Banned Books and Library Dynamics

In this eye-opening discussion, we delve into the controversial topic of banned books and library censorship from a conservative perspective. We explore the reality behind claims of book banning, examine the political bias in school libraries, and discuss the actual sources of youth radicalization. Key points include:

* Debunking myths about conservative book banning

* Exposing the overwhelming liberal bias in school library collections

* Analysis of controversial books like "Gender Queer" and their availability

* Discussion on where youth are actually being radicalized (hint: it's not the library)

* Critique of current library funding and suggestions for alternative educational focuses

* Strategies for parents to combat ideological indoctrination

* The role of anime, manga, and fan fiction in youth culture and radicalization

* Policy suggestions to empower parents in their children's education

* The importance of early, comprehensive education on sexuality and gender issues

Join us for this thought-provoking conversation that challenges mainstream narratives and offers a fresh perspective on the culture wars in education.

[00:00:00] We are going to be talking about the truth about banned books.

And we are going to be, and that's literally the article that I'm going to be reading from, from the free press. No, but. I'm always shocked how, like, the left will be like, Oh, the right's out there banning books, and they're horrible, and they're And then I'm like, okay. Didn't, didn't we ban Dr. Seuss? Not the, the left banned Dr.

Seuss. Didn't you guys, like, just ban Dr. Seuss? Like, didn't you, don't you ban books? All the time these days? You guys are like, actually burning Anne Frank's diary, and I'll put a thing on the screen here, because a lot of people don't know how, like, antisemitic a lot of, like, the far commies are, because, you know, keep in mind, Marx did write like, what is it like the Jewish problem or whatever is his first book?

Commies are very anti Semitic. But yeah, the, the, the books that you guys are banning, you know, the Dr. Seuss and stuff like that, horrifying that you guys are banning that you are actually banning [00:01:00] like pieces of our tradition and stuff like that. You look at the books that the conservatives are banning.

And they're like actual pornography. They'll like demonstrate using cartoon characters for children how to give fellatio. What? Wait, like in your We'll get into all that in a second. Okay, let's. Would you like to know more?

But before we get into that, I want to go into this particular piece because it also shows that conservatives don't actually really ban books.

It's mostly a progressive dog, like, fabrication. Dog whistle. Like the, like the don't say gay bill where that's not So what she's talking about with the jokes of the gay bill is we know the people who wrote that bill before it ever left the Republican side of the planning committee. There was concern that it could be used to prevent gay teachers from talking about their personal lives to their students or letting their students know that they were gay.

And so that was removed from the [00:02:00] bill. By conservatives before it left the conservative planning stage. And then progressives made up that that's what it would do. And yet it has never been used that way. It doesn't do that at all. And yet they created this huge fight and stuff around this where they've created this perception like, Oh, conservatives are out to get gay people, but it's more, no conservatives were concerned about the huge number of child grapes that are happening in our school system right now.

That right now are higher. On a, not, not on an absolute level, but on a per teacher to per preacher level than they were during the Catholic Church at the height of the scandal. It is bad. There is a reason to be putting these laws in place.

So just for people who aren't familiar with the current stats, here's an article from the Federalist, a one in 10 K through 12 students has been sexually abused by a teacher. , and it says that the rate of sexual misconduct in public schools far exceeds the high profile abuse scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic church [00:03:00] and the boy Scouts of America. , and this article came out in 2024, July 15th. Also, admittedly, it is not just the high number of grapes that are the problem.

It is also the systemic attempts at brainwashing children into ideologies that have extremely negative mental health outcomes, which is something we talk about in other videos. my first year in preschool with a class of my own teaching alongside another queer neurodivergent educator and we have been rocking R2's class.

We've been talking about gender and skin color and consent and empathy and our bodies and autonomy. It's been fabulous. But our teaching team is shifting, and a new person is being onboarded. Someone with many years of experience. So today at the lunch table, when the topic of gender and genitals came up, one of our students plainly looked up and said, Well, I'm a girl today.

But I know that Teacher Co isn't. [00:04:00] No, they're Enby. And the look on the incoming teacher's face was priceless. She was shocked in a good way. And she just looked around at the two of us and said, This class is incredible, and I am so impressed.

 But anyway, I want to get to this piece right here.

 So for example, how to be an anti racist by Imram X. Kendi, which argues that the quote only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination, end quote. So, a book that is actively arguing for discrimination is stocked in 42 percent of US school districts that were surveyed.

Meanwhile, only a single school district, Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, offers students Woke Racism by John McWhorter, a book that challenges the borderline religious anti racist ideas. Advocated by Kennedy. So what we're, we're showing here is if [00:05:00] you're talking about what's actually being stocked at the stores, like are conservatives influencing this?

