Indiana Senate Bill 167: Holy crap, what a mess.

[MrCalavera]

 

[Silvanus]

That really pisses me off. I loved Maus. It's a delicate, thoughtful, genuinely great piece of art.

 

[tstorm823]

It wasn't banned. It was taken out of the 8th grade curriculum, with the possibility of reinstatement if they can legally take out the profanity.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

It wasn't banned. It was taken out of the 8th grade curriculum, with the possibility of reinstatement if they can legally take out the profanity.

So, it's banned unless they can censor it sufficiently? Yeah, I can see the difference

 

[Cheetodust]

So, it's banned unless they can censor it sufficiently? Yeah, I can see the difference

Free speech is a fickle *****.

 

[tstorm823]

So, it's banned unless they can censor it sufficiently? Yeah, I can see the difference

Not being required reading =/= banned.

 

[Cheetodust]

Cochran proposed revisiting the entire curriculum over concerns it was developed to “normalise sexuality, normalise nudity and normalise vulgar language.”

Yup, God forbid sex and nudity be considered normal.

 

[tstorm823]

Yup, God forbid sex and nudity be considered normal.

You realize you're talking about 8th graders, right? You want schools to normalize nudity for 13 year olds?

 

[Cheetodust]

You realize you're talking about 8th graders, right? You want schools to normalize nudity for 13 year olds?

We're not talking about getting 8th graders naked. As if 13 year old are unaware of nudity

 

[Thaluikhain]

We're not talking about getting 8th graders naked. As if 13 year old are unaware of nudity

If kids don't know about anatomy and sex, they won't have sex. Sure, it's been a dismal failure everywhere and every time this approach has been tried, but it's gotta start working sooner or later.

 

[Chimpzy]

Fyi, the nudity in Maus to is probably referring to "Prisoner on Hell Planet", the comic within a comic, which has a couple panels showing human boob on corpses, one of which Spiegelman's mother lying in a bathtub after she had commited suicide. I don't have images of it to show, but I can assure you there's nothing appealing about it.

There is also male anthropomorphic mouse nudity in Maus. And this is what that looks like.

If any of the above looks/sounds to sexy or arousing to you, for fucks sake, please don't tell me.

 

[Cheetodust]

Fyi, the nudity in Maus to is probably referring to "Prisoner on Hell Planet", the comic within a comic, which has a couple panels showing human boob on corpses, one of which Spiegelman's mother lying in a bathtub after she had commited suicide. I don't have images of it to show, but I can assure you there's nothing appealing about it.

There is also male anthropomorphic mouse nudity in Maus. And this is what that looks like.

If any of the above looks/sounds to sexy or arousing to you, for fucks sake, please don't tell me.

Fine! I won't tell you.

 

[Silvanus]

Just been reading through the minutes of the McMinn County School Board meeting. Good lord, some of the members come across like absurd anachronisms, who shouldn't have any power over what schools are teaching.

My problem is, all the way through this literature we expose these kids to nakedness, we expose them to vulgarity. You go all the way back to first grade, second grade and they are reading books that have a picture of a naked man riding a bull. It’s not vulgar, it’s something you would see in an art gallery, but it’s unnecessary. So, teachers have gone back and put tape over the guys butts so the kids aren’t exposed to it. So, my problem is, it looks like the entire curriculum is developed to normalize sexuality, normalize nudity and normalize vulgar language. If I was trying to indoctrinate somebody’s kids, this is how I would do it. You put this stuff just enough on the edges, so the parents don’t catch it but the kids, they soak it in. I think we need to relook at the entire curriculum.

 

[Avnger]

Just been reading through the minutes of the McMinn County School Board meeting. Good lord, some of the members come across like absurd anachronisms, who shouldn't have any power over what schools are teaching.

School boards across the US are generally almost entirely the domain of the exact same type of people that make up your homeowners association board. It's busybody 'Karens' (and their male equivalent) who often have no real background in education or even want to further education for its own sake. They're looking for the petty power those positions give them over others. Unlike HOAs though, these people aren't just making asinine rules about the exact grass length (down to the millimeter) of your lawn; they're shortchanging and handicapping entire generations of children instead.

edit: US conservatives have long had an anti-education streak. With the recent "CRT" craze, there's been a very real push to both radicalize that belief and elect even more of these morons into positions of power over schools.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Just been reading through the minutes of the McMinn County School Board meeting. Good lord, some of the members come across like absurd anachronisms, who shouldn't have any power over what schools are teaching.

Yeaaaaaaah...Make no mistake here, this is one of the modern foundational pillars of qanon dog-whistling. The whole idea of the rhetoric is pushing the mantra of "liberals/democrats/communists/socialists are pedophiles involved in a worldwide conspiracy to groom our children and society into accepting pedophilia." It is the most successful of all the pillars at reaching uncritical wine mums and co internationally, as well as folding neatly into evangelical prudishness, so of course it worked there. I'd be really interested in learning how many of those board members were recently voted in, and how many of the previous members were harassed out of their positions, usually by well-funded astroturfing. Expect a lot more of this going forward, as little is being done to stop them.

The QAnon playbook: Republicans make school board meetings the new battleground

GOP takes a page from QAnon: Using concern for kids to push authoritarianism

www.salon.com

QAnon is, at its heart, a fascist movement dedicated to ending American democracy and, like many fascist movements, regards their leader, Donald Trump, as a god-like figure. But coming at people straight with that pitch is a tough sell. So, instead, the QAnon pitch is about "the children." They lure people in with lurid conspiracy theories about a worldwide pedophile cult, the sort of thing that, if it were true, really would be a cause to take action. Once in, the lies about "saving the children" serve as a justification, both to outsiders and to silence doubts in the followers. How can you call them fascists when all they want to do is "save the children?"

