To make a point about the fuss the left is putting up over the book “Gender Queer” being pulled from school libraries, including middle school libraries, GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana went viral from reading a pornographic passage from the graphic (in both senses) novel it during a Senate hearing last Tuesday.
Naturally, the indignant folks at The Washington Post thought it was time to upbraid Kennedy for his reactionary behavior. To respond, they did an interview with the author — Maia Kobabe, who identifies as nonbinary. Her response to the whole kerfuffle? Well, c’mon, it’s not like the book is for kids.
Oh.
If you missed Sen. Kennedy’s reading, trust us when we say that, unless you were genuinely unaware of the depths of depravity to which “Gender Queer” sinks to, trust me, you really don’t need to see it. That being said, it is part of the story, after all — and this book might be available to your son or daughter without your knowledge, so here we go. A reminder that if you’re eating — stop. Really. Trust me.
WARNING: The following video contains extremely graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
BRIEF COMMENT
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) read excerpts from Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” in a manner that gave me the same laughs as when a pornographic book was read by Richard Griffiths in “The Naked Gun 2½” . . . only these laughs are far less intentional.pic.twitter.com/6LdwspbNze— Jesse Coffey💉💉💉💙💛✡️#WGAStrong #SAGAFTRAStrong (@JesseCoffey15) September 12, 2023
Thus, the Post, the Beltway’s paper of record despite numerous self-inflicted attempts to disabuse the capital’s residents of that notion, reached out to Kobabe for an interview about the kerfuffle.
“Earlier this week, regular viewers of C-SPAN stumbled onto a truly singular moment of politics and television when John Neely Kennedy, the conservative 71-year-old senator from Louisiana, began to read aloud what sure sounded like it could be the beginning of a porn scene,” began the “perspective” piece by columnist Monica Hesse.
Should LGBT materials of any kind be stocked in a school library?
Yes: 0% (0 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
“The topic of the hearing was a new Illinois anti-book ban law, and Kennedy’s excerpt was from ‘Gender Queer: A Memoir,’ a coming-of-age comic book by Maia Kobabe that was published in 2019 and became the most challenged book of 2021 and 2022, according to the American Library Association. Kennedy’s argument: that librarians alone shouldn’t get to ‘decide whether the two books that I just referenced should be available to kids.’”
So, the Post began by asking if Kobabe had seen Kennedy’s dramatic reading of her work.
“I have seen the clip. Another trans-activist friend texted it to me with a very ‘Congratulations and also I’m sorry’ attitude,” she said.
“The main thing was it was very clear that the senator picked the one page out of a 240-page book that he thought would be the most shocking. And it’s interesting he chose to read the words without showing the images. [Emphasis theirs] Because the images on that page are not salacious at all — it’s an illustration of me sitting at my job, which was in a library, reading text messages from someone I was dating.”
Well, there are no illustrations whatsoever in “50 Shades of Grey” — so we can put that in the preschool library, right?
Not exactly — since, as Kobabe noted in response to a question about opponents “mak[ing] it sound like it’s marketed to 6-year-olds,” it’s not really supposed to be read by, you know, kids.
“It keeps being called a children’s book. Senator Kennedy implied it was a children’s book,” she said.
“But I think that’s coming from a misreading of the comic-book form. ‘Gender Queer’ is a comic, and in full color, but that doesn’t mean it’s for children. I originally wrote it for my parents, and then for older teens who were already asking these questions about themselves. I don’t recommend this book for kids!”
Thanks for saving us the time, I suppose.
Now, I wonder how genuinely stupid and/or insulated Kobabe believes conservatives to be, or at least cynically believes the Post’s readership believes them to be. I know of no conservative who is lighting the torches and sharpening the pitchforks because “Gender Queer” is a graphic novel and they labor under the misapprehension all graphic novels are of the 1960s Batman “BIFF! POW! ZOWIEE!” comic book variety.
Rather, it’s because 1) the book is pornographic indoctrination and 2) it’s in public school libraries.
Also, Kobabe tried out another hoary line used while defending “Gender Queer”: I mean, most of it is innocuous.
“I mean, could he just read some other passages from my book?” she asked at the conclusion of the interview.
“There’s a whole passage where I talk about my asexual identity, and realizing that dating and sex might be something I don’t care about at all. There are parts where I wrestle with whether to come out and share nonbinary pronouns as a teacher in a classroom and whether or not that’s too political.
“There are other sections about connecting with friends and being met with love and support. He could read any of those other passages out loud. Literally any.”
OK. So let’s say — hypothetically — that my local middle school’s library allows middle school students to rent “Reservoir Dogs.” Aghast, I show up at the next school board meeting and play the scene where one of the characters tortures a police officer tied to a chair and cuts off his ear while “Stuck in the Middle With You” plays in the background.
In their defense, the librarians bring in Quentin Tarantino. “I mean, couldn’t you have shown some other scenes from the movie? Like the one at the beginning, where Mr. Pink says he doesn’t believe in tipping because society says he has to?”
Now, granted, the oeuvre of Mr. Tarantino is usually peppered with a bit too many utterances of certain, ahem, words that begin with F, S and N to make that argument an exact apples-to-apples comparison, but the point is this: That “Stuck in the Middle With You” scene could have been put in the middle of “Mary Poppins” and it should still exempt that film from being accessed via a public school library.
Also, keep in mind that, if you’re a parent who believes your child should be able to read “Gender Queer,” you can let them get it from a regular library — or buy it from a bookstore! In fact, this is exactly what my dad did with “Reservoir Dogs” after I asked to see it when I was 13 and there was buzz around it: He rented it from the video store for me. You know, the video store that requires parental permission for movies rated R. (Now, of course, that’s done via parental controls on streaming services, but the idea is the same.)
Now, you could make the argument that a book like “Gender Queer” — which features dialogue like the “I got a new strap-on harness today … I can’t wait to put it on you. It will fit my favorite d***o perfectly” — is so pornographic that shouldn’t be allowed. But that argument isn’t the one being made, even though the word “banned” is bandied about throughout the Post’s interview. “Gender Queer” isn’t being “banned” by anyone. It’s being taken out of school libraries, where it doesn’t belong — the same way a number of other titles don’t belong there.
“American Psycho.” “Gravity’s Rainbow.” “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.” These are all literary masterpieces. They also — almost everyone would agree — don’t belong in middle school (or high school, for that matter) libraries.
It’s not that they’re being banned, it’s just that they aren’t children’s books. The same way the author of “Gender Queer” admits her book isn’t, either. The only difference, from what I can tell, is the marked drop-off in the prose of Kobabe’s work — unless, of course, we all want to admit that this really is being marketed at children and the only reason a stink is being made about it being “banned” is that it robs the left of one more indoctrination tool.
