![]() ![]() ![]() Those most decrying cancel culture are being silenced the least. No, the books he wants hidden from young people are about sex education, race, LGBTQ+ lives and – perhaps most troubling of all – those that teach young people about their human rights. There’s nothing about gun control, anti-abortion sentiment or so-called gender-critical diatribes. In fact, scrutinising Krause’s list, you won’t find any “cancellable” rightwing topics at all. You can dine out very well on your I’ve Been Cancelled media tour. It’s interesting to me because the political right, in both the UK and US, are obsessed with saying they’ve been “cancelled” or “silenced”. On Krause’s 850-strong list of titles he wants banned from Texas libraries, 62% concern LGBTQ+ issues. Most of it is about figuring out your identity, coming out and creating fulfilling relationships. I figured it was best I told readers rather than them doing a Google image search, right? But that’s only a tiny section of the book. This Book Is Gay explains how to safely have anal sex how to access PrEP to avoid HIV transmission how to find a clitoris the difference between cis and trans bodies and I clarify words and phrases that teenagers will have almost certainly read online like “Grindr”, “rimming” or “golden shower”. The “conservative activist” Stephanie Armbruster told a committee hearing of Lafayette public library board that it was “so disturbing that I cannot bring myself to talk about some of the specifics in the book that I do have a lot of concerns about”. There have been a couple of UK incidents with parents upset at school libraries, but nearly all of the heat has come from the US. I wanted it to be approachable, funny and relatable.īut it’s my straight talking (pun intentional) that has seen the book repeatedly “challenged” – in Wyoming, Florida and Texas (and those are just the ones I’ve been told about) – or outright banned. True, I didn’t want it to read like a fusty medical textbook. So I set out to be the “cool aunt” coming with all the advice I wish I’d had as a teenager. As such, we were leaving queer kids dangerously unprepared for adult life. It bothered me that sex education lessons assumed every child was straight and every child was cis. Many teachers were terrified of doing or saying the wrong thing, so there wasn’t an immediate improvement to the education of LGBTQ+ kids. After the repeal of section 28, which forbade teachers from discussing LGBTQ+ lives, professionals were allowed to acknowledge us, but hadn’t been given any advice whatsoever on how to do it. I wrote This Book Is Gay because, from my time working as a personal social and health education teacher, I knew there was a gap in the market. Needless to say, I was already well on my way towards understanding my sexual and gender identity. I didn’t read a book with an out queer character until I read Poppy Z Brite’s Lost Souls when I was 17. If books had that power, I would stand before you a very hungry caterpillar. None of my books has “turned” young people into lesbians, gay men, bi people or trans folk. What sort of message would removing the title from libraries send out to those kids? That they’re shameful? That they’re sinful? They ought to be hidden from sight? I feared it would force them to the back of the closet. “It’ll be great publicity.”Įven at the time, I was disheartened for the queer youth of Wasilla – Sarah Palin’s stomping ground. “You’ve made it now!” people exclaimed, as the furore made headlines all over the US. When This Book Is Gay, a nonfiction handbook for LGBTQ+ teens, was first “challenged” – in Alaska in 2016 – everyone was very excited. Krause only wants liberal, or inclusive, books banned. But this isn’t indicative of some evenly split “culture war”. As a writer, I think it’s up to publishers to decide if they want their name associated with prejudice – even with authors and books I disagree with fundamentally on ideological grounds. Book burning remains synonymous with censorship, dictatorship and autocracy. Few sights are more enduring, or chilling, than the photographs of Nazi youth raiding Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology in 1933 and burning the books they found there. I’m in good company: Margaret Atwood, the young adult bestseller Adam Silvera, and the V for Vendetta author Alan Moore also feature, alongside Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jeffrey Eugenides and – for whatever reason – a book by James Patterson.īook “banning” is nothing new. ![]() Recently, two of my titles – This Book Is Gay and Understanding Gender – appeared on a very long list of books that the Texas lawmaker Matt Krause would like to see removed from schools. ![]() I t’s becoming worryingly frequent for me to get emails from librarians telling me that one of my books has been “challenged”. ![]()
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