Transcript
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Hello, and welcome to The Storied Human. I'm Lynne Thompson and this is a short solo episode. I haven't done one in quite a while. But I've been thinking so much about how polarized our country is. And it's sort of hitting us here.
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When I live in New Jersey, it's hitting me at a local level, there are people who are fighting to ban books in our district, and there are people who are fighting the book banners. And I've attended a couple of Board of Education meetings.
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And I was really frustrated with the people that on both sides, actually.
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Because if all we do is get angry at the other side, then show them hostility. We don't reach common ground, like ever.
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And there is common ground to be reached. The folks that they want to ban contain information that makes us uncomfortable.
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It's, you know, usually, unfortunately, they choose LGBTQ books. But there's really an issue of you know, how much sexual material do they want to expose our children to.
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But this isn't middle school or elementary school, it's high school. So I can see the point that these books should be available, but nobody's really that comfortable with them.
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It's just a matter of freedom of expression, supporting children who need this information, things like that. But that doesn't get talked about in a nice, reasonable way. I think people are afraid. I think that's really what we're talking about people who want to be in the books are afraid.
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And what are they afraid of?
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I've thought about this a lot. I think they're afraid of things racing ahead and changing in a way that they don't like. And they want to retain some kind of control. And if you think about it, we all can relate to that. I am a super control freak. I don't like when things change too much. I like to have a handle on things. And so we're threatening them when we're hostile and insisting that they're wrong or behind the times or trying to restrict freedoms of children. I mean, that's not what they're trying to do. They're trying to protect their children. And they're afraid that things are becoming are moving too quickly in a way that they don't like.
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So if we could just talk about that.
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It would really help but we don't seem to talk about that.
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So anyway, I'm sure you can guess what side I'm on.
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You know, I'm a writer, I'm an English major, I would never ever, ever be on the side of banning books.
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But I am on the side of understanding people's fears.
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And I am on the side of knowing when you worry about your children, however misguided someone else might think it is.
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Worry is worry. I remember one kind of last minute protest I went to. I was in a local town and a woman crossed the street literally across the street to talk to us.
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And she was a Christian therapist. And she was engaging me in conversation and saying, I don't think people realize how this messes with kid's head some of this material. And I talked a lot with her. And I listened to her. And I brought up as some of my friends have brought up, that the material that children are exposed to on the internet is about a billion times worse. And there's nobody guiding them through it. It's not presented in the best light, some of its pornographic, some of its, you know, practically illiterate. I mean, there's things they're exposed to on the internet, that's not healthy, not helping.
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And so at least these books with facts and data and information that they can't find anywhere, could be helpful. You don't have to like the book. You know, my friend and I talked about this.
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It's not like we liked this stuff. We don't want to read these books. We're not that interested in singing, you know, graphic depictions or explanations of anything related to sex. I mean, that's just not what we're wanting to read right now. But we will defend to the death, your right to publish these books. And we will defend to the death, your right to make these books available to young people, because it's an issue of living in a democracy in a free country.
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I don't know when that got lost on people.
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If you think about the book banners in history, I don't want to be associated with them.
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Nazis banned books. Books are banned in Russia books are banned in Arab countries. Books are rewritten in Arabic countries, there are curriculum in Arab countries that teach children how evil Jewish people are from the time they're little. And they teach young children, how evil Americans are. The whole thing is just so distasteful that you would ever want to align yourself with book banners. So I think the real issue honestly, is we need better, more calm conversations. And we need to address what's really upsetting people, which is this, I see it as this fear, that things are just sort of catapulting forward in a way that they don't like. And there has to be a way to make both sides happy. I don't think banning books is the answer.
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But I think that we could find a way to meet in the middle. I'm not sure what that is.
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I do you know that there were some really braved kids who came to some of the meetings, and they stood up and said, You know, I was so alone, with with discovering that I was gay, and to find a place that talked about it, to have a book that talked about it normally and clearly gave me information, pretty much saved my life when they were young, because they felt isolated, nobody, the only information they saw was probably not very good or positive. And they probably got a lot of crap from their peers. So to have those books, it's important, and we can fight over how sexual quote unquote, they should be, forever, but you can't ban them.
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And I hope we can find a way to talk to each other because this is so close to my heart. You know, I'm a book person, I'm an English major, I'm a writer.
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It's especially important to me.
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And I just hope that somehow we can reach a place where we understand each other and maybe even accommodate each other, you know, anything but but banning.
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I mean, I'm all for whatever makes it work. If you want those books to be signed out if you want a permission slip whatever.
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We could, we could talk about that but you can't ban books because you're not a Nazi basically. Thanks for listening
