librarypunk - 090 - Right of Children to Read and Know feat. Srsly Wrong

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Crossover episode! We're talking with Srsly Wrong about the rights of minors to read, to know, and to be treated as people. We talk about our memories as children and accessing information at various stages in our development, and what the liberation of children will look like in regard to libraries. Media Mentioned The Convention on the Rights of the Child: The child-friendly version | UNICEF State of Palestine https://www.schneier.com/books/a-hackers-mind/  https://global.oup.com/academic/product/part-of-our-lives-9780190248000?cc=fr&lang=en&  https://www.dukeupress.edu/no-future Srsly Wrong episodes about child rights 262 – Society Lets Children Down 263 – A Conversation with Pearson Bolt about Child Liberation 265- Ageism, Misopedy, Adult Supremacy, Child Liberation, Childism, Adultism, Child Rights, Etc. 266 – Think of the Children! ALA About Banned & Challenged Books | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues  Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues  Notable First Amendment Court Cases | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues 

We now go to a government public service announcement for librarians. The government reminds librarians that it is illegal to acknowledge gender, race, or be supportive of children's decisions or reading choices. All books must be read or taken out with explicit permission from Guardians. This proprietary permission tracking system must be compliant with anti-BDS legislation and must be fully searchable by all Twitter blue subscribers for maximum transparency. Guardian permission forms need to be sent to the Department of Child Safety for Processing. There, a panel of concerned parents will vote on whether the children should be kidnapped by the state for what they let them read.

And disciplinary action towards librarians is taken through an opaque and mysterious process managed by a disciplinary black box AI algorithm. Once to pay for this system can be taken out of the collections budget. That was a friendly reminder PSA for all librarians. From the government. I'm Justin. I'm a Skalkan librarian. My pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie.

I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they them. I'm Jay. I'm a music library director, and my pronouns are he, him. We have guests. Would you like to introduce yourselves? Hey, I'm Sean from the Seriously Wrong podcast, and my pronouns are he him. And I do not work in any sort of library organization whatsoever,

and I have no experience there. I'm Aaron, also co-host, Seriously Wrong podcast. He Him. And we don't work in libraries, but we have talked about libraries a lot. We're big library fans from the outside. I'm a library patron. I often sit in the library. Once I started really feeling like, yeah, this is my place.

This is the people's palace, like sitting down, putting down my bag, you know. That was, that's, I really do feel that way about the public library, the people's palace. Yeah. Whereas the law will call it the limited public forum, which has legal ramifications for things we'll talk about. Oh, oh, yeah. Welcome. Sean, it's awesome to have you back, Aaron. It's great to meet you.

Yeah, it's great. Thanks for having us on. Yeah, thank you for having me on twice. Of course. We're big fans. We love Seriously Wrong. And you have done quite a lot of really great episodes about the rights of children, particularly like child liberation, the way society lets children down,

childhood and capitalism and a lot of the contradictions there. and all of which were excellent. And I thought it would be really good if we could tie that into what's going on with the current culture war focused on libraries because it's a Save the Children campaign. It's a it's a satanic and lavender panic. I'm just turning into Lee Edelman over here. No future. Yeah. It's the same.

It's not much. A whole lot has changed. It's the same panics. But focused on school libraries, expanding into public libraries. but always kind of focused on what about the children, and that's kind of the wedge issue that I think everyone knows is a cover for something else. But we want to take it seriously and talk seriously about, like, actual rights of children. And what does that mean for library workers who are the majority of people who listen to this?

And to have, like, a serious conversation about children's rights and liberation and children as people. I think that's rad because children are people. And they're really smart, like right away. I've got a three-month-old child in my house, my progeny, my legal possession by law, brilliantly intelligent little thing. It's actually wild. Like they can't stand. They can barely talk.

But there's all this just clear intelligence dripping out constantly. So, yeah, in general, children are people. I think it's a really important thing to underline that it might seem obvious when you say it. But in so many contexts, we don't treat children like their people. And it's so obvious when parents. treat their children like autonomous people rather than just extensions of themselves, especially like me. I had one parent who was very good about treating me like a person and one who treated me like an extension. And it's so obvious, like, the difference there when you see it.

Yeah, there's just like parents who treat their kids like they want them to become them. And then there's parents who treat their kids like an adversary that needs to be crushed and broken to their will. And we've just been reading. Jordan Peterson on an episode. So I was thinking of it. I'm sorry. Up yours, woke moralists. I'm glad we still have that drop.

Never getting rid of it. When we have debates about access to reading materials and libraries and stuff like that, the debate is taking the form of politicians and parents speaking on behalf of children, claiming to advocate for children's best interests, and everyone fights with each other on behalf of what the children want. But no one actually asks the children what they think about access to reading materials or even just like what reading materials they're interested in the first place. Everything comes from this assumption that children don't have agency. And the debate is, you know, among us adults, we are the gatekeepers who can either be sort of like more or less moral in what we let children access or what we force children to access.

I was trying to look for polling data. I've already done this before in other subjects. I know that we don't poll children in our society, but there is absolutely no polling data on what children think about book bands. There is only polling data on people above the age of 18. And I think that's, it's weird because children are the subjects of this story there, the people who experience or don't experience access to materials as a result of these debates. I would imagine some children have wildly different opinions on this kind of stuff if you engage with them on it. But the fact that that data doesn't exist is just, yeah, it's a layer to the way that our society just doesn't take them seriously. It's always so bonkers to me when I like, like, when I had like a friend or something tell me that like their parents like monitored what they read or like controlled what they read or what they watched because mine didn't.

So I didn't know that was the things parents did except for the like when Harry Potter was like, you know, when the kids weren't allowed to read that and stuff. Because I'm from like a rural area. But yeah, it's just always like so weird to me. when I hear people with like, quote, like, liberal parents, like, was like, oh, yeah, my parents, like, restricted what I could read and watch. And I'm like, they did? Like, it's always so weird to me when, when I, when I hear that. Yeah, I had really similar experiences in a grade school learning that some of my friends weren't allowed to watch The Simpsons. And I was like, what? That's, like, a staple of the, you know, it's a basic building block of every evening on TV. Like, if you're not watching that over your parent's shoulder,

or like after you like have ordered like pizza on a Friday night like what are you doing with your life? Just yeah, I just couldn't imagine this other world, this tightly controlled universe where you've never seen the Simpsons. I wasn't allowed to watch the Flintstones. Neither was I. Oh my God. What? We'll say to you in a moment. That makes sense. No, no, actually it was because my mom didn't like the way that they treated their wives and had a house full of boys with no good father around.

So I think that was not necessarily a bad decision on her part. Yeah, I am a little sympathetic as an adult when I looked back on that. But I did completely get banned from watching TV because she caught me watching it. So then I didn't get TV for a couple months. Well, and the funny thing I was just about to say is we watched The Simpsons all of the time. But then again, I'm the youngest of a lot of children. So it was like whatever my older siblings were watching, I had to go along with. So there was The Simpsons.

but we weren't allowed to watch South Park. Oh, I was. Yeah, right? And I'm trying to think this had to be back in the 90s because I was like 12. But somehow one of my oldest brothers procured a VHS tape with a bunch of South Park and other things. We weren't allowed to watch from a neighbor. Beavis and Butthead, that was the other one. And my dad caught a bunch of us watch.

I think I was just there incidentally. but caught a bunch of us watching this tape and got really pissed off about it, right? My dad was very, very Mormon. And then a couple, like a week later, he repossessed the tape, right? And a couple of weeks later, we came home from a Costco trip

because we were like a 12-person family to find my dad sitting on the couch in front of the TV, watching South Park and laughing. And it was like, like, that's so, it was so blatantly, especially because my oldest brothers at this point,

were like late teenagers. It's like you could have a conversation about why you don't like Beavis and Butthead and South Park with them and not have it be a big deal. But like, but no, my dad just threatened to break the tape and stormed off, right? So yeah,

but the Simpsons thing kind of makes, is interesting because we watched that all of the time. Yeah, it's weird. It's like, I feel like people who like had like liberal parents monitoring and controlling what they read maybe don't understand why that's like, necessarily problematic because it worked out well in their case or something. It's not like

the conservative bad controlling, whatever. So it's like not as obvious that the same thing is happening. The one positive thing, I was banned formally speaking from watching The Simpsons at one point. I don't know what age I was, but I remember that I was told this was a decree that I just never followed because I was unsupervised after school and Simpsons would be on four channels and what are you going to do about it? But this, It's one of the good things about this sort of censorship for children, and there's very few good things about it, is training children with evading these.

