librarypunk - 148 - Censorship is a Drag feat. Jason and Jordan

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

This week we’re talking with the editors of the new book Censorship is a Drag. We talk about putting yourself on the line, personal and professional risks, and reacting to the latest administration���s onslaught against queer people.  Order Censorship is a Drag here: https://litwinbooks.com/books/censorship-is-a-drag/ Media mentioned The Joy of Gay Sex: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-joy-of-gay-sex-charles-silversteinfelice-picano  Sara Ahmed’s works The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/sara-ahmed/the-feminist-killjoy-handbook/9781541603752/?lens=seal-press  Bri Watson join Homosaurus call: https://bsky.app/profile/brimwats.com/post/3lkvvyv4szk2w Form for Homosaurus: https://forms.gle/tADEnq9qPYk3e5eE6  Fairhope Public Library story: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/alabama-fairhope-public-library-book-bans  Indigenous metadata projects to look into: Maori: https://natlib.govt.nz/librarians/nga-upoko-tukutuku Others: https://guides.library.ubc.ca/Indiglibrarianship/knowledgeorganizations  Transcript: https://pastecode.io/s/r8istne2 Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/zzEpV9QEAG

Let's go. I'm Justin. I'm a free agent, and my pronouns are he and they. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they them. I'm Jay. I'm a cataloging librarian, and my pronouns are he, him. And we have guests. Would you like to introduce yourselves? My name is Jason. My pronouns are he, him, and I'm an academic librarian in public services. I'm Jordan. My pronouns are he, him, and I'm a director of library services. Thank you. All right. of library services, is that like access services or you're the full director of the whole thing? The whole shabang, yeah. Right. I'm just really keen on job titles right now because I'm doing all this job hunting. So everything comes up and it's like, oh, you're the director slash CEO of this job. It's like, okay, well, which is it?

It throws me off. Certainly that job did not have a salary commensurate with what I would call a CEO. But we'll see what happens with that one. So I'm interested in learning more about the two of you before we get started. Jason, would you tell me a little bit about yourself and, why you decide to be an editor for this book? Let's see. I'm a small town boy from Alabama that finished his master's in history and and knew that I didn't want to go on to get my PhD. So I got kind of pointed in the direction

of library school. I really enjoyed the research and the idea of helping others with their research. So I've kind of bounced around a few places over the years. Landed here about three years ago. Had a career, you know, active. and LGBTQ community, both professionally and personally, with Jordan and I served together on the board of an equality center. That was some fun times. For me, this book was kind of, it was cathartic after several experiences that Jordan and I shared together when we were working together at our previous

university, or my previous university. And one thing that kind of I kept with me was the thought that someday this will be useful to you. And then we just kind of reach this moment of critical mass with all the things going on, that it seemed like a moment right to come out with a book to kind of talk about the experiences we had. And I'll just kind of stop there and let Jordan kind of catch up. And then we'll talk a little bit more about the origins of the book. Yeah, I guess my story is kind of similar to Jason's. I've been in libraries for since I was 16. So it's been a minute. And like honestly, I think part of my reason for being in libraries, it's kind of the common story.

You know, I like helping people, et cetera. But I also, from my youngest years, I've hated censorship. I just, I can't with it. I know that's not silly, but I, you know, there's a lot to say. I've edited a book about it. I kind of want to gather my thoughts here. But I, and like my, I guess my interest in fighting censorship didn't directly connect to my interest in libraries and my professional work until, like Jason has just hinted at,

we had these, you know, sort of shared professional experiences at Jason's previous job been at my current workplace where censorship did come into play. And then in the last couple of years, you know, moms, I keep doing this Freudian slit, Mons Against Liberty. I'll do the right thing, call it Moms for Liberty, started doing their thing. And I think that might have been a little bit of the catalyst for our deciding to edit this book. We're seeing that, yeah, we've had these experiences and it's going on at an institutional level of other places and let's gather some thoughts around it. Yeah, we did a whole episode about Moms Against Liberty. And I'm going to take that now because I think that's, it's always good to throw in a nickname once in a while. So it works for the Starvation

Army. It'll work for Moms Against Liberty. So that's just, I'm going to drill that into my head, and that's what they're called now. But yeah, being from Florida, I was aware of the Florida politics that are running moms against Liberty, which is, you know, basically DeSantis screwed up his campaign funds and then had a bunch of money to spread into, you know, astroturfing some stuff. And so we did a real deep dive on them. So I know this is related to Emily Jermenski's book series. So why don't you tell us how the books got started? So I had a contribution and an earlier book in that series out behind the desk. So that was kind of, that that was kind of an end that, you know, oh, let's start here. And so Jordan and I, our original idea was we wanted to do this book

about academic libraries, instances of censorship of LGBTQ materials and services and academic libraries, because there's not a lot of scholarship out there about it. And really, the most thorough treatment of it came from, you know, Carmichael's work in the 90s. And there hasn't really been much since then in terms of academic libraries. So that was our initial thought. We did our call for proposals and had just such a tremendous response to that from school librarians, public librarians, archivists, that we decided to expand the scope of the book to just cover libraries in general because there was so much there that could be said and that needed to be said.

Jordan? I think that's about right. Yeah, we began with this idea that we would be, you know, working in new territory if we were targeting academic libraries specifically. And then it became very clear as we began, you know, doing a lit review. And kind of, I think, honestly, as submissions started rolling in in response to our initial CFP, that this was going to be a much more comprehensive, of a much more comprehensive project that it was going to incorporate lots of different kinds of libraries and different kinds of censorship, honestly, because I think one concept that we get at is there are various ways to censor things. So yeah, it was maybe a little bit of mission creep at the outset, but I think that it ended up going in a more thorough direction, I hope.

And one thing that that was important is we wanted to have kind of this toolkit component to each of the chapters. You know, we didn't just want to tell stories, we wanted people to be able to have kind of something to take away from it. Like, how can I use this in my situation? So that's something that I'm hopeful will be helpful in this present moment. Another important thing, and we had to kind of go separate from some great contributions we got along the way is that we wanted these chapters to be accessible to as many people as possible.

And I think, you know, some of our colleagues, particularly those. An Academic Librarianship have kind of this academic voice, if you will, when they're writing, that is not very clear or understandable to people that don't read and speak in that academic voice. And so we had some contributions that were just kind of really up there in the ether. And we tried to maybe tone it down a little bit. Ultimately, we just had to kind of part ways. But it was important to us that we wanted this book to be accessible to everyone. And so that's something else that I want to kind of put a plug in for. And when did the final draft come in?

Like what time a year? Like when did the book stop updating, basically? Oh, gosh. We got final, the final chapters in December of 23. 23, yeah. And then there was like a full year of like back and of basically like our like final edits to the chapters and back and forth through the publisher before it, before it went to press. Litwin and Library Juice Press, they were all. also impacted by Hurricane Haleen. I think a lot of their operations are based out of Asheville,

North Carolina. So that also kind of slowed down the publication process. I'm not actually entirely certain that we have said the name of the book yet so far. We're so good at this. We're so good at this. So yeah, why don't you give us the bare bones of the metadata of the book, if you will? Well, as you can see from the front cover, the title of the book is Censorship is a Drag. LGBTQ materials and programming under siege and libraries. And for folks at home, I can't see, I'm holding up a copy of the book. And the cover itself has the title, has, you know, Jordan and I as the co-editors, but it's been marked out with a black marker.

