Fun fact: @ryanestrada.com ‘s “Banned Book Club,” which I proudly publish, keeps being challenged in libraries for being “pornograhic.” There is zero sex or sexual suggestion in the title. The censors are just shrieking The Magic Word and hoping it gets them what they want. This is what they do.
and even if someone thinks "well I don't like/look at porn so why should it be a priority for me?" it's important to remember that when christofascists say "porn" they also mean age-appropriate comprehensive sex education, media with queer/trans people in it, and picture books about gay penguins.
Im the 80s, the magic word was "communist" in Korea and "satanic" in America. This latest batch of banners tried "woke" but it wasn't scary enough, so they switched to "porn." In every case, the word means "books with depictions of the types of people we don't want in society."
The satanic panic was such a WTF when I first read about it. I wondered how the hell so much of the population was actually afraid of a mythological being.
Then the last few years happened and it got hammered home how incredibly stupid and superstitious so many people are.
Some people actually believe in Satan, and fear “Satanic cults” on that basis.
Some people don’t believe in Satan, but do believe that baby-sacrificing Satanic cultists exist, and are afraid of those.
It would be more exciting to live in a universe with satanic cults I could do battle with. Especially if that battle involves no personal risk and I don't have to leave the house.
Why do you want to spoil things!
I grew up in the Bible Belt during the Satanic Panic. It was crazy, the news loved covering that shit.
When I finally got into D&D during the late 80s, even my not-very-religious mom had concerns. I told her it was all just pretend & she watched a session for about 30 minutes before getting bored.
My 10 year old brother made good money for a while when all his friend's moms heard on the news that Magic: The Gathering was satanic, and one by one they gave their kids' extensive collections to him to get the evil out of their houses.
I remember the Satanic panic. It was used as justification for banning the mass-majority of music genres, the banning of the majority of video games violent and non-violent, the banning of Japanese anime, the banning of any and all books featuring 'magic' and 'mythology', it was an insane time.
well, you see, it's critically important to ban books about how banning books is bad, because otherwise people who read them might question whether we were right to ban all the other books we banned
I wonder if it's a case of having "banned" in the title makes challengers assume it must be about pornography, because they're obsessed with pornography.
At this point I'm waiting for these nutjobs to just go after the entire press, because "But IC publishes PORN so these books might touch PORN so the PORN might rub off on these other books and infect our children with PORN!!"
I read my copy recently and naively assumed it was being challenged for reasons like “character who likes punching cops” or more broadly “disrespecting authority” but of course it’s much stupider and nonsensical than that