Another example of this is when we first got internet at my house, we had AOL CDs, and I was set up with like kids only internet, kids only chat rooms. You can't go on new grounds. You can't go on stick fighting websites, that sort of things. It was the most oppressive, horrible, you know, 2001.

You can't use Napster, that sort of stuff. Habster. And one day I found out what my grandfather's account's password was, and I just started using it. And no one ever even knew for like months and months. By the time I found out, it was already completely normalized to me. I never went back to that kid internet again. That process of escaping the cage and going from, I feel like there's something symbolically beautiful about that. It's like a growing up kind of thing. In a utopian society, maybe we would still have these, you know, child walls, but if only to train them to escape them. Like fucking Enders game or something. Yeah. Oh, everyone say hi to Arthur. All right.

So I am reading a hacker's mind by Bruce Schneier, who if none of you are familiar, he's a big cybersecurity person. He teaches cybersecurity policy at Harvard, and he's been in the game since the very beginning. He is a board member with the EFF as well and has been for a very long time. And a hacker's mind is literally about how people hack real life. So like people hacking financial code, people hacking law, like all of these different ways that people can basically get around rules and how we can basically flip that to take back some power, right, from like the ultra wealthy assholes.

But that you're talking about like, children evading walls and learning how to do that. Children in that sense are really like a fantastic at hacking. If you want somebody to find a loophole, you give it to a child. I don't know if this is true or not, but isn't it like the childproof prescription like things? Like they literally give them to like a room full of children and say, try to get this thing open. Yes, you're allowed to use your teeth and like just let them go ham on it. So it's like if you want If you want to know how to get around a rule, you talk to the children who are being faced with that role. And I think that, like, I totally agree with you, Sean.

I'm like, that is a fantastic way to help them build a sense of, like, identity and individuality and, like, critical thinking. Yeah, I also, I think I've brought this up before. We had, like, a specifically Christian internet filter, which was garbage and blocked everything, as you might imagine, which web filters are want to do. And, yeah, I hope, I hope kids are still having the fun of getting around these things. I'm sure they are because this has actually come up when, um, I think this was in a parish in Louisiana. One of the council members hired a private investigator to go to the public library and try and get around the internet filters, which are federally mandated CEPA filters, right? And was able to, like, I don't know, see boobs on TikTok and was like, see, they're harming children in the public library.

And someone was like, I think you might have committed a crime technically by trying to bypass government firewall without, but whatever. Anyway, so that's, it's very strange and serious nonsense, but moving along, I kind of wanted to talk about a concept that we don't have a whole lot in American law, which is like positive rights. And so I brought up the UNICEF Convention of the Rights of the Child, with Sean, I've led to understand you have read to your child, read them their rights today. Yeah, the Miranda rights. I didn't get through them all. It was almost nap time. And there's a lot of them. But I did, I also, I ordered a rights of the child poster for the nursery to make sure that she grows up in an environment where she's able to hold us accountable for what the United Nations declares as her rights. I think. Have you found her a union yet?

Those mandated posters in like the breakwork room. Hang in there. Your white garden rights. That is interesting to, like, imagine if it was like mandated. that all nurseries, children must be aware of their rights from six months of age, you know, like every classroom. I'm here for this. Yeah, like your OSHA rights.

And yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you're going to get in trouble or get sent to the principal's office, you get to have a union rep with you. Yeah, you have a right to talk to a shop steward during, you know, during a referral process. Yeah, I think absolutely there should be a little baby. If there's going to be a boss baby, there should be like a teamster baby movie, little baby in, in a Teamster jacket. Yeah, someone get on that. That'd be cute.

After the writer's strike, I guess. But then get on it. Yeah, we want the good ones on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But a couple of, and there are a lot, but I grabbed a couple. One is access to information. Children have the right to get information from the internet, radio, television, newspapers, books, and other sources.

Adults should make sure the information they are getting is not harmful. Government should encourage the media to share information from lots of different sources and languages that all children can understand. What does harmful mean? That's the catch. All of these are pretty vague and, you know, they're meant to span a lot of countries, so you can't expect it to be too specific.

And this is the child-friendly version, right? Yeah. I didn't want to do any tough reading for this episode. Honestly, I think it's great that they have a child-friendly version. Like, it's in terms that it's like having Wikipedia and then what is it, simple English Wikipedia, you know, nothing wrong with having multiple versions of the same thing. Yeah, and I think for kids especially, like, you kind of always have to do that. Like, depending on what age a child is, because we talk about children's rights, but children

are anywhere from zero to 17 years old. So they have like really different needs along those spectrums. And while, like, I think kids in general deserve a right to access any information they're interested in, like, if they want to know what something is, they're probably going to ask you or another adult, and, like, we should generally answer their questions. You know, you don't have to, like, go into a full technical Wikipedia detailed answer on everything they ask. Sometimes they just want a basic understanding of what it is. And there's, like, age-appropriate ways to talk about pretty much any topic, I think, with kids. I remember when I was a kid and I was watching Hocus Pocus,

and they kept making fun of this little boy for being a virgin. And I didn't know what a virgin was yet. And I asked my mom, I was like, hey, mom, what's a virgin? And my mom at the time had been doing medical transcription work for a lawyer and had a medical dictionary on the bookshelf very conveniently. And so she told me how to spell it and told me to look it up in the dictionary, Arthur's on my mouse. Very cozy.

And I read it and I'm like, this doesn't make sense in context of the movie. That definition's wrong. It didn't question it. It must mean stupid teenage boy. I had such a similar experience in home improvement.

They made a joke about circumcision. And I ran down the hall to ask my mom what circumcision means. And then she just said, yeah, something about like cutting penis or whatever. And I was like floored. I was like, that's not what I was expecting, just like retreat back to my room.

I'm like, okay. Not asking that question again. Yeah, I didn't know what I was asking. I do like to imagine kind of what these UNICEF rights look like in practice. And there's another one here that I've got, which is freedom of thought and religion. Children can choose their own thoughts, opinions, and religion, but they should not stop other people from enjoying their rights. Parents can guide their children so that as they grow up, they learn to properly use this right. And so it's sort of saying, look, we understand people are going to raise children in their own way.

And I tried to read like some anarchist thinking on this. And it's kind of been like, look, there's a natural propensity that like parents are going to raise their children. They're going to want them to like kind of do the same stuff as them. But we have to as a society be cool with them having other sources of information. And how you do that is tricky. But it's more or less we should agree that children get information from a lot of. lot of sources besides just their parents. But this absolute control of parents that is sort of the assumption behind these book bans rights, parental rights. Children's rights really don't come up

in the discussion. It's parents rights. Parents rights to control what children read through the school, through the public library, which is wild. Because, like, Sean, you were saying that, like, you've looked up a lot like people don't poll children about their thoughts on things. But I haven't looked, but as someone, like, I'm one of the areas of librarians. that I'm like just most interested in is information seeking behavior. And there's all sorts of studies on like different types of like groups. Like, um, for my master thesis, I like read a bunch of articles on like the information seeking behaviors of lesbians, information seeking behaviors of like trans people, like all this stuff. And so I'm assuming there is has to have been like librarian

scholarship on the information seeking behaviors of children at some point. God, I would hope so. Yeah, and so I'm wondering like what that kind of methodology and study like why that realm is so different than just like polling and whatnot and like what we count as information and information seeking behavior in children. I want the children's librarians to get back to us on this. Tell us about how your kids do do shit. Yeah, it must come up in like training for like shelf browsing. Like how do children shelf browse and stuff like that and how do they ask questions and formulate? questions because they do it differently than adults. Like sort of qualitatively over time, you get this process of growing up that changes your

relationship to the world. But the ALA has some resources that I went through about the rights of minors to access things in the library. One example is librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents and only parents have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children and only their children to library resources. This is something that actually has come up. up kind of in library and discourse a little bit because when these bills get, you know, up for discussion,

the public comes in and usually there'll be like a minor who testifies and says, look, the only person who can tell me what I can't read is my parents. It shouldn't be other parents. And there's just like a little bit of pushback among the more contrarian library people that I like to hang out with who are like, yeah, but also your parents shouldn't have like that much control over you as like a 16 year old who's able to testify about a law. You should actually have like independent rights to information and sort of the safety of school to go in and find things that are relevant to you. Yeah, it's useful in being able to be like, hey, back off. These kids are my property. I'm in charge of what they're not allowed to read. And that might help you in an argument for a moment

to appeal to people's biases towards that. But yeah, ultimately, I mean, when you're talking about a 16 year old, like, yeah, fuck off. Like, what do you mean you're not allowed to read something? What are you a monster. Like they found something. They looked for something and they found it and they wanted to read it and they were prepared to read it. And you're like, nah, nah, like what you're interested in doesn't matter. Like that is forbidden, uh, forbidden material. There's very few things that I think like could possibly justify that, especially with, I was thinking about this of like, there's so much the, the process of like seeking out and finding information as a kid. I think a lot of like the think of the children people in the pejorative sense, not the positive sense.