And that was a very deliberate choice that we and the publisher made as part of this statement. You reminds you those band book socks. Yeah, you can get. Okay. So since this book kind of wrapped before the election, obviously we're, we're a little behind. And I mean, obviously all the chapters are very prescient,

but didn't really know like the flooding of issues that we were going to be dealing with on all different sorts of levels, although most of them guessed pretty correctly, I would say. I think there is, I would definitely love to see like a volume two where people update, you know, based on what happens during the next year because, you know,

a lot's changing very quickly. You know, it's funny that you point that out. This is a conversation Jordan and I, have had together and with our series editor, Emily Drabinski, whom I can't say enough good things about. She's good people. When we sent the manuscript to the publisher in March of 24, and then kind of through the year, Jordan and I had kind of the feeling that, you know, maybe, maybe as a country, maybe we were about to turn a corner on things, you know, maybe this was just going to be kind of an

inflection points. And this would just be kind of a book of history documenting what happened. And sadly, that was not the case. So like, and actually there's something in, I think it's our introduction chapter. Yeah, that I wanted to point to. And this is a passage that I think I wrote. Well, we've seen encouraging signs that the oppressive measures of the past several years are facing real pushback and even exhaustion within the ranks. As one mom for Liberty noted in early 24, I guess there wasn't as much willingness to do the work that's required to propel the movement forward. There's no reason this can't happen again. So, like, I think we're definitely writing kind of under the assumption that, you know, like the election wouldn't fix everything. Obviously, elections don't

fix everything. But under the idea that may be, you know, this sort of, you know, moms for liberty movement and kind of, you know, the tensions and the pressures we were discussing in our book had maybe, you know, reached, reached their highest point. And then we're beginning to burn themselves out. And then everything else started happening. And we've had the developments, you know, at this like whiplash speed just in the past couple months. So we did definitely kind of go from the sense of the book being not just a historical document, but in part of a historical document to being, I optimistically think kind of a, you know, part of a continuing conversation that we don't want to continue because it means censorship is still ongoing, but it's going on whether we like it or not. Yeah, one of the,

it's funny you mention the burnout of these movements. So one thing we actually did when we were talking would have been 2022. We actually brought on a comedian to talk about sort of right-wing engagement on the internet. So when we were seeing this sort of rise in bookbends, we were also seeing the forces behind it were people like Chris Rufo

and these online like right-wing influencers. And right at that time, the war in Ukraine broke out. And of course, that changed everyone's talking points immediately. And so one thing that we were talking about was, you know, who is going to continue doing the day-to-day work of this? Because you can have rabble-rousers who are big people like lips of TikTok or whatever, but you still have to have the people who are going to write in the complaint forms. You know, there's that guy in Florida who sent out like 5,000 across the country

by himself. We still are going to have that. Who's going to, you know, the Baptist churches or particularly Southern Baptist. I'm not trying to paint all Baptist with the same brush. But, You know, what I said at the time is white citizens' councils didn't go away. They moved into the Southern Baptist churches. It's the same people. It's the same political group. That's why they're like that. And so I'm, yeah, I'm really interested in sort of how it's regained traction through the election of Trump. The, and it's kind of amazing to me how much the momentum hasn't stalled on attacks on libraries. Because you really think, oh, this is the flavor of the week. They'll move on to the next target. But they're really impressively. hitting on every target and keeping up the momentum just through the sheer force of maintaining, you know, let's see how long it lasts. It's only the first few months, but they are really keeping their targets and sights and it's unfortunate. We started out the book with a chapter on stoicastic terrorism written by Bryn Nilsson. And man, a chapter, like I went back and rewrit it again today and it just really knocks it out of the park, just kind of setting up this intellectual framework

of how and why this is going on, you know, kind of this three-legged stool, you know, having the pundit, having the medium, in this case being the internet, and then having the activity. And it just, you know, it feels like the internet, for all its good,

has unleashed kind of these forces that allow that fire to continue to burn. Yeah. Even then without, you know, it's really kind of interesting how like moms against liberty is like still doing the day-to-day work. You know,

I really thought this is just going to go, to the Facebook grandmas and they'll be the ones writing the letters and stuff, but it's not going to be, you know, essentially an extension of the Ron DeSantis campaign. But that's not true. It's kept up. And that's really not something I expected. Yeah. And like, even beyond just censorship of queer materials, like, with the rise of like the sort of like on campus, like protests and encampments against the genocide in Palestine, like you're seeing. now like library administrators censoring their employees. There was so recently there was a Harvard employee fired for tearing down one of those like free the hostage posters and he was wearing his badge at the time. And so that's how they knew it was him and they fired him. He was a cataloging librarian at Harvard that one of the heads of or whoever's like high like their university librarian or whatever also was like banning library employees from like entering the building when they were supporting students and faculties like silent like protests in the library. So it's even beyond just the

materials now. It's like any sort of dissent of speech if the library doesn't agree with it because apparently that's not what libraries are for now. That's news to me. But so it's even just beyond materials like employees are being censored or just straight up fired now. So honestly, like, that connect, I mean, there's a, there's an experience that I think it's Jason Dell, but that we recount in the book about, I mean, Jason, the incident. Which one? Yeah, which one? Relatable.

Yeah, a good librarian does not, you know. Oh, dear God. Yeah. So that anecdote, that, that's really kind of at the root of this book. Yeah. Is art that inspired this book. These, these things will be useful for you later. So just briefly, summer.

we had a new librarian start, I guess, in like 2015, who wanted to start doing a band books display. And so I did a search in our catalog and the state of the collection wasn't great because we just transitioned not long before from a community college to a four-year university and had largely relied on donations from the state library or from the community. So the collection wasn't great. So, of course, we don't have a lot of the band books. So I used some retrospective collection development funds from a project I got approval for to purchase every title available on Amazon because that was the book job we were using at the time. All the band books from the band books list, including the joy of gay sex, which became kind of the cause of great furor and the library for several years. One of the library employees objected to adding the book to the collection, brought the book to a meeting. And we went through this whole rigmarole of explaining why this book is being added.

We got faculty to weigh in on the value of this book in our collection, and the staff member just continued to refuse to accept it. And one day in a moment of frustration, the library director at the time, not Jordan, Jordan's wonderful. The library director at the time came into my office. and just simply said that a good librarian does not do anything to jeopardize their library or the place of their paycheck. I kind of took that as a bailed threat. And that was kind of the seed for that particular chapter. Academic libraries have so much porn in them, though. Like, have they not heard of like a women's studies department?

Like, of the libraries that have porn, it's usually academic libraries. like this is not new this is not controversial like we even have the joy of sex in the collection yeah of course and like I don't like I'm I'm a movie guy and I donate

like old DVDs of mine to the library that have absolutely filthy stuff in them and no and like the staff member never objected to that stuff because apparently she wasn't watching the movies but she was able to you know go through this one off book and find it has graphic illustrations

but there are nothing graphic than you would find in, you know, the heterosexual counterpart to the book. Yeah. And I mean, it's an acknowledged classic, you know, it's, whether she likes it or not, it's a classic. So, but beyond that. And you had ordered a book that she added to the collection without question, Tulsa? I ordered, yeah, Tulsa by Larry Clark. And like, I'm sorry, that book is every bit as graphic is anything in the Edmund White book. But maybe she liked me better. I don't know.

I have what I like to call a resting beer face that has won me few friends over the years Well it depends depends where you are at the time But Sadie just shot me such a look I've lost my oh but I remember in the story You were I believe it was you who Jason who was ordering books And the person was not ordering them Yeah we talk about that

in our building collection development policy chapter. So as I mentioned, we were using Amazon as our jobber. So what we would do is we would send Amazon links to a librarian in the library who was responsible for actually purchasing them and doing all the technical processing to add them to the collection. So I faithfully sent, I think one year, like, let me back up. We were doing this retrospective collection development project I got approval for. So each year I would pick an underserved community to buy books for.