Are they conservative influencing what books are there and what books aren't? They're just not and conservative books that are even like Mill Road, or if you're saying, Oh, I want both sites presented, are a functionally banned from our libraries, even fairly mainstream ones. So Felix Ever After, a book by Kacen Caller that claims that girls who hate, quote, being forced into dresses and being given dolls in quote, are transgender, is available in 77 percent of school districts surveyed.

But not a single school out of nearly 5, 000 offered books critical of trans theories. Students won't find books like Trans by Helen Joyce. Or, Irreversible Damage, The Transgender Craze, Seducing Our Daughters, by Abigail Schreier. Both recent bestsellers that present skeptical takes on the rapid rise of transgender identification among [00:06:00] adolescents.

Hmm. So, you know what you're reading is a book that literally, and keep in mind how insane this is, transgenders Wearing dresses and being given dolls is transgender? It's a radical fringe view that is also potentially quite damaging because the gender affirming care that a girl might be driven to get by those ideas is pretty irreversible and can have very, very serious knock on effects.

It's not like that book is in some school libraries. It's in 77 percent. That's Wild. That is absolutely crazy. It is also wild that not a single one of the 5, 000 school libraries searched had either of two bestselling books that were skeptical of trans ideology. Well, it's just, it's weird to me that books on this would be present at all.

I'm thinking of at least my experience with the school library [00:07:00] and I don't know if there were any books that were published after 1980 in there, like literally. Well, you went to a very poor school district. Yeah. I remember my experience on the school library. I actually stole a book on how cults worked and brainwashing and then another one on Well, they threw out books all the time.

It wasn't really an issue. I saw all the giant book things they threw out, but I didn't want it on my personal record. Now I admit that I was interested in studying those things. And I was like, Oh, if I end up, you know, just starting a cult right after school, I don't want it on my record. I was checking out books on that and bioterrorism and you know, various forms of stuff like that because I was very interested in how all that worked and how to potentially rapidly change society if it needed to happen.

 But they had a pretty good selection of stuff.

Okay, so most school libraries have new books, you're saying? And they throw out old books literally into the trash in the, in the, like, truckload. That makes me sad. Really sad. Yeah. I mean, your [00:08:00] library, there should be a better truckloads went to my school's library. I'm pretty sure that's the case. In fact, many of the books that we were given for our English class and stuff had the rich high school like stamped on them.

So we knew that they were the cast offs from made us feel pretty shitty, but you know, like we, I said in another podcast, we sold them the drugs and they took them in the end, they were the ones who hurt. So. Yeah, right? Yeah. All right. Memoirs by non progressive leaders are also notably scarce. While Dreams of My Father, the memoir of Democratic President Barack Obama, is found in 75 percent of sample districts, Becoming, by his wife, is found in 65 percent of districts, Memoirs by Republican politicians like Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramasamy, and Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, and Ron DeSantis were essentially nowhere to be found.

Wow. You think at least Vivek, I mean, he's like a young person's person. So when they were looking at those 5, 000 schools from 35 school districts the Vivek one was found in 0%, Nikki Haley, [00:09:00] 0%, Mike Pompeo, 0%. Tim Scott, 0%, Ron DeSantis, 0%, and Mike Pence, 6%. And then it lists yeah. So basically they are indoctrination centers at this point.

And any claims that Republicans are trying to indoctrinate your kids are Absolutely laughable in terms of at least effective, but, but of course, why would Republicans need to indoctrinate kids when Republicans have kids and Democrats don't, right? Like Democrats have to play this game aggressively. It's their only way to survive.

So, yeah. Although I have to also ask this question, which I think is important in any discussion, Related to political fights in America around banned books, who's, who is reading these books? You know, these are for the most part, physical books. And I don't know how many high school students are actually reading.

Aren't most of them just addicted to TikTok and or their AI boyfriends slash girlfriends? [00:10:00] It's the autistic kids who are also the ones most likely to convert. Yeah. I wish I had better stats on who was actually checking out and, or reading these books because I have doubts. Yeah. And it's, I think it's funny to me and a little bit misguided.

This is very similar to me. To the bathroom debate about schools with parents. And yes, I understand that there have been isolated incidents and they are very worrying about mixed gender bathrooms or policies where schools allow transitioning. Students to go into the bathroom of their chosen gender. And then they, you know, go in and they, they assault people in those bathrooms and cause problems.

Like I get that that's, that's a thing, but they're very isolated incidents and I'm sure that there are much more common incidents of just full out violent bullying outside of bathrooms. So I'm not that concerned about it. Right. What, what I think is, is that people are not putting their focus in the right place.