They don't remember what it's like to be a kid. And like I still have memories of what it's like to be, you know, 11, 12 years old. And it's like, it's like, fuck you guys. I know what I want to do. Like, I know I want to access the full internet. I know I want to watch the Simpsons in South Park. Like, and the, yeah, I don't know. Like parents have a responsibility to help guide children to let them know things that they need to know that they don't know. And even to let them know about things that they don't know that they don't know, if they need to know about it, parents and guardians have positive responsibilities towards children to help facilitate their development. They don't have the responsibility to be a stifling, like a stifling influence that keeps children from following their own desire to read, their desire to learn and so on.

Like, especially if it's like maybe something that would be challenging or mature air quotes to a child of a certain age. Like the parents' role there should be to give context and information so the child can make an even more informed decision. And then to offer support as the child is going through the process of maybe digesting that material if it's maybe upsetting to them. If they've made that decision and then the parent can support them through that process, it's not just to say, no, you can't know this ever. I'm going to protect you from ever having a negative emotion or feeling ever because otherwise I'm a bad parent, right? Yeah, or even like, because a lot of the time it's just the parent being like, I disagree with this. Like, I don't want my child to believe what's written in this, so you're not allowed to read it. I feel like the most control you can have over that as a parent is like suggesting what you think.

And if they want to read something, like if Sean's kid, sorry to use her in his example, wants to read Atlas Shrug, I think you should allow it. You can maybe suggest some other political novels, maybe with different. ideologies as well, but... Give her some Ursula. Yeah, exactly. Read the dispossessed after and see what you like better. Yeah, I think giving the context to, it's against like the, a kid that finds Atlas Shrugged or, you know, the Turner Diaries or American Psycho or something, if they somehow have, like,

the first step is really to contextualize to tell them what they don't know about what they have and give them the context to be like, maybe there's other options and stuff like that. think if a kid is persistently trying to access information and you're blocking them off, then access to information becomes a metric of punishment and where knowledge is something that needs to pass through this gate of these other people. So I think ultimately, like, with these various horrible books, just putting out of the shrug the same, tears. The seriously wrong, banned book lists. It's all Atlas shrugged. if a kid is persistently trying to access information and then you're being a roadblock to that,

then there's a, there is really like a punishment disciplinary aspect to that that I think is totally out of line with what we want to encourage from kids, which is their self-directed learning, their self- their autodidactic interests should be encouraged. But the thing is also, it's like kids don't know that American Psycho exists. Even if they found out or they existed, they probably wouldn't want to read it and stuff. So like I think that context, too, of what. what the kids don't know that they don't know. This sounds really esoteric if I start laying it all out systematically like Rumsfeld.

But like it's okay for parents to not tell their kids about American Psycho. But if your kid for some reason is like obsessed with like trying to get through it, I think it's I would not advise the child to read this book. I would advise a child to not read this book. But at the end of the day, it's like kids, if they're pushing consistently to get access to information, you don't want to turn that into a disciplinary dispute. And at the end of the day, it's like the kids want to read books about UFOs. They want to read magic eye books.

They want to read young adult fiction just to generalize and not to unfairly stereotype. But what kids want to read is like if a kid wants to read a coming of age queer novel, that's what's being banned right now, actually. It's not like no one's concerned about American psycho ending up on children's library shelves. That's the context that's most important here to think about. And children should be allowed to, yeah, children should be allowed to access that. Because if you're monitoring what kids are taking out from the library too, there's like this weird surveillance aspect to it as well that I think is really a violation of the rights that we should think of children having to privacy. And I think having worked in a public library, a lot of kids don't realize that they have those rights at the library. A lot of kids assume that they can't check out from the adult section that will stop them or they can't check out rated R DVDs because we'll stop them.

Like, not even their parent won't allow it, but that, like, the library workers will look at a movie and go, sorry, you're too young. You can't check this out. And so they do things. I had a library and do that to me before. Yeah. Yeah. And some do do that. And at the same time, like, so that leads to things like at one of the libraries that I worked at, we could not keep the satanic Bible on the shelf. No matter what we did. It keeps flying off. It kept getting stolen. Well, yeah, yeah, I was possessed. And, you know. That's great. No, like, and we ended up having to keep it in the reference section just so it wouldn't be stolen, right? And that was because people, and I don't know if it was teenagers or what, we never actually, like, caught anybody doing it. Because in the end, we don't care. But, you know, they always assumed that somebody would think bad of them or would stop them if they tried to check out this perfectly checkoutable book.

So again, like saying what kids don't know what they don't. know, there is that sort of other aspect where you have to let kids know that they have these lights and rights in a library. That's one reason why self-checkout machines are so important in libraries, by the way, so that people have privacy to check out what they want without fear of like embarrassment or intimidation. Yeah, especially like tiny libraries. One of the libraries I worked out was in a very tiny community and everybody knew everybody. And it's like, and the librarian I worked with was very, very judgy about everybody who came through that library. So, yeah, like, I wouldn't want to check out my, like, queer romance books in front of her either.

So, yeah. I took out an adult biography of a rural farmer once when I was, like, nine or ten years old, because I name-searched a children's book that I really liked. I think it was called Fortunately, Unfortunately, or something. It was like every other page was like, something good happened, then something bad happened. It's like a picture book. And then this biography was called a fortunate man. And I went to the adult section of the library, got the book, and went to the desk, and they were just like, are you sure? It's great.

Are you sure you want this? Is this, why? Like, are you sure? And I was like, yeah, no, this is what I want. And they let me take it out. I never read it. But I was totally allowed. Yeah, the ALA has some great policies, actually, where it talks about equitable access.

There's an interpretation of the library bill of rights for minors. And part of that is equitable access to all library resources and services should not be abridged based on chronological age, apparent maturity, educational level, literacy skills, legal status, or through restrictive scheduling and use policies. And this is pretty relevant right now because it's something that a lot of these local governments are trying to do is set up a tiered system. And unfortunately, with the sort of growing popularity of e-resources, it becomes a lot easier to do that. you can tie someone's age to their library account and then the account automatically will stop you from reading certain things. Like you can't even have the decency to go steal it off the shelf anymore. Like you can't, you can't get to it. And that's like a huge problem that I think is if you're not taking the children's actual rights seriously, you're just like, oh, yeah, well, we could set up the system to do it this way automatically.

