Waterloo Region Record

‘Don’t say gay’ could clear out library shelves

HARRY SHANNON HARRY SHANNON LIVES IN DUNDAS AND BLOGS AT PROBABLYMAYBE.NET.

A recent letter writer complained about an earlier cartoon.

It showed “Ron DeWokeRat” (a caricature of Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis) burning literature labelled “Filth” (including “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and “The Hill We Climb,” the poem read by Amanda Gorman, a young Black woman, at U.S. President Joe Biden’s inauguration). The letter writer approvingly quoted DeSantis as saying “Florida is where WOKE comes to die” and then went on to argue that “Woke needs to die at The Spectator, too.”

I couldn’t tell what the specific objection to the cartoon was, but it seems that the writer supports DeSantis’s policies. These include letting parents force the removal of books they don’t like from public school libraries. I suspect the letter writer would like to see that policy replicated here.

But I wonder if the writer has thought through what would happen if it were combined with the DeSantis ban on the word “gay.” All sorts of books would disappear from the shelves, including many of the English classics.

For example, in “A Tale of Two Cities,” Charles Dickens wrote of “gay crowds.” In George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” we can read that “Mr. Bambridge was a man of pleasure and a gay companion.” I assume that Gov. DeSantis would agree that our children shouldn’t read this, especially when you remember that the book was written by a woman pretending to be a man. Was she (horror!) transgender or did she simply cross-dress?

No doubt DeSantis would also want to remove “Pride and Prejudice” from the eyes of the young and impressionable. Jane Austen wrote about “the streets of that gay bathing-place.”

While the book has been read by many generations, its unsuitability should have been obvious simply from its title, which includes the word “Pride”!

Austen even had the gall to suggest that anyone who objected was guilty of “Prejudice.”

And don’t try arguing that the word “gay” used to mean something different. “Don’t say gay” means “Don’t say gay.”

Seriously, do those who rail against “woke” even know what it means? Merriam-Webster defines it as: “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”

In other words, woke means learning things, being sensitive to others, and paying attention to various forms of discrimination. What’s the problem with that? Surely we don’t want to raise a generation of ignorant, selfish bigots.

INSIGHT

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2023-06-05T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-05T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://waterloorecord.pressreader.com/article/281728388909846

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