Support Groups - Blog Posts

authorandwriter

3 months ago

There’s no better comedy than posting this on TikTok:

pictures of Christian bale in the dark knight. He looks happy. caption reads: "we're an inclusive support group tell us your story."

picture of Christian bale in the dark knight, he looks disgusted now instead of happy. caption reads: When you tell them you don't romanticize your mental illness and trauma.

Then getting a rude paragraph by a random that basically boils down to: you do that because you think therapy is beneath you.

Uh no. I just admit that my mental illness isn’t a superpower. It’s a terrible thing and I wish it never was there.

The random deleted the paragraph a minute later. I’m guessing they realized how stupid they sounded.

Anyway song of the day:

A Circle of Chaos

So, who puts in the effort to try and ban or challenge a book? I would think, and could agree to a certain extent, that parents are those who attempted to restrict their children’s access to books (thou I don’t know why they just don’t do it as parents instead of loophole out of their authority and try to use someone else’s) at their child’s school depending on their age (where some of their authority has temporarily been given over to the teacher or administration). However, while parents make up the second largest percent of challenges against books (32%) only 37% of all challenges occur at schools or school libraries with the majority happening at public libraries (59%) by other local library users (33%).

Books are also not the only things get challenged and for some, removal of the book includes vandalism, theft and destruction (burning books). In 2018 62% of all challenges or censorship actions in libraries were against books, but 15% of challenges were against meetings, 10% were against databases, films and games and 6% were about artwork. This scope of the challenges is the reason for the focus of censorship during banned books week as these challenges extend past the idea usually presented that books are banned because the material is “too mature” for the age group it was recommended too but has to do more with the prejudice behind those promoting the bans and can create an horrific self-fulfilling prophecy as those who were limited in the experiences and connections to these book will remain close-minded and become the passionate censorship leaders of our future.

http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/statistics