And I think part of the reason the obsession with chronological age is is, is I think, you said, Sean, this is about gender and sexuality. And so that's really where the rub is, is like, these children of certain ages cannot learn anything about sex, which is I have opinions on because that's, that is a long process of becoming a sexual being that starts way earlier than people like to admit and keeps going through various stages that, you know, it's what chronological age could you possibly set that's going to work for everyone? Yeah, I was really impressed with those, the ALA guidelines, the interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights stuff. Yeah, the Granges are normally like lib and annoying. The stuff about teaching kids about sexuality, again, like, I think there's like age-appropriate ways to address any topic with kids. And, like, you don't need to volunteer any more information than they asked for. But, like, if a kid wants to understand sex or something about bodies or gender or whatever, they should.

should absolutely have access to those kinds of resources. And like, yeah, just like I know that growing up, I would have really appreciated a lot of the stuff that you have been seeing in libraries more recently of like outward attempts at including more diverse books about queer stories and queer kids and like drag queen story hour and stuff like that is like really, I feel like as a gay kid, I would have really loved having that kind stuff around. So seeing the attacks on it is just like it feels very personal and not just like, oh, it's too adult for these kids. It feels like it's like an attack on like these children's ability to feel welcome in these spaces. Yeah. And it's the obsession with, I think,

minors sexual development and independent sexual growth because like you don't turn and become a sexual person. Like that process has been going on. And so if you're, for instance, Indiana, I think, just had a bill go through or is in the process of going through because it's like legislative session, where it's removing the protections for school librarians for anything about their indecency laws. That was a felony. This is Indiana.

Oh, so they're also doing it? Yeah. But the statute includes any type of nudity because I read the statute. And it says, anything cannot be distributed to a minor that includes nudity. Doesn't say like the pre-pubescent nudity that we saw before, the weird language where it's like, okay, you can see a naked baby in like a maternity book. No, it's like any kind of nudity is like technically illegal. So this is like an unenforceable law. It's only going to be enforced politically.

Exactly. Exactly. It's insane. It's not a possible real law. Right. So no mouse. Mouse is off the shelves. Yeah.

No red guy from cow and chicken because he's got a naked. But that's nudity. It just says nudity. Yeah. Welcome to Keyboard Warrior Radio Theater. Hey, everyone. Have you seen this new law coming out of a red state in the South? I'm so shocked.

Well, not shocked. More unsurprised and disappointed. There is a new law banning children from reading magazines because of possible prurient interests. Can you believe this? this would never happen in my state. Oh, so you're against censorship for children. You want to have pornography playing 24-7 in every classroom, and it's mandatory to read the Turner Diaries before you turn one years old.

That's your idea of a good and fair society is mandatorily having a book club for Mind Conf. And children's libraries should store hardcore hustler magazines from the 70s right next to the I spy and Where's Waldo books? I think both of you need to change. check your privilege. And I think you should give a trigger warning before you mention the Turner Diaries again, Besty, from my LD fridge.

I don't know what weird fantasies you have about pornography and classrooms or children reading the Turner Diaries or MindComp, but it's completely separate from the reality of what's going on in libraries. Kids aren't looking for MindCompf. They aren't looking for the Turner Diaries. If one of them for some reason tried to look for it or their adults around can explain context and be there to guide them as they encounter this information. But I just don't think it's going to come up that much. I think it's the tip of a spear for a greater movement that wants to reduce children's access to information that they need to understand the world or to feel accepted in the world.

That whole fantasy you laid out, I think that's going on. on in your head. I think you need to be checked for what you're thinking about. So let me get this straight. You're saying that there should be babies board books in the library, which demonstrate body positivity by forcing babies to look at images of genitalia and baby board books. And that should be featured prominently at the library right next to the Berenstein Bears. And that's your idea of a good library? That's what you're saying? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I'm hearing. FBI, are you reading this thread? Can you come and arrest this guy? Seriously, what is with these weird fantasies they're spinning out? Please. My God, at FBI, at FBI, at FBI, arrest this person.

I don't think the Turner Diaries guy understands the threat that's coming from the Christo-Fascist book banners. This is a real threat to democracy. If children can't access popular materials in the library, then they won't know that democracy and capitalism are good things. Fuck democracy. Fuck capitalism. I wouldn't know about that if I didn't get to read Carl Marx. I've never heard his name pronounced out loud before. So I'm actually not sure how to say it, even though this is, we're typing. It's from my LG fridge.

I think what a lot of you losers in this thread don't understand is that my cousin's uncle, his cousin, works as a teacher and all the kids, 100% of the kids, are trans this year. And he's saying that it's because what they read in the library, and this is a classroom of 32 children. Is that right? Yeah, if there's 32 trans kids in one class, what an amazing community for those trans kids to experience. I'm so happy for them.

I think what censorious people don't understand, like, Turner Diaries guy, you really need to, like, understand where the threat is coming from. And that is specifically red states that don't want children to learn about Hillary Clinton's newest biography and also what it's like to be queer in California where they don't live. All states should be red states for communism. From my LD fridge. Wow, this used to be a place where you could have serious, thoughtful discussions. Things have really changed. Yeah, I agree.

Things have changed. People weren't spreading scare stories about classrooms full of transgender kids or pornography in classrooms only a few short months ago. But yeah, the group really has gone downhill. I agree. So I guess I'll be seeing you guys all at the school board public testimony during work hours. I know me and all of my Facebook grammas are going to be there. Yeah, I'll see you there. And my 16-year-old child will be there also to testify against the,

the new proposed rule against removing all graphic novels from the school library. And they will tell you themselves that the only person who can censor what they're reading is me. I think it's admirable that you censor work for your child. So thank you for saying that. I only wish to expand the circle of censorship as far as possible to protect our precious, quivering little children who will be destroyed if they ever see something that is not painstakingly curated by, a coalition of concerned parents. Could you not say quivering? Mauds, can we ban the word quivering?

Stint from my LD fridge. Oh, quivering, quivering, quivering, snowflakes, quivering, quivering, quivering. You want to censor me? Quivering, quivering, quivering. I'm not the one trying to censor things, snowflake. Stint from my LD fridge. Oh, you got me there.

I'm going to have to reflect on the inconsistencies of my ideology. Well, nice to meet you. You two, take care. by the way, five stars for the Lowry Seasoning Salt. It's so nice to meet like-minded people in the review section of the Trader Joe's website. And we'll see you next time for another episode of Keyboard Warrior Radio Theater. If you think about when you were a kid and like the, I mean, I could regale you all with details of all the stories of this art book on this friend's parent shelf and all this sort of stuff. But there's this exploratory process that's child guided and it's on your own terms.

And there's absolutely material that I think is inadvisable for children to be exposed to. And as caregivers, you think about that kind of stuff. You orient the environment of what they should be exposed to. And we're all really squigged out about children in sexuality because child abuse is such a horrific thing. But the thing is that like when you remember what it's actually like to be a kid and you're learning stuff and like you're getting exposed to different things, at different times through you find the magazine in the woods, you're flipping through this art book and there's breasts on one of the pages and stuff like that. This is all very natural human development kind of stuff.

And the most part, it's all very benign banal parts of growing up. And like, yeah, like I think the way that this debate gets cast a lot for these political, you know, like, well, the insurgent sort of like fascist movement in the Western society against queer people that is trying to turn. Like this is their wedge issue, right? As you make it about kids and then you can attack the whole thing. Part of it is like forgetting what it's like to be a kid, forgetting the sort of banality of finding out this stuff in real time

over the, say, the period of, say, roughly 9 to 14 is sort of the territory where a lot of this stuff happens. And like, I don't have a big, it's hard to pin down exactly in words the absurdity of this. And I think that that's why these anti-queer fascists are so harping on this point is that there isn't like these clear, great talking points that we can all easily get into about what it's actually like to be in a kid growing up and going through these stages of discovering sexuality, discovering nudity and all this stuff in a healthy, regular developmental way. But yeah, I mean, I think that's the situation as it is. And also, this is the thing that blows my mind about this stuff too. And I just, it's an important but small point is like part of life. Sometimes uncontrollable stuff happens.

Sometimes the kid accidentally sees the uncle getting out of the shower and sees his butt. You know, that's life. You build resilient kids. You talk about the real world. Kids like you can't control everything that children are exposed to. They go to school and all the kids are joking about blowjobs one day. And it's like, are you ready to talk about that? Do they have the context for that?

