Censorship: My take
cen·sor·ship
–noun
1. the act or practice of censoring.
2. the office or power of a censor.
3. the time during which a censor holds office.
4. the inhibiting and distorting activity of the Freudian censor.
Censorship has lots of different definitions. To me it boils down to something pretty simple. The act of censoring materials, beliefs or media is a tyrant activity. To actively seek to destroy, remove or eradicate anything just because it doesn’t bode well with you and your beliefs is a selfish and cowardly way to handle things that you do not agree with.
I don’t like a lot of things. White chocolate for instance. I hate that stuff, and it’s not really chocolate anyway. Do I start a campaign to rid America or the world of this dastardly imposer? Absolutely not. Some people actually eat that garbage and enjoy it.
Now you may say what does chocolate have to do with books, books that have sex, drugs, and (gasp) gay protagonists? Nothing. However taking these materials out of libraries, out of the hands of people who are in no way connected to your life or beliefs weighs at the same ridiculousness as a proposed ban on white chocolate to me.
To take books such as, Twilight, Wintergirls, Crank, and Luv Ya Bunches out of the hands of teens because you don’t think any teen should read them is ridiculous. Are you the parent or guardian of every teen on the planet? Absolutely not.
Just because you do not agree with materials doesn’t inherently make the materials wrong. It makes it wrong to you and your family, not mine. You see I have a plan, my plan involves my children being able to read any material that they want. I want it ready and available for them anywhere they look. I want this because I trust my children.
I talk to them. We discuss things, we are a team. I trust them to make the right decisions, to be humanitarians, to tell me things that they read that made them think or that they need clarification on. I will encourage them to read outside of their comfort zones, to push the limits of their beliefs and have an open mind to any culture.
Through learning only are we free. If you want to live in a box that you have created for yourself that only includes x and y that is fine. Leave me and mine out of it.
What do you think reader? Do you have a plan for censorship in home?
I would like to thank Amy, Danielle, Gail, Susan, & Tasha for weighing in. Their pieces were fantastic. Go read them already.
Censorship Week: Tasha from Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Books
Here is what Tasha from Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Books has to say:
Read No Evil
A few weeks ago, Farley’s Bookshop Blog had a post titled “Most People Don’t Want to Read,” an essay by William Hastings. Hastings posited that people don’t want their ideas and world views to be challenged, so they either don’t read or read pablum that they know will reinforce their world view.
As a reader, especially someone who reads what Hastings would undoubtedly label “summer reading,” I found his thesis offensive. Who is he to decide what will and won’t challenge people’s world views, to decide what’s worth reading? Just the act of reading fiction is a submission of one’s viewpoint to that of someone else, at least for a time, and thus is an acknowledgement that experiences outside of one’s ken are valuable–even if they do in the end wind up reinforcing a personal viewpoint.
However, I do think the post is pertinent when talking about censorship.
As various anecdotes prove, the most virulent supporters of censoring books wouldn’t read the books they want to censor if they were last pieces of writing on the planet. They don’t want their world view challenged. They don’t want the books to tempt them or their friends and family. These people are obviously fringe elements, however, and rarely have a lasting impact.
The issue with most societies is there are things that the vast majority of people would object to off-hand without ever considering it. Sometimes these things make sense, like child prostitution or incest. But whether they make sense or not isn’t the point–the point is, if confronted with a taboo, most people don’t want to confront it, consider it, or read about it. It’s wrong, period.
But that’s where the role of genre comes in. Genre provides a structure to reinforce our favorite societal myths–romance and Westerns being two particularly appropriate examples. They are comforting reads of the sort which Hastings would undoubtedly deride. But subversive elements swish through the waters of that comforting, reinforcing framework. People of different classes and races mixing together, changing of genre roles, incest, and question of what is bad and what is good are all things that can be found in genre novels. No, they may not confront issues outright–but then if they did who would read them, or who would publish them?
So in a way, Hastings is right–people don’t want to read things that challenge them too much. Even the most liberal of human beings has a line; people should have lines. But the books he dismisses as an utter waste of brainpower are not. More people listen to a whisper than a shout, and a book someone enjoys is more likely to make an impact on them. In the end, Hastings’ manifesto is its own sort of censorship, reserving books for an educated intelligentsia who can afford to criticize many things from their ivory towers and ignore the fact that they have their own taboos.
But books aren’t just for smart people, or rich people. Books are for everyone.
So read–just read. And don’t let anyone ever tell you what you should and shouldn’t be reading.
