We censoring books or not? I vote not. Is it so hard to be consistent?
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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You can't seriously be against all censorship in books, right? Where are your actual boundaries? I don't think you'd be ok with something obviously evil like a book of cp.... Right?
Edgecases are why it's hard to be consistent.
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So a book store pushing an anti book banning agenda is in trouble for not banning books?
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Drag Queen Lady Bunny's take on it...
I don’t really see an issue with this position. Replacing book bans with de facto bans by refusing to stock them could also become a problem. I’ve read Mein Kampf and I’d still gladly slug a Nazi.
Mein kampf is a terribly written book. Maybe it's a translation issue? Does it read better in German?
I read it in English so I can’t say. I just chalked it up to Hitler being a dipshit
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The criticism comes after users on X (formerly Twitter) exposed the site for listing books by authors known for their anti-LGBTQ+ stances, including titles by Riley Gaines, Robby Starbuck, Kirk Cameron, and other books from the conservative publisher Brave Books
So, like, thank you for pointing out a legitimate problem here and inspiring RuPaul's team to try to do better, but complaining about people allowing fascists to get financial support on twitter of all places feels a bit inconsistent
I imagine that’s a common pitfall for most online bookstores that have any sort of volume. Unless you want to proofread and curate every single thing that gets sold, there’s bound to be things that slip through. The article even mentions they sell 10 million books… just not possible to curate properly.
And personally, I’d rather have a bookstore that occasionally sells a questionable title, rather than one that actively censors itself. There’s plenty of titles out there that someone would deem offensive, while others consider it essential works.
Heck, there have been many scholarly annotated versions of Mein Kampf as the article mentions. It’s a historically significant work, penned by a madman. Not everyone who’d read it is by definition a Nazi. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it could cure some of them if they did read it. It’s a terrible book. Even when it was first published it got shitty reviews.
This is just a drop shipping operation. It's not "some things slip through." Rupaul had just attached their name to a drop shipper that serves the broadest audience possible. There's no curation. There's no safety.
Yay capitalism?