Jodi Picoult is an amazing author who writes thoughtful novels difficult social issues. In the books I’ve read, manages to make her thoughts known without outright damning people who disagree. I wish I had the talent she has in her pinky finger. Even the people who don’t like her work would have to agree that she doesn’t write erotica. She should not have her books banned from high school and municipal libraries.
According to some True American Patriots™ on Twitter, this makes me a pedophile who wants to serve up pornography to third graders.
And yet, there’s a book that has far worse stories than anything Jodi Picoult’s written. One of the first stories in this book is about a family of hermits–a father and two daughters (the mother died)–that lives far away from civilization. The two daughters fear they’ll never have a chance to raise children, so they get their father drunk and take turns raping him to make babies.
This book is available in most libraries. Elementary and pre-school children are taught content from this book on a regular basis. Somehow, this book is okay with the people who want Jodi Picoult’s work banned. They support content from this book being taught, even to pre-schoolers. For all his positioning as the pro-parent, pro-purity culture warrior, Ron DeSantis hasn’t said a word about this particular book.
If you haven’t guessed, I’m referring to the story of Lot’s daughters. The Jewish faith demands babies be made. After Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, there were no men to marry, so they made children with their father.
While the story doesn’t cover the mechanics of the conception, the implications are there–and they’re disturbing. You can’t say the Bible paints God’s people with a blind eye to their faults.
Clearly, I’m not saying the Bible should be pulled from libraries, or that children should be shielded from its content. There’s a time and a place. And if children in higher grades want to read an adult Bible, complete with the story of Lot’s daughters’ incestuous rape, they should be able to.
They should also be able to read Toni Morrison, Jodi Picoult, The Handmaid’s Tale, and A Time to Kill. In the Twitter wars, I was called out for referencing The Handmaid’s Tale because there’s graphic sexual content. There’s also graphical sexual content in A Time to Kill. Both works include descriptions of rape.
When my daughter reached a certain age, we told her that if she was at a party, if she was drinking beer out of a bottle, keep her thumb over the top. If she set down a drink, consider it gone. If she wound up short of money because of it, we’d cover her. Because of rape.
High school students know that the world’s full of ugly things. They regularly practice what to do if a shooter enters their school. If my daughter also picked up healthy skepticism about what happens at parties, it’s not blowing up her world view. She knows there are predators.
The problem is, when you push back on the censorship, you suddenly support showing graphic sexual content to third graders. You become a groomer and pedophile because it’s easy shut people down with those charges and end arguments.
Meanwhile, folks like DeSantis and a raft of self-important culture warriors impose their standards from a minority viewpoint. Those standards go far beyond pornography and elementary school students.
For the record, I don’t support porn for kids. If you raised specific examples, I would agree with you about their inappropriateness. Although the accusations fly, no specific examples are provided.
I disagree with Margaret Atwood’s (author of The Handmaid’s Tale) politics. Jodi Picoult probably wouldn’t agree with mine. That’s what freedom means. People get to take positions I don’t agree with.
We should defend that freedom. When people use pornography as a cover to condemn a wide range of books that might or might not have sexual content, we should ask questions.
If you push back when people defend Picoult, Atwood, Morrison, or a freaking Michelangelo sculpture, you’re being served a bait-and-switch for political gain.
The question is, why are you okay with that?