Challenging Flamer, or No Gay Kids Allowed
In the Lindbergh, Missouri, School District, a challenger has objected to 16 books and they are currently under review. It appears that only one person submitted challenges but there is a large redacted section that suggests they filled out the form for a group of residents. As you can see,* the list is utterly predictable at this point. This is part of a broader effort in Missouri and across the country to purge books some don’t like. As the Missouri leader of No Left Turn stated, they pretend this is about “porn”: “It is being so misunderstood or misconstrued by a lot of people that this is about LGBTQ or this is about race or color or anything like that. I don't care about any of that. My sole focus is are these, do these meet the legal definition of pornography or not? And if they do, then they should not be available to a minor.” As none of the books challenged are porn (or what he really means, legally obscene), this is a transparent lie. And the books in Lindbergh echo this fact because the targets are overwhelmingly books about people of color, women, and/or LGBTQ people. The claims about porn is just window dressing, a pretext for challengers to purge stories of people they don’t like from schools and libraries.
Flamer, pg. 125.
One of these challenges is particularly telling. Flamer by Mike Curato is a lovely graphic novel about a Filipino teen, Aiden, about to enter high school and finishing up Boy Scout camp in 1995. Aiden leaves with an abusive father, a depressed mother, and is bullied frequently because others perceive him as gay. He desperately doesn’t want to be gay because everything in his life has told him that being gay is fundamentally evil. See the above panel, which will live in my brain for a long time. He struggles with this to such a degree that after a failed romantic overture to another boy, Aiden nearly takes his life but manages to save himself just in time. It is a hard book but one that is lovely and affirming. As the cover blurb from Jarrett J. Krosoczka says “This book will save lives.”
“Pg. 80 nudity pg96 nudity, p139 kiss, p245 kiss, p306, suicide attempt.” “Graphic image of nudity, sexual affection and promotion”
Above is the challenger’s objection. Graphic novels are easy to challenge because they include images which challengers use to try and dress their challenges up in: “look, written descriptions of sex are bad enough but visual ones are a road too far!” This is often pretty strained, such as when people make up lies about sexual conduct in a middle grade graphic novel, and Flamer is little different. The “nudity” the challenger claims are two scenes where boys are in the shower and the most that can be said is you get maybe a vague image of a butt crack, this is what they claim to be “Graphic image of nudity.” The two kisses are even more unhinged. One is a dream sequence where Aiden and his crush are about to kiss but he wakes up and the other is where Aiden kisses his crush on the cheek. If this is explicit sexual conduct then no books will be left in the library. Luckily the real objection comes a few lines later:
“By affirming sexual orientation it normalizes”; theme or purpose of book is “homosexuality”
The challenger is happy to admit what really drives this is nothing more than Flamer’s purpose to affirm and normalize homosexuality. And they aren’t wrong, that is a major theme of the book. It is people like the challenger who seek to erase queer identity, to treat it as dangerous and vile, who drive kids like Aiden to attempt self-harm. To them, however, affirming a gay teen is the real danger: “Affirming to engage sexual activity for minors is pedophilia.” Of course, the book has nothing in it about engaging in any sexual activity other than the various teen boys talking about masturbation and girls’ bodies, but none of that got a mention in the challenge. It is only a message of affirmation to queer kids that is a fundamental danger.
I wish I could be surprised but I’ve been doing this too long. For so many challengers, the danger in the books is that they dare to tell stories the challenger doesn’t want to see. To these challengers, gay adults shouldn’t exist and the best way to get there is to erase gay kids. The fact that the gay kids will still exist is irrelevant to these challengers, such kids need to be hidden and ostracized so they learn to be properly straight. Faced with this bigotry, libraries and schools do not have a neutral choice: there is no neutral position between exclusion and inclusion of queer identities. I hope that this district will do the right thing and keep a wonderful graphic novel in their libraries for any kid to read if they want.
The books challenged were: The Breakaways, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, This Book is Gay, All Boys Aren’t Blue, The Bluest Eye, Gender Queer, The Testaments, Heavy, Anger is a Gift, Fences, Flamer, Black Girl Unlimited, Crank, Out of Darkness, and Living Dead Girl.
