I know what this is before it begins.
Gender Queer has been, according to the American Library Association’s annually alarming statistics, the most challenged book in the United States for the last three years. A memoir drawn in cartoon style, Gender Queer is the emotional story of its author’s journey to understand eir gender and sexuality. It includes frank discussions of both, including a scene where the author and eir then-partner use a strap-on to simulate oral sex.
You’ve got a GoPro in one hand and our copy of Gender Queer in the other. The book is open to that scene and you’re contorting yourself to make sure the camera is pointed at me. “I’ve got a question about a book,” you say.
I notice that you’ve got a printout from some website, BookRiot or BookTrust or any number of BookContent blogs: “Top 10 Picture Books for Pride.” You’ve had to put it on the information desk because your hands are full.
My therapist has taught me to pay attention to what my body tells me when I’m in intense situations. My heart rate spikes first, as it always does.
You splay the page and stumble a bit through describing what’s on it, because most people find it a bit awkward to talk about sex with a stranger, whatever the situation. You ask me if a child—think of them, the children—could walk in and take this book off the shelf.
Of course they could, and you know it, and so do I, so I don’t answer the question. I shoot for the one you’re really asking, and say that if a kid wants a library card, they need to have a parent or legal guardian sign off on it, and if that person is concerned about what their charge is reading, then they should accompany their minor to the library or check their kid’s online account to see what they have checked out.
You’re not satisfied, and you press.
“There are no age restrictions on any of our items,” I say.
This is, to you, a great victory.
“What’s the educational value of something like this?” you ask.
Now my cheeks are hot and I can see my heartbeat pulse in my eyes. It’s time to fall back on policy. I tell you that I don’t normally comment on things like that, but would you like to speak to the library director?
You would, thanks.
You take a seat away from my desk and so I can’t quite hear the things that my director says to you, but I can guess. Would you like to submit a request for reconsideration form? (No.) Do you have a library card with us? (No.) Do you live in our service area? (No.)
A more politically informed coworker told me later that you are a YouTuber whose content is mostly focused on picking fights with liberal students at the local university and whose immediate family member is one of the leaders of the far-right group that took over our county’s local government in the last election, turning its meetings into eight-hour ordeals, decimating its health department, and becoming embroiled in multiple extremely expensive lawsuits.
You spend the next hour in our children’s department, scrounging for the titles on your printed list and filming yourself shaking your head at them. You were up there before you talked to me, actually—Gender Queer is in the adult section, so you had to come downstairs to find it—and when our teen librarian asked you to please be careful not to film the faces of minor children, you told her that you had “freedom of press” and that she could “call the cops” if she wanted you to leave, which she had not asked you to do.
What you are doing is a combination book challenge and First Amendment audit. The former is when a member of the public objects to a book being held in a public or school library and attempts to have it removed from the collection. The latter is when someone films public persons—government officials, police, librarians—at their jobs and attempts to goad them into acting improperly on camera. (Since you do not live in our service area and therefore do not support the library with your taxes, we wouldn’t consider a book challenge from you anyway, but you can harass someone at their place of employment regardless of geographic location.) Both are increasingly common in libraries.
Your video went up on Easter (Christ is risen, indeed). The title is clickbait and the comment section a constellation of ad hominem attacks against me and my coworkers. We’re all fat. We’re all women. We’re all pedophiles, too; how dare we make And Tango Makes Three available to children? What if it makes the kids gay? What if it makes the kids penguins? God will punish us. We should be arrested for this.
I only cried about it once, standing in my grandmother’s sunroom on the day that we were supposed to be celebrating the pinnacle of Christian promise, knowing that I needed to tell my parents and wondering how I’m possibly going to explain this to them. How could I convey the violation of being filmed without my consent? That you have just altered my online presence forever, with just nothing but a GoPro and a couple of bad faith arguments? That tens of thousands of people suddenly hate me, even though they didn’t even know my name?
The first line of your Twitter bio is “Christ is King.” I’ve thought about that a lot. I’ve thought about it all a lot, in nights spent staring at a dark ceiling, playing it in my head over and over, wondering what I could have said that would have made a difference. There is nothing, and that is what hurts most. I have the arguments. I can tell you the educational value of Gender Queer and why we’d keep it on the shelf even if it had none. I can tell you that I actually love to comment on books and might even have done so with you, if you hadn’t brought your followers to our first-ever interaction.
And I can ask. I can ask why you came to our library instead of any of the eleven others that are closer to your hometown. I can ask why you didn’t bring me an R-rated movie or our copy of Blacksad if you were really here to complain about materials that are inappropriate for children. I can ask why you took a break from your parade of LGBTQ books to clutch your pearls at the young readers’ edition of Stamped.
But it’s pointless to tell you. And I know the answers.
When my cycle through the stages of grief landed on anger, this is what I was angry about. There is no conversation to be had, because you don’t care about that. I might have been angry that you instead care about humiliating people online, but I don’t think that you do. Because I don’t think that my coworkers and I are people to you. We are vectors through which you may channel the rage of your audience in order to gain revenue and clout. And if they say horrible things about us on the internet, so what? The Bible says to love your enemies, but we are not your enemies. We’re your content, and the Bible doesn’t say anything about that.
The day you came happened to be book club night, where one of my fellow librarians and I talk sci-fi at a local brewery with anyone who feels like joining us. It’s our favorite place to go and library staff are fixtures, showing up both off the clock and on for trivia nights and off-site library events. That night, after ordering, I noticed that our regular bartender had upgraded my stout from a snifter to a pint.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Seems like a rough day.”
“What,” I laughed, “did Jake tell you what happened?”
He shook his head. “I could just tell that something was up.”
So I told him. And he told me about the things that he, a Hispanic man in a West Michigan town, hears from drunk men and sometimes sober ones. He gave me one on the house; I tipped the price of a drink. Then Jake and I sat down with a botanist, her dog, a middle-aged forklift driver, a new father, a shy data technician, a nonbinary twentysomething, a married pair of Star Trek geeks, and a curly-haired artist. As we all pulled out our copies of The Left Hand of Darkness, I realized how small your world must be.
I’m not angry anymore, except in that general way that all women past a certain age are. I pity you, and on my worse days, feel a smug satisfaction in that. I’m scared, too, and I’m trying not to hate you for the power you have over my fear. I’m not a hard person to find, and there are things that I’ve said, publicly, on this blog even, that might seem to confirm the worst fears of anyone who would care to look. I cannot help, when spooling out worst case scenarios, but imagine them finding me here (or worse, in person) and dragging their noxiousness from your space into mine.
I wish I could talk to you about the value of books. I wish that you cared. But I’m not grieving that loss. I’ve got other people who do.
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Always, always grateful for your wisdom and curiosity and moral clarity, Annaka. I’m really sorry this happened.
ANNAKA! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! I love the way you write and am super impressed on how well you keep it together! Personally, I don’t know how y’all put up with this s**t! I just don’t have patience and most likely “accidentally” trip, fall and pour my sugar & cream-laden coffee on that women’s phone or go-pro.
#ohsooosorryNOT
❤️❤️❤️
The good news for you is that when you’re my age you can release all the filters… like dandelions in the wind… and use your excellent command of language and word craft to filet her words to sniveling bits! If you want to…
Guess that’s not very “Christian” of me, but I’m pretty sure God hates these crazy hypocrites, while still loving them! Yup, God & I dicuss this a lot…
Love youse!
V