Reasoning for banning books

thesilentman

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Jun 14, 2012
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I have a feeling no one read the Wikipedia page...

Taken from Wikipedia itself said:
"This list of most commonly challenged books in the United States lists some of the books challenged from 1990 to 1999 in the United States.[1]

In the United States, many books have been challenged by a variety of groups and agencies to prevent a particular work from being read by the general public.[citation needed] In recent years, it has become more common for those challenging the availability of a book to do so on a local level, targeting public libraries and school libraries. Many communities have a formal process by which a citizen may challenge the public availability of a work."
This does not mean that they were banned. This means that they were highly contested as study material in school because of reasons that may or may not have made sense. I've read a good chunk of titles on that list, and the reason for even considering them to be banned baffles me.

As for OP's question, it's because nothing turns on people lost in power than more power. People love to be right and argue, some more than others, shown quite well with all of the controversies that occur in the world, whether it be as petty as sexism in video games, or as the events that lead to many major conflicts throughout history.

Now the link below the page on actually banned books by governments is something that would apply here.
 

Mangod

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Feb 20, 2011
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"A musician was shot in the eye,
By a youth just passing by,
Who sat down with a heavy sigh,
And read 'The Catcher in the Rye'.

"The gun seller stod at his pulpit,
Soon identified the culprit,
'Let's ban books and films and violent games,
Then all go back to being sane."
- Benjamin "Yahtzee" Sebastian Godzilla Croshaw.

People want to ban stuff because they're overly sensitive and afraid that anything that isn't the Disneyfied New Testament will make people murder, rape and/or cannibalise each other (not necessarily in that order).

captcha: hello sweetie... I think the internet is hitting on me...
 

AidoZonkey

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Oct 18, 2011
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busterkeatonrules said:
I think censorship in school is a good thing.

By banning any book, the school system achieves two things: Draw kids' attention towards said book, and make it look attractive to them. Yeah. Remember, to a kid, school is basically the all-encompassing Ministry of Boring Stuff. Anything it actively seeks to keep out of reach has GOT to be SOME kind of awesome! This way, kids get inspired to seek out insightful, thought-provoking works which they otherwise wouldn't have given a crap about.
As useful as this might be, it could and would be grossly miss used no matter how good the original intentions are. By telling kids what the can and cant read, children wont be able to explore what they want to explore, restricting what they will become in later life. Any government could potentially use this as a form of propaganda, which might mean kids don't learn important facts or even false facts.

Even if it isn't used in this way, the restricting of art is terrible thing. There is so much to discover from books just like any other art form, and telling people they cant print something just because its going to be boring for kids or doesn't inspire kids is just wrong. You don't know what will inspire kids until it has inspired them

Right time to get off my soap box
 

Lovely Mixture

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Jul 12, 2011
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I like these discussions, I did a report on censorship back in highschool.

Flatfrog said:
So. We all agree banning books in general is bad. But here's a book that is *proven* to cause harm. Would you ban it?
No, because if we ban it, it would just make people more curious.
Instead we would educate people on bulimia (or whatever topic is being covered in the book).

The only media I would see banned are snuff material (unless there were extenuating circumstances of suicide, see: the plot of Frozen by Wang Xiaoshuai) and child pornography (and I mean ACTUAL child porn, nothing drawn)
 

Dragonbums

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Personally, I think no books should be banned.
Ever.

Because the people who choose which books should be banned or not are a group of people who think they can decide what's appropriate or inappropriate for the general population.
Of course some books like Harry Potter are easy to bypass(and I honestly wonder what's the point of banning them if they are so fucking easy to get their hands on)

However the act still sickens me.
If you don't like a book at the fundamental level?
Don't read it.
If your spouse/kid is interested in it?
Don't tell him/her they can't read it because YOU don't like it. Let them read it and decide for themselves.

I lady at my college told me that she was banned as a kid from reading the Golden Compass series because it disproves God.
I read the book.
I don't think they ever even mentioned Christianity in the entire book. I don't even think there was a single main character that even alluded to Christianity.
So how could the book disprove it?
You might as well ban all fantasy novels then.
Because last time I checked 80% of them have nothing to do even slightly with Christianity.
 

Angie7F

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Nov 11, 2011
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Well, with the internet, almost nothing is really banned anymore.
But I can understand that certain contents need to be restricted for only those who really put an effort to search for it.
 

Glongpre

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Jun 11, 2013
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People ban books because either:
1. They think they are helping
2, they are idiots

Usually number 2.
 