They're not putting their focus where their actual damage is being done. Not that many people are [00:11:00] reading books. Not that many people are being assaulted in bathrooms. And yet these are the two top discussions that are taking place. Like as I run for state rep in our state. These are the discussions parents are having about their kids in school, not the curriculum, not the bias and skew of, of the teachers, not the bias and skew of the school boards, not social, emotional learning.

There are all these things that are taking place in school that are, are, are steeped within every moment of the day that every student is involved in. And yet we're talking about isolated bathroom incidents and books that I don't think anyone's reading and refer to our podcast on. Nobody reads anymore, right?

Like no one reads anymore. We have the data on that. Even when you look at bestselling books, and I think some of this is selection bias when you talk about the biographies of progressive leaders, you know, dreams of my father versus biographies about Nikki Haley and stuff, it's just, you know, Obama was a more famous figure when you probably look at the bestseller status of those books, the, the [00:12:00] The incidence of them being in school libraries probably tracks almost perfectly to their bestseller status and rank among other books.

No, I think we just went over that with the trans books. The two books that I mentioned that were in 0 percent of libraries were both New York Times bestsellers. You did. Yeah. You did say they were bestsellers. Although we know, we know from our data, which I think we covered in our, our, our episode on why nobody reads that New York Times bestseller status does not necessarily indicate.

A book that is actually bestselling. Amazon bestseller status is a much better read of that. But anyway, my, my argument, no, still Amazon bestseller was very few books. The point being Simone, look, you can be a bestseller with a few books, but to be a conservative New York times bestseller. Is actually means that you're selling serious books.

I think that you are being taken in by trying to be, take the middle approach here, where the reality is, is this is pretty horrific that this is happening. And if the position that you want to take is we should stop spending any money on public school libraries or school libraries, I am [00:13:00] okay with that.

Position like transitioning them into other centers or, or having schools work in concert with the local libraries of any town or city, because pretty much every township and city in the United States has a library system. And I don't know why. We need to have school libraries in addition to that when we could maybe Shift funding and be a little bit more efficient if we pulled resources I think that's a really good point and I think they should do that.

But let's continue Okay, and then at the end of this we can talk about whether libraries Matter at all in the modern age. Yeah, the american library association and groups like pen america have raised alarm and millions of donations By warning of the continued rise in attempts to censor books and materials in the public school and academic libraries.

Penn America estimates that 2, 532 books were removed from schools in 32 states during the 2021 and 2022 school year. But an investigation by the Heritage Foundation found that 75 percent of those so called banned [00:14:00] books were actually widely available to students. My own research uncovered the same. In some cases, such as Amanda Gromer's The Hill We Climb, a poetry book was supposedly quote unquote banned by the Miami Dade County School District.

It was actually just moved from the elementary school to the middle school section of the library. In Gender Queer, a graphic memoir for teens about gender identity that the New York Times called, quote, the most banned book in the country, end quote, ,was available in about 25 percent of the school districts I surveyed. Another gripe that I have, you can take this out if you must, but where are students actually being radicalized? Where does a An adolescent in the United States or elsewhere actually decide that they're trans.

I do not think it is in their school library. I think that it is when they go to an anime fan fiction forum and hang out in chat forums online and start getting radicalized by people there. And first they start identifying as non binary. And then they start, you [00:15:00] know, using they, them pronouns and it goes on from there and yes, their school absolutely plays a role in this to a great extent.

I think public schools are influential in tipping the scales and that's something that parents absolutely need to discuss. But it is only in the form of affirming something that has begun online, at home, on their own. In chat forums and certainly not chat forums and certainly not on websites that have anything to do with gender affirming care or politics or anything else they have to do with anime.

They have to do with fanfic. They have to do with fun. They have to do with fashion. They have to do with culture. Nothing about politics. And so when parents are trying to build. ban books, like if, if, for example, the conservative dream came true, right? And suddenly there were only gendered bathrooms and there were only no, you know, no books about sexuality at all in schools ever, and there was no sex ed.

It wouldn't change a goddamn thing because you would still have students radicalizing the same way that they're radicalizing now. And if you don't change the policies and the state [00:16:00] laws right now around protecting children, Who are starting to identify as non binary and who choose to identify in their schools as different names and different genders.

And parents are often not told about this. And in some cases, like you have in Minnesota, that's a sanctuary state for, for trans kids. You have a governor's like Tim Walz, who's now the VP candidate in the United States saying, okay, well we can even. You know, take it from the parents if they, if the parents don't agree with the kid's choice to, to transition.

That's when you have problems. And I just, it bothers me that there's so much discussion. I mean, obviously the free press has to cater to a very mainstream audience that is still concerned about this. It just really bothers me how misguided this all is. Yeah, so just, just so you're aware of what this book has in it, that's in 25 percent of school libraries.