So one year, African Americans, one year Native Americans, and so on. And so the year came around, I did start out with the gays because that would just be a little too on the nose. But, you know, I started, you know, one year I ordered or requested a whole slew of titles from the Stonewall Book Awards and the Lambda Awards. So award-winning titles and set them faithfully on thinking that these books were being ordered for the collection. And it was only later when we were putting together a book display for Pride But that I realized that actually know the books were never ordered. And this was the single person just sort of vetoing it on their own and sometimes going to the director to be yeah I think and this was kind of before the whole rigmarole about the joy of gay sex because again I bought that for that

band books week project. But I I don't know if it was the director. that tacitly said no, or if it was just this librarian and exercising their prerogative, but in either case, the books are not ordered. And something that I really like how the stochastic terrorism and stochastic actions, chapter is so high up in the book, early in the book, because I think it pulls together a lot of the chapters by explaining how this whole thing is connected. So the weaponization of essentially discussed and saying this is not suitable for the library ties into social media moderation changes. So we all know, you know, have friends who are sex workers who get stuff censored or who get kicked off platforms or people who write smut or anything like that, getting tagged in ways that a straight author wouldn't be.

and the saying, tying this into the anti-school movement, the anti-library movement, the anti-college movement, the anti-Grantz movement, the whole DEI thing, and also the enforcement. So the enforcement of, you know, these laws are really important. So the TSA people who are deciding to exercise their prerogative to harass trans people more or harass brown people more. All of it is kind of coming from the same well. And it really lets you see all of the aspects through all the different chapters where people are talking about different things, talking about internal censorship, talking about, you know, any particular thing that came up that was mentioned in this book, like Stop Woke or Government Info or Drag Story Events. It's all coming from kind of the same place, which is giving everyone the opportunity to be nasty to queer people. And there's also, I think, a component where, like, people are almost forced to, like, internalize this stuff. So it goes back to the idea of community standards, right? If you're working within these sort of, like, widely accepted, or what somebody says is widely accepted parameters, community standards, eventually you're going to internalize that as part of your practice. And that is, it's almost like this Panopticon thing where you end up, you know, with this perception that, oh, this some force outside of me is going to attack me if I don't adhere to this. And so you don't. end up taking these risks, right? Like, Jason, did you, after these events happened? Like, did you get more, you know, outgoing with your LGBTQ-oriented purchasing, or did you kind of keep your head down, you know? I absolutely did not. Like, I, I remember when I was like heading out the door, I was really tempted to buy another copy of the Joy of Gay Sex, because the copy

that we bought just disappeared. Of course. It was never having a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah. As an aside, the employee that challenged adding that book, allegedly was not homophobic because they have a gay cousin that they're very fond of. Of course. So maybe they gave it to their cousin. I think they're the gay

cousin. So it has had a chilling effect for sure. Like when I left, I left the job. I moved on. I was content to stay there for the rest of my career. I still miss that community. I had like a community of scholars that we have a group chat that is active every

single day. I miss working with those people. But I left and I talk about this. And in one of our other book chapters, look at the title list. Or no, I've got it in our little sheet here. Is it at what cost? Yes, at what cost. You know, I talk about this, you know, with queer battle fatigue, that that, that, that, that that that that that that that that that that's the result of, you know, you don't, not even just being an advocate, being a gay person in a situation where you're being asked to explain something, being asked to defend something, you know, it takes a toll. But when you are an advocate, you know, buying books, doing programming, and you experience this backlash, you know, it takes a professional and personal toll.

You know, the, for three years, I had to go on anti-anxiety medications because of their everything, like just the culmination of it all. And this was even before the pandemic. So it takes a toll. And I, I've kind of recalibrated my scholarship, my service since then. I reached out to, well, when we had it here in Florida, reached out to the sponsor, oh gosh, the safe zone training on campus, because I was, I used to be a safe zone trainer. And I, you know, I was interested in doing that here. and kind of getting involved. But I said, I do not want to be the face person. You know, I'm happy to work behind the scenes.

I don't want to be the face person. I had, you know, these bad experiences before, and I'm happy to be a worker bee, but please don't put me up front. Yeah, Jordan, you mentioned community standards, and I wanted to talk about the chapter, building and defending LGBTQ Plus collections. Because I guess we already have talked about it a little bit,

which is the titles had not been ordered at all, but was there more about community standards you wanted to say in terms of this anti-queer movement? I think it, well, I mean, I guess for one thing, it kind of brings us to this sinister incident for the drag story time that we had where I think community standards also came into play as a concept. So basically, I want to say that it was the end of 2018. We had the idea that we should do a drag story time in our academic library, that this would be a fun kind of offbeat event for finals. it would be a stress buster, and it would be definitely the way of getting attention. It drew the wrong kind of attention. It got the attention of a state legislature who effectively said, I think,

this are not the kinds of events that we should be supporting, certainly not with taxpayer money. So, and really, Jason, you should be, and this is more straight for you, because I think you ended up kind of taking the administrative brunt of this, didn't you? You know, and I wasn't even the one that initially organized the event. It wasn't even my idea or on my radar, but I was the sponsor of the student group pride at UAFS at the time. So, you know, we had the idea of, hey, let's get the student group to sponsor this and we'll just house it in the library. And that kind of put me front and

center. I remember there was, you know, everything was fine. Our library director at the time had gotten approval from her immediate supervisor. Everything seemed fine. And then, you know, when the state legislator, who ironically or not so ironically is now on the state library board, got wind of it and all these things started blowing up. And then, you know, the university was getting pressure from the local community and from alumni. You know, at that point, things started to hit the fan. And I have both the provost and the associate provost come over to my office. I had never seen either of them in the library before, much less in my office. And that was really kind of daunting to have both of them sit down and, you know, go over the particulars of this event with me.

And we talk about this in some detail, particularly in our toolkit of if, if you're you're going to do it, this is how you should do it. And part of the issue was, is that we had included the library's logo on the flyer. And so, you know, the legislator had really latched on to that and said that the university was endorsing this event because the library logo was on the flyer. And so ultimately, you know, the decision was made to just take the logo off the flyer and everything would go forward. But it was a real stressful time. But I also think going back the ADF Community Standards. Like it, that was sort of like, you know, the cliche that came into play a little bit. And I don't remember whether that phrase was actually articulated in the whole thing, certainly the concept was. But it wasn't the community getting upset. It was one or two people in the community, maybe getting, you know, a few of their online followers stirred up about the whole thing. But the community's reaction really, like, it seemed positive to me. People did not seem to take the event. It wasn't like, you know, like small town rises up to a press, you know, the, you know, the gaze within. It was really, you know, you know, it was really, you know, you know, this agreeable event is happening. People who want to show up are going to show up. Those who don't will avoid it. But it ended up, I think the opposition kind of painted themselves as being, you know, the voice of the community in this whole thing. And I think that's what happens a lot of time with community standards. Somebody who's vehemently against something will represent themselves as being, you know, the authority on it. They are the ones to speak for the community. Whereas the gays or the minorities, whatever, are not, you know, by dint of being minorities, they cannot speak for the community. That's the dynamic that I think was in play in this event.

I think that's the dynamic that's in place so much, in so many of these situations where the community, really a minority within the community is there to the press materials, programming, whatever. It ended up being a really lovely event and a news crew had come to film it. And they actually packed up and left early because it was so anticlimactic, you know, in the height of all the drama that led up to. With all the drama, you would have thought a drag queen was planning it. But, oh. And, like, I think a mistake that people make when this kinds of things happen is to, like, actually take the argument as valid. Like, oh, how dare they have a drag queen around the children?

Don't, that's, why would, why do the drag queens only go to the children and not the, like, elderly and stuff? It's because they're all pedophiles. And we go, no, no, we're not. And it's like, that's actually not the way that you tackle this, because then you're, like, giving their argument any validity at all. And that's just not what we should be doing by like having this like, oh, we're squeaky clean, like sexless figures. Like we're okay to be in your community. It's like, no. Like, well, that's bullshit. It's something kind of similar happened at one of my

former library systems where they organized a drag story hour for the first time. And the, the area was very, very rural, but surprisingly democratic. in the places where there were actually people. And the library that was holding the event was the biggest city in the area. And they kind of did that where people were all up on the Facebook being like, well, blah, blah, blah. Why is this, you know, why is this pervert reading to our children, et cetera, et cetera? And for some reason, the idea that somebody got was to go, okay, but she's a local school teacher to be like, this is something that, you know, she's, you know, this is just something she does on this, but this is like she's, she has the, you know,

she has the qualifications to be doing this just as well as one of our like children's librarians kind of thing. What's the thought process? But then as soon as they were like, well, though she's a local school teacher, like nothing about this is going to be inappropriate, the first thing that got asked was, what school does she teach at? Right. Which then is just escalates it immediately. Why is she a school teacher? Because she wants to be around the children. And at that point, the PR fucking shut down. Like, they thankfully just shut down that line of questioning whatsoever. And we're just like, we're not talking, we're not answering any more questions about this.

We're going ahead with the event as scheduled, you know, not answering any more questions about this. If you want, come, come. If you don't. And it went off without a hitch because it was like three people, right, who probably didn't even live in that part of the county. They probably lived like an hour and a half away or whatever. But like that I cannot imagine being that person being like, I'm going to spend my time doing this thing for my community and representing my community only to have to be like, well, where is your job at? Right. Like that's fucking terrifying. Even if ultimately the event goes perfectly smoothly, like you said, Jason, it's still like it's still it's queer battle fatigue. That's probably the best like way I can, that's such a good term for it. But yeah, that's. Don't pretend like their arguments are valid is really the thing. And yeah.

