The book they’re banning is a book I’ve been recommending to all my friends.

I write diverse characters, always have. But gender identity has gotten more complex in the last decade, and for Newsroom PDX I needed to upgrade. Newsroom PDX is about a college newsroom in downtown Portland during the protests and pandemic. Based on the newsrooms I’ve advised over years, including the one at Portland State University, Eyewitness News had to reflect gender diversity as well as racial and ethnic diversity. (Available wherever you buy your e-books.)

I asked around, and found two books that seemed like they would be helpful. And an extra benefit, they were both graphic novel style books. I’d been meaning to explore that, because I associate graphic novels with comic books, and it sounded like I needed an upgrade there too.

So, the first book was How to They/Them: A Visual Guide to Nonbinary Pronouns and the World of Gender Fluidity by Stuart Getty. Very helpful. I’d created two minor characters who used they/them, only they became major characters….

This happens as a writer. A character keeps tugging at you, so you include them in another book, and then another. And finally one day you think what’s going on with Character X, anyway? So you write a book centering that character.

And it became a real challenge to get the pronouns right every time, and to make sure the writing would be clear to the reader. They/them is easy in spoken words — you tend to know who the ‘they’ refers. But on the page, the inflections aren’t there. So do I mean ‘they’/Carroll? Or ‘they’/several people? And there are ways to deal with that. Getty’s book helped.

The second book is a memoir written by Maia Kobabe, called Gender Queer. It’s poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, informative, and kind. I loved it. And I truly believe it should be given to every girl when she starts her period. All of us can relate. So I’ve been recommending it to mothers of daughters as well as my own friends who are wondering what gender identity is all about.

And then Florida passed the Don’t Say Gay laws, and Texas decided it was illegal to provide health care to transgender youth, and Virginia and Tennessee were banning books in school libraries. I kept seeing the list of books, and many of them were familiar. Some I bought in solidarity. Ban a book? Watch it’s sales soar. It sends a message to the book banners: there’s more of us than there are of you.

(Actually, does someone want to start a petition to ban Newsroom PDX somewhere? I could use the sales.)

And one book, even liberal people agreed, probably shouldn’t be in middle school libraries, and maybe ought to be for only mature readers in high school. But ban it? No.

And I kept thinking, is that the book I’ve recommending?

And then Tennessee decided to label it obscene.

From the Virginian Mercury:

A Republican lawyer who serves in the Virginia House of Delegates is pursing restraining orders that would make two books unavailable to minors after a retired judge acting on behalf of the Virginia Beach Circuit Court found  the books could be considered obscene due to explicit sexual content.

In an interview Thursday, Del. Tim Anderson, R-Virginia Beach, said he and his client in the case, Republican congressional candidate Tommy Altman, are now seeking temporary restraining orders that would prevent distribution of the books to minors by libraries and bookstores.

The books in question are “A Court of Mist and Fury,” a fantasy novel that contains sex scenes, and “Gender Queer,” a memoir about LGBTQ identity written in a graphic or comic book style format. It has come under fire from some parents over an illustration depicting oral sex. (Continue reading here.)

So I dug through my pile of HBR,NBR (have been read, needs book review) and sure enough, it was the book I’d recommending for all 13-year-old girls — Gender Queer. The other book labeled obscene is a best-seller science fiction book. It’s on my wish list, but everyone else who reads science fiction has read it and loved it, and told Amazon so. Its author dominates the best sellers list.

And Tennessee is trying to get it banned not just from school libraries but from bookstores like Barnes and Noble.

Gender Queer is the story of a child who doesn’t really identify as either male or female. As the child grows up, they experiment and explore their sexuality and their identity. (The reason I think all girls should read it as they begin their periods is Maia is horrified and decides for that reason alone they want to be a boy. I howled with laughter. All women everywhere can relate, I think.)

Is it graphic? Well, it’s a graphic novel and so there are these wonderful sketches that accompany the narrative. Is it more graphic in terms of sex? All the sexual exploration is consensual which puts it above a fair number of books that are required reading for students. (Here’s the Goodreads compilation of required reading for high schoolers, in case you’re interested. Doesn’t look like it’s changed much since I was in school.) I just did a database search, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy is on the recommended list — in California, no less. But no Gender Queer.

Did I go ewww a couple of times? Yes, but I’m old. Would a kid? Maybe, but they’d like the book because of it, not be repulsed.

Book banners are extremely naive about what teens already know about sexuality. Trust me, there’s no sex act in this book that my friends in the seventh grade weren’t already talking about when I was in school, and that’s…. let me see, subtract that from that, recheck the math, is that really true?…. let’s just say it was decades ago, OK? Today’s kids? (insert lots of laughing emojis here. And an eyeroll or two.)

I keep wondering who the book-banners are visualizing when they say a book like this one is inappropriate for kids. To be honest, I think they have this fantasy of a protected innocent girl who is completely clueless about sex until her older, more experienced husband can initiate her to sex the way he wants it. Which combined with the Tennessee legislature also recently making it OK for someone to marry a 14-year-old, makes me wonder about them. Creeps me out a bit, really, because you’re protecting child molesters, and banning books about sex for the same age group? Hummm. Can we say Lolita Complex is alive and well in Tennessee?

So buy the book. Read it and decide for yourself if your child can handle it, and then give it to your kids to read. Most important, though, is to talk about the book and about sex with your kids after they’ve read it.

Because in Tennessee? Molesting 14-year-olds is OK if you ‘marry’ them, but reading about sex isn’t. Fight back with literacy and knowledge about sex and their bodies.

And vote the bastards out.

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