silveradept | Bonus Stage - Book Banners and other Worst Persons in the World

A special entry to highlight some of the Worst People In the World, complete with running themes! Before we begin, note that the ALA's Banned Books Week is about a month away. Libraries and Librarians are often your first line of defense against the marauding hordes that think you and your children should only be allowed to read and see what they deem to be appropriate. Whcih does mean, occasionally, that we'll oppose you when your'e part of the horde, but them's the breaks when it comes to defending everyone. Support your local library, but if you want to really get into the dirty parts and keep books in the hands of children where they should be, get involved in the decisions of your local school districts and keep tabs on them, so you can spot when someone else is about to raid or when the school board is about to do something remarkably stupid and ban a book from their own shelves.

So, with that in mind, the bronze to The Stockton school board in Missouri for voting 7-0 to uphold their decision to ban Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, citing that the prevalent foul language and rude jokes were too much for the book to be of any use in a classroom setting. The article ntoes that the book also touches on racism (prevalent), alcoholism (extremely prevalent), and violence (in spades, usually because of the alcoholism), especially in relation to life on the reservation. Those themes are more than worthwhile to discuss in a classroom setting, and the delivery in the voice of a teenager, warts and all, makes it that much more likely to appeal to readers. (Doesn't hurt that Alexie manages to make much of it funny while also pointing out all the ways life on the reservation is horrible.)

Our silver attempt goes to "Gonzalo Lira", who swings the bat and, well, strikes out talking about the justifications for rape and abortion. Rape, says he, is the impulse by a man who doesn't have the resources to raise a child to try and father one, and abortion is the way for women to even the score by not having to invest the resources in raising a child. So rape against women is unacceptable and unjustified violence because it's a man trying to steal what he can't afford. Furthermore, abortion is unjustified violence against fetuses because in the United States today, women are only inconvenienced by being pregnant - the only way it would be justified is if the pregnancy were going to kill the woman.

You can guess where things went sideways. Considering rape to be a glorified property crime shows off his dim view of women, and then dismissing the process of pregnancy, with its complications, as well as the changes and then the requirements of giving up the child to adoption as a mere inconvenience cements that view pretty firmly. Other commenters pointed out the inherent encouragement he gives to rapists - if the woman is forced to carry the child to term, that's nine months of reliving a trauma as well as opening the door to let a rapist continue to hang around his victim out of his concern for his child. Which could involve repeated raping and/or battery if he doesn't want the child to be linked to him. It basically gives the rapist nine free months of inflicted what he wanted to inflict on the woman - terror, fear, and nightmares.

Our winner, however, manages to combine the two above-mentioned topics into one short but stupid column. Meet Wesley Scroggins, champion for your childrens against sex education and the reading of books, like Slaughterhouse-Five and Speak, because they contain profane language, blasphemy, and graphic descriptions of sex and rape. In fact, he calls Laurie Halse Anderson's "Speak" out as "soft pornography" because of the descriptions of sex and rape in the book.

From our ever-present friend (and also banned book), the dictionary:

pornography, — n.
1. writings, pictures, films, etc, designed to stimulate sexual excitement
2. the production of such material

[C19: from Greek pornographos writing of harlots, from pornē a harlot + graphein to write]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition, as made available on dictionary.reference.com, 20 September 2010. Emphasis mine.

You mean to tell us, Mr. Scroggins, that the teenagers in this school are going to read about rapes and get off on it? Well, considering that he spoke at Reclaiming Missouri For Christ, an organization devoted "To educate our pastors, legislators, educators, students, and all citizens as to the truth about America’s Christian Heritage and the role of fundamental, Biblical Christianity in the establishment and function of our legal, legislative, and educational system, and to work towards the successful reestablishment of these values in our society," he might actually believe that is the case, under the rubric that everything regarding sexuality and young adults is bad and will be used as jerkoff material, unless it's the anvil of abstinence, which is pure and always encourages students to be virtuous.

For that background above and more, we now turn to Laurie Halse Anderson herself, who is worried that the people in the school district will read in the paper, will uncritically accept that opinion as correct, and then will demand the books be removed from the shelves. She asks her base to focus efforts to get the message and their experiences with the book out to the people who will be reading the paper, and offers several contact points for the paper, the school, and other places to make their voices heard. (Comments for the original piece stand at 32 pages as of my last check.)

Wesley Scroggins, who believes your teenagers get off on depictions of rape, today's Worst Person In The World.