We all are circling around. It's perfect because, you know, just don't accept the premise. Yep. And unfortunately, you know, the university being a public institution, they had to accept the premise because one of the people throwing dust up in the air about it in the legislature was chair of the committee responsible for the university's state funding. But, you know, to their credit, and I really, you know, if anyone, from there, here's this podcast. I do want to give credit. They did continue with the event.

We did get asked a ton of questions afterwards. How is this event funded? Was any public funds used for the event that God, none were, or I'm sure someone would have gotten fired. So all of it had either come from the local nonprofit, Equality Center, or a friend of student group. Yeah. It's on the topic of community standards.

I think there's another way we can approach it, which is when someone is saying that they speak for the community. I think also a lot of people, particularly like liberal-minded people, think less of their community. And so they're like, well, of course they're all against queer people. But you shouldn't think that in yourself either. I think you should kind of assume the best. These are just really loud, annoying people. It puts people on the defensive. And one thing I was thinking of was years ago, there was this event at the Alabama, I think, archived.

Is Alabama or Georgia? And there was an event about queer life in Alabama. And one of the legislators said, well, this doesn't represent Alabamaans. And it's like, it's about Alabamans who are queer in Alabama. Like, it's about them. You know, you can't. How could it get more about Alabama's, right? Yeah.

And so exactly saying, like, we're having a drag story hour in our community with community, people who want to go and people who want to do the story time. So, you know, you just, you can really, I think, circumvent a lot of the argument by saying, this is all run locally. This is your community. And it's, we touch on that in the collection development chapter. Because, you know, like you were saying, this university is located in kind of a rural area. It's the biggest town in that part of the state. And so, you know, the library is the only place that some of these people are going to find these books.

The only place they're going to see themselves represented. Otherwise, you know, we had, I think, one gay bar in town, and that was it. We had our, you know, quality center. We were small but mighty. And so it's so important to have these materials, to have these programming because we're part of the community. You know, community standards were part of the community. That's why we also were collecting materials about the Hispanic community because that part of Arkansas has a huge Hispanic population.

That's why we got books about the Native American community because we're next door to the Chalkta Reservation. And I think that needs to be the angle that we push back with is that if you want to talk about community standards, we are part of the community. Yeah, I think people are hesitant to believe that because they want to believe their child won't be gay or their cousin won't be gay. And I think that's why a lot of the centers around parents and children because there's this sort of fear that a lot of people have that their children are going to go off and do something that they don't quite understand. But that their first tentative ways of understanding themselves is going to be at the public library or in public school. Or once they get to university, I mean, sometimes it takes time because, again, your experience is so curtailed as a child. Like when we talked about the rights of children to read and know things, you know, you can say there's like, this is a extreme minority in our community, but you don't know. Even if there's only one person, that person exists, you know.

Like during our time in this area, where I'm still there and Jason has since left, but we've known multiple people who, you know, like married a woman young and then came out later in life. Like that's a story that is common here because people don't have a, they don't have a. they don't have access to this crucial aspect of their identities. And I'm not going to say that having these materials and libraries to represent the entire community would necessarily be the cure all for that. But it wouldn't be a problem. It would help at the very least, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we've done tons of episodes where we've said, you know, how did you find information about being queer?

And it's like, you know, the internet really helped. And also, I just saw a book at the library. You'd be surprised how often the library comes up. That was the case for me when I was. kind of coming of age, finding a book in the library, and that, like, I still remember that moment, you know, like a light came on and I realized that I'm not a freak, that I'm not, there's not something wrong with me. And I don't think the people screaming about community standards appreciate that, how lonely and scary it can be to, to grow up as a queer person,

or at least, you know, when I was growing up. Or maybe they do it to some degree. Oh, go on. Yeah. And why it takes them having, like, a gay child to finally go, I get it because they love their child, but they can't imagine beforehand what that reality would actually feel like. It can also be important to be a little bit, I don't know if prefigrative is the right word, but like even if you don't know if there are queer people in your community, which there are, but even if they're, say there weren't, is it so horrible to have books about queer people in your collection, even if they're not, quote, in your community? like the books, what's in a library and who's in a community doesn't have to map like one to one.

Like there might one day be queer people. People might want to learn about queer people. Like queer people are just cool and we should know about them. I don't know. Like this whole thing that like a library's collections have to perfectly map onto the community members, I think sometimes gets us into problems like this. And that's kind of what collection development is about, right? It's about it's about foreseeing the needs of your community before they're explicitly articulated.

to you, you know, like, right. That's a good job to flex your development. Yeah, and it's why it starts at the school libraries because that has a, I'm missing the word, but you have, when you learn things in public school, you are forced to learn them and forced to learn about them. In a public library, you're sort of free to learn about it. There's a coercion aspect to public schools. But once you talk about like a public library or a university, that kind of coercive aspect

isn't as important, although, you know, people try and say like, well, you're forcing people learn about gay stuff and university. It's like, well, yeah, but you went to university. What do you want? You're going to have to learn about the world. So, yeah, I think there's, there's that, that's why it starts and goes in the order that it does in communities, starting with school libraries and then saying, like, you're forcing our, our children to read these things. When everyone knows it's, it's just the unforced force of being interested in something or a better argument. When you're talking about queer battle fatigue, I also wanted to talk about like creating division. Why are you creating division in your community when you talk about racism, when you talk about genocide, when you talk about queer people?

And it's because, you know, we have to understand that we're not the ones creating division. We are the focal point of it, though, because we bring attention to it. But we're not starting these things. And I think maybe people can feel a little, I don't know if it will help with the battle. fatigue, but realizing that you were going to be seen as the conflict itself rather than a person who's just trying to explain the conflict to other people. Sarah Ahmed talks about, like, writes about this phenomenon a lot, especially around like, like, being a killjoy, like a feminist killjoy, like, or like being a troublemaker because she's the one who would like bring up issues around

like racism or sexual assault in like faculty settings and stuff. And that there's a quality to complaining that is sticky, right? It sticks to the person who's doing it and then they're seen as the source of the problem. She writes about this a lot. I highly recommend her work. Yeah, if folks are interested in this kind of phenomenon of like, why am I seen as the problem

when I'm just pointing out the problem? It's because complaining has this sticky quality to it. It's funny. It's good. I'm reaching for a pen and pad to write that down. That happened. And I touch on it in that queer battle fatigue chapter that as the sponsor of the private UAFS group, you know, the students came to me with a question about gender neutral bathrooms. And so I, you know, wearing my hat as the faculty sponsor, I went to a senior administrator with the question of, do we have gender neutral restrooms on this campus? And what is our policy about gender neutral restrooms?

And I never got to reply from him. So, you know, I was diligent and, you know, followed up three times. And he finally just said, tell the students to use the bathroom that they're most comfortable using. But at his next staff meeting, he said, Jason Phillips is a troublemaker. Yeah. And I wasn't trying to stir up the issue. And that was actually an issue that had created some national intention for the university a few years before about the question of, you know, accommodating a trans student. So I wasn't even stirring up trouble.

I just was asking a question, what is our policy? But asking the question meant I was a trouble maker. It means you're the source of the problem because people didn't know there was a problem until you brought it up. Yes. Yeah. I also, to remind everyone, I do try and make a list of everything that we mentioned in an episode. So when I go back and edit, so I'll have the links to Sarah Ahmed's books and the Joy of Gay Sex and everything else we've mentioned. So those will all be linked in the notes.

