RuPaul’s new online bookstore under fire for selling right-wing extremist, anti-LGBTQ+ titles
RuPaul’s new online bookstore under fire for selling right-wing extremist, anti-LGBTQ+ titles
The online store declined to comment, but flagged certain books as 'contrary to our core values' and vowed to donate proceeds to fight book bans.
Drag Queen Lady Bunny's take on it...
I don’t really see an issue with this position. Replacing book bans with de facto bans by refusing to stock them could also become a problem. I’ve read Mein Kampf and I’d still gladly slug a Nazi.
bookshops can't stock every book. Just because they don't stock Georges Perec's Species of Spaces or Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller or Marcia Citron's 1988 biography of 19th century composer Camille Chaminade doesn't mean those books are banned - they're niche.
It seems more likely that current, contentious, right-leaning polemic is in a lot of stockist warehouses due to the political machine and the supply chain software is just presenting the inventory without comment.
So a book store pushing an anti book banning agenda is in trouble for not banning books?
Nope, that ain’t it.
I imagine that’s a common pitfall for most online bookstores that have any sort of volume. Unless you want to proofread and curate every single thing that gets sold, there’s bound to be things that slip through. The article even mentions they sell 10 million books… just not possible to curate properly.
And personally, I’d rather have a bookstore that occasionally sells a questionable title, rather than one that actively censors itself. There’s plenty of titles out there that someone would deem offensive, while others consider it essential works.
Heck, there have been many scholarly annotated versions of Mein Kampf as the article mentions. It’s a historically significant work, penned by a madman. Not everyone who’d read it is by definition a Nazi. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it could cure some of them if they did read it. It’s a terrible book. Even when it was first published it got shitty reviews.
This is just a drop shipping operation. It's not "some things slip through." Rupaul had just attached their name to a drop shipper that serves the broadest audience possible. There's no curation. There's no safety.
Yay capitalism?
RuPaul had come under fire previously for being anti-trans, but it's okay because they apologized on Twitter by posting the wrong flag (literally a flag for trains - and I'm not making that up).
Regardless of your stance on the issue of a bookstore with a no-banning-books mission not banning books, RuPaul clearly is not an ally and this isn't surprising.
How the fuck is someone who is so well-known for drag, not a trans ally?
What synapses have collapsed in his brain to allow for this cognitive dissonance?
The person you're replying to is being a typical internet person.
Rupaul's Drag Race used to not allow trans contestants. It does now. We've had more than one trans Winner.
Ru got some backlash for implying that being trans would be an unfair advantage on Drag Race, comparing it to taking performance enhancing drugs for the Olympics. She later apologized for it.
The show also had some vernacular that was very common in its early days which the trans community pointed out weren't OK and it changed overtime.
Ru is a fairly old gay man who has done a pretty good job of changing with the times comparatively.
He's rich, that's how.
We censoring books or not? I vote not. Is it so hard to be consistent?
According to the Paradox of tolerance from an above poster, you cannot be fully tolerant.
You can't seriously be against all censorship in books, right? Where are your actual boundaries? I don't think you'd be ok with something obviously evil like a book of cp.... Right?
Edgecases are why it's hard to be consistent.
That’s illegal and for good reason.
Yet somehow the US functions with freedom of speech even with some restrictions.
But we’re not talking about CP are we? We’re taking about how we are still dealing with rightoids censoring books and now the left wants certain ones censored.
I argued against the right censoring books and I’ll continue to argue the same way, regardless of who the next shitty group trying it is.
It's not censorship if it's words by people you dislike, silly! Everyone with a real education knows that!
(Edit: /s because I guess someone might say this unironically?)
Twitter people pointed out that Mein Kampf is sold there, but it's a historic book and valuable to read to understand the roots of fascism to fight it.
Mein Kampf is a pretty poor source to understand the roots of fascism. People have this idea, that Hitler was some elaborate writer, who laid out a comprehensive and enchanting piece of work, that was then surrounded by mysticism.
You don't understand the roots of fascism from books written by fascists. You understand it from looking at fascists in action, both on the side of agitators and those following the agitation. And the roots are pretty simple: Combine fear with hatred and an inferiority complex, mix it with simple solutions and by elevating individuals of the in-group by terrorizing the out-group.
Yeah people should have access to the nutjob right wing shit as a learning tool. Can't defeat your enemy unless you understand them.
The criticism comes after users on X (formerly Twitter) exposed the site for listing books by authors known for their anti-LGBTQ+ stances, including titles by Riley Gaines, Robby Starbuck, Kirk Cameron, and other books from the conservative publisher Brave Books
So, like, thank you for pointing out a legitimate problem here and inspiring RuPaul's team to try to do better, but complaining about people allowing fascists to get financial support on twitter of all places feels a bit inconsistent
I like their reaction, no censure, just donating profit