Okay. It has a, a guide on how to give fellatio with pictures of a kid giving fellatio to another kid. They appear to be [00:17:00] Kids! Kids! Yeah, they appear to be underage. I, I guess from the picture here, they're probably about 16. And then in this one, it, it talks about how to masturbate and

yeah. So it's, it's some pictures of men and then a man masturbating to two men having sex. Oh, that's, that's sweet. No homo. It's like, it's definitely strange. 25%. They, they call this the most banned book in the country. What they mean is most people complain about this book, but it is The most complained about book.

Okay. But that doesn't mean it's actually not in libraries. It's in 25 percent of, of the student libraries.

Yeah, this, it's honestly, here's the interesting thing. It seems more explicit than the joy, the joy of sex, which is one of the more famous, like original illustrated guides to sex. It was supposed to be fairly didactic because it. I don't think the joy of sex even really talked about masturbation, like, you know, sort of, you know, not participating in a sex act.

It was really [00:18:00] more about, like. how to participate in, in, in male, female mutual sex acts. And this sounds even more explicit than that. And that is just insane. Well, you, you want to hear some other insane stuff? I'm a little afraid, but let's do it. 17 percent of survey districts carried freedom is a constant struggle.

Ferguson, Palestine, and the foundations of a movement in which Angela Davis argues that quote. Repression associated with Israeli settler colonialism was so evident and so blatant and that, quote, the Israeli military made no attempt to conceal the violence they inflicted upon the Palestinian people, end quote.

The school libraries of Bowerd County, Florida, alone has 16 copies of the book, and precisely zero copies of Bibby, my story, Benjamin Netanyahu's autobiography, which refutes Davis's allegations. Of the 35 school samples, only one carries Bibby Bibby. ISD once again. So it appears that there's like one school that like actually [00:19:00] tries to carry both sides.

Recently we have seen reports of the rise of antisemitism in American schools. According to Harvard Harris poll from last month, 67 percent of 18 to 24 year olds believe that quote Jews are oppressors in quote and quote should be treated as such in quote. Is this at all surprising if students aren't being exposed to viewpoints that counter this argument?

Which I see is very true. I've seen very few people who had this like anti Jewish perspective actually look up the other side, actually look up, you know, the, the, the foundings of the, the efforts that the Jews have made to try to reconcile with the Palestinian people. The efforts that they have made in peace negotiations, the absolute, just like they, they just believe the narrative that's being fed to them instead of researching both sides.

And it's really disappointing to me. But here, now we are going to go down a list of books here. Okay. Okay. So these are books written by some of the world's [00:20:00] best known progressive thinkers. Okay. And we're going to go through what percent of school libraries are in communist manifestos and 75%. Cap the origins of our discontent, 60%.

This 1619 project, 54%. Stamped, 71%. What's stamped about? I don't know. I can add it in post.

It's a book by the guy who wrote the anti-racist book, Abraham X, Kennedy. The full title is stamped racism. Antiracism. And you, or

stamped from the beginning. An African American and Latinx history of the United States, 40%. Latinx is such a racist race. The New Jim Crow, 60%. Guide to Political Revolution that's by Bernie Sanders, 40%. White Fragility, 54%. Is that horrible racist books in 54%?

So you want to talk about race, 57%. This book is anti racist, 45%. Now let's look at mainstream books that have a conservative mindset, right? Okay, well they got Karl Marx. What about Milton [00:21:00] Freeman's Capitalism and Freedom?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Eight percent. Oh. Created Equal by Dr. Ben Carson. Five percent. Woke Racism. 3%. Breaking History by Jared Kushner, 2%. Social Justice Fallacies, 0%. That's by Thomas Salwell. Great thinker, by the way. The War on the West by Douglas Morey, 0%. The 1619 Project, a critique, 0%. The Case Against Impeaching Trump, 0%.

 Decades of Decadence by Mark Rubio, 0%. The Diversity Delusion, 0%. 0 percent in the case for Trump, 0%. No wonder only 16 percent of Gen Z says they are proud to live in America. According to a survey in 2023, they don't have access to books that present our country in an honest light. Surprise that 76 percent of Gen Z and millennial women wouldn't date a Republican according to a change research poll from September.

Yeah. They've never been exposed to any conservative ideas. And that's definitely [00:22:00] how I was raised. So what do we do about this? Like, well, how do you realistically combat this? I mean, I think one realistically these decisions are being made by the local librarians. And so what this shows me is as conservatives, you should not be fighting to get these books in libraries or what's in libraries, because you are never going to win against the bureaucracy of minimum wage to bureaucrats.