If you're a librarian, buy them for your collection. Exactly. Buy like three copies of the joy of gay sex, so everyone knows how good it is. And also buy several copies of censorship as a drag. Yes, that's too. Wink. The library punk recommended reading list for your library. And remember, you are also a patron of your library, even if you don't do collection

development. You are also a patron and you can request things. To be honest, I have not bought a copy of our book for our library yet. And here's why. Honestly, I'm still working at the place where these experiences happen. And I think the atmosphere is distinctly more sympathetic. It's distinctly more sympathetic to diversity now. But I'm still mindful that I'm working in the South. And that is a region that still has all these tensions, these pressures, these increasing, you know, aggressions toward LGBT people. And I have administrative support in this thing. You know, our chancellor bought a copy and brought me to sign it. and I was touched by that. But at the same time, I'm like, do I want to put a target in my back if I don't necessarily have it in this case? And like, it hurts me not to have a copy of my own book and the library where I work,

but also I'm like, maybe this is best for now. Maybe the situation will feel different in a few years and I'll finally, you know, steal my nerve and do it. But up to this point, I haven't felt comfortable with it. Yeah. Yeah. Picking your fights is important. It really is.

I've always talked about that. I mean, on the whole range of issues of like, you know, being a worker in a library, labor issues. Like, I quit my job recently, and that was just a line I had to draw of like, this is it. This is where I'm gone. But, you know, things like that. I'm also in the South. So, you know, we had a DEI collection in our repository, which I was the supervisor of. And one of the other librarians who is an ally, quote unquote, was like, we got to take that out because we don't want, you know, because people have seen like the IT searches through the entire a web domain for the word gay or DEI and whatever.

And it's not even that bad in Texas in terms of like that kind of thing happening, which is a strange sentence to say. But it's true. Like no one has come around with a list of like here's every time your website says gay or LGBTQ. That hasn't happened. And so it was very, you know, it was very much like you can pin this on me if you want to, but it was also as I was thinking of it, because this happened months and months ago.

But as I was thinking of, I was like, I don't know, maybe maybe they were right. Maybe that was just too easy of a target. And, you know, it wasn't good for the people whose works were in there. So maybe, but it still made me feel bad. And it also still was like, hey, I'll, I'll take the hit. I'll be the face of this because it's fine. But that's a line I'm willing to draw. But it's, you know, it's also because, like, I'm willing to move.

I'm willing to get a new job. I'm, you know, that's not everyone's position. One of the, actually, this is good. One of the things that comes up multiple times in the book is the political nature of libraries requires an organized response, not just, you know, we've talked a lot about our individual stuff, but, you know, an organized response from librarians, from library unions, from library workers, from the ALA, from our professional organizations that we're in, that there must be an organized response because our individual responses are, one, too taxing on us and create too specific of a target. as we've seen with mass firings, things like that. Because it's an organized attack on queer existence itself. And I think taking it on as a big thing of saying, the ALA is against this because this is an attack on all queer people existing.

It's not a library specific issue, but we're going to talk about it from the library perspective. But we're talking about this, sort of the failure of neutrality as a policy, which is never really a policy, in fact. It doesn't really come up anywhere in most libraries' codes of conduct or anything. And it made me think there was a discussion recently in the Skalkom shit talk discord about what happened at Spark, which is they removed a lot of language around DEI and

queerness and things like that from their website because they worked directly with the federal government to get grants. And we were going back and forth about, is this a sound move? Is this too much preemptive compliance? Is this a good strategy? And I think most people actually lean towards saying, yeah, it was a good strategy because of the direct nature of their work with the federal government at this moment, it was a good retreat. But I don't, again, I still, it's the same thing with that DEI collection. I don't know how I feel about like that. Like, I think that might be a line for me. But I don't know, what does everyone else think about, like, strategic retreats, I guess? I know it's a difficult one. It's funny you mention that. I'm on a LA committee and

the chair of the committee is a librarian with the federal government. And they recently said that their term is up in June and they are not staying on the committee. And I don't think they're staying involved or active with ALA. And I think that largely has to do with what's going on. And that is kind of a strategic retreat for her in this situation. And I feel badly. But it's tough. It's really tough because we talk about in one of our chapters, you know, if we had to do the drag

story time again, would we have done it? And no, I would not have after having lived through that. And that's the line that we have to kind of draw is that, you know, we are professionals, but yeah, I got to keep a roof over my head for my four cats and two dogs. They're bums and they depend on me. So I understand some of these decisions that they got to keep the lights on. They got to keep the grants rolling in or they got to do this. But it's also, it's a scary time because what's going to get lost? in this process. And, you know, assuming, you know, God willing, four years from now, we inaugurate someone new and different and better, are we going to be able to kind of wind back the clock on this or how much of it's going to be sticking around with this for a while? Yeah. And I think that's

my primary fear. And I think, I mean, these are things that, you know, we thought, we thought it was, we thought it was on the way and we thought it was going away, but it's, it's not, you know. And, like, one thing that came up recently is we were doing these, like, kind of like book talks on YouTube for press. And somebody asked the question in the chat about how does how does this stuff, you know, sort of echo or rhyme with the NIA censorship at the 80s and 90s, you know, works of art being censored, you know, the government is funding, you know, works by, you know, Andre Serrano or whatever. And we can't allow that to happen. It's the same conversation again. So even if, you know, we get somebody better in office who, you know, maybe doesn't actively hate libraries and gay people,

that's not to say that, you know, this sort of tensions, driving bombs against liberty and similar things are going to fade. I'm afraid these are battles we're going to have to fight again and again, and it sucks, but each time we're going to have to choose our role within the battle. The role really...

I'm going to use the IMLSs like they used to use the NEA. Well, I mean, look at what... Oh, go on. Oh, no, go ahead, Jordan. So, look at what's happening now with the ALA, where it's literally being weaponized against entire,

like, state libraries because of, you know, one remark that the, you know, former president of L.A. made. The ALA before this was, I think it was widely seen as like this, you know, unimpeachable organization. It's the ALA. How could we possibly think anything bad of it? But now it's being weaponized against states, you know, like if a state has, if a state library association mentions a connection to the ALA, like there's legislation to defund that. That's happening, what was it,

Montana. It's happening in Arkansas. It's like, so like these authorities, these former authorities are no longer really, you know, whether or not they're, you know, fighting on behalf of librarians, they're not leveraged in the same way that they were before. Like, the authorities themselves are under attack. And, like, with the sort of, like, being, where do you draw the line between, like, what's being strategic versus what's bending the knee or, you know, where do we make these decisions and how and why? It's sort of like, does taking language off a website mean you can't do the work anymore

is sort of where I would, like, if me taking a word, off of a website means that I don't have the fuzz on my tail, but I still do the work. Like, it's more about, like, like, people who need to know can know. You know, I know there's like, this feels like maybe like related to like discussions of the closet, right? And like visibility and representation. Like this happens with trans people a lot. Like, what is representation versus what's putting a?

a target on us. There's a reason why trans women are so visible and so attacked. It's because they're so visible. Right? Like, there's a lot to do with, like, the politics of the closet and of representation and people

be like, no, I have to be visible. And I'm like, I am visible to the people who matter to me and everything. And it's like, I'm not saying like, we should all go back in the closet because fuck no, shouldn't. We should do sodomy in their faces. But like, you know, if I, if I can take a word

off a website and that's going to keep me my job, like, I'll take a word off a website, you know, like that's where I would draw that line. But being organized is what's important here is what's very important. Yes, Sadie. Yeah, well, and I also just kind of think of it as like, again, like individual lines, what's the line for me going to be? But also like, what hits am I willing to take so other people don't have to take them. Like in the past couple of months, I've been thinking really, like, you know, everybody's talking about moving to Canada and all of this shit, right? Which is been a very difficult topic, but I have three trans nibblings who are teenagers

living through this time. And I'm thinking, you know, if I stay and fight, even if they somehow go to a supposedly better country, I'm fighting. I'm fighting so they can come back, right, for their future. So I'm willing to take those hits. I'm willing to be the visible queer that I am. So they could possibly be safer in the future kind of thing. And like that can also apply to our jobs and our communities.

Like maybe you keep your head down at your job because you need to keep your job and you're not going to push the envelope there. But maybe outside of your job, you volunteer helping with like immigrants find legal help and teaching you. You know, learning Spanish so you can help your neighbors stay, you know, stay away from ice. You know, so it's like it's not, it's not that zero-sum game, but we all do have to play it individually. But we all also have to know which part of our communities we can take the best hit for and which ones are too personal for us to withstand, if that makes sense at all. Also, unionize. Also unionize.