Do they know the context of what's appropriate and not appropriate for people to act around them about this kind of stuff? All this stuff is really, really important. And if we get in this super squigged, like, QAnon mode that just like everyone is like, there's all these like latent hyper-petapelic desires around and that like knowledge of sexuality and children needs to be like stifled and frozen until they turn exactly 18 before they can see an art book with breasts in it. That sort of stuff is like ridiculous just obviously and totally out of touch with everyone's experience of growing up in their lives. Like I don't know when y'all had to have like sex ed in school or if you had it, but I remember when I had it in like seventh grade. There is nothing that is unsexier and unarousing than like a printout that your gym teacher gave you of genitals with scientific names and you have to like fill in the blanks on them. Like that's not going to like freak a kid out. That's just going to make them go like ugh and then like kind of go about their day.

like there is nothing arousing or erotic or tantalizing about fucking like printouts of like it's just uproariously funny it's just the funniest shit in the world yeah yeah just make it as banal as possible yeah i don't know if i'm saying that word right but like whatever but to to your point earlier shan about like freezing children's development until they're 18 is having been raised Mormon but kind of a jack Mormon and knowing lots of people like that's kind of what the Mormon church does. Like when you talk about stereotypes of different religions and, you know, all of this stuff, the Mormons are horny as fuck, right? It's, it's, it's, it's, it's insane. Like, I don't know how to explain it to you. They're all just perfectly manicured twinks walking around. Well, and, and so,

and so, it's so, it's that, like, it's taboo because it's so forbidden, so you can't know anything about it. So everything about it feels like, you know, extra exciting and all that. But at the same time, And then like, exactly, the South Park tape. But then you get to like when they do turn 18 and they are adults and they still don't know all of this perfectly developmentally appropriate information about sexuality and their own bodies. That's how you get 19 year olds who are now married and don't realize that they can even have an orgasm. I've heard that from Mormon women before. Or people who have their adolescence in their 20s because they were told teenagerhood is like a secular. invention. And so then they hit their 20s and then they start having a teenagerhood because now they

have like a little bit of freedom. And they spend like the first half of their 20s going through that and sometimes they're already married. And so they're going through their teenagerhood with their spouse. This is why I miss blogging. You don't get these stories on Twitter. But like I used to follow all these blogs of people who were raised in Christian patriarchy, quiverful and stuff like that. And they were very informative to me because my sexuality was extremely repressed as much as possible as a child because that was part of, you know, my religious upbringing too. So it's all like, it's, yeah, it's not true to anyone's experience. Well, and, and like, I feel like part of the control aspect of it, it definitely goes beyond being 18 years old, because especially in like,

just thinking of the context of the Mormon church, because that's what I know, like, if you have these people in their late teens, early 20s, it's a lot easier. to continue to control them in their development if that's something they've already been sort of used to going forward. So, you know, it's not even necessarily just stops it at kids and being a minor. It's a full lifelong tactic of keeping people ignorant of their own ability to explore like the world around them. That makes it easier to keep them Republican and not knowing anything around them. Yeah, I mean, like, capitalism, fascism is obsessed with, like, sexuality because

it's both the side of pleasure and of reproduction. And like, when you're like having like pleasure and stuff that's like not mandated by the state, right? And like reproduction as a way of furthering the goals of the state and falling in line with the state. And so all that whole realm has to be controlled. mandated and surveilled as much as possible so that like your citizenry, like your reproductive body doesn't get out of line. There's so much, yeah. You see it too with the way like these

pushbacks start with think of the children and like, oh, these books shouldn't be in school libraries and then they shouldn't also be in the public library or we just want to pass laws preventing children from getting gender affirming care and then like almost immediately there's trying to push laws also preventing adults from getting it. There's like the think of the children thing. It's convenient because they can like straw man the other side and be like, oh, they want like 24-hour pornography playing in all the classrooms. And this is what you're giving into and stuff.

It's just like completely ignoring like levels of gradation. And like there's difference between public libraries, school libraries, like recommended reading lists, what's available, what's on display, what's behind the counter. And I think there's like conversations to have about how we restrict children's access to like hardcore gore images or pornography and things like that through like these various different levels. But like it just like uses this boogeyman of this worst possible situation of complete anarchy where like kids are just being force fed all this wild stuff. and then use that to like very quickly move up the ladder to like repressing the sexualities and lives of everybody well we've had um last last year already we had um emily knocks on dr emily knocks and she's a scholar on book challenges and book bands and um one of the

things that she says is like one of the reasons like people believe that like reading is so powerful that it can change you and we don't trust certain groups to change the way we want them to, like, in line with the state or specific ideological goals. And that's why, like, on, like, any side of the political spectrum, like, that's normally a lot of the times what these bans are for. It's because the information in these books they view is, like, it will just, like, change a person. But, like, once they, like, access it, it will, like, change them in a way that's not approved. Right? You suddenly know knowledge about being trans. Uh-oh, you're trans.

Do the book trans do? Right? Or you are okay with a friend being trans and you support them or something, right? It reminds me of, I can't remember the exact dates. I was reading about the history of libraries and there was a challenge to, I don't know, the time period or the place off the top of my head. This sucks. But they thought that access to fictional reading materials in particular for young women was giving them a hysterical uterus. And there was like a medical guide that said that hysteria of the uterus is one of the symptoms that comes from having young women read poetry.

And this is like an early challenge to libraries in the 1800s. And so what poetry it is, honey. Yeah. They tried in one of these places, they tried by removing all the pulp stuff that people wanted to take out because it was so corrupting. Because, you know, you could read these romantic stories and be changed by them and get these crazy. ideas about that you would decide your own fate and that you're your own person or whatever, but they found that the people stopped using the library almost altogether and they reversed it after a couple years.

Hey, this is Sean after recording. Here's the details that I didn't have on hand, which I just found in my notes. So during the mid-1800s, cultural authorities disparaged the reading selections of the masses as being unserious, puerile, and et cetera, because people largely favored fiction. For example, Goody's Ladies' book published in 1860 said that reading popular fiction causes the mind to be frittered away and all strength of reasoning and seriousness of reflection deserts the unfortunate. Additionally, the book On Diseases Peculiar to Women, 1868, they say novels, romances,

plays could cause women undue excitation that could give rise to a whole tribe of dyspeptic and irritable disorders, including irritable uterus. And the example I was thinking of was actually the St. Louis Public Library attempted in 1873 an anti-novel reading experiment where they stopped buying novels except those by Dickens and Scott. As a result, patrons were furious and stopped using the library, and the end they started restocking popular pulp novels in the following years reversing that trend. So that's what I was thinking of. And all these are from the book, part of our lives of people's history of the American Public Library. I'm blanking the details. But it's the same sort of thing.

Talk about this in library school. The shoddy and pernicious books article that I talk about all the time, that like, especially like around the kind of like the Ellis Island immigration stuff where like librarians would like label books as shoddy and pernicious because they didn't want immigrants to read them because they only wanted them to read things that would assimilate them into like white American culture. Yeah. The debate over.

Should novels be in the library? Like, should pulp fiction, should magazines be in the library? It's a huge debate at a certain point in American history of can you have fun in the library. I think that's sort of the same thing with the children is like, can they have anything that's not edifying? Can there be things that are prurient interest, right? Can a 14-year-old check out a book that they find arousing sexually? Yeah, I think so. Fine.

Don't want to talk about it. You don't want to talk about a 14-year-old being aroused. house, but like, I mean, it's none of your business. Fucking grow up. Yeah, yeah, grow up. Like, there should be prurient materials for 14 years. I'm not saying we got to make porn for kids, you know, like, like kids bop or whatever. But I can check out a fucking book that you think is hot.

Yeah. They're not going to like, they're going to re-dub it with for. I'm fucking stopping there, actually. I don't want that clip. Oh, God. I mean, like, so I was like very freaked out by sexuality until like, middle of high school. Like I remember being in fifth grade and they tried to do sex ed on us and they showed us this

video and it showed a like CG wire frame of like a penis getting erect and I had a panic attack and was screaming like into my desk and everyone was making fun of me. And then we did not do sex ed in fifth grade and then like had to do it in seventh grade again. But like I was so freaked out by it. And it wasn't because of my parents. at all. Like, my parents, like, didn't go to church or anything. I went to church, but my parents didn't. And, like, looking back, when I, like, sort of realizing I was queer and then realizing I was, like, trans, I'm wondering, like, if I would have figured out that maybe, like, I was so freaked

out bisexuality and stuff because of, like, how I was feeling in my body and stuff and not able to articulate that. I wasn't able to articulate it until, like, I was, like, 17 or something. And then didn't like start transitioning until I was 25 and like I wondered like if I would have figured out that like maybe why sex freaked me out so much if I had been able to like learn about sexuality and gender and all of this kind of stuff earlier and just yeah I don't know like it's not just like there are kids who are freaked out by this stuff but usually there's a reason why you know, or sometimes you just have sensitive kids. You know, I was also very sensitive.