The beauty of using "the children" as a cover story is that it is blanket permission to be a monster. Any level of harassment or even violence can be justified, as long as protecting the innocence of children is invoked. (See: The attempted overthrow of American democracy by QAnon fanatics.) No wonder Republican operators have been inspired to take a page directly out of the QAnon playbook to manufacture this nationwide assault on school boards. Using imaginary threats to children as a recruitment-and-rationalization strategy works.

Republicans' cleaned up the conspiracy theory a little, as accusing Tom Hanks of pedophilia is a tough one to trick mainstream journalists into repeating. So the mainstream GOP version of the conspiracy theory is now "critical race theory" and something about how mask mandates are a sinister effort to wrest away parental authority, instead of a common sense health regulation. But the basic gist is the same: Pretend to believe that evil liberals want to hurt children, and use that as a permission slip to act on every antisocial impulse.

QAnon's new 'plan'? Run for school board

In the wake of Donald Trump's 2020 election defeat, many QAnon followers have hatched a plan: run for school board or local office, spread the gospel of Q, but don’t call it QAnon.

www.nbcnews.com

Drake Wuertz came to the school board meeting in Seminole County, Florida, in late June with a message familiar to those who had heard him speak at previous meetings: America's children are at risk of systemic abuse.

And the way to stop it is to run for local office.

"They’re being carried away through our education system, through the woke ideology that’s infiltrated professional sports, through the sexual grooming and pedophilia that’s apparent in the entertainment industry," Wuertz, 36, said in a video of the Seminole County School Board meeting posted by the district’s YouTube account. “We need to run for precinct committees, we need to run for City Council, run for school board and primary the RINOs in this room," he said, using an acronym for Republicans in Name Only.


It was the kind of claim he'd made before, touching on a wide variety of fringe theories about sex trafficking, including the false conspiracy theory that mask mandates “make it easier for sex traffickers to target kids in our community.” On his social media profiles in the last month, Wuertz posted pictures of Michael Flynn, the former general and national security adviser, and the "great awakening" — all hallmarks of the fringe QAnon conspiracy theory.

-

In the wake of Donald Trump's 2020 election defeat and the disappearance of the anonymous online account "Q" that once served as QAnon's inspiration, many people who spout QAnon’s false claims have hatched a new plan: run for school board or local office, spread the gospel of Q, but don’t call it QAnon.

It's a scene that has played out at other school boards and comes as many local meetings have emerged in recent months as cultural flashpoints in a broader battle over the perceived encroachment of race-conscious education — sometimes separately lumped together under the label critical race theory.

In California and Pennsylvania, people who previously espoused QAnon have run for school board positions, sometimes melding conspiracy theories with anti-CRT sentiment. In June, the National Education Association, a prominent teachers union, warned that “conspiracy theorists and proponents of fake news are winning local elections. And their new positions give them a powerful voice in everything from local law enforcement to libraries, trash pickup to textbook purchases.”

-

In April, Tracy “Beanz” Diaz, one of the first and most prominent promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, won an election in Horry County, South Carolina, to join the state GOP’s executive committee, receiving 188 total votes.

Diaz was endorsed by Flynn, who had been telling his followers to take over school boards for months, including at a Reopen/Reawaken America tour event in June, headlined MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who emerged as one of the most vocal Trump supporters in claiming that the election had been rigged.

“We cannot allow school boards to dictate what is happening in our schools," Flynn told the crowd. "We dictate that.”

Even those articles are a tad outdated, as so much happens since, but am little bit rushed at mo so the relevant parts will have to do.

 

[Agema]

There is also male anthropomorphic mouse nudity in Maus. And this is what that looks like.

BESTIALITY PORN! BAN THIS SICK FILTH!

 

[Trunkage]

So... A Brave New World was required reading for me. At 14 or 15. During the Satanic Panic times when a lot of things were banned (eg. I was NOT allowed to play Magic the Gathering at school)

It has 8 year old fucking under bushes and people constantly drugged. Also, suicide. So, way 'worse' than this comic

Just putting it out there, this has got nothing to do with nudity, etc.

It DOES have something to do with the oppressed/oppressor dynamic and how a bunch of white people are super scared about their ancestors being called oppressors. This has been outright stated by Governors

Luckily, A Brave New World has nothing to do with oppression...That was sarcasm. This book helped me understand that, even though I might be trying to help someone, I can actually be totally oppressing enough for them to do anything to escape it

 

[Thaluikhain]

So... A Brave New World was required reading for me. At 14 or 15. During the Satanic Panic times when a lot of things were banned (eg. I was NOT allowed to play Magic the Gathering at school)

Huh, thought the Satanic Panic faded away earlier than that. At my school we weren't allowed to play it in the library because our librarians were weird and though all card games were gambling, but that's it.

 

[tstorm823]

So... A Brave New World was required reading for me. At 14 or 15. During the Satanic Panic times when a lot of things were banned (eg. I was NOT allowed to play Magic the Gathering at school)

a) 14 or 15 is different than 13. This was a middle school they are deciding curriculum for, not a high school.
b) You shouldn't be allowed to play Magic: the Gathering at school. I say this not as a conservative, but as a Magic player. That game feasts on people's time and money, and definitely should not be encouraged at school.

 

[Avnger]

Huh, thought the Satanic Panic faded away earlier than that. At my school we weren't allowed to play it in the library because our librarians were weird and though all card games were gambling, but that's it.

While it may have been past it's heyday, the satanic panic has never really left conservative circles. Harry Potter and Pokemon were both considered satanic by large swathes of US Christians; Obama was literally called the anti-Christ regularly. Hell, I'd even argue we're smack dab in the middle of its second coming (ironic) with how mainstream Qanon is becoming in the GOP.