By Rachel Krueger
Book banning is for right-wing fundamentalists and crotchety spinsters and very tense parents of pristine children and also EVERYONE who saw The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure on Amazon last Tuesday and immediately clutched their pearls. Including me. The site has since kowtowed to pressure and pulled the book, which will effectively alienate the Free-Speech-At-All-Costs crowd while failing to diffuse everyone else’s Fury Bombs.
Every September Banned Books Week rolls around, and the internet is afire with the wrongity of censorship. The arguments against are nearly always framed around freedom of speech, not greatness of book. No one fights the banning of American Psycho or Twilight because we should all experience Patrick Bateman or the Bella/Edward hot mess; they fight the ban out of a zero-tolerance conviction that forbidding people to read what they choose to read goes against a basic human right.
That conviction went out the window in the face of this admittedly tasteless and disturbing book. Facebook groups sprang up with mushroom-like vigor, where people said things like “I believe in freedom of speech and all of that, but this is disgusting.” Lolita is also disgusting. So is The Day My Butt Went Psycho, which (in addition) lacks the Russian Stamp of Credibility. “Disgusting” is not an acceptable counter-argument to freedom of speech.
Other people ask, “Can the police track down who actually bought this filth and press charges?” Because the book lacks any actual child pornography, it does not count as child pornography. Pedophilia is illegal, certainly, but the author is not molesting any children (that we know of). Amazon also sells a book on how to smuggle cocaine (by the ton), but because that book isn’t hollowed out and filled with crack before it is shipped to you, it is also not technically illegal.
The instinctual donkey kick is understandable, because children are far more beloved and vulnerable (and generally cuter) than cocaine addicts. However, this has blinded the opposition to some of the more reasonable arguments against the book. There are laws, for example, against hate literature. If I wrote a book on how to most effectively torment your Visigothic neighbor, I’d be clapped in irons. Since this book advocates what the law has deemed harmful, it could reasonably be classified as hate literature.
But I’m not convinced we need to launch a legal rocket against it. I hesitate to judge sight unseen, but I’d make an excessive wager that this book is a horrid read. Pedophilia is not like legalized marijuana. It is not a topic up for debate, with valid arguments on either side. We as a society have decided that it is appalling, so I have to believe that we as a society will likewise refuse to buy this book, Super Saver free shipping be damned. Money talks, and if my faith in the human condition is to hold its fragile head high, very few dollars will give this book the time of day.
And I’m hesitant to allow a site like Amazon power over what I can and cannot buy. The zero-ban came about because the slope is slippery, and while pedophilia is illegal almost everywhere, gay marriage is still illegal in no few states. The same logic that bans this book on so-called “legal” grounds would also see Julia Glass’s The Widower’s Tale banned in California because two dudes make with the wedding cake.
I hate that this book exists. I don’t want Phillip Greaves to have written it, but I also don’t want Nickelback to write any more songs. The only choice I have is where to turn my attention. If I’m more afraid of censorship snowballing than of the ramifications of this Guide, it’s because I doubt the Guide’s potency. Not all problems will go away if they are ignored, but this book is one beast we should probably stop feeding.
Great thoughts. And agreed on so many levels. The attention the book received will help to sell many more copies from wherever, if not Amazon, than if whoever came across it simply wrote a letter of complaint to Amazon as a loyal customer complaining about it, rather than alerting The Media. Amazon is allowed to sell what they choose (within legal limits of course!) and this fell within those parameters, and while morally, I don’t see the point of Amazon distributing this reprehensible book or offering it for sale (perhaps they are motivated by money…mmm, really?), they are well within their legal rights to do so.
I’m surprisingly apathetic about this, given what a touchy and horrifying subject it is. I (necessary disclaimer) think the book is disgusting. I would mildly rather that Amazon didn’t sell the stupid book, but I understand that not selling it treads close to a line they don’t want to cross. So yeah. I’m ambivalent.