Okay. Like the lady. Yep. Yep. New to the library, bring back shop class. So take the money that used to go to libraries. Let, let libraries be handled by existing libraries that already are present in local communities, which are fantastic and wonderful and should be getting attention and should be getting used.

I disagree with that too. I think libraries should not be funded. I think, I think libraries are amazing third places and should be given more support in communities. And frankly, it's a great place to give teens and kids another place. It's not just school to go [00:23:00] and hang out and study and learn and meet with the community.

So we'll have to disagree on that. I'll agree with it insofar as they are useful to homeschooling projects and stuff like that. But I think, yeah, and homeschooling groups, libraries are amazing places. They're fantastic to hang out, to just go through the books. I used to spend, before I met you as an adult, I would just spend like a whole weekend day.

And this is how they get the Autists. Little Autists like you are in libraries. No, because they're in like, Octavian would be in like the toy, The, the train section. And I was always in the fashion history section and like cultural history. So no one wants to read these political books. They're so boring.

That's the thing is I'm pretty sure. I mean, sure. That one school had 14 copies of one of those books, but I just don't think they're in that much circulation. You know, I think that these are what the librarians are excited about. They're not what the readers are excited about. The readers are excited about romance novels.

This shows up when you can see how often they're checked out. You know, in the old days, you could see. I'll buy the romance novels. That is what the young girls are after. [00:24:00] They're poor. Now, now here's the thing is, is I did read yaoi manga when I was a kid, but it didn't. Explain to the audience what yaoi is.

We have some older listeners. Yaoi is man on man romances. Let's say that again, man on man. Romances is what Yowie is. Yuri is girl on girl. And Yowie is very popular among young women in the United States. And maybe it's a little more of a deep cut among weebs, but in Japan, there are entire Yowie conventions.

A lot of people argue that much of a deep cut in the United States. Lots of girls who read Yowie. And so there's, yeah, there's a lot of theories as to why women like yaoi. For example, it's kind of nice to enjoy like romantic and sexual scenarios that don't involve. like female bodies or female objectification.

And you don't have to kind of like put yourself in there. You could just kind of enjoy men. So anyway, like I enjoyed, like, I, I would say that there's some materials that people, that conservatives would get [00:25:00] their panties in a bunch about or did you just enjoy the story? Oh, that was just so sweet.

Like, no, like I get I would read. Girl, boy romances too. And sometimes be like, wait, you and I watched part of that. Remember the ice skating anime? Oh yeah. Come on. Like anyone can watch that and be like, Oh my God. You know, like it's, it's great. And like, the thing, the thing is like for me, fan service and anime does nothing for me.

You know, like the jiggling boobs, it's just. So like, imagine, you know, any, I'm sure like male fan service doesn't really do anything for you when you're watching anime. So, you know, imagine if it was just all female fan service for you and cute romances, you know, I, I think that that's, that would probably maybe be more appealing.

Disney made a, a yaoi recently. The mermaid one. The gay mermaids. Yeah. Luca. Yeah. But it was, it wasn't that good. Compare Luca. Compare Luca to the ice skating anime. Yeah. I mean there was chemistry [00:26:00] in the ice skating anime. Oh my God. And this is one of the things that we're like, you know, you're talking about what young girls actually like, and we mentioned this in a recent episode.

Where everyone was like, no, young girls like buff muscly men. And I'm like, then you have no young girl friends. Like you, you must have not actually talked to a, a, a late teenage girl, early twenties girl, because if you at all engage with these communities, they do not, they, they like their Yowie. They like their.

You know, they're Legolas, they like their Well, but I also want to emphasize, you know, there are these books that like are supposed to instruct men on how to masturbate to other men, as you described with that one book. What are teens actually reading? Teens are totally watching men go down on each other, whatever, like whatever men do.

I'm sorry, I'm rusty. But it is, it is yaoi, you know, it is, it is, it is very different stuff. I think that you're right. And I actually really want to elevate this because you mentioned this earlier in this [00:27:00] particular podcast, but I think this is really true. Focus on the culture war where it is actually being won and happening.

Focus on the points of conversion. Yeah. Focus on why the radicalization happens. Fund them. Nobody's even using them anymore. Well, that's what I'm saying. Take the funding that used to go to school libraries. Bring back shop class, but like the modern version of it, right? Teach people how to fix things, teach people how to cook, teach people how to do their own laundry.

So bring back home, bring back shop class, call it adulting. Okay. I just, please. I love calling it adulting. So people are like, Oh, that's sexist. You brought back home at adulting, but yeah. Oh, even if it wasn't like, if you really like, if that's too offensive for people, just teach teens how to prepare tax returns and have that be their first job.