Like seriously, like, I feel like a lot of that is like so much of the. right now is like voting rights and unionize. Work on voting rights and unionize. Maybe then like, yeah, anyways, that's devolving. But that's kind of where I'm at at this point. That Jordan and I were involved with. And I want to like, I want to say this about Arkansas. When I moved to Arkansas in 2013, like yeah, it's conservative state. There's a lot of religious conservatives there. But there was also kind of this really broad streak of libertarianism where I never felt uncomfortable being openly gay in Arkansas because people were very live and let live there for a time.

And so when we would do interviews with the press, we would always say the most important thing that we can do for a community is to be out and open to show people in the closet that it's okay. Yeah. So even if that's what it takes doing is just being out and open and just finding small ways to help the community, you know, that will still be enough for brothers and sisters that are in the closet or that are, you know, running scared. Yeah, I was always very like, even like early in my transition, when I would do instruction,

I was very open about the fact that I was queer because, like, I wanted, because I, my first career, my first job, at a library school I lived in Utah and like I wanted the people who I mean because like contrary to popular relief like less than half of the people in Salt Lake City are practicing Mormons and the Mormons I did meet there were like kind of cool like I went on a date

with a socialist Mormon one time that was kind of fun. They were there I promise You're fucking wild but like I was always very open about the fact that I was queer and that I was trans because I knew that there were probably

kids there who were exposed to that when they were younger. And I wanted to show them that it was okay and also to challenge them because sometimes you would run into people who needed to be challenged, but that's why they were there and not at Brigham Young University

so that they could be challenged. So full shade on Brigham Young, but you know. Yeah, of course. The one thing that I worry about with, because, you know, a website is just a post board that is the outside face of your organization. It doesn't say, you know, I would prefer Spark exist than not take down some language on their website. The thing is, it feels like I think we might

sometimes overestimate how clever we are in terms of, well, we'll back down here, but that means they won't target us. And you get targeted anyway. And every time you see something on social media where they're like, oh, they back down on this, but it was strategic, don't you? And oh, it's the criminology of the Democratic Party. It's like, no, they still got played. They still got, they still, you know, they know that these organizations are their enemies. They know that the ALA is ultimately not on their side. So it doesn't really matter if the ALA takes a stand or not.

So there's definitely times when we have to pick our organizations to be actually saying the things that they need to say because you need something to rally around. The homosource ain't changing shit for the record. That would be very funny to try it in anti-clear the homicides. Do you just take it down at that point? And there's several references to that source in our book, too. Hell yeah. Yeah.

Jay is our local homosaurus board member. We're turning into a collective and you can apply to be on one of the several little committees in it. If you're so interested in being involved, Brie Watson put a bunch of links to things in various list serves. Cough. Help us. We're only like six. You know, I got my start in librarianship as a copy cataloger, so I may have to...

Hell, yeah, let's fucking go. Yeah, we talked with the Queer Liberation Library folks. They're all moonlighting on that whole project, and they have no institutional support. It's all local funding and funding from the queer community. And that was the other thought I had is, you know, I know people who work on various grant-funded library progressive organization. who have had to, you know, very quickly rewrite their stuff in order to get the next round of grant funding. But how long can we rely on that? Do we need to start looking at other forms of funding, you know, union funds or crowdfunding or things outside of the government? Because right now the government's not a reliable funder.

Can I just say that drag queens are really great fundraisers? Hell, yes, they are. That's another lesson, Jordan, I took from a deal. Equality Center as we used to host an annual gala featuring like at least five or six drag queens. And that was that was such a bomb fundraiser. Everyone loves a lady who's very pretty, but looks a little bit like a Venus flytrap, being a little bit mean to them. That's like a universal, like the Maslow's like hierarchy of needs.

It's like the bottom one is like a lady being mean to me and she looks like a monster a little bit. A little bit of a predator. Yeah, so pro tip. And then also Maybe not that word, yeah. Yeah, and also local funding sources, you know, public libraries are funded locally, making sure you have your community on your side. And it's a difficult tightrope, but it's important.

I think if your union, like the support of your community members is what gives you as a union power. You can't go on a quote, I mean, when there's no such thing is an illegal strike, the only illegal strike is a failed strike. Remember that kids. But if you go on a strike, even if you're not allowed to, cough. The way you do that is by having community support so that you don't piss them off by being a public servant who is now on strike. And you show them how it's inconvenience, but they're like, yeah, it is inconvenient. And they're mad at the right people and not you. Right. And I think that's something that we kind of harp on in one of our chapters where we talk about, is it building and defending,

Jason, where we talk about how you have to have an investment in your community before anything goes wrong. I mean, obviously there are situations where that won't necessarily help because obviously there are plenty of libraries who, you know, think they have community support and then surprise the rugs pulled out from under them by, you know, some cranks or whatever. But if you have

a foothold in your community, people really recognize the value of your resources, that will at least give you people beyond your staff who will fight for you if the shit hits the fan. Like, you don't want to be left alone fending your for yourself in these situations. You want to have people writing letters on your behalf,

and making noise to the state legislatures. Well, Jason, you have an example close to home about this, don't you, from Alabama, just the past couple days. Yes, I was going to mention that. To Jordan's point there real quick, we talk about that. He actually wrote that part of that chapter, talking about how librarians and libraries were not really built or poised to sort of defend ourselves because it's not our mindset. And so that's why it's really essential to develop these communities of support and allies. and in the academic setting, you know, that's your faculty and your faculty senate. What Jordan mentioned, though, is, and this kind of goes back to what we were talking about

earlier, how things are different in 2025 from when we started out with this in 2022, is, you know, the bans and the protest has become more institutionalized. You know, they're taking over school boards. They're taking over library boards. They're taking over the state library board, which happened in Alabama, Chair of the Library Board in Alabama is also the Republican Party leader of Alabama. They just fired the state director of libraries because there were libraries that were getting funded from the state library that had these banned books in their collections. The notable example being Fairhope Public Library, which Fairhope is neighbor of the small town I grew up in and Daphne.

And the community has rallied around this public library. They had a city council meeting where basically one of the city councilmen gave a full-throated defense of the public library and said, we don't need outsiders telling us how to run our library. And that has been so effective in the defense of this library. And the amount of money they're getting from the state that's been suspended is kind of minimal from what they're getting locally. But I think that's kind of the thing is like rallying the community support that we don't need outsiders telling us what to do. And the people protesting and challenging these books aren't even members of our community. And I think really kind of rallying around that kind of particular perspective could be effective. So there was an issue that me and Jay were talking about.

And I wanted to, I think this would be the best time to pull it into the podcast, which is the discussions about the Library of Congress subject headings and the difference between that and local cataloging. So there are changes happening at LCSH, which is the Library of Congress. It is not our national library, but we rely on it a lot. And a lot of people are saying, hey, you can do local cataloging. You can use local subject headings. You can use home source in order to make sure that things are still discoverable. But especially with the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and Denali back to Mount McKinley is the main two things that happened recently. Yeah, but there's labor issues.

Jay, why don't you go ahead and say what you were thinking? So, like, yes, it is absolutely true. You do not have to, like, go into your catalog and change all of these over. I saw a lot of people going, like, you're complying in advance if you don't do anything. And to that, I say, do you actually know what doing authority work in a catalog is like, especially at scale? And also, do you know all of the plate, like, are you not using OCLC records? Because OCLC will change them over. and other people will add them in.

Are you going to always change them when they come over? Do you have an automatic process? Do you pay a third-party vendor to do this for you? Are you in an academic library? And so you don't think about these things? Like, do you have electronic resources, like e-books and stuff that come in through a discovery layer where the mark record never even touches your catalog?

These headings are going to get into your catalog, whether you like it or not, which sucks. This is bad, and I hate it. And it's bad that we rely on LC so much. including internationally. Like, LC stuff affects, like,

affects cataloging at an international scale, right? And so when the people were like, well, if you don't use local headings, if you just sit back in the other thing, you're complying in advance,

and like, who's doing their authority control? And so, like, these questions of, like, labor around censorship and around,

like, stuff this, this particular regime is trying to impede upon libraries. Like, there's only so much you can do as an individual. And this is why organizing and stuff is so important, because it's like if libraries won't even pay for us to do the authority control,

if they want to shell out a third party to do it, like they're not going to fund just doing, okay, well, Denali is now Mountain McKinley, so we want to make sure it's not Denali again. To which I want to say, why aren't you doing that for every single place name in your catalog that has an indigenous counterpart to it. Why don't you work with your local tribal communities to see what language they might actually want changed? And it's because of money.