AMEN and THANK YOU! I am rather tired of reading all the kill this book yammer out there. Of course the book is sick. Of course no sane, moral person should support pedophilia. Of course we would prefer that it just didn’t exist, but by grabbing up the pitchforks and torches and storming Castle Amazon what was accomplished? The book won’t sell? I doubt the book was selling well anyway. After all a media savvy pedophile has far better connections for his/her materials than Amazon.com. I think it was a pointless exercise in scapegoat-ery. We have run it out of town and made ourselves feel a little better about ourselves for DOING SOMETHING, but in reality have we done anything against pedophilia by doing so? Probably not.
Well said! I agree completely. Now, shame on Amazon for putting a book up for sale that so clearly violates their own standards. I do have a problem with anyone being able to sell books that openly advocate illegal activities with how-to intentions – in ye olde days one could only hope that no publisher would publish these books. With self-publishing, those days are gone. But then we can always hope that no one will notice these books in the millions available…unless someone makes a big to-do about it.
I’ve read somewhere in the last couple of days that sales of this book skyrocketed due to the uproar on the internet. AND that the book had been available on Amazon for 5 years (more?). So I really have to wonder what the uproar accomplished. Amazon eventually pulled the book but it gave the book far more publicity than would ever have been afforded it.
Excellent post by the way.
I agree with you. The book sounds despicable but like you, I can’t see any justification for banning it.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, when people start talking about “book banning” or “censoring,” they are talking about neither. If a group of parents wants a notice on a book that is sold as young adult, but which is heavy on early-teen sex and promiscuity, or some other group wants it taken out of the young-adult section entirely, neither group is calling for the banning of the book, and if a retailer decides not to sell a particular book, that’s not censorship. Calling for banning a book would involve petitioning the government to make the publication, production, importation or ownership of the book illegal. Censorship is when the government tells you “You can’t write about that, or we’ll put you in jail.”
There is no question whatsoever that this book is, at the very least, standing on some very shaky moral ground. Whether it does or does not promote any illegal activity, I can’t say, since I haven’t (and won’t) read it. But there’s also no question that it seems to violate Amazon’s policies. If I were an employee there, charged with the decision of what to do in this case, it would be a pretty easy decision.
A law saying he can’t write what he wants to write would be immoral. I certainly don’t want someone else deciding, on the basis of their own personal feelings, what I can or cannot write. But when I’m in that person’s house, then they do have the right to tell me not to talk about X, whatever X is. And Amazon is someone’s house, so to speak.
I don’t want to live in a world where certain subjects are taboo, always, at all times, for everyone. But I also don’t want to live in a world where Amazon (or any other retailer or property owner) has to fear ungrounded charges of censorship or racism or ageism or whatever, when they make decisions like this.
So, yes… revolting, but not a fight I would take part in.
I could not agree more. Honestly, I was surprised by the hullabaloo over this book. I assumed people would read about it, feel disgusted, roll their eyes, and move on. It never crossed my mind that the people on “my side” of the censorship in literature debate would even consider banning this book despite the horrific subject. And I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed; two reasons, one I was disappointed that those who put up such a fuss during book banning week would change their tune when the book was something they disagreed with; and two, I was disappointed that people called attention to the book. If you want a book to go away, don’t tell anyone about it. If not for people causing an uproar, this book would have died in obscurity with no sales and no promotion. Now, who knows?
While the book of course horrifies and disgusts me, I do not deny that the author was well within his rights to write and distribute it. My problem was with Amazon distributing it. I do not think that Amazon has the ability to control what I do and do not buy – if they don’t sell something I want (and they’re already from my first choice of vendor) I go somewhere else, often obscure places. Amazon does, however, have the ability to obey a moral code, which this book clearly violates, and to obey their own established guidelines on what they will and will no sell. Certain things are just not appropriate in certain venues (you wouldn’t buy infant formula from a sex toy store, would you?). I believe that my money speaks, and I don’t want it to say that I support a company that defends pedophilia. I guess what I’m trying to say that while I was ethically, morally, and tactically disgusted by Philip Greaves, it was Amazon that I was truly disappointed in.