Imagine that, right? But here's what I would say, Simone. Okay. What people are missing is at the same time as you shouldn't be focused on the FALSE truth. Areas of operation, i. e. whether it's gendered bathrooms or [00:28:00] whether it is Libraries, you need to be focused on where they're actually getting your kids.

Yes Yes, and that is fanfiction communities is one of the biggest Fanfiction communities you need to pay attention to this if you aren't paying attention to the battle happening in fanfiction communities Then you aren't paying attention to To how your daughter is going to be indoctrinated. Yeah, you don't know where your kids are being radicalized.

Yeah, because you're thinking, oh, it's that nerdy, innocent place. And I would say that there's a long history of nerdy, innocent places being demonized. For example Dungeons and Dragons was caught up in the panic, the satanic panic of the 80s. And that was totally misguided. But this is one of those places where it actually is a real source of radicalization that parents need to look at.

And you're absolutely right. But, but you win this by winning the fight in the community, by creating alternate iterations of this community. So for example, If you approach something like the Satanic Panic by banning Dungeons and [00:29:00] Dragons, then what you ensure is that your kids are secretly going to Dungeons and Dragons events.

No. And it totally backfires. You have no say over in that are antagonistic to your perspective. Yeah. What, the way you win the Satanic Panic, the way you win the fanfiction wars, is to create alternate communities that are copacetic with your worldviews. If you created the Christian the, what's the word I'm looking for?

Dungeons and Dragons club, then your kids are protected. In fact one of our friends who lives in our local community does this, he runs, he's a dungeon master for a group that a lot of his employees go to, but also his young kids go to. Who are like, you know, I think like eight through 16 or something.

And they have a blast at it. And kids are not as repelled by doing things with their parents as you would think, if you engage with earnesty in the activities that they enjoy. And this can be reading their latest fan fiction and stuff like this. [00:30:00] And it's a good way to educate your kids to help them learn better language.

Right. You know, Getting kids to engage creatively in things that they're not shamed for and that you can engage them on is a great way. You're like, Oh, you want this to win the local fan fiction competition? Like I'll help you as this, et cetera, right? Like this is how you win. When you ban this stuff, that's where you lose.

Or when you focus on battles, if you're out there, like I bet you so many of these parents. Yeah. Right. Who are like fighting, like to get this, like book instructing on play show and stuff like that out of school libraries. If you ask them yet, when was the last time your kid went to the school library, they'd be like, I don't know, like maybe once a year, maybe not at all.

Maybe as part of a class. I don't know. So why are you expending time fighting this? It's performative. It's part of a social hierarchy battle more than it's about actually trying to make things better. And yet it makes the entire Republican movement look bad when we should just be. Not funding these libraries and focusing on the community [00:31:00] institutions.

As Simone says, the community libraries that already exist. Yeah, well, I think the other important thing that cannot be understated is addressing policies that allow schools to be places where once the, the radicalization has begun, they, they bring it up from 10 to 100 by affirming That and by, by legitimizing it.

Remember there's that story how, when I was a kid I just like innocently said at one point that I was going to marry my best friend and we're going to have a hundred cats and we were going to live in an RV. And my school decided that I had just come out as a lesbian and had a call with my parents and had a call with like, there was a whole, all these meetings because they basically made it a thing and.

I, I just, I mean, they didn't like have a meeting about how I wanted to have a hundred cats. Like I, this was how [00:32:00] unserious, I mean, I, I was, I guess like, I was just like, I don't know, I just assumed I was gonna be a lesbian because everyone around me was a lesbian. Like all my kids, all my friends' parents were lesbian couples.

So I just figured like it didn't really matter what gen matter matter what gender you married, and I didn't know what it was. But I think that, that, that is something that is happening at schools is kids are saying, you know, doing things like being a Tom girl. And rather than just being like, Oh, she's a Tom girl, rather than being like, Oh, Simone is, says she's going to marry her best friend and have a hundred cats.

They're like, Oh, but there's nothing you can do about that. The whole bureaucracy is corrupted. Okay. There's nothing you can do without taking down the school system. There are laws. There are laws that, I mean, Tim Walz, so close to launching right now. We've been doing all the final polishes. It's getting so nice.

I really just want the product that hits the shelves. To be something that people can be proud of. And I feel like we're there, we're waiting for the final ad to be made. It might actually go live before this episode does, [00:33:00] but so if it does, you know, check it out. Yeah, well, you might throw the promo video in here.

Sadly, we're still a few days away from the promo video being done. , but. We probably are going to have the first final draft done today.

, which is exciting. Although for any who can't wait here is the first 15 seconds of the promo. Frankly, we're terrified to send our kids into the legacy school system. To that end, my wife and I built the Collins Institute, a comprehensive interactive map, or skill tree, comprising all of human knowledge. The platform is designed to be usable as soon as a student gets comfortable with reading, and goes about midway through a PhD in most subjects.

