Any "banned book list" that consists entirely of generally beloved bestsellers everyone has heard of is self-refuting I find it very frustrating that people don't get thishttps://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1311495815945486338 …
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Like, I'm dead certain tons of people who smugly share lists like this on Banned Book Week WOULD "ban" books under certain circumstances, especially if we use the extended definition of "banned" to "restricted or challenged" (getting it off store shelves or school curricula)
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I mean how do you feel about Alan Moore's Lost Girls? That book got "challenged" a hell of a lot, yanked by a bunch of distributors, seized at the border by customs officials, etc. ...Because it contains graphic drawn depictions of underage sex
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So are you cool with that? *Would* you be okay with the book being stocked on bookstore shelves or assigned reading in high school classrooms? I don't actually know the answer to that question for myself, but I'm asking How do these people feel about Cuties being on Netflix
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Again, I'm agnostic on the question of whether Cuties should've been made, as I generally am with movies like Kids (1995) that were challenged for similar reasons I'm pretty comfortable with saying Pretty Baby (1978), which features actual underage nudity, doesn't need to exist
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But that's why I'm pretty open these days about thinking that "freedom of expression" isn't an absolute and that can be abrogated by other concerns Do these people feel the same way? They sound all absolutist about free speech in the abstract but their examples are all so tame
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Like, I also don't think all copies of The Turner Diaries or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion should be destroyed but I don't want them publicly sold like they're just normal books I'd be pissed if I heard some teacher was using them as sources uncritically
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By their definition that means I'm someone who wants to "restrict or challenge" books Well yeah I plead guilty to that, and I think if you oppose me on that you should have the courage to do so openly, with the worst examples, and not the ones you know make you look good
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Like I legitimately actually want Lost Girls, which was a high-profile example from a famous creator that people really did fight bitterly over in the comics world, to be centered in discussions like this Let's go ahead and hash it out instead of dancing around it
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Alan Moore threw down this gauntlet about "free speech" -- "I'm a grown man who fantasizes about 14-year-old boys and girls fucking and I don't care who knows it and I'm rich and famous enough to sell a book about it" And the world at large just... kind of tiptoed past it
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Like we all just kind of pretend it didn't happen when discussing "Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen" and let it continue to be a "comics nerd" thing because the legal and moral issues involved legitimately will blow up many communities who all thought they had the same politics
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(See also: Half of the "hottest" content on AO3, and all of the content that AO3 explicitly fundraises for so they can have a legal team on call in case a government sends them a takedown notice for obscenity)
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End of conversation
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