I’m not a huge fan of social media, despite using it frequently as a blogger, activist, and mother of kids whose grandparents all live out of state. Setting aside all the shadiness that comes with social media companies whose only real product is its users, I dislike social media because nearly everything about it is fake. The pictures are carefully filtered and cropped to remove imperfections and enhance beauty; posts are judiciously curated to create the illusion of a happy, perfect life; and nasty comments are left by people who would never have the guts to say such a thing to anyone’s face. It bears little to no resemblance to the real world, and it’s having a negative effect on our kids as a result.
I’m a much bigger fan of realness and authenticity. To me, sharing life’s downs as well as ups is how we connect with people and feel less alone in our own imperfect lives. Talking about the bad as well as the good in the world is how we come up with ways to make things better. And hearing about other people’s experiences, whether difficult, negative, or downright horrific, is how we develop empathy. Seeing the real world, warts and all, is a valuable learning experience.
When it comes to our children, parents often feel the need to shield our offspring from certain aspects of the real world. We want to protect them from things that are scary, or fall outside of our values, or things they are too young to understand. It’s an understandable and common impulse. Most of us handle it within our sphere of control, meaning, within our households and families. We enact parental controls on media devices. We pay close attention to what our kids see and hear. We set rules, boundaries, and expectations.
Sadly, sometimes parents take this impulse way too far.
The topic of banning books is certainly nothing new. At any given point in time, I’d imagine there’s a place somewhere on Earth, if not in America, where a book is being challenged in some way. Recently, in Howard County and elsewhere in the Maryland/D.C. region, the book sitting on the hot seat is the award-winning memoir Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. For students struggling with their sexuality or gender identity, it is a book that embodies realness, by sharing the author’s own experiences with gender identity growing up. Having this book available in Howard County high school libraries is an acknowledgement of the importance of LGBTQ+ students seeing books that represent them and resonate with them.
Yet, at the October 5 Howard County Board of Education meeting, board member Christina Delmont-Small made a motion, seconded by board member Vicky Cutroneo, to direct the superintendent to ask HCPSS’ general counsel to review Gender Queer’s legality due to parental concern that it contained images of child pornography.
Lol wut.
I’d like very much to think that Ms. Delmont-Small is simply dumber than a bag of hammers, but I know she isn’t. She knows that this book – which is published, available at public libraries across the nation, and available for sale at major retailers – wouldn’t be sitting on a shelf anywhere if it contained child pornography. Make no mistake: Ms. Delmont-Small and Ms. Cutroneo were pandering to parents who are so afraid of their high school students reading LGBTQ+ literature that they want their sphere of control to include the school library. They aren’t satisfied just to forbid their teenager from reading such a book; they want to make it disappear from the shelf altogether so that it doesn’t exist at all.
That’s not the way the real world works. A public library serves all, and no one is compelled to read any of its books. Some parents would be happy for their teenager to happen upon a book such as Gender Queer, whether because it reflects their teen’s own internal struggles or simply gives them a window into the soul of another human being. But other parents don’t want their teen to encounter such a book, because it threatens the fragile, fake world that they’ve cultivated for their teen in which nonbinary people don’t exist, where teens don’t talk about sex and erotica, where anything other than cisgender heterosexuality is an abomination. It’s the same thinking behind parents railing against their misinformed idea of critical race theory being taught in schools; they do not want anything interfering with their children’s view of America as a colorblind, post-racial, meritocratic society.
Children whose parents shield them from the real world will have more difficulty thriving in it. They may struggle to have empathy for others. They may not be capable of understanding or validating any perception or experience other than their own. They may be burdened with an unrelenting desire to control everything and everyone around them. In extreme cases, they may grow up to hate others who are different.
This won’t happen, however, if we allow them to experience the world as it is – instead of our meticulously curated version of how we think it ought to be.