Things freaked me out. So who knows? Well, that's part of the... The resiliency that you are trying to, like, build into your kids' lives, like, from the get-go. Look at me now. Yeah. Well, and, like, I get it. Like, there are kids who are just maybe more sensitive than other kids, but instead of shielding them from anything that could possibly engage

that sensitivity, you know, you teach them ways to cope with it and, you know, how to feel safe again and that kind of like thing. It's something you mentioned earlier, Sadie, I think is really important is when you mentioned in the context of Mormons growing up and still having this childlike view of things because they've been trained on this, this like very limited, this very limited world, and then they're sort of trained for life to have this sort of subordinate reaction to things. I think there's something really profound there about the way that this applies to just thinking about child liberation more broadly is like these things that we think of as these temporary impositions on children to protect them are embedding them with lifelong habits that relate them to being subordinate within positions where they don't have agency, where they don't have their own direction and so on. So I think it applies to access to information and library access in particular ways, but it's also a broader thing about the way that children, the way that adults experience, the world first as children and then growing up into adults. It's like we're training. Ideally,

we want as caregivers of children, as guardians of children, as people in children's lives, we want to be empowering them with the skills that it takes to be a conscientious adult for life. And I just, I feel like that distinction's really important because we think of, it's almost like we think of children as like this outside separate thing instead of something that has continuity with everyone and is like an essential part of becoming a human being is going through the child stages. So yeah, I think it's really, it's really, it's really, important that we start embedding that sense of agency and self-direction in children because this is a lifelong set of skills to apply. Yeah. So that brings us to the really important question.

Should you let your six-year-old watch Terminator 2? We've been dancing around the question. We all know that this is the central question of this episode. Are you a bad librarian if you are not letting your six-year-old watch Terminator too and they want to watch it. Why does the six-year-old want to watch Terminator? Is it because there's robots and guns? You know, give them transformers. I feel like this is not actually that hard of a question, but I'm not a parent, but I was a child. We'll see, like when I was six and I had a sick day, I asked to watch Alien because I saw it on the VHS on the shelf.

And I went, Mom, that looks cool. Can I watch that? Because I'm sick and I'm feeling well. And she went, sure, let's watch Alien. And then it got to the part where like the pods were like breaking open and like, and I was like, mom, this is too scary. And then we didn't watch it anymore. And it was simple as that like let like my parents trusted me to know when something was too much for me. And they watched it with me.

Like I watched, I asked to watch the Rocky Horror picture show in fifth grade because I had heard the time warp and thought it was cool. And my stepdad then like talked about the movie. And I was like, well, can I watch it? And my mom was like, sure. And so I remember the day very well. My stepdad made Chili Mac and we were all sitting down and I was in a chair by myself. And we watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show as a family during at like 2 p.m. You know.

And it's been my favorite movie like ever since. And it was so crucial to me then becoming comfortable with like sexuality and gender and stuff. And like I was having a blast. And a lot of like of the sex stuff went over my head because I just like didn't know it. And so, like, how is that going to, like, affect me if it just, like, completely went over my head and I didn't get it? Right. Like, that's the thing. People think that, like, children are going to, like, hear a sex joke or a reference to a sex thing and be like, ah!

And it's like, most of the time they don't know what it means is the thing. They're laughing because the adults around them are laughing. Right. Like, that's the thing. Like, children are pretty good at knowing when something's uncomfortable for them or if they shouldn't be watching something. Like, if a kid, like, I remember, like, I don't know if you ever, like, had been, like, watching. watching like, I don't know, like stars with a parent. And then you fell asleep on the couch.

And then your parent was on the other couch. And then you woke up. Then it was like three in the morning. And then the softcore was playing on stars. And your other parent was still like your parent was asleep. And you just woke up and you're like, uh-oh. I shouldn't be watching this. I'm going to like army crawl and get the remote and not look at the TV and turn it off.

That happened to me more than once. But I was like, oh, I shouldn't. That came on because we fell asleep and didn't turn the TV. TV off. Right. Cool. And then it was it was fine. I think that's part of like children's agency is like a lot of the time they know when to self-censor. Like my wife talks about that a lot, uh, it being in like the seventh grade and they could choose from these lists of books. And the one book that the whole class was reading, they started to read it. And they were like, I don't feel like this is appropriate for me and told the teacher and the teacher shamed them. basically like, oh, like you're immature for not wanting to read this adult fiction novel.

And that's affected them ever since because they weren't like allowed to define their own boundaries about what they were willing to read and engage in. So, yeah, like part of that agency is knowing when the child is going to realize that something is over their head and maybe they need to stop paying attention or, you know, kids will self-centered most of the time, I feel like. Yeah, I took out Christopher Pike writes both YAA novels and adult novels, and I took out one of the adult ones, ones, not recognizing the day. But as soon as he started describing the vampires having sex, I was like, oh, this is like, yeah, I don't think this is for me. I don't want to read this. Yeah, I just stopped. I read a lot of Christopher Pike and a lot of A. Steyn, and I have that same exact story, but with Arl Stein having written a really terrible adult

novel that even to this day haunts me because the premise was like so whack and like the ending was so bad. I don't even remember the rest of like the parts of it that were over my head. I just remember being like, this ending makes no sense. And that's the part that haunts me to this day. I do read a lot of Mary Higgins-Clark in like fourth grade and was like, oh, this fade to black scene is steamy. Maybe we should just force adults to have this kind of conversation every once in a while. Like remember the shit that you did as a kid and how felt about it. And maybe then, like, you'll look at the concurrent generation of children in a different,

slightly different way. It's like, do you remember watching like a raunchy PG-13 or censored for TVR-rated movie when you were in like sixth grade and laughing at it, but not understanding any of the jokes? It was like how many of your friends had watched American Pie, like, even at that young age? Or like, I'm of the age where like before Twitter, the way that you just talked with people was just quoting Anchorman at each other for a good five years. And that was the only conversations we had was just quoting Anchorman at each other. And it's like so many of those jokes, we, you know, talk about Sex Panther in like seventh grade. And I thought it was hilarious, but didn't like think anything of it, right?

I don't know. I love that stuff either went over my head or I just like didn't care about it. My like big childhood censorship seeing thing. There wasn't actually a library one or like an adult book that I read that I can remember. But I was shown Jurassic Park by my dad when I was like four or something. I don't know if I was already a dinosaur kid or if it made me into one. But the only reason I know about this is because my mom was like super pissed and she like blamed any nightmare I had on it for years. Like this is because you showed him Jurassic Park.

But like it's true. I do remember the Velociraptor scene still scares the shit out of me as an adult from these like these these fucking scary nascent childhood like visceral experiences. But also like I wanted to be a paleontologist for years after that. Like there's no and to this day it's like it's like it's a great movie. I don't know if you've seen it recently. But it's like every not a moment wasted. But like when I think back on all the things that I saw that I wasn't supposed to see including but not limited. to Jurassic Park, I feel like it's all really neutral to positive on my own life. So yeah,

like maybe if at the start of these censorship hearings, everyone went around the room talking about the nudie meg they found in the woods at what age and stuff and just really reflected on how much everyone was harmed by being in the real world despite being a child, it might be a beneficial thing. Yeah, that's the thing. I think a lot of people forget is children are here in the real world, right alongside us, God forbid. And like, I don't know if any of you are familiar with like some of Dana Boyd's research. I forget exactly what like things she works with. But she wrote a book and I read parts of it about basically about teens being online. And the absolute major thing about being online is they wanted to be somewhere where their peers were,

but the adults weren't. And that's why, you know, the teenagers were just switching from Facebook to Instagram to, you know, Snapchat to everything is because they were, they were trying to stay ahead of their parents. Because once their parents entered a space, it became a very different, like, ballpark. And again, like, if adults could remember being like that, but like, I don't think that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, especially for teenagers. They want to be able to have a space where they can talk with their peers and not necessarily have the surveillance of adults. And we've destroyed outside for them.

