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Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#242
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. The adults in the room should have nipped this crap in the bud but instead they entertained it. Now it’s a much bigger problem to solve. Check out SFUSD renaming racists schools like “Lincoln High”. Eventually parents had start a recall effort to end it.

It’s dangerous to complain about this stuff. Was at one place that routinely trashed white males, of which I happened to be. Caught hell when I tried to push back. Sadly this seems like it’s becoming the norm.

You might have considered leaving instead of pushing back? Vote with your feet?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#243

Am I not alone in thinking this Neo-puritanism is going too far?

No, you are not. A substantial majority of people consider this foolish Just think of it as a weird entertainment show that doesn’t have to be rational. There are crazies in all historical eras; the various social justice people are ours :)

> A substantial majority of people consider this foolish

[citation needed]. While ebay banning them may be a bit much, I don't know anyone IRL who is upset that Dr. Seuss's B-list books with offensive stereotypes are no longer being sold.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#245
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. Ebay is a private merchant. They can choose what to list too. Maybe this presents a copyright problem with clones, we don't know. I found the books by googling the title and PDF because I was curious about why they were removed. Curiosity satisifed and I still love Dr. Seuss.

No one fails to make this "hey, it's a private company" point in these discussions. It's always brought up when someone is criticizing a tech behemoth for censorship of some kind, and it's nearly always a non-sequitur. Guess what? It's totally fine and valid to criticize private entities even when their conduct is perfectly lawful. Thought experiment: imagine eBay and Amazon started to promote Neo-Nazi literature on…

More on point:

Back in the 1950s, Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, decided that he wasn't going to buy any more screenplays from communists, or anybody who had communist friends, or even anybody who'd been accused of having communist friends.

MGM was a private company, so that was perfectly okay.

Right?

Right?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#246
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With what pronouns you're allowed to use to describe yourself? Or what pronouns you're allowed to use to describe others?

I am no longer allowed to refer to my group of cisgendered male companions as "you guys."

This feels pretty extreme. I was raised in the Midwest where everyone calls everyone 'guys.' Even if I could successfully stop saying it...why? It's very obviously meant with no ill intention.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#247

Now this part is getting a little too carried away. It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. It is another (and overstepping imo) for Ebay to restrict individual people from selling to others goods that are not illegal or in violation of their other practical rules (no selling jewelry, monetary equivalents, etc). This falls into the cate…

Meanwhile…

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mein-Kampf-Annotated-Book-criticall...

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#248
post #140
post #29

What bothers me is the speed with which this process - "accused -> convinced -> executed" happens. We are not discussing things anymore. Today, you could tweet any accusations, and, no matter how ridiculous they look at first, it will lead to a race of who is taking them most seriously. Something definitely is broken. Look at what happened to the "okay". 4chan forced that meme 5 years ago in what they thought is a mi…

It's 6 of Dr. Seuss's books, and ones that most people haven't heard of. If you actually look at the content of the books, they are clearly racist and demeaning to those they make caricatures of. And in any case, it was not a sudden "canceling" or anything approaching that. Seuss's estate, managed by his family, made the decision after much deliberation to cease the publication of only six books due to the content. Y…

Does Seuss state own ebay?Do they have a constitutional mandate to stop selling of private copies to be sold between 2 private individuals? Are you going to order Fanta, Volkswagen,Bayern,BASF, Ford and Hugo Boss products to be delisted because they were literally associated with the Nazis?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#249
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With what pronouns you're allowed to use to describe yourself? Or what pronouns you're allowed to use to describe others?

I am no longer allowed to refer to my group of cisgendered male companions as "you guys."

"You guys" isn't a pronoun in the first place.

I guess at least not grammatically. But informally people might use 'pronoun' in a way that includes this meaning?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#250
This makes me think of Whoopi Goldberg's introduction to the second volume of the "Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection" published in 2005 [0]. Warner Bros faced the same kind question that we see these companies grappling with now and decided it was best to keep a majority of the offensive content in the collection. Most importantly, the collection was prefaced by Whoopi Goldberg and she explained why the offensive clips were included. I highly recommend anyone who reads this comment to watch the video below.

I personally feel as though it would be better to do something like this with Dr. Seuss' books rather than ceasing their publication.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_oEOdIBOpU

Edit - Whoopi Goldberg also did something similar for the third volume of the collection as well --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCT1clqci3I

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