> All this to say I think it makes book bans a bit muddier - in some instances they might be legitimate pushback on aggressive editorialization by librarians. But in most instances, they are self-obviously performative and unnecessary.
You could easily make those arguments on the book bans themselves.
One common argument I've seen floated in these conversations is that whatever this you call this behavior, it's not that bad because there are lots of other means to access the banned books.
But if that's the case - why bother in the first place? Is it all just performative virtue signaling that has no measurable effect on children's means to access these books? If not, shouldn't we be interrogating their reasoning?
You could easily make those arguments on the book bans themselves.
One common argument I've seen floated in these conversations is that whatever this you call this behavior, it's not that bad because there are lots of other means to access the banned books.
But if that's the case - why bother in the first place? Is it all just performative virtue signaling that has no measurable effect on children's means to access these books? If not, shouldn't we be interrogating their reasoning?