281–290 of 396 posts
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Idk I have managed to live my whole life without inflicting violence on others. Literally never been in a physical altercation.
Well, presumably you outsource the job of inflicting violence to others, like most people do. Voting for pretty much any political candidate is equivalent to doing so.
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The problem is that there isn’t really a better term, and using “banned” gives the correct impression for most people to see the problem. In many cases these books are not simply being removed at the school level but are being driven by the government and it is politically motivated. Ignoring the problem won’t lead to them being banned in the sense that having them would be illegal, but it could make it more difficul…
This is admitting that its intentionally misleading, which is lying and is bad. You just think that it's an rhetorically effective term. When I walk into a public library and I see a display a books for "banned books week" that includes The Catcher in the Rye and The Color Purple, two of the most best selling books ever which are commonly assigned reading in schools, it's so obvious that the whole thing is a farce.
it doesn't need to apply globally for something to be banned. it doesn't need to be illegal across the country. something can be banned from a certain place (e.g. a school). it's still correct to say it is banned.
some HNers are so weird when it comes to the word "banned" regarding books, i really dont understand why. its only ever in the context of school/library books. use "ban" in the sense of "banned from the forum" or similar, and no one bats an eye.
why dont people get worked up when tom/dang "ban" someone from HN? they haven't made it illegal for that user to visit HN.
As expected, the book examples given were not "banned". They're usually school libraries that are removing books from their collection that contain explicit material, usually at the request of parents.
> As expected, the book examples given were not "banned". > They're usually school libraries that are removing books from their collection that contain explicit material, usually at the request of parents. So they were banned from certain school libraries then. Something doesn't have to be banned globally to count as being banned.
I'm guessing the website is currently being hugged to death, but the images take a while to load, and I'm on a pretty good connection. Maybe try webp with some decent compression to shrink down the filesize?
Cool project, except these aren't really "banned" books. thats a misleading term. In most of these cases, the book isn’t actually banned. Nobody is being arrested for owning it, Amazon isn’t forbidden from selling it, and adults can still read it whenever they want. What’s really being debated is whether a particular school library, children’s section, or curriculum should include a book. That’s not the same thing as…
The problem is that there isn’t really a better term, and using “banned” gives the correct impression for most people to see the problem. In many cases these books are not simply being removed at the school level but are being driven by the government and it is politically motivated. Ignoring the problem won’t lead to them being banned in the sense that having them would be illegal, but it could make it more difficul…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that there isn’t really a better term, and using “banned” gives the correct impression for most people to see the problem. In many cases these books are not simply being removed at the school level but are being driven by the government and it is politically motivated. Ignoring the problem won’t lead to them being banned in the sense that having them would be illegal, but it could make it more difficul…
This is admitting that its intentionally misleading, which is lying and is bad. You just think that it's an rhetorically effective term. When I walk into a public library and I see a display a books for "banned books week" that includes The Catcher in the Rye and The Color Purple, two of the most best selling books ever which are commonly assigned reading in schools, it's so obvious that the whole thing is a farce.
It is a fact that there is a government lead effort in various states to ban books from k-12 libraries. That part of this is not up for debate because it is happening. So they are in fact “banned”. As a society we generally accept that words have more complicated or nuanced meanings when connected to other words, as “banned” is in this case.
We also as a society generally accept that those other words may be implied or require looking at something for more than a minute to understand the context. If you are in a country where a book is actually banned, I would wager that you would likely just say “this book is banned” implying it is banned where you are instead of adding in “this book is banned here in X” since it would be unnecessary to say and would be generally understood.
If you don’t like the word than propose another word.
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This is admitting that its intentionally misleading, which is lying and is bad. You just think that it's an rhetorically effective term. When I walk into a public library and I see a display a books for "banned books week" that includes The Catcher in the Rye and The Color Purple, two of the most best selling books ever which are commonly assigned reading in schools, it's so obvious that the whole thing is a farce.
"banned" just means "not allowed". it doesn't need to apply globally for something to be banned. it doesn't need to be illegal across the country. something can be banned from a certain place (e.g. a school). it's still correct to say it is banned. some HNers are so weird when it comes to the word "banned" regarding books, i really dont understand why. its only ever in the context of school/library books. use "ban" i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"banned" just means "not allowed". it doesn't need to apply globally for something to be banned. it doesn't need to be illegal across the country. something can be banned from a certain place (e.g. a school). it's still correct to say it is banned. some HNers are so weird when it comes to the word "banned" regarding books, i really dont understand why. its only ever in the context of school/library books. use "ban" i…
Because they're not "not allowed". With very few exceptions the thing people are freaking out about is books being curated out of libraries, usually for very understandable reasons.
...yes? that is the meaning of "ban", so it seems entirely appropriate to use that word
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>In the USA, the books that are banned are for public schools. They talk about topics like (gasp) LGBTQ and sex things! The book that is commonly at the number one spot on "banned book" lists has what would always be called hardcore pornography in the middle of the book. It depicts fellatio literally (not just implying it). It has no educational value, and is meant, within its context, to be erotic/lewd. I can link d…
Are we talking about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_for_Alaska#Author's_re... (I've not read it, of course, and don't know whether I'd consider it inappropriate for school libraries. However, it sounds like it was not intended as pornography and therefore isn't pornography according to some narrow definitions of that term. In any case, school libraries have such tiny budgets and there are so many uncontr…
And its easy to attack books in k-12 school libraries. The hard conservative christians attack DEI, sexuality, suicide, witchcraft, and other things regularly.
However, we are also seeing direct attacks on funding with public libraries.
https://michiganadvance.com/2025/06/23/local-michigan-librar...
They almost had their funding yanked to keep librarians from putting LGBTQ books on the shelves. These christian nationalists would rather destroy public libraries than allow (gasp!) books on subjects they dont like.
And as far as I can tell, the solution as of May 21 2026, was that the 4 republicans on the board voted to segregate all the aforementioned topics to the adult section. They also voted to remove the ALA's Library Bill of Rights. And who is this "They" who rewote it? "Alliance Defending Freedom", a christian nationalist group known for LGBTQ hatred.
https://thelivingstonpost.com/guest-column-cromaines-mass-re...
And all of this shit is in the name of children and "harmful to minors". (Geeee, where have we seen this using children for terrible shit before? Perhaps age verification?)
Im not always for democrats, as many of them are statist stooges as well. But book banning and threatening to shut down libraries is well within fascist and nazi regimes.
Cool project, except these aren't really "banned" books. thats a misleading term. In most of these cases, the book isn’t actually banned. Nobody is being arrested for owning it, Amazon isn’t forbidden from selling it, and adults can still read it whenever they want. What’s really being debated is whether a particular school library, children’s section, or curriculum should include a book. That’s not the same thing as…
If you're that bad with semantics, I'd recommend the next book you check out is the dictionary.