We don't have the money to do that because that's like a project and it's not necessarily sustainable unless you have money in a budget line for it. And so like I guess with like some of these issues around like complying at advance and there's only so much you can quote be an activist at work, Like, especially with Brownlee censorship, like, how much of this has to do with just like, we aren't given, we don't have, we aren't given the money to actually put the labor towards this problem the way it deserves.

It's not, you don't have the institutional power to do this institute, do this on your own. And so if you're, if we're not doing this at a high level, it's really maybe wasting a lot of labor to try and do it locally because of the nature of copy cataloging and, and authority. control. So I don't know. I just wanted to run that past you to see if you had any thoughts. I, you know, I mentioned earlier that I started out my career as copy catalogler while I was finished in grad school. And I was, I started out in that time where, you know, cataloging departments used to have a ton of copy catalogers to do this kind of authority control to do these kind of record updates. And they, you know, started losing these positions through attrition and, and people They started relying more on vendor records that they're getting from their bookjobbers.

So if we're going to make this change, who's going to be there to do it? We're cataloging departments, technical services departments are less than half what they were 20 years ago in terms of staffing. So it's a huge labor issue. And I feel like this has touched on something like in our discord, especially when the election first happened. We had a lot of people being like, what can I do at work, right? How can I make sure that my library, that people in my community know that the library is there for them. And I think our broad answer was like a lot of this is going to have to happen outside of work. Like you're just going to have to start organizing in your community and not just at work.

Like, I hate to say that, but there's only so much you can be an activist at work sometimes. Like my politics do not align with the politics of my workplace. you know, like I have to do shit outside of work to like feel like I'm doing something in my community sometimes. Like I can do stuff in my union, right? And I can mitigate at work. But like if I want my library, like if I, what I should be doing is like, well, how can I encourage groups to maybe use the library or how can I make sure those dialogues are set up? But like sometimes things are going to have to happen outside of the approved realms of the state apparatus, you know? And maybe that's one of the answers or one of the solutions is that for those of us that are

kind of what can we do, how can we feel effective, how can we give in a way that doesn't jeopardize our jobs or our livelihoods, but how can we push back or what can we do to make things better? And maybe that's it. Maybe it's just, it's the volunteerism of pitching and rolling up your sleeves and doing the work, like volunteering with homosaurus or, you know, is there an equivalent to homosaurus for the Native American community? And if there isn't, you know, let's start that up and working with there. There's several actually. Oh, good, good. Mainly coming out of the Pacific Northwest and a place like New Zealand. So you're rolling up your sleeves and doing that. And the government doesn't control the internet. The state of Florida does

not control the internet. So we, you know, that is a space that we can have freedom to push back in, hopefully without retribution, to at least keep the fight going and to at least make some kind of positive progress. And there's still, I think we still go back to this principle, too, of self-protection. You can't do everything. You can't be everything to everybody. You have to protect your own interests first and foremost because you're not going to do any good if you, you know, if you ruin yourself, you have to, again, cliche, but you have to pick your battles, and sometimes you have to sort of mindfully pass your battles upward

to people who are able to fight them for you. You know, like, there are certainly battles that I wouldn't fight, but I might encourage, you know, higher leadership levels to fight them on my behalf because they're in a position where they can do that. You know, like, that's, it's a sad reality, but I can't be at the front lines of everything. I can't. And we talked about this in the virtual book talks last,

week that lit when in Library Juice Press hosted. Those of us that are living in kind of red states, southern states, conservative states, are, we don't necessarily have the same freedom of action. So, you know, those of us who live in blue states or who are in secure positions, you know, may have to fight the battle for us for a time. And I will say that those of us in blue, yeah, like those of us in blue states have a lot to learn from our comrades in the, the red states as far as how do you do labor organizing in states which are hostile

towards labor organizing? Because like it is not illegal to be unionized in those states, but that is the propaganda that it is. Just because you can't do collective bargaining agreements a lot of the time, but that doesn't mean you can't unionize. It doesn't mean you don't have protections.

And as, you know, who knows what's going to happen to the NLRB and everything, but like the power of your union doesn't come from the NLRB. you know, the only reason we have in LRB is because we're like, well, I guess we'll stop like shooting the boss in the middle of the night, I guess. Like, you know, like, that's why we have that shit now. So, I don't know. But like, there's like, you know, there's like the, do you think the teachers in West Virginia who went on strike, like, had like legal protections to do that?

Absolutely not. Did a single one of them get fired afterwards? words, no, because they had built enough power to be able to do that. So, yeah, like, we, in the north, like, there's so many people are like, oh, the NLRB. It's like, I don't give a fuck about the NLRB. Like, that's how it gives my union power. And like, we should, we have a lot to learn from our, our comrades in the South. I was surprised that when I came here that the state university system of Florida has a union, the United Faculty of Union. And I immediately, like, I was such an easy sell on joining the union. When I got here, like, they, you know,

one of my colleagues was kind of starting to give me the pitch. And I was like, where are I sign up? Like, I'm, I'm ready. And I'm on the, the union's bargaining team with the administration. Let's fucking go. Yeah. And I tell you, like, you know, it's not that far. in the past that there was union activism in the South. So if people would just kind of reach back to, you know, the days of their parents, their grandparents, and for the younger generation, their great-grandparents, you know, the labor was strong once upon a time, and it can be again. Yeah, my grandpa was a coal miner, and I went, he took me to United Mine Workers of America,

like Union Picnics when I was a kid, and I was reared on stories of slashing scab tires and all sorts of shit. People used to go hardcore. Let's slash scab tires again. It's a good pastime. Teach it to your kids. It would be great. And as the U.S. South has looked to

as sort of an internal frontier, you know, instead of having Machiadores in northern Mexico, people are moving things to Kentucky because, oh, they won't unionize. Yeah, they will. They have that memory.

They have their co-workers in other states to look to. So the South is prime. for a large labor movement. I just got a phone call while we were recording from the industrial union for state workers of Texas, saying that they're heading up to Austin soon. So, yeah, it's not impossible. It might work a little different than things like that.

But I want to move on to talking about the advice that you both gave in the toolkit. Given the changes that have happened since the book has come out, is there anything that you would change about that toolkit? I think that we kind of priced in the precarity, the sort of like deliberate precarity that people are feeling at this point. Like, I think, I mean, that I think has, I mean, that's changed a little bit. You know, like in November before the election, people probably felt their jobs were significantly more secure than they do now. But I think we have sort of acknowledged that there's a real feeling of risk to fighting some of these battles. And again, choose your battles, work with other people.

Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate with other people, including your community, including people who have fought these battles before to be able to do this more effectively. I think organizing with the community, I think that's something that I would really play up more, you know, building that support in the community. Hell, I'd probably devote an entire chapter to that now, particularly seeing instances like what happened in Fairho. The fundamentals are there, though, regardless. of, we went from bad to worse, but I think the fundamentals are there to scale up. And Jordan and I, you know, when we were kind of preparing for this, we had a conversation, I'm going to pull that out, because I had it flagged, where we were talking about like, you know, what would we do in volume two of this, you know, in the next book if, you know, and maybe we'll, we'll, we'll write that, Jordan. Let's put that in the hopper. We're already working on our next book project. But one thing that Jordan had mentioned is, scaling up from the idea of individual self-preservation to institutional self-preservation.