CrimsonBlaze

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I don't really see the point of banning books indefinitely.

Sure there are books that have content that may not be suitable for younger audiences, but by high school, where you eventually discover about other forms of sexuality, religions, cultures, ethnicity, political affiliations, laws, language, and social structures, I'm sure kids are mature enough to learn about these things objectively.

Also, in a time where kids are exposed to more content that was once withdrawn until they were older, it is possible to reverse the ban of some books, namely Catcher in the Rye, despite it being more stupid and boring than offensive.
 

DefunctTheory

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Hilariously, Red Pony isn't and never was banned.

I was forced to read it in middle school. It has a whole chapter dedicated to a small boy beating a bird to death with a rock is a sociopathic rage.

We also read Lord of the Flies, and had just about every single one of those books in our library.

I don't know if Pennsylvania just doesn't give two shits about banning books or not, but I'd tak this list with a grain of salt. I'm pretty sure where their banned is highly situational now a days.
 

TheRightToArmBears

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I agree with banning books that are quite clearly hate-speech, but even then I think they should still be looked at in an academic setting. I mean, yes, people have the right to free speech, but they don't have the right to spread messages about how all Muslims should be burnt at the stake.

I do happen to think there's a fairly sensible case for banning books that fly in the face of accepted science (I guess I'm thinking creationism here). This isn't a balanced debate between to equally viable theories, one goes against everything we've ever found. The less it's spread, the better off we are as a society, freedom of speech shouldn't cover presenting things that are clearly wrong as facts. That said, I think there's too fine a line on things like that for it to be sensibly enforced.
 

DarkSpartan

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Jun 18, 2013
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That begs the question: Who defines Hate Speech? Mein Kampf would qualify, as would a host of current material. You could make the same argument about most of that list. Every one at least calls someone a Bad Name.

Let's go one step further out towards looney-land for a second: The Bible is full of exactly that sort of message from the word go, and is the putative cause of some of the largest massacres in Human History, and several hundred wars. This will never happen, but if you want to say it's okay to ban for Hate Speech, then it must be considered.

Think about it seriously for a minute. Sheltering our children isn't the way to go about raising adults.
 

IndomitableSam

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Libraries have a simple answer these days to banning books (if the librarians are good people, there are some out there who ill not have books in their libraries that don't follow their beliefs. Which is stupid, I even let my students read Twilight). You have a form - it's called many things, but it's a form you have to fill out concerning the book you would like removed from the library.

Generally, the first question on the form is "Have you read the entire book?" .... If the answer is no, many librarians will toss out the form then and there. It then goes on to ask general questions like "Why do you want this book removed from the library? Provide examples from the text"... etc.

Basically, we make people who want the books banned do their homework. Which most of the time they'll never bother to do and instead steal all the books from the libary so no one cn read them until they get caught and prosecuted.

Here's some: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/challengeslibrarymaterials/copingwithchallenges/samplereconsideration
http://ntrls.org/policies/ReconsiderationofLibraryMaterialsandForm.pdf
http://www.springfieldlibrary.org/policies/colldevappend4.html

... And many, many more.
 

Redd the Sock

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Flatfrog said:
Okay, just for fun, let's play Devil's Advocate. Here's a hypothetical scenario.

Suppose there was a book which promoted, let's say, bulimia. (There are, after all, websites that do this). Suppose that 75% of teenagers who read it went on to become bulimic. (And for sake of argument, let's assume we've already done the statistical research to prove that this is caused by reading the book; control groups; yada yada)

So. We all agree banning books in general is bad. But here's a book that is *proven* to cause harm. Would you ban it?
The question that follows is why it happens. People as a general rule don't just do what books tell them to for no reason. So barring subliminal programming, either the book made a better argument for bulimia than those that had made ones against it, or it made its argument to someone with no counter arguments against it that would just accept it. If there was an outbreak of bulimia because a book promoted it, I'd really have to question how shitty the anti-bulima arguments were.

Bulimia might get a pass for being a harmful activity in and of itself, but a lot of media challenges (I won't limit it to books) come from there being a promotion of differences in opinions on sex, economics, religion, politics and other big philosphical questions. Now the book isn't bulimia, it's masturbation. A group doesn't want their kids to do it, but all they have is "the bible and / or my parents say it's wrong but I don't really know why" or they just don't have the parenting skills or time to instill the values they want in their children such that the book wouldn't make a strong case. The response: keep the book out of the kids hands. Sometimes this even gets passed into adults as societal programmers harp on anything that doesn't meet their value set as it they've no faith in the values they promote to cut through books TV or video games. Some may be desperate to avoid having their own views challenged.

