Sex, bans and 'All Boys Aren't Blue'
Are today's book challenges really just about graphic language?
I’ve been reading All Boys Aren’t Blue.
It’s a series of linked personal essays by nonbinary activist George M. Johnson who describes growing up Black and queer in Plainfield, NJ. It was also the country’s second most-challenged book of 2022, according to the ALA. Most recently, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy read a sexually explicit passage aloud from it at the Senator Judiciary Committee meeting about censorship back in September, in a clip that quickly went viral. Senator Kennedy’s deadpan and uncomfortable oration — in which he said the words “ass,” “lube” “condom” and “masturbated” — was clearly intended to prove that the book had no place in school libraries.
When I saw the clip, I hadn’t yet read All Boys Aren’t Blue and it gave me the impression that much of Johnson’s “memoir-manifesto” was going to be about sex and romantic relationships. “It was the worst pain I think I have ever felt in my life,” Kennedy read aloud, quoting Johnson about the first time he was penetrated. From that, I wondered if the book was about surviving sexual abuse. When I picked it up, I was expecting a tough read.
Imagine my surprise when I started getting into it then and realized, no, this book isn’t upsetting — it’s joyful. Yes, Johnson has a history of sexual abuse at the hands of an older cousin, but that’s just one chapter. Much more than that, All Boys Aren’t Blue is about familial love and Black and queer liberation. Despite growing up “effeminate,” Johnson is a strong student with a deeply supportive family. As recently as this month, his mother talked to PEN America about showing up to a New Jersey school board meeting on his behalf to successfully defend All Boys Aren’t Blue against bans.
Johnson devotes an entire chapter to the privilege of taking care of his sick and aging Grandma, who he calls Nanny, the way she once cared for him. Can’t get more wholesome than that.
As a narrator, he’s candid, engaging and has a firm moral compass. So then I started to wonder — what are this book’s critics really so upset about?
Yes, there are a few gay sex scenes. It’s a Young Adult book, which means it’s intended for high school aged readers; no elementary school librarian would even try to stock it. But I’m starting to think that it isn’t sex that’s driving would-be book banners crazy. Is citing graphic language a cover for keeping more controversial ideas away from impressionable young minds?
Here are some passages from All Boys Aren’t Blue that are likely just as incendiary to some audiences as the sex scenes:
“Gender is one of the biggest projections placed onto children at birth, despite families having no idea how the baby will truly turn out. In our society, a person’s sex is based on the genitalia.”
“My eyes were opened by seeing the shooting of Black people at the hands of police. Seeing the killing of Black children like Tamir Rice at the hands of police. Seeing that it didn’t matter whether you were an affluent Black, a poor Black, a child or an adult. In the eyes of society, I was still a n****.”
“Suffice it to say, respect people for their names, and for how they choose to identify. This also goes for respecting people and their choice of pronouns — he/him, she/her, they/them, god, goddess, or whatever.”
“Consider recent American history: After the integration of public swimming pools, pools were filled with cement or simply closed in predominantly Black areas. This prevented Black families and their children from learning to swim. That is the type of social pathology that runs through us. Find a flaw, deficit or disadvantage in our community, and I can find a system that oppressed us and made it that way.”
“American history is truly the greatest fable ever written.”
I think it’s still easier for right-wing banners to point to sexually explicit language in a book than to come out and say that they don’t believe marginalized folks have a right to tell their stories. It’s more straightforward to say that they’re afraid their 16-year-old kids will be corrupted by reading about sex, rather than admit they’re worried that they’ll grow up to empathize with the plights of people who are Black, gay, trans, gender-queer, etc.
All Boys Aren’t Blue is a little bit about sex, and a lot about other things that conservative leaders are afraid of: racial justice, gay rights and the interrogation of gender binaries.
This past week, Discord chats from a chapter of the right-wing “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty were leaked. I flipped through them and honestly, they’re not that juicy. There’s a lot of unremarkable back and forth about planning and process and school board meetings. But one thing is abundantly clear: this group is intent on blocking anything that it perceives as “pushing the LBGT message.” It’s not about sex, really. It’s about protecting heteronormativity at all costs.