Sorry for nitpicking, but you said "The 'woke' crowd have generally promoted censorship ('cancelling')" - but from what I can tell it's not the woke crowd banning books from schools and libraries, banning certain words from education, banning health measures, and I could go on. You talk about wokes promoting things, yet ignore the others actually _implementing_ bans as we speak? Is this gaslighting or what...
To use an analogy: there's a world of difference between scams, spam, opt-in marketing, and an actual, legitimate, invited, email message.
Those not wishing to face the difficult and nuanced reality of these debates equate these in appeals to emotions rather than citing specificity. Not interested in any discussion that employs that technique.
What books? Why? What "health" measures? Why? What were the arguments for and against? Side-stepping these questions is side-stepping the process correct outcomes depend on.
> A 6th grader should NOT, under any circumstances, be taught how to give a blow job by a 400lb man in a dress.
Can you show one instance of this actually happening? I'm not aware of any and what does get banned seems to be a pretty far cry from that sort of thing. Honestly, this registers as more of a pretext than a legitimate concern.
Do you have any examples of this book actually being read to children? Otherwise it's still speculation that kids are being taught "how to give blowjobs". I have no doubt that sexually explicit books on lgbt issues exist, but the claim is that they are being targeted at children.
Do you honestly think a book with a blowjob in it would have been banned if it weren't?
Regardless, exactly which "books" presenters with names such as "Eric Big Clit", "Flowjob" and "rainbow dildo butt monkey" choose to present to children - as young as four - strikes me as somewhat beside the point:
Um. Yes? Considering books like this https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/27/us/tennessee-school-board-rem... have also been banned, I'm not super confident in the some people's ability to distinguish between genuine overstepping of boundaries and stuff they just don't agree with.
Thanks for those links BTW. Those events over in Europe do appear to be of real concern. But, given the nature of the source, it's hard to tell how representative they are.
The county boards statement on that removal seemed pretty reasonable to me:
The McMinn County Board of Education voted to remove the graphic novel Maus from McMinn County Schools because of its unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide. Taken as a whole, the Board felt this work was simply too adult-oriented for use in our schools.
We do not diminish the value of Maus as an impactful and meaningful piece of literature, nor do we dispute the importance of teaching our children the historical and moral lessons and realities of the Holocaust. To the contrary, we have asked our administrators to find other works that accomplish the same educational goals in a more age-appropriate fashion. The atrocities of the Holocaust were shameful beyond description, and we all have an obligation to ensure that younger generations learn of its horrors to ensure that such an event is never repeated.
Though I would very much agree that censorship of any kind is a delicate matter and can easily become heavy-handed in exactly the way you describe.
I actually don't know anything about that source. It came
up in a search and appeared to summarise and provide source-links to cases I'd previously seen. It wasn't as sensationalist as others so seemed worth including.
Glad you appreciated it. I wasn't able to find something that specifically summarised what I've seen from the US, but it is out there and was as concerning. Maybe it's a bit "boy who cried wolf" with the right in the US on this.
That is, while there's often puritanical hyperbole that's easier for left to switch off to, the right appear to have a valid point most people either side would agree to here, but it's maybe not represented well in mainstream left media.