Still, I take it as banning (or challenging with the intent to remove the content as much as possible) is just a sign that the person in question is afraid to have their values tested.
 

Flatfrog

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Redd the Sock said:
The question that follows is why it happens. People as a general rule don't just do what books tell them to for no reason. So barring subliminal programming, either the book made a better argument for bulimia than those that had made ones against it, or it made its argument to someone with no counter arguments against it that would just accept it. If there was an outbreak of bulimia because a book promoted it, I'd really have to question how shitty the anti-bulima arguments were.
Niiice answer! I genuinely had not considered that argument at all. It's essentially the cultural relativism argument but applied to self-harm :)

A fair point. In my hypothetical scenario, we would have to conclude that maybe bulimia just rocks.

Ew - captcha is 'come back'. In context that's not a good image.
 

OneCatch

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Dragonbums said:
I lady at my college told me that she was banned as a kid from reading the Golden Compass series because it disproves God.
I read the book.
I don't think they ever even mentioned Christianity in the entire book. I don't even think there was a single main character that even alluded to Christianity.
So how could the book disprove it?
You might as well ban all fantasy novels then.
Because last time I checked 80% of them have nothing to do even slightly with Christianity.
TBF there is a whole lot of theological musing in those books, courtesy of Phillip Pullman being a prominent humanist. They're kind of like the atheist equivalent of the Narnia books.

In Northern Lights (Golden Compass in America) you have the whole thing with the Catholic-Church-analogue abducting kids then severing them from their souls to keep them free of original sin in the form of Dust [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_%28His_Dark_Materials%29#Dust_as_a_symbol_of_Knowledge], not to mention repression of scientific research, and attempted assassination of intellectuals.
In The Subtle Knife you have persecution and 'on screen' torture of witches by the church, and the prophesying that Lyra is a second Eve because of her possession of the alethiometer, who will doom the world to sin because of lust and knowledge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aletheia].
And then in Amber Spyglass you have Asriel declaring war on God (who's old, senile and ceded control to the Archangel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatron]), Lyra freeing the dead from the afterlife (which is revealed to be Purgatory rather than heaven or hell), musings on a Republic of Heaven, and the eventual assertion that what the church regards as sin is actually a universal lifeforce without which everything will die.

It's pretty scathing of organised religion really.
That's not to say that they should be banned - anything that makes kids actually think about things is something to be embraced, not discouraged. Hell, I'd have them as required reading in schools.
 

Nosirrah

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Queen Michael said:
Little Woodsman said:
Zhukov said:
Is there anywhere that says why they get challenged? Some I can at least understand, even if it is stupid, but some are just bloody bonkers. Unless James and the Giant Peach had some kind of super subversive message that flew over my nine year old mind.
I agree that attempting to ban the book in unconscionable, but the part that people probably find offensive is
When the peach starts rolling, it crushes and presumably kills both of James' aunts. James & the insects then later make an amusing rhyme of the incident. Now those two women were horrendous bitches who should never have had a child left in their care, but having a joke about the deaths of family members is something that some people would probably find offensive.
Nah, the offensive part was the imaginative imagery. People thought it seemed drug-inspired.

What? How could that be drug related? I doubt kids of the age I read the book have any idea of what drugs are.

Also, the witches, really? I get the whole " wig & glove wearing women are witches" ( who are also octopuses and have massive noses) part, but aside from "incredibly shocking" violence such as a mouse getting its tail cut I don't see the problem.
 

Dragonbums

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OneCatch said:
Dragonbums said:
I lady at my college told me that she was banned as a kid from reading the Golden Compass series because it disproves God.
I read the book.
I don't think they ever even mentioned Christianity in the entire book. I don't even think there was a single main character that even alluded to Christianity.
So how could the book disprove it?
You might as well ban all fantasy novels then.
Because last time I checked 80% of them have nothing to do even slightly with Christianity.
TBF there is a whole lot of theological musing in those books, courtesy of Phillip Pullman being a prominent humanist. They're kind of like the atheist equivalent of the Narnia books.