They have nowhere to go. And I think there's a lot of room to talk about, like, the kinds of things that are easily accessible on the internet. But, like, those sort of things are usually harmful to a person in general and not necessarily just a child or a teen. Yeah. A lot of stuff going through a library has been through several layers of curation, like, through a publisher, purchased by a library.

Ideally, like, a librarian was involved at some point. But, like, let's be real, sometimes it was just, like, an inventor package. And that's how you do get weird stuff like Holocaust denial books in your e-resources package that you would rather not pay for and wouldn't have paid for. But it's like, oh, it's just in a bundle, whatever. Please stop putting it in there. We don't really want this stuff. But, you know, I mean, that's kind of what it is.

There is still, like, so many layers of curation. When you're talking about, like, especially school libraries, but even public libraries, there's just so many layers that we're already assuming are already there. And we talk about it like it's like you're going to see a beheading video in Hoopla. I know it's not, I know it's not a, to wrap up to talk about kind of like child liberation, how we go forward. I wanted to kind of make the point that a lot of things that we say about children were things that people said about servants and then women and like that they're incapable of making independent choices for themselves. I doubt that there's going to be any child liberation movement anytime soon. But I could see it happening at some point in the future where we start saying like, hey, if you can put a child in adult jail, maybe they can vote.

I don't know. maybe at elementary school, you just have election day and you just all go to the lunchroom and you vote. Like, you know, and then you get your bulletproof vest and you go back to the classroom and then you do a duck and cover training. And yeah, I mean, just, you know, react to the realities that we have. But it is very silly the way politically we're talking about children as like these childhood is an inconvenience. The thing that's like, it's got to happen, but no one wants to actually deal with it on its own terms. So I just want librarians to think about it a little more seriously. And I wonder how, and I know I brought this up before, but it's a controversial book that I think everyone should read and seriously engage with and disagree with or agree with or both.

But like I've already mentioned it in this podcast, The No Future Queer Theory and the Death Drive by Lee Edelman, which is basically talking about how like how the all-pervasive figure of the child, the list. pin of our universal politics of reproductive futurism that like when positioned as innocence and need of protection represents the possibility of the future against which the queer is positioned as the embodiment of a relentlessly narcissistic, antisocial and future negating drive. And so instead of queers trying to be like, no, no, no, we care about the children and being like accommodating and defanging and stuff, just being like, no, you're right about that. and like accepting that negativity of like fuck them kids because I see this a lot of the like,

especially like with like drag queens and trans people in libraries or around children which people often don't view those as separate things. The whole like anti-drag queen thing is the same thing as the anti-trans woman thing. It's a both like these are these are the same thing. People then go, no, drag queens are always appropriate for children. and queerness is always, like, all aspects of queerness are now child-friendly. And I see a lot of people pushing about, like, no, I want to be a sicko sex pervert. And not all drag is appropriate for children, maybe.

And like, what happened to mean bitchy drag queens? Where's divine telling people to, like, you know, murder everyone, right? Like, what happened to that kind of drag queen? And so this sort of like way of queers not having to tone down the sexuality and like the degeneracy in a positive way of our sexualities and our genders just to appease the like, oh, we're not the straw men you think we are with also this like rights of children thing. Like I wonder how like these two positions work together. just because I'm so tired of the like, oh, drag and queerness and pride is always kid-friendly. It's like, no, I want to go be a leather demon like in a dark room. And like that shouldn't have to be kid-friendly, you know.

Well, and because it like the way I kind of see that is it kind of is like homogenizing spaces, like, spaces, right? So like if everything has to be kid-friendly, then you can't have like these open. been expressions of sexuality and gender and stuff. And if everything's adult, then, you know, there's no, like, a developmentally appropriate place for killing. And it's like, people need to recognize when a space is for an adult, when a space is for a child, and where they overlap, and how we get to define our own boundaries about that. And without watering down.

One or the other. Yeah. Yeah. Because I just, I'm so tired of seeing that our, like, people are always. like arguing like no it is appropriate instead of going like they're they're seating ground already by saying like no this is always appropriate they're like taking the argument seriously and it's like you already lost when you've when you've done that yeah i think that's kind of how i always approach these things is and why i wanted to do this episode which is like if you're seating ground like yeah

it's okay to censor kids whenever you're the parent because it's like your property that's just not like a winning position to take. And sometimes you've got to take the position that is a little more difficult to articulate. And sometimes you've got to spend like an hour talking about it because it's tough. But it's worth talking about. So Sean and Aaron, did you have any closing thoughts? I want to like kind of wrap up a little bit. Yeah.

I was going to say it is true that when it applies to drag queen story time, that that is always appropriate. Like you can trust the people running those things, the people at those things, the parents who approve their kids of coming there. You know, you ask the kids, they had a great time. That child-friendly context, just I've had these debates online with these people. But yeah, there's context for everything. And like, yeah, you don't want to close off to, in order to protect children from exposure to things in the world,

do you want to close off the entirety of human existence and shape the entirety of the world around always fitting into a child's perspective? There's there's context where they're, you guys hear my baby crying in the background. I sure did. It must be almost snaps. She has opinions. Yeah, very, very opinionated. But on the broad sense of like what is a society that treats children, not as adults, but as people who are also children, a society that treats children as people, I think you need to really respect the fact that, yeah, children have opinions. They have a right to information.

They have political rights to participate in the world. I think also, like, we got work to do on adults having political rights in the world still, but I would like to bring kids along with us and building a directly Democratic confederated, you know, commune of communes type scenario, in my personal opinion. So, like, having children have a say and things that affect them, you know, understanding that maybe they don't always know what they don't know, they don't always have the full context and so on, but like as guardians, as adults around children and with more experience of them, we have a responsibility to help them through that. I think these are all like very reasonable goals that,

yeah, they might not be like the most mainstream priorities right now, but there's things that we can do even now that can help move us in that direction. I think one thing is just asking kids what they think. If more people participate in the process, if people who are in the context that have children in them where they're interacting with large amounts of children, but by their schools, libraries, etc. Having context to in sneaky, you know, non, not like super radical, not, not, it doesn't need to blow anyone's mind. But you can ask kids what they think and that's totally fine.

Like you can be, you can be a grade three teacher and pull your class on things. And no one's going to be like, this is a Marxist plot to give the children, give the children agency in the world. It is, but. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's perfect. They would never suspect the thing. But no, like it's, it's, I think that is like those sort of things are important first steps in building these ideas in public discourse and getting us used to the idea that, yeah, children, children are people.

They have rights like we do. And their chronological age isn't the basis for denying them access to things that they want access to. Like, for example, reading a book or whatever. I think that is a really important thing to think about how we can empower and integrate children's agency in the long term in a utopian sense into a democratic society where people have full democratic rights for the first time, all people, but also in the short term, finding ways to ask questions and listen and have what children think reflect, be reflected in what happens to them and around them in the places where they congregate and so on.

I think that's a really good first step. Yeah, I don't know if I have anything to add to that. I feel like that's about it. Yeah, go listen to all the episodes because you both fleshed out lots of different ideas of different aspects of like child liberation and rights and where we think these limits might be. I really want all of the people who listen to Library Punk to like think about these things seriously because like we're going to keep having this discourse. Like, we're going to keep having to talk about, like, what can kids see in the library?

And you should have put some thought into it because it's not, it doesn't seem like it's really going to go away. Like a year ago, we were like, eh, this will blow over. Ukraine just started. That was what we were talking about at the time. We were like, Ukraine's happening. No one's going to talk about this shit anymore. And I was a little prescient when I said the Facebook grandmas were going to keep on marching along. And I was fucking wrong because it was Florida Republican operatives.

posing his face to Primal. Dogfowl and Apollo really got you. You just wanted to your plugs for Seriously Wrong? Sure, yeah, yeah. So we do comedy and politics podcast called Seriously Wrong. We've been doing it for nine years now. I just realized earlier today, which explains why we're so damn good at it. Oh.