So that's something that I think we would definitely kind of pivot and also address. Did you expand on what you mean by scaling up to institutional preservation? I think we're at a point where libraries, like, I mean, as like this collective entity, which sounds weird to say because libraries are made of people, right? But if we can sort of conceptualize libraries as being this collective thing, I think libraries do feel like there's the sort of existential threat, you know, is funding going to demolish their entire ability to carry out their mission. To what degree our library is still going to be, even in a couple of years, to what degree our library is still going to be,

you know, what they are now. And how can libraries, you know, leveraging the individuals within, you know, how do we, how do we fight against that? You want to be able to, you know, keep yourself safe. You want to, you know, keep your interest safe as a person. But if you can reach some, you know, Maslow's baseline of having done that, where do you go from there? to keep your library the active vital thing that hopefully it's always been, you know? It's not just the librarian advocates with targets on their backs now, but I think libraries as a whole, you know, with the elimination of the IMLS, potentially, you know, the effects of that are going to be devastating. And the work that it was doing, what it was funding, that's going to

be devastating, especially for small communities. You know, is the next step going to be that we're going to be issued an approved book list by some organization. And if books aren't on this list, they got to go. That's it. Okay, so there's legislation right now in Arkansas about that. It's effectively trying to do away with the Arkansas State Library and put the control of the state library under the Department of Education. And this would basically allow community standards and what goes, what the mechanisms funding libraries would be entirely dictated by, you know, if there's, you know, adult content in libraries, which we all know, it'll content means they would lose funding. And I mean, that alone is an existential threat to libraries.

And like before, you know, maybe before, you know, 24, before the 2024 election, what was the worst thing that an individual librarian can be called, a groomer, right? But now you have people thinking that libraries themselves are doing the grooming. Libraries, not just, you know, like some, you know, bad, you know, bad individual within the library, but the entire institution of the library itself is doing this. How do you fight against that? I don't have the answer to that question. I wish I did. And then another point that had come up was looking at dear Emily Trebensky and kind of what happened to her during her term as president of ALA. And she talks about this in her forward audience at home. If you read nothing else in the book, read her forward because I think that that's really the threat that we're facing is, you know, ALA itself did not stand behind our president.

You know, she was puzzled. She was censored. She was put to court. help, they practically try to shove her back in the closet. And Jordan had kind of put this in our text thread, this tension between, I've done nothing wrong, and I shouldn't have done this. And it circles back to that quote from earlier that a good librarian doesn't jeopardize his library. And so our actions as librarians, are they causing harm to our libraries? is the actions of, you know, Emily, Dear Emily Jribinski, you know, which has unfortunately cast a pall on ALA,

you know, how long a shadow is that going to cast over libraries in this country? And I think we have something in our, again, our building and defending chapter where we essentially try to reframe the cliche about a good library, has something to offend everybody, to a good library represents its entire community. It's not about offending people. It's about making sure that everybody feels represented and welcome. Yeah, and I was just going to say it has been this podcast position since that'll happen, that it is cool and great that Emily is a Marxist and a lesbian and she should be loud and proud about both of those things.

And no one should have been going, no, she's fine to be president. Like, no, it's cool that she's both of those things. And I feel we didn't see enough people in this profession stand behind her and say, no, it's cool that she is both of those things. It is okay that she has both of those things at the same time. and that she was open about that. We voted her because we wanted her to be these things. Yes, we, she was, I believe she was the only candidate for president that we've ever had on because we generally don't care about ALA shit.

But like, I wouldn't be the librarian I am today without Emily Drabinski. Like, I cite queer in the catalog and everything I fucking do. Like, she's like my hero. I love her. And like, it was the coolest shit in the world when she was. on here. And yeah, like, it was so shocking to me that more people were doing that, no, it's okay. Like, she's fine. She's not a groomer. Like, it's fine. We're not a socialist. We're not communist. But instead of standing behind what she said and saying it's okay that she's those

things. Like, it was bad of our profession and not stand behind her. And I think that more generally when we're, because a theme that runs through the book is, again, this disgust towards queer people is the driving force of all of these other things in the culture. They might try to defund your local power plant co-op because they have a DEI statement. I mean, this is a really, you know, I'm a wobbly. I'm always going to go back to industrial unionism. You know, why not have, you know, a conversation with all the other public service workers who are under threat, you know, just because libraries and information source doesn't mean you can't work with the water department

and say we're a community, what we're doing is important, these are attacks on our community. Because there's definitely going to be that with like your forestry service or anything else that's going to have like a clean environment. It's going to be, you know, a target. Make friends. But yeah, the thing has always been it's cool. Like gay people are cool was kind of what we were saying at the time is that should be the response to saying there's gay stuff in your library saying, yeah, gay people are cool. We fucking rock. Yeah.

I am trying to recruit. Yeah. You're right. Could be one of the, you know, is one of the ongoing threads of this podcast. Mm-hmm. It's like, no, I am a crazy pervert. You're right about that. And that's okay.

So we've gone a little long, but I think we covered everything we wanted to. So I'm really glad that you both stuck around. Jason and Jordan, is there anything else you would like to share things people can look for anywhere they can follow you? Don't follow me. I'm okay with, yeah. I'm salty. Leave him alone. I post pictures of cats on my social media, usually my cats.

I've so checked out of social media these days. I've really, just since November, I've checked out of every fucking thing and have just focused on the work. because that's tough enough right now. I'll say that Jordan and I alluded to this earlier, but we're already deep in our next project. Maybe y'all will bring us back for that. We are co-editing a two-volume book about the role in place that J.K. Rallying and the Harry Potter Wizarding World has post-2020

and her whole unmasking as just a terrifying, terrible bigot. Nice. the queen of turf island. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. We'll have you back on to talk about that. This project, like, we are, like, we're, we've finished the censorship book and we're excited that's going on.

But, like, my mind is, like, exploding every day when I look at the list of things. Like, so we have, like, 50 contributions to this Harry Potter book, ranging, like, all over the spectrum. It's incredible. Like, I'm so excited about this project. Like, the censorship book is, I'm happy that we did this. But, like, the Harry Potter one is going to be next level just because it just coalesces so many different, like, it's like this prismatic thing about libraries, right? Like, there's, you know,

like the well-natured, you know, like liberalism, oh, Bo, Harry Potter, you know, Child of Literacy and everything versus what happened in 2020. And like, it feels, it feels like, it feels emblematic of something. And I'm, we're writing, we're editing this book, I think, in part to find out what that is. So there's our little preview of that project. My chapter would be Ursula Leguins right there. Yes. Is what my chapter would be. I, I, I think actually, I'm, co-authoring it. I'm going to do like an annotated bib of, you know, don't do Harry Potter look at these as alternatives. Yeah. It really always was weird when other people in the library were like, we're going to have a Harry Potter themed extended hours for finals. And it's like,

do you not Google anything about this person? Like what, what's going on here? Like, I get that everyone's age regressing, but come on, man, read another book. It's like terrible people can make good art. Harry Potter's is also not good art, though. Yeah, J.K. Rowling is not one of them. Yeah. We're co-editing this book with another former colleague of mine, current colleague of Jordans.

And we have like this group chat. And they both recently tackled reading Harry Potter, Jordan for the first time. And just like his commentary through that journey. It was like an awful. Yeah. He couldn't even finish. You saint.

Yeah, he couldn't even finish. I've read them several times, so, like, before the whole turfism. So I actually, I did try to reread it in preparation for this, and I just couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't get back into it. All right. Well, thank you both. I want to thank you so much.

Thank you. Oh, thank you. Yeah, thanks for coming on. I was looking at Yale's previous podcast and, like, just really flipping out when I saw some of the ones that you've done, like the leather archives, and then interviewing one of the hosts of Bad Gaze. Like, that is my go-to podcast when I'm doing road trip. So I, like Jordan and I, we were just spinning at the thought of doing this.

So thank you. I saw that you guys did an episode about Kira Stami's close-up, and I am like the world's biggest Kyrostami fan. So I was like, I'm going to get that tomorrow morning. Half of this podcast is like, Okay, we don't have an episode. Jay, which weird art house film can you try to force into a podcast context? I'm like, if I got close up, let's go.

My husband will not let me watch certified copy anymore because he's so sick of me watching that movie. Jordan's partner, he is so long-suffering because Jordan and his esoteric taste in films, it's hilarious. Incredible. The Criterion Closet Boyfriend. Yeah. What was that thing? The Criterion Closven. Yeah, it was Criterion movie boyfriend.

It was like an Instagram reel of some chick being like, I'm dating a criterion guy. So you watch for fake and I was like, I make people watch it for fake. But J has a good taste in movies, so it's fine. That's true. Y'all are both lovely. Please come out again to tell about Harry Potter and that'll be great or just any other things. You're great. This was great.

I really enjoyed this and keep up the good work. I've really enjoyed this experience. Always happy to hear that. Good night.