In Northern Lights (Golden Compass in America) you have the whole thing with the Catholic-Church-analogue abducting kids then severing them from their souls to keep them free of original sin in the form of Dust [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_%28His_Dark_Materials%29#Dust_as_a_symbol_of_Knowledge], not to mention repression of scientific research, and attempted assassination of intellectuals.
In The Subtle Knife you have persecution and 'on screen' torture of witches by the church, and the prophesying that Lyra is a second Eve because of her possession of the alethiometer, who will doom the world to sin because of lust and knowledge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aletheia].
And then in Amber Spyglass you have Asriel declaring war on God (who's old, senile and ceded control to the Archangel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatron]), Lyra freeing the dead from the afterlife (which is revealed to be Purgatory rather than heaven or hell), musings on a Republic of Heaven, and the eventual assertion that what the church regards as sin is actually a universal lifeforce without which everything will die.

It's pretty scathing of organised religion really.
That's not to say that they should be banned - anything that makes kids actually think about things is something to be embraced, not discouraged. Hell, I'd have them as required reading in schools.
Guess it really has been that long because all of that literally flew over my head.
I'm serious.
I just enjoyed the story more than anything.
Although the Underworld part and the soul seperations are the most memorable to me.
 

Queen Michael

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Nosirrah said:
Queen Michael said:
Little Woodsman said:
Zhukov said:
Is there anywhere that says why they get challenged? Some I can at least understand, even if it is stupid, but some are just bloody bonkers. Unless James and the Giant Peach had some kind of super subversive message that flew over my nine year old mind.
I agree that attempting to ban the book in unconscionable, but the part that people probably find offensive is
When the peach starts rolling, it crushes and presumably kills both of James' aunts. James & the insects then later make an amusing rhyme of the incident. Now those two women were horrendous bitches who should never have had a child left in their care, but having a joke about the deaths of family members is something that some people would probably find offensive.
Nah, the offensive part was the imaginative imagery. People thought it seemed drug-inspired.

What? How could that be drug related? I doubt kids of the age I read the book have any idea of what drugs are.

Also, the witches, really? I get the whole " wig & glove wearing women are witches" ( who are also octopuses and have massive noses) part, but aside from "incredibly shocking" violence such as a mouse getting its tail cut I don't see the problem.
Actually, I was scaret ****less by The Witches as a kid.

Anc concerning James and the etc., I guess some people think that any imagery that required a little imagination on the part of the creator had to have been drug-inspired. If it seems stupid to think that way, that's because it is.

Captcha: bad books
Stop lying, captcha!
 

Johanthemonster666

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Good ol' US of A... a place where a title of the a book, the rumored plot of the book, or cursing and *gaps* sexually suggestive words can get it banned from a middle/high school library in a heartbeat...while the military recruiters passing out video-games on how cool it is to be in the military, and Evangelical proselytizers can pass out pamphlets on why abortion/gays are evil (yes both use to be common sights on a public Jr-Sr. High school I attended.
 

Stasisesque

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Queen Michael said:
Nosirrah said:
Queen Michael said:
Little Woodsman said:
Zhukov said:
Is there anywhere that says why they get challenged? Some I can at least understand, even if it is stupid, but some are just bloody bonkers. Unless James and the Giant Peach had some kind of super subversive message that flew over my nine year old mind.
I agree that attempting to ban the book in unconscionable, but the part that people probably find offensive is
When the peach starts rolling, it crushes and presumably kills both of James' aunts. James & the insects then later make an amusing rhyme of the incident. Now those two women were horrendous bitches who should never have had a child left in their care, but having a joke about the deaths of family members is something that some people would probably find offensive.
Nah, the offensive part was the imaginative imagery. People thought it seemed drug-inspired.

What? How could that be drug related? I doubt kids of the age I read the book have any idea of what drugs are.

Also, the witches, really? I get the whole " wig & glove wearing women are witches" ( who are also octopuses and have massive noses) part, but aside from "incredibly shocking" violence such as a mouse getting its tail cut I don't see the problem.
Actually, I was scaret ****less by The Witches as a kid.

Anc concerning James and the etc., I guess some people think that any imagery that required a little imagination on the part of the creator had to have been drug-inspired. If it seems stupid to think that way, that's because it is.

Captcha: bad books
Stop lying, captcha!
From what I've read, James and the Giant Peach wasn't banned because it was thought to be inspired by drugs, but because it promotes the usage of drugs (snuff/tobacco), along with sexual connotations (tenuous) and racism. Some claim the imagery is too scary for children (which could be said for all of the Roald Dahl books), but I haven't seen anything claim it was drug-inspired.