Sad to unpack them
Bookstores have to be safe spaces!
Don’t they? Isn’t that the whole point of them? Or have I misundertood?
An Australian bookstore will no longer stock J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, in order to make the shop a “safer space” for customers.
It’s a sad fact about the Harry Potter books that they tend to burst into flames after you’ve read a few pages. No, that’s not it, they’re laced with arsenic. No, wait, they’re contaminated with plutonium. No, I know, there are tigers and rattlesnakes between the pages.
Rabble Books and Games located in Maylands, a suburb of Perth, made the announcement on Facebook this week, saying that it would no longer house Rowling’s books and those written under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith after her latest novel has been labeled as transphobic. The store’s Facebook page has since been deactivated.
The post, which was written by store owner Nat Latter, said the shop would “not put books by transphobes on the shelves” and asked customers for suggested alternatives.
Gee. I wonder if they carry any books by misogynists. Racists? Antisemites? Snobs? Reverse snobs? Criminals? Exploiters? People who put empty milk cartons back in the fridge?
“While stocking a book isn’t an endorsement (good grief, that would be a minefield), and we will always take orders for books that aren’t in stock, there are more worthy books to put on the shelf — books that don’t harm communities and won’t make us sad to unpack them,” a spokesperson for Rabble Books and Games wrote.
Oh, okay, that helps – the books have to be worthy.
Worthy how? Worthy in what sense? Worthy according to whom?
Again…for the fifty thousandth time…I have to point out that is has never worked this way for women. No general bookshop has ever decided not to keep misogynist books on the shelves. That’s no doubt partly because there would be so few books they could keep on the shelves if they did that.
See, contempt for women is just normal, just everyday life. Updike and his buddies are just what literature is. “Transphobia” on the other hand…now that’s evil. People who don’t believe that men can become women by saying the words are worse than misogynist, worse than Nazis, worse than anyone.
The decision follows furious backlash against Rowling in recent months due to her constant attacks on transgender people.
Liar. Who wrote this? [looks] Someone called Serena Sonoma. Well, she’s a liar. Rowling doesn’t “attack” trans people, and what she has said about the ideology around what “trans” means has not been anything like “constant.”
The liar then instantly undercuts her own lie by giving all of two examples of this purported “transphobia,” first last December then “earlier this summer” – so that’s hardly constantly, is it. What Rowling said wasn’t “phobic” anyway, but the “constantly” is an extra layer of destructive lying.
Anyway, skip Rabble Books near Perth if you want to buy a Harry Potter book off the shelf.
Now you’ve done it. Now I’m going to have to read Harry Potter just for the adventure.
How sad. The great bookstores I’ve visited in the past are the exact opposite – They aren’t safe spaces for customers – they’re dangerous places that challenge our perspective and world view. Same with libraries. Perilous locales where if one isn’t careful, you may stumble upon another’s story that may provide insight into the mind of the other, or make you feel a little less alone in your own skin. Where notions great and small have to compete in an open market place of ideas. Places that trust their patrons to think for themselves. Groups that only survive through intellectual protectionism (like most religions) hate these places.
And here we have a series of books about an awkward, tragically displaced lad and his friends, who with time and through experience, come to understand their place in the universe, defy convention, seek to control their own destinies and come to accept and embrace their true selves. So I could see how that would be an objectionable message to share with young people.
Personally, I like a bookstore with tons of different subjects represented by dozens of books pro and con. Not interested in one that only has one section titled, “things that piss no one off”.
After all, I think Borders already caters to that demographic.
“will not put books by transphobes on the shelves”: Really? They’ve examined the views of all the authors whose books they sell? Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Joel Osteen, various Popes, all pass muster?
“labeled as transphobic”: by who? Under what circumstances? Accurately? I’m going to label the Bible as transphobic, right here, right now; will the store stop selling Bibles?
“books that don’t harm communities”: Hoo boy. I’m sure they examined their inventory for this claim. It astounds me when people try to make up general rules on the spot to justify a specific action. They can’t just say they don’t want to stock this book, they have to make a claim that this book is really truly totally different from all other books that they sell in some objective and impersonal way. Never mind the questions about whether this book actually harms any community.
Pliny, I was reading your comment and agreeing, and being impressed, and being more impressed…
And then that last line.
