunger for the controversial, I certainly did. I also think back on those years of my life and wonder how I would have seen the world had I not been introduced to the idea of things like eating disorders and drug abuse. The information came from both sides-the propaganda and media encouraging these things and programs at school or books at the library discouraging them. I almost feel like they functioned symbiotically to make these things undeniably captivating and interesting. I don’t think we should ignore difficult topics with teens, but I also don’t think we need to fully immerse them in them constantly.

I noticed one particular book propped up so it’s cover was on display. "The Trans Teen Survival Guide" by Fox Fisher and Owl Fisher. A quick read through of the book proved that the Fox and the Owl are really bringing it for the kids with the insubstantial, inappropriate, culty shit. Just as predatory in nature as their fake names.

From using the very stereotypes they claim to reject such as suggesting growing long hair to appear more feminine and talking about while dresses emphasize the hips and chest and legs, it’s “not only about wearing princess dresses” to suggesting packing and binding breasts-which they admit is dangerous but give tips on anyway-the book is full of information that at best was unhelpful and shallow and at worst was suggestive and coercive. It is imperative to understand that sometimes when a book has a lot of true value, it can be worth it to consider that fact when judging any overtly obscene passages. This book was surface level information with the added spice of glaringly porn-ified language sprinkled throughout.

The language in question? Well, the passages that struck me the most were in the “Genitals, Parts, Junk, What Suits Best?” chapter, in which the authors state “while some AFAB people who haven’t had surgery might refer to their genitals as clit, pussy and vagina, others might prefer terms associated with masculinity such as dick, cock, dickclit, manhole, fuckhole, or hole”. Yes, you read that right. It goes onto discuss the disembodied equivalent for “AMAB” people and states males may prefer to go full-blown denial mode and call their male genitals pussy or clit or that they may go the ever-charming “lady cock” or “girl dick” route. The same passage refers to “getting fucked and fucking others”. In what world does any teenager need access to this sort of swill? Is there anything at all redeemable about this?

Please mentally insert your preferred “excuse me?!” GIF here.

Teaching teenage girls to call their vaginas “manholes” is pure degradation and subjugation. It is simultaneously the most reductive and destabilizing messaging that could possibly be put in writing. I find it interesting that in the world of Fox and Owl, when a female wants to be male, she is a “man” (indicative of a desire for control and power, the things young women may be lacking a sense of as they realize the weight their female bodies carry) and when a male wants to be a female, he is a “girl” (correlates with the perpetual cultural infantilization of females, potentially pedophilic desires etc). It’s all the work of an insidious rhetoric that seeks to weaken and disrupt. Inserting this into the minds of children is not okay. It is even more not okay for a institution that is funded by the public to provide this work to children.

When libraries cast a net out into the teen genre swamp and attempt to try and make selections that apply to each and every current social issue, they may have good intentions. What they are doing though, in picking out the token “trans book for teens”, is just checking off that tokenized box. They will frame it as a “need” for the diversity of the community, yet there is no such need for this. The questions of who is creating these boxes that need to be checked and why need to be asked, and considered critically.

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Against Obscenity Culture

I saw this and I froze. I realized my own elder daughter was old enough to happen upon and read this book as she peruses the shelves looking for chapter books. I realize kids not much older than she have surely already read this book, a book complete with a website recommendation for where they can go look at pre- and post-op genital and mammary surgeries. I realize that I have to get over my fear of confrontation and walk on over to the service desk and ask what can be done.

I literally walked up and down the aisles of books with my fingers holding open this book to that page probably about 10 times before I worked up the nerve to go speak to the woman at the counter. Maybe it’s my Midwestern-ness, maybe it’s a lifetime of shyness, but this is the sort of situation that makes me forget words mid-sentence and apologize before I even say anything remotely argumentative or seemingly controversial. And yet, I did it, I said something.

“Saying something” as a woman is actively discouraged with demeaning terms like “Karen” because shame tactics work and shame is what feeds the very same beast that various societal issues including trans ideology are born of. Shame creates people who need to rely on commercial products and services to feel good, shame creates mothers who feel like failures and therefore parent their children poorly, thereby churning out more future lifelong customers/patients. Of course a sick society delights in making fun of the woman who dares say something that goes against the cultural popularity of disassociation and the cultural obsession with normalizing the obscene.

Upon speaking with the woman at the desk who was both very sweet and very unsure of what to do with my worries, a more corporate-appearing figure appeared to print me out the 11 page Collection Development Policy and Request for Reconsideration of Materials form, with directions to fill it out and return it. I was relieved to have the opportunity to think my answers through carefully in writing and also of course to have some sort of reference as to what their reasoning is in terms of how these decisions are made. Choosing to not ignore my instincts and say something wasn’t nearly as horrifying in practice as it was in my mind, either.

Essentially, the policy states it selects pieces from “as many credible sides of current and historical political, social and cultural issues as possible”. Great, sounds great-but let’s all collectively wonder what “credible” means here and again, who is choosing who gets that title? Another interesting statement it made was that materials are chosen “based on awareness of community interests and concerns, national and international issues and events, publishing trends, societal trends, and the professional judgment of selectors regarding the materials value to the library’s collection”. I suppose I must ask what the standards for professional judgement are exactly. The use of the word trends is also interesting. Acquiescing to trends isn’t always the best or most intelligent choice. Acquiescing to trends often is acquiescing to a popular culture that encourages the human disassociation from nature and ourselves and which delights in the obscene and the harmful.

The document also states that the library does not serve in place of parents when it comes to accessing of their materials and that “Only parents and guardians have the right and responsibility to guide and direct the reading, listening, and viewing choices of their own minor children”. While I absolutely agree with this, I also think it is unrealistic. Kids, especially teens, are not supervised every second. Communities have collective responsibility towards the children that exist within them as well and that statement ignores this. Institutions that are a part of a community like a library have the communal responsibility of stewarding both the community’s youth and the community’s resources in a manner which serves the overall well-being of that community. This book is not in the realm of anything that is “well”.

I see it as a matter of civic responsibility to not ignore such things. It is acting towards the common good to not just put the book down and walk away. It is a matter of standing in integrity. As a mother, I see things like this and think not only of my own children but of all children who may find a book such as this in their hands. Ignoring it is ignoring those children.

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Freedom to Object

I am no stranger to the free speech debate and as someone accused of Wrong Think on a semi-regular basis, I very much appreciate how immensely impactful and important it is. I also think that we live in a society where porn depicting individuals dressed up as children or appearing young enough to be children was ruled free speech and therefore protected- so the bar is so low it’s subterranean. Freedom without morality has it’s costs and as a society we truly need to reconsider how much we are willing to pay.

I don’t deny these people the right to write such a volume and sell it. I oppose the public purchasing and providing of such a work to children in the name of tokenized diversity and inclusivity. Obscene content without any actual merit serves no purpose in the hands of children besides destabilization.

This is what I object to-the active contribution to the destabilization of a foundation of what builds a good life. I object to the prioritization of harmful trends. I object to the insertion of this rhetoric into the minds of children by adults. I object to the lie that any of this is done with their well being in mind.

The word “destabilize” here is the one I keep coming back to. I imagine bricks crumbling, Earth moving, roots pulling apart. The most disorienting of imagery. When we are destabilized and disoriented, we are the most vulnerable, and this applies all the more to children. Children need stable and sturdy foundations most of all, not cracked and crumbling ones. We as mothers must work to preserve a steady and reliable foundation for them to gain their footing as they grow, despite any societal grumbling at our efforts.