If you, if you want to go to the end, yeah, it could be kind of fun, but yeah, I'm just saying like there, there are actually state laws. There is actually legislation in place that can empower teachers to not tell parents as kids start to go through the process of transitioning. And I think that addressing those Is important if parents are at least informed, it doesn't matter how radicalized teachers are, parents can then have, [00:34:00] have conversations with their children and at least have a part in the de radicalization process.

You know, of course there are like plenty of bits about how like, you know, conservative parents hear that their daughter has decided to transition. And so then they decide to transition to and start making fun of it. And the daughter like chooses to not, you know, Cause it's not cool anymore. Cause now dad's dressing like a girl and affirming her.

And she doesn't like that. Cause now it's not cool anymore. It's like, I'm just saying. Yes, I understand your point, and you cannot undo the progressive nature of many public school teachers that said, you can absolutely change the legislation. That makes it hard for parents to intervene when their children start getting radicalized and their culture starts being torn from them and, and they start being converted really heavily.

Don't you agree? No, no, getting to that point. The moment you realize that this is happening, it's usually too late. It's because you found the [00:35:00] hormone pills that they've been taking for the past six months. Those are the way I disagree. I think, you know, if, if teachers. You know, have to report, for example, to parents that their kid is asked to go by a different pronoun or something.

They don't have to report that. Are you saying you want to change the law around that? Right now they're legally mandated to not report that. And that's what I'm saying is, is the laws around protecting that are making it harder for parents to catch things before they go too far. Okay. So change the laws around that.

Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Like if, if a parent, the thing is, and I've listened to so many interviews with detransitioners and it never starts immediately as. I am a girl. I am a boy. It starts as I'm they them. I want to try this out, you know. Yeah. And they, they, they start by so commonly it's just being non binary.

Or, or changing to a new nickname and it's just playing around with it and parents can very subtly start having meaningful conversations with their kids about things like body [00:36:00] dysmorphia about their discomfort about, you know, other things going on in their lives. Sometimes the stress that drives people to body dysmorphia.

Or to turning to gender affirming care is because there, there are big problems elsewhere in life. I mean, all of my times when I started doing things to hurt myself when I was an adolescent, like when I started starving myself, it was because of the stress that I experienced at school and school really wasn't working for me.

And the way I dealt with that was by, by serving myself and other kids are dealing with this by trying to change their identity by transitioning. This, these are all areas where parents can start to intervene. So I disagree with you that it's not like, okay, once they've, that once they've started to explore, they, them, they can't go back.

They absolutely can. Yeah. But your, your, your job is like 99 percent harder at that point. Because by telling them to go back, or by getting them to question this in any way, you are now seen as abusive to them. And they then will begin to quarantine any, their, their mind to any ideas that [00:37:00] you are putting in there.

Which is why you need to give them a full understanding of human sexuality before you do. For the school presents an alternate understanding of yeah, and well, and also a full understanding of what transitioning is and what didn't gender affirming care is most of the people coming into this, like, we, we did an episode on Planned Parenthood what.

Young women are being told, for example, before given testosterone is they're having often just two hour consultations with someone at Planned Parenthood where they list very few of the symptoms of transitioning, like two, two symptoms. One being like vaginal dryness, which is like, Oh, who cares? Right. And then they go in and they don't understand.

Now, if you educate your kids well, before puberty about not only puberty and sex ed and all that, but also like, by the way, one thing that people often do at this time, or that more people are doing is they're transitioning. They're taking gender blocking hormones. Here are the impacts, you know, fertility, osteoporosis IQ hit.

Like, here's what happens. It's irreversible. Then they're gonna come into this really [00:38:00] differently because again, what people are being told as kids is it's reversible and that it doesn't cause any problems and that it has all these benefits. Yeah. Well, and I, I show them pictures and video of the surgery in the same way that they used to, you know, they scared our generation out of pregnancy by showing people like videos of pregnancy.

Snacky S'mores presents the miracle of childbirth. Here we can see the water breaking. Eww! Later the contractions are happening closer together. Mom sure is in a lot of pain. We can see the crown of the baby's head, stretching the vaginal walls in ways never before thought possible by mom. Waaaaah! That's right.

I never saw any of those. Oh, yeah. They, they, they did that where I was. Just go through videos of it, you know, and they'll be like, Oh, okay, this is not something. Because a lot of the, what I've heard is the way that they sell the medical transition to people. They don't really explain what's happening.