But yeah, we've got, I think, four to six episodes on. child liberation. And then we also have our Papa and Boy radio play series, which explores child liberation ideas and other related political ideas through a series of prolonged sketches, totaling I don't know, hours and hours

of content following a fictional universe where fathers, the entire world is a battle between fathers and sons who are like the proletariat and the bourgeoisie constantly at each other's throats. And it's like our satirical universe that we also adapted into a cartoon

show, I Mean TV. So yeah, that's kind of roughly. We're a utopian comedy podcast that if people listen to it, it will create 10,000 years of world peace is our promise that we made in 2014 and we stand by today. And now for a very special library punk seriously wrong sketch where a young skateboarding boy who is questioning his sexuality is looking for something to read at the school of library. Well, all right. Oh, sick. Kick flip. Tommy. All right, man. I'll see you later. It's so hard to talk to him sometimes. Anyway, I got to go. I'm going to skateboard up this little wheelchair-accessible ramp into the public library because I've got to pick some stuff up.

All right. Okay. Let's see. I was going to grab something for my sister. And then, oh, there's a display up front. Oh, okay. Oh, hey, that looks like Tommy. And a guy. Is that a guy? Oh, kind of looks like me. But they're kissing? That's funny. I bet Tommy would find that funny, too. I don't think I'm going to read it like right here.

So I'll just grab it and tuck it under my arm and I'll go check it out. Hi, I have this My Little Pony book that, I mean, it's not for me. It's for my sister. And this graphic novel that I saw. Can I check these out? I've got my card. Oh, yes. Let me see your card.

I just need to see your patron details. One moment, please. Yeah, sure. Here you go. Oh, let's see. Let's see. All right, here's the My Little Pony book. This will be due back in four weeks.

And, oh, how do I put this delicately? There is absolutely no way that you can check this book out as it's in the not-14 section. That's what that big display is, not-14s. We have to put it very prominent. So no teens check things out from there. Because you see, the library is not really a place for self-expression. Do you know what that means yet? it's only for reading books that have been selected impartially.

You know, we are neutral for your edification as determined by the local First Baptist Confederate Congregation of American Jesus. Oh, my uncle goes there. So I'm sorry, I'll just put this back here so it can be put back on the not for teen display. Oh, but like you said it's not for teens, but like I could like reach it, right? Like there's not like a, I didn't have to like go into the adult section. It just said not not for teens. I mean, technically I'm 12. So isn't that sort of fine?

Well, you see, this is a new system we have, and we've just implemented it for minors. And because this book is locked out for you, there is no possible way that I can check this out for you, even if I wanted to. Because you see, it's only fair that you're not allowed to read those books because no one else is allowed to read them either. That's why we put them on that display

so people know not to read them. If we made exceptions, then other people might want to read, and that wouldn't be neutral. And as we all know, libraries are neutral. I just really feel like I should have someone else here to, like, advocate on my behalf to, like, tell me that, like, it's okay for me to want to check out this. This really funny book about, it looks like, you know, it's just really funny. Did you read it?

I saw the cover. It was on the display. We're soldiers from the Rontown Children's Rights Militia. We're just here to make sure that the rights of the child, as laid out. by the United Nations is being reflected, and we've come with military force to be able to enforce and protect the rights of children. That's why we're the wrong town, children's rights militia. Well, I could direct you to the policies page on the library website if you have any questions about this policy. We're more of a sort of extrajudicial militia. We just show up and enforce things

with guns, if necessary, but we usually don't have to. People are usually pretty just intimidated by us. So yeah, could you just scan the book? Scan it. Check it out. Check it out. There won't be any trouble. Put it on his account. There won't be any trouble. It has a barcode.

It's literally impossible. You see the system that we have, it's locked out of the system. It is impossible to check this material out to anybody. And I think it's time that you leave now, you and your little friends. You've got a system. We've got a system that comes through the barrel of a gun. And at the end of the day, the children's rights are protected. And look, the skateboarding.

kid is clearly, is a 12-year-old kid, he's exploring his sexuality. Do you want unaccompanied minors to have access to sexually explicit materials? Is that what you're saying? I know. I've read this book. It's not sexually explicit. There's like one mention of like a cut-to-black sex scene where they reference they're going to take out a con.

It's literally, it's totally fine for a 12-year-old to read it. No, no. They must wait until they are exactly 18 to become adult butterflies who can see nudity. What if a kid has sex before 18? I was reading the Johnny Cash autobiography, and he said he had sex at 13. And so I thought maybe once I become 13, I might think about having sex too. You think you're Johnny Cash. I mean, sex is a big decision kid.

I would take my time. There's no rush. Yeah, no rush. Also, I just mentioned this book really isn't funny. I mean, there's funny parts in it, sure. But, I mean, clearly, like, you're interested in. Maybe you're just curious. Maybe there's something more going on.

I don't want to speculate. but the funny excuse isn't really, it doesn't matter. Yeah, it's funny, sure. Whether it's funny or none of my business. Listen, I've told you to leave. I totally haven't pushed the emergency button under my desk and the library police are on their way. Please help me. So we're just going to take this erotic graphic novel.

We're just going to take this mildly erotic graphic novel and we're just going to go and no guns need to be fired or anything. It's just regular militia stuff. We're just... I can still take the My Little Pony book, right? But the policy, of course you can. You checked it out. Thank you. Thank you.

Back in four weeks. Okay. Yeah, I assume this is going to set off the book alarm thing when we walk through here, but just so be prepared for that. It might be a loud noise. That's what the police are for. Yeah, it might be something you have to turn off after we leave peacefully with the book. But we just really believe in children's rights generally, and we have a militia to

that effect. I don't know if we explain that. Yeah, they look like they do a lot of squats. But I've tried explaining the policies at you. They're right there. the policies. I know, Mr. Throckmorton, I know, I know you know me because you've been around for a while, but I'm pretty short at this age. I haven't really hit my growth spree yet. And so I'm like, I can really see that these guys seem to have like, they seem to do a lot of squats. They've got

really impressive thigh muscles. I don't think these thigh muscles are going to be like intimidated by library policies. I think I should just go with them and take this book to my friend. But I do, I want to show the cover to my friend. Fine, whatever. Just the police will deliver you, but I don't get paid enough for this shit. Yeah, now that's the spirit. You don't get paid enough for that shit. No violence.

It was just a discussion. That's great. That's what militias hoped for. When I grow up, I want to be in a militia. Great. Do you see what happens when we let people read whatever they want to read? It's beautiful, isn't it? It's just, yeah.

It is great. I agree. Do we have any books about militias? Oh, yeah. No, the militia sections over here, and kids are totally allowed to. take these out. Oh, sick. I'll be back tomorrow. Bye, Mr. Throckmorton. Love you. And so, my many children, that is the story of when I first took out a mildly erotic graphic novel, which stirred something in me, and that's when me and your father, over time, it took years.

It was more like 17, 18. There was a will, they won't day kind of thing, but eventually we found ourselves, we came together. And I, I really, we have the completely extrajudicial children's rights militia to thank for that. And now we have all of you beautiful children that we're, we're raising to seek out your own risque graphic novels someday. Well, that's a really great story, dads. I want to be in a gay militia when I grow up. Yay. And so, grandkids, that's the time that I told your parents about when I first took out mildly, mildly. Miley. Mildy erotic graphic novel. Things were different then, but after I told them that story, they all saw the library a little differently.

Well, great. That's a great story, Grandpa. I'm too distracted by the hyper-porn that I just got from the public library. So could you repeat, like, the last half of that? It's kind of ruined my attention span, if I'm honest. Yeah, and I'm exhausted because I just had a workout session with my fellow gay militia bros, keeping the family tradition strong. Oh, as I look back on my life, I realize it was well-lived, a well-lived life.

And if that's the takeaway, this day, then I guess that's the takeaway. Grandpa had a wonderful life. Thank you all for me. Thank you for listening to Grandpa's stories. Teacher said, every time a bell rings, a library gives a new library card. That's true. Yay! That's true about bells.

That's a fact about bells. They're teaching you in schools. Did you know that? All 32 kids in my class are trans? Well, all 36 in mine are furries. Well, now furries, that's going too far for Grandpa. Yeah, that's that, da, da, that. They should get those books out of the library.

Those furry books out of the library before this gets out of control.