...reading my post here on the BWI Test Board.
As she wrote in her article below:
"This is all happening at a moment when politics is increasingly defined by negative polarization and a with-us-or-against-us mindset in which anyone who doesn’t fully support every last tenet of a given ideology is deemed a member of the loathed outgroup. We saw how this played out in 2016 with Republicans who wouldn’t get on board the Trump train, but it is also how lifelong liberals — the kind who have been voting Democratic for more than 20 years and believe passionately in free speech, legalized drug use, abortion rights, criminal justice reform, universal health care, and LGBTQ equality — can suddenly find themselves nonconsensually categorized as far-right fascists (or the dangerous enablers thereof) for being critical of this or that new left orthodoxy."
Updated June 21, 2023, 3:00 a.m.
The graphic novel “Gender Queer,” a memoir of sexual and gender identity written and illustrated by Maia Kobabe, has been described as the “most banned book in the country.” A flashpoint in the current culture war over the content of school libraries and curricula, it is at once celebrated and despised. Liberal commentators describe it as groundbreaking and essential, a work of art that helps struggling young people to feel seen; conservatives denounce it as pornographic and demand its removal from children’s spaces.
Almost all the objections to “Gender Queer” center on a single page that appears about two-thirds of the way through the book. If you’ve followed this controversy online, you’ve probably seen the illustration in question. If you’ve only heard about it via cable or traditional news, then you probably haven’t — at least not without a censor’s blur in front. This is because the scene depicts a moment in which the protagonist and a partner experiment with a strap-on dildo.
As illustrated acts of kink go, the one in “Gender Queer” is unmistakable, but not especially sexy. You can see far more titillating and explicit works in the collection of 15th-century Japanese erotic woodcuts at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Still, though: It’s racy. Enough so that the page can’t be shown on TV, not even in the late-night hours when the Federal Communications Commission’s obscenity regulations are relaxed; enough so that I can’t name the sex act in question without playing an elaborate game of charades to avoid running afoul of the Globe’s editorial standards. (Hint: It rhymes with “whoa, bob.”) And while reasonable people can disagree on whether the scene qualifies as pornography per se, the fact that this is a debatable point at all is revealing in its own right. Once you’re haggling over whether an illustrated sex act is dictionary-definition pornographic, surely you’ve already ceded the point of whether it’s appropriate for children.
In a less fractious, less polarized moment, this is where the debate would end. It is possible to imagine a world in which “Let’s not stock the [rhymes-with-whoa-bob] comic book in the middle school library” is not a controversial statement. Alas, we don’t live in that world. Instead, we live in a world where not only are we....
Full article: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/21/opinion/progressives-are-minting-conservatives/
As she wrote in her article below:
"This is all happening at a moment when politics is increasingly defined by negative polarization and a with-us-or-against-us mindset in which anyone who doesn’t fully support every last tenet of a given ideology is deemed a member of the loathed outgroup. We saw how this played out in 2016 with Republicans who wouldn’t get on board the Trump train, but it is also how lifelong liberals — the kind who have been voting Democratic for more than 20 years and believe passionately in free speech, legalized drug use, abortion rights, criminal justice reform, universal health care, and LGBTQ equality — can suddenly find themselves nonconsensually categorized as far-right fascists (or the dangerous enablers thereof) for being critical of this or that new left orthodoxy."
If I disagree with my liberal tribe, does that make me a conservative?
A lot of rhetoric on the left is proving to be unpersuasive — and even alienating.
By Kat RosenfieldUpdated June 21, 2023, 3:00 a.m.
The graphic novel “Gender Queer,” a memoir of sexual and gender identity written and illustrated by Maia Kobabe, has been described as the “most banned book in the country.” A flashpoint in the current culture war over the content of school libraries and curricula, it is at once celebrated and despised. Liberal commentators describe it as groundbreaking and essential, a work of art that helps struggling young people to feel seen; conservatives denounce it as pornographic and demand its removal from children’s spaces.
Almost all the objections to “Gender Queer” center on a single page that appears about two-thirds of the way through the book. If you’ve followed this controversy online, you’ve probably seen the illustration in question. If you’ve only heard about it via cable or traditional news, then you probably haven’t — at least not without a censor’s blur in front. This is because the scene depicts a moment in which the protagonist and a partner experiment with a strap-on dildo.
As illustrated acts of kink go, the one in “Gender Queer” is unmistakable, but not especially sexy. You can see far more titillating and explicit works in the collection of 15th-century Japanese erotic woodcuts at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Still, though: It’s racy. Enough so that the page can’t be shown on TV, not even in the late-night hours when the Federal Communications Commission’s obscenity regulations are relaxed; enough so that I can’t name the sex act in question without playing an elaborate game of charades to avoid running afoul of the Globe’s editorial standards. (Hint: It rhymes with “whoa, bob.”) And while reasonable people can disagree on whether the scene qualifies as pornography per se, the fact that this is a debatable point at all is revealing in its own right. Once you’re haggling over whether an illustrated sex act is dictionary-definition pornographic, surely you’ve already ceded the point of whether it’s appropriate for children.
In a less fractious, less polarized moment, this is where the debate would end. It is possible to imagine a world in which “Let’s not stock the [rhymes-with-whoa-bob] comic book in the middle school library” is not a controversial statement. Alas, we don’t live in that world. Instead, we live in a world where not only are we....
Full article: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/21/opinion/progressives-are-minting-conservatives/