They like explain it super quickly and in super short euphemisms. And that most of the G [00:39:00] transistors said, like, if I actually understood what was going to happen to my body, I wouldn't have done it. Yeah. Like getting a mastectomy can actually be pretty like, there are two ways to do it. I think in one way you have to have a little ports to like drain the pus or something.

And then another way you try not to, but then it can lead to a lot of bruising and internal bleeding. Yeah. It gets, it gets pretty intense for sure. Horrifying. Love you to decimone. I am so glad that it's funny how it all comes back to anime in the end. It all comes back to anime in the end. Yeah.

You got to make sure you have good manga supplies at these places. Right. That's whatever you're actually heard that that's like the one thing that's still a lot of people read. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, and it's, it's just, yeah, physically, although there's so many great apps for it now, too. You know why I think it is?

We have to plug, we have to plug what is it? Dating Advice from the Duke of Hell?

Love Advice yes. Great, like, online comic. So good. Hold on. This is the thing about, like, manga, right? And I, it's actually interesting why I think manga has continued to do well. Mm hmm. Is because it hasn't been [00:40:00] captured. In the same way that the publishing industry has, as we remarked in our other video on the publishing industry right now, most of the publishing industry is just a pet project to the publishers and doesn't make the money they really make money by basically just off of Bibles and back sales which is a shame that it's going to all the rest of this horrible, horrifying stuff.

Right. But anyway, so then they funnel the money from that into Making the industry, but it also means that they're not really focused on like making money in the industry, which means that they're okay with kicking out talented writers if they don't fit their agenda. Right. Which is why all of the teen novels are so boring and by the books these days.

That's why all the stuff coming out of the industry is boring and by the books. And it's why when kids want something that has any degree of intellectual vitality to it, they have to go to non woke markets in the same way that I think that that's why a lot of conservatives watch anime these days is because.

In the United States, the market is so, what's the word here? Well, terrible. Right. Yeah. You know, [00:41:00] you're, you're, you're, if you want to go watch movies or shows, like they're all like wokefied, right? Like they don't even seem to care about making money anymore. It's bizarre almost. But you know, you go to Japan and you can get actually unique ideas that don't have any sort of like ideology that they're trying to push on you.

But it's, it's also the same as fan fiction and that's why people are drawn to fan fiction. It's because it is genuinely when people are pushing ideology through fanfiction, it's an ideology they actually care about instead of this bland corporate iteration of this ideology. Yeah. So it can be used to convey toxic, ultra progressive, ultra urban monoculture ideologies, but it can also be used to convey conservative ideologies.

Yeah. In fact, fanfiction was one of the core ways the EA community got started was the Harry Potter. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Harry, Harry Potter and the methods of rationality, but so much better than that is, and you can find this on webtoons, although apparently print copy is coming out. It's going to be in Barnes and Noble soon.

So I'm so excited. It's by the, the French author and illustrator unfins, and it is called love advice from the great Duke of hell. I have not stayed up late to read [00:42:00] something like to the point of being sleep deprived. Since I was maybe 13 years old and this, I could not, I could not put it down. It is so freaking like laughing out loud.

It's just so I got you into it, right? I got me into it. Yes, you did. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Anyway, you're welcome. And, and, and in exchange for this amazing graphic novel recommendation audience, please like, and subscribe if you can leave us a five star review on iTunes or wait, I podcasts, I Apple podcasts, Apple podcasts, please, please.

And thank you. Or as our son Octavian would say, please life and describe. It would mean life and describe this. It's very important life and describe otherwise other people won't see it. Mm-Hmm . And don't you want them to also read love advice from the great Duke of hell and maybe listen to us talk.

Alright. Love you to that. I love too gorgeous. What do you want for dinner, by the way? [00:43:00] And I figured we can do a pasta bar for you again, where you have like your pesto. We have mac and cheese. Well, I do B tonight because I've chips and I'm pretty full, so, okay. Maybe we do two pieces of the B. Just two, not all four.

They're little. No, two, two. A lot of bow. Okay, and you can pack the car, I'll steam the bow and you get the kids? Yeah, of course. Okay, I love you, gorgeous. I love you too. He's he's doing a new one called Vampire Family. Ooh, that sounds cute. I know! I need to check it out, I need to see it.

Hello,

Simone! You getting a little distracted there playing drums on a child? Are you beating her? Repeatedly? Well, you know, I beat our children. With rhythm, of course. With rhythm, of course. Yeah, I mean, we gotta get into it, right? You [00:44:00] know, if you don't savor the beating. She's just got the cutest smile on her face.

I just can't. You're going to pick her up and show the camera. You can't not let the audience see. She's fun. And now she'll keep smiling because she likes being beaten. So she doesn't want to smile when she's not being beaten. Yeah. I mean, our, our little masochist, this one, right? Yeah. Anyway,