Iz ded.
I imagine they’re not dissuading people from purchasing Gone with the Wind…
Seriously though, in a time of plague do you really want to discourage people that might well buy seven hardbacks from you from doing so?
This is performative wokeness. Talk is cheap, but can end up being costly. Facebook or Twitter might not be the best place to find out what’s really happening out there in the real world beyond the online wokosphere. It’s very easily skewed by certain small, loud minorities. Many of the people who might applaud this move live on OTHER CONTINENTS and are not likely to reward the shop with a visit and purchase. I think this bookseller is going to find out just how small this particular loud minority is.
Liars like the person who wrote the article, perhaps? The seller has accepted someone else’s word that the author and her works are “transphobic” when they are not.
Now you’re expecting consistancy? I’m sorry, but it’s quite clear that this a single issue worthiness test. If you want other issues addressed, you’ll have to open your own bookstore and stop stocking those books that fail to meet your own worthinessness test. Point of order: Is it better to order them and then take them off the shelf (Stunning! Brave!!)? Do you lose points for not ordrering them at all in the first place? You can have a nice theatrical “Taking the EVIL BOOKS off the shelf” performance, to draw attention and approval to your purity, whereas not ordering them at all does not give you that additional performative woke bonus.Virtual cookies just don’t taste as good.
How many, upon reading this, will decide to skip Rabble Books altogether? There are more of “us” than there are of “them.” I think this is going to go swimmingly for them, don’t you?
I live about 10 minutes from them: never bought anything from them and I am not about to start.
It’s pure BS, they will absolutely continue to sell her books because non-facebook people will ask for what they don’t see on the shelf. Notice they aren’t returning the unsold copies, and I don’t believe for a nanosecond that they won’t continue to order any book that sells. FFS it’s a BOOK store, not exactly the buzzing hub of commerce* that can afford to not sell a popular line of books.
I used to hit book stores all the time, I could spend hours in even (maybe especially) the computer book shops back in the day. I have no idea where the nearest book store is anymore, it’s probably a big chain in a mall that I don’t visit unless I have no other choice.
* And if it happens to be a buzzing hub of commerce, it’s because it sells popular books!
Well, it is Australia. If the spiders, the deserts, snakes, angry ‘roos’, chlamidial* koalas, or a rogue platypus don’t get you, the Rowling books surely will.
Bloody dangerous country.
* probably not a word but I like the alliteration. If there isn’t an Aussie rock group called Chlamidial Koalas there bloody well should be.
To be fair, The Monster Book of Monsters does look dangerous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7GQFHLDTcg
Also, isn’t Perth one of the most isolated places in the world?
In all this buzz about transphobia they’d know she was a SWERF if they’d read the book… /s
I remember going to a bookstore that was, while not explicitly Christian, run by a Christian family, and that featured a lot of Christian books and material. Implicitly Christian. I was looking for a copy of Katha Pollitt’s excellent book about abortion, Pro. The clerk awkwardly searched the stacks to find the one copy listed in the inventory, and pointedly informed me several times that this was the only copy. But she sold me the book; no nonsense about how they don’t carry such books in this store, no diatribe about the awfulness of the book. A sale is a sale.
AHEM, this is an Australian store, so make that taipans and brown snakes if you please. Yes, those are both snakes. We specialise in them.
I don’t know why, but I can guess: they were inundated with
literal physical violencederision and feminism. (The proper version.)I bet they stock Tolkien, who was a Roman Catholic born in the 1800s and therefore likely (though unconfirmed) against abortion against homosexuality. Of course, they acknowledge that it would be a minefield to be consistent in looking up author politics and stocking books on that basis… but I guess trans women are special women, and deserve the fawning appeasement.
I suspect the closure of their facebook page is at least partly out of damage control.
The trans politburo wields more power than the fundagelicals. Xtians have been howling about Harry Potter for 20 years without stirring up anything like this.
cyanswan (love your nym), I am boycotting several businesses I actually never did any business with until my boycott. I’m sure they are devastated.
“The post, which was written by store owner Nat Latter, said the shop would “not put books by transphobes on the shelves” and asked customers for suggested alternatives.”
How about several shelves full of copies of Mein Kampf?