Transphobia in Wayne, New Jersey

During the 2021 war on books, I’ve done a number of interviews and a common question is along the lines of “the book challengers argue that they only want to remove sexually explicit material from the library and not LGBTQ books. How do you respond?” My response is always simple: “It is a lie.” The anti-diversity activists are seeking to purge entire identities from the school (and often public) libraries. “Sexually explicit” is just a pretext behind which they can hide their bigotry. At times this is quite obvious publicly, such as when a Texas legislator issued a list of 850 objectionable titles and demanded to know how many every school held and any other dangerous literature. A Bookriot analysis found that just shy of two-thirds of this list were LGTBTQ inclusive titles. At other times this is far less public. These anti-diversity activists scream about out of context passages from some books at school board meetings to maintain the facade that this is what they care about but it turns out that they also challenge, less publicly, books that can’t possibly be considered sexually explicit, or sexual at all. Recently, in Wayne, NJ, a wave of book challenges leaves no doubt that this is driven by a common drive of a subset of book challengers for decades: hate for a group of people.

“The fact that a boy wants to be a girl. This will contradict what my children learn in biology. This should be in the resource library.”

Three people challenged seven books.* One is a common target: Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. This challenger argued that “[t]his book depicts pornographic illustrations, illustrations that teenagers would be legally liable for if they took and/or shared the same photographs of their peers.” As with all others, of course, this challenger demonstrated a complete failure to grasp the plot, though they claimed they read the book, but ultimately this is just the same pretext that we see a lot now. What is far more telling is the other six books challenged, all of which are trans and/or gender diverse books for younger kids. Above is the form language that one challenger used against the five books they challenged, here Introducing Teddy: A Gentle Story of Gender and Friendship. The very presence of a book depicting a trans kid is a fundamental danger. The repeated accusation that this will contradict biology class is particularly interesting. It plays off the false idea that there is a fixed, sex binary, and that this will, thus, inherently confuse their children. More amusing is the challenge to My Princess Boy where the fact that “A boy dresses like a girl” is also described as violating biology class. The challenger not only sees biology as fixing a gendered binary but that gendered roles within that binary are fixed as well by that same biology.

“Any and all material that challenges Biological norms must be examined for dangers it poses to the biologically normal students. Furthermore, emasculation of young men is child abuse. Any child that has the degree of mental instability it requires for them to be confused over their sex/gender should be handled by their family doctor not the school. This entire book perpetuates lies that contradict science so tell me who is going to standup and fight evil if all the boys are wearing dresses acting like a princess”

Another challenger took these concerns about fixed gender roles to another level. In attacking My Princess Boy above, they asked an illuminating question: “tell me who is going to standup and fight evil if all the boys are wearing dresses acting like a princess.” This is a decades old trope that “real” men are harmed by queer existence. This challenger accused the trans inclusive books of in essence unmanning men: “emasculation of young men is child abuse.” By attacking the fixed gender binary and its fixed roles of man as protector and woman as nurturer, we undermine the very basis for a secure society. Who will do all the fighting if boys are taught to be princesses? Queer people, by our very existence, are a danger and must be dealt with. This is why trans kids are described as deeply mentally ill by this challenger and a family doctor should be involved. These kids need to be cured before they can grow up to be trans adults. The history of weaponizing faux-medicine against queer people is by no means dead yet.

Nothing is really new in book challenges. Mostly it is just variations on a set of themes around moral danger. This is evident in the above challenger’s worry about the danger that trans inclusive books, and they repeated it for all five they challenged, is that such work “must be examined for dangers it poses to the biologically normal students.” In attacking Introducing Teddy, this challenger linked the fixed gender binary to heterosexuality: “male and female are the only two genders and nature dictates their attraction.” In another challenge, this time to From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, this challenger brought back a real classic of homophobia: “Biology and Nature do not in any way support homosexuality or transgenderism – if everyone was homosexual the world would go extinct!” I haven’t seen that one in a while. The meaning is pretty simple: nature gives us fixed genders, with that comes established roles that include not only dress but also our fundamental attractions. "Biologically normal” children must be protected from any deviation of this because the entire purpose is to convert our children. This is one of the oldest tropes in the queerphobic playbook.

So if all of this is so common, why harp on it? Well, partly because I’m an academic and harping on shit is what we do. More fundamentally, however, this narrative of the latest round of book censors that they are there to just help the kids by keeping the knowledge that sex exists a secret has to be challenged. It is nothing more than a thin veneer, a pretext to support their real targets: books that depict people they fundamentally hate. The only stories that deserve to exist in school spaces are those that center straight people (and white but that’s a discussion for a different day). Straight people are the “neutral,” anything that deviates from them is “indoctrination.” Queer people should not exist and one means of achieving that goal is to erase our stories from public spaces.

*The books challenged were: My Princess Boy by Cherly Kilodvis; Sparkle Boy by Leslea Newman; When Kayla Was Kyle by Amy Fabrikant; From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea by Kai Cheng Thom; Introducing Teddy: A Gentle Story of Gender and Friendship by Jessica Walton; Who Are you? A Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity by Brook Pessin-Whedbee; Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe