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1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

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81–90 of 99 posts

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good chance your 13-year-old is hooking up and about 100% chance she's hearing about friends hooking up. A guide like that is useful for identifying healthy and unhealthy behaviors around consent, health, and emotions. Have you actually read this book? Or are you making assumptions based on the title?

I included the title and its own summary. And FWIW, the age of consent in the U.S. is 16+. 13...my goodness man...

The age of consent and the age teens are having sex with other teens are two different things.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#82
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I included the title and its own summary. And FWIW, the age of consent in the U.S. is 16+. 13...my goodness man...

The age of consent and the age teens are having sex with other teens are two different things.

The average age of first sexual intercourse in the US is ~17 for both boys and girls, and rising. The hypersexuality of adolescents is overstated in popular media, though probably varies by region. I grew up in a pretty promiscuous environment, and even there, while there were 13-year-olds having sex, and we were aware of it, that was by far the minority experience.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not support the removal of these books. My claim is that: - Everybody supports the removal of certain books - Demanding the exclusion or demanding the inclusion are both partisan issues. Neither is a politically neutral stance. This suggests that this is not a free speech issue at all, but a political issue with two sides wanting/not wanting children to read particular books.

> two sides wanting/not wanting children to read particular books. No. One group of people don’t want any children reading certain books. The rest leaves the choice of reading the books in question up to the children (and/or their parents). An important distinction.

>The rest leaves the choice of reading the books in question up to the children (and/or their parents).

Complete nonsense. Libraries are not staffed by children nor their parents. What goes into a school library is not some ideologically neutral ground where books just happen to appear, because of the inner desires of children. These books are bought because the people in charge off filling a library want children to read them. This is true for all books in a library, but it automatically guarantees that school libraries are curated. And curation is not ideologically neutral.

It is totally disingenious to pretend that this is not about you wanting children to read those particular books.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is Google docs on topic? No. I had to open it in Tor. >School librarians in the US face prison time for owning books in parts of the US No they don't. Stop lying. >The government telling you what books you can ow No. The government tells them which books to put into their libraries , read your link. Can you tell the difference? It is public vs. private.

> No they don't. Stop lying. I'm sorry you don't believe me, but librarians are facing jail time in Tennessee, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Librarians (typically school librarians, but in at least one state also public librarians). The books their collection owns is a book they own. The states are telling them they could go to jail for owning a book in their collection. In Arkansas, a librarian can now…

No. You missed the point of the law.

The state mandates curation of libraries. No librarian is under any legal threat because of private ownership. Stop halucinating.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is Google docs on topic? No. I had to open it in Tor. >School librarians in the US face prison time for owning books in parts of the US No they don't. Stop lying. >The government telling you what books you can ow No. The government tells them which books to put into their libraries , read your link. Can you tell the difference? It is public vs. private.

I'm disappointed in the low quality of your arguments here. They border on bad faith, but, in truth, are probably simply lazy. I googled "new law prison time for school librarians banned books" and the following was the top result: "School librarians face prison time for distributing banned books" (actual title slightly different) In keeping with the ethos and guidelines of Hacker News, please apply the principle of…

>provide ‘obscene’ books to minors

If you had read my previous posts you would know that this is irrelevant.

By that standard the state has banned pretty much anything. Alcohol is banned in the US because giving alcohol to minors is a crime, see how absurd this argument sound if you apply it to literally anything else?

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#86
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these laws punishes possession, printing and reading any books, and the only distribution restrictions are about some public libraries (typically school ones), which are directed to not stock these books, but otherwise there are no restrictions on distribution of these books.

> None of these laws punishes possession ... > which are directed to not stock these books You see how these are opposites, right? Stocking a book in a library is possessing it. The laws punish libraries for having a book in their collections, and that punishment can include years in prison. Years in prison for a library having a book in its collection. Libraries are some of the bastions of freedom and liberty in our…

>Stocking a book in a library is possessing it.

Nope. That is not how (most) libraries work. School libraries purchase books, which then are owned by the school and managed by librarians.

>Years in prison for a library having a book in its collection.

Libraries do not go to prison.

>Telling libraries that they should not stock books is antithetical to freedom and liberty.

Libraries are curated in all cases. The speech they provide is 100% determined by the purchasers and staffers. If those people are ideological, then so are the contents of libraries. Calling them a bastion of free speech is hilarious.

Personally I never looked at any book in my school library and avoided anything but the technical books in university.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#87
post #48

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I’m so confused. Book bans in authoritarian nations mean that you can’t purchase the book because the government prohibits it. Is that happening anywhere in the US today?

You're not confused, you're just playing semantic games.

Congratulations on your apparent mind reading ability. Also I am pretty sure your post violates HN guidelines (is there a way to summon @dang?)

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#88
post #31
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Book banning seems like a strange red line to have forgotten Has book banning ever been a red line? Many Western countries, from Canada to France through US and New Zealand have banned many books for most of their existence.

Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all. It is legitimately weird how quickly that seems to have changed within the culture in the light of the moral panic over transgender "groomers" and the antiwoke movement. That, and the sentiment that the governm…

> Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all.

Was it, really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_the_United_...

Controversial, sure; but I'm not sure it was as universally loathed as you seem to think.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#89
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> point of public school boards and elections thereto is to enable voters to exercise the political control over the branch of government that is providing public education Fair enough. Perhaps the answer is school libraries are Constitutionally problematic–we can call them book bazaars and acknowledge that minors under state custody do not have the right to a library. Politicians removing books from libraries is a c…

I don’t think that non-school public (ie. government-ran) libraries here are any different from legal perspective: since I am funding my local public library, and since the library has a limited budget, I expect to have a say as a voter as to what books I want it to stock and take space on shelves. For example, I am very much opposed to it stocking books in foreign languages, because few people even can read these, a…

what exactly bothers you so much about kids reading slightly more mature books exactly? it’s not like 50 shades of grey and 20 copies of A Birth of a Nation are sitting around in school libraries and plenty of kids read well above their age level.

It sounds like you just want to control things

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#90

Sadly, the word "ban" has been used all too inapropriatley lately. And this website doesn't seem to help as nowhere did I see exactly what they meant by banned, who banned them, or exactly what the ban entails.

It is fascinating to watch the progress from "don't be hysterical, no one is going to ban books" to "we're offended that you're calling it a ban".

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