Gender Queer and the War on Books
The war on books continues to escalate rapidly. A Texas legislator has issued a demand to all schools in his state to report how many books they have from a list of 850 objectionable titles. There is no explanation of what makes these books objectionable but basically they are nearly all by or about people of color, women, and/or LGBTQ people. Texas’s governor has issues a call to remove “pornographic images” or “obscene material” from the schools even though no such material in the schools exist. But to book banners anything that dares to engage with sex, especially queer sex, is dangerous obscenity and pornography. The latest target has been Maia Kobabe’s amazing Gender Queer. Kobabe explores eir gender journey to finding a nonbinary identity and comfort in asexuality. Gender Queer is quickly on its way to the top of the most challenged books list as far right extremists have shifted their focus to it as the currently most dangerous book in America.
Three challengers objected to five books in North Hunterdon, New Jersey; the story raises other books as well but no formal challenges were submitted. Gender Queer made all three challengers’ list. One, seen above, complained that the graphic novel memoir included “sexually explicit drawings.” Another complained that “There are images of pedophilia and child pornography” (there aren’t but more on that later.) The third just described it, and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, as “Clearly, in using simple common sense, neither of these books are appropriate for our youth. They are our children.” Only one of the three claimed to have read the whole book, the other two relied on excerpts read at a school board meeting.
This has become a popular method of attack on queer-inclusive graphic novels. Challengers get to pretend that they are objecting only to the dangerous images and not the depiction of a queer person. Amazingly, a Texas district made up sexual conduct in The Breakaways to claim it had nothing to do with the LGBTQ identity of the characters. Some of these challengers go so far as to demand criminal charges against the librarian for daring to have Gender Queer on the shelves. I’ve addressed this many, many, many times on this site but the short of it is that Gender Queer is not legally obscene. There is no question of this. Partly this comes from the fact that obscenity law requires that the work be considered as a whole, which challengers refuse to do, and that it seek to invoke a prurient interest in sex, be patently offensive, and lack serious artistic and literary merit. All three elements are lacking here but the most amusing is the first because Kobabe’s depiction of sex is not titillating in Gender Queer, no one actually reading the book thinks “wow, that is hot!.” Instead, Kobabe uses these scenes to show eir discomfort with sexual contact and the emerging understanding of eir asexuality. But to the challengers this doesn’t matter, they are personally offended by the material and thus it must be purged from the library with the help of the criminal system. So far prosecutors have stood up for the law, most recently in Kitsap County, Washington, and an earlier attempt to remove Fun Home and have it charged with obscenity, but this attempted purge is not going away.
As always, what the challengers want in this case is not to control the reading of their own child. That is already provided for in school libraries that can restrict material at parental demand. What the challengers are doing here is to try and restrict all student access to a book that is lovely and affirming, something that I wish I had back in my teen years as it would have helped me avoid so many years of struggle and doubt myself. As Kobabe wrote recently, “[r]emoving or restricting queer books in libraries and schools is like cutting a lifeline for queer youth, who might not yet even know what terms to ask Google to find out more about their own identities, bodies and health.” The fact that this has nothing to do with the images in a graphic novel is demonstrated by the other challenged books which included prose novels Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison and prose memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson. The depiction of teens engaged in sexual activities in these books “is completely inappropriate for children. In fact, it is arguably illegal as it can be considered distribution of pornography to children.” This is absurd and makes clear the real target of such people is any material they particularly dislike, especially when it dares to celebrate LGBTQ identity.
I hope the New Jersey school stands up to censorship but so many schools have recently pulled Gender Queer, often without following their official review policies, in an attempt to appease the censors. They probably hope that this one book will appease the censors. The Texas experience demonstrates that there is no end to censorship for many rightwing extremists, and increasingly the Republican Party in many states, until all books by and about people of color or LGBTQ people are removed.
