Books and Magazines News

A Times investigation, published this week, has found that universities across the UK have been removing the requirement, and in some cases the option, to study certain books because of their supposedly distressing content. The University of Sussex, for example, has removed August Strindberg's play, Miss Julie , from a literature module because it contains discussion of suicide.

Students at Wrexham Glyndwr University, on a module dedicated to mentoring, are being given the option to skip a book called Mentoring , because it includes "humour" that is not inclusive of people who are trans or nonbinary.

Similarly, on Nottingham Trent's French course, a French language module has removed a requirement to study satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo . It says the magazine contains racist, sexist, bigoted, Islamophobic satirical206 cartoons with strong language.

Other universities have slapped trigger warnings on Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro ('trivialised role and abuse of female characters'), Austen's Mansfield Park ('poverty, classism, sexism, mistreatment in a domestic context'), and -- in a masterstroke of dark comedy -- Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four ('contains explicit material which you may find offensive or upsetting').

See full article from spiked-online.com

Mary Ellen Cuzela is a mother of three from Katy, a suburb of Houston, Texas. She has hit the headlines over her campaign to complain about gay themed books available in local school libraries.

She started after reading Lawn Boy , by Jonathan Evison, which was available at her children's high school. She said. The book, which traces the story of a Mexican American character's journey to understanding his own sexuality and ethnic identity, was filled with vulgarity, Cuzela said, including dozens of four-letter words, explicit sexual references and a description of oral sex between fourth-grade boys during a church youth group meeting.

Cuzela shared her views with some like-minded parents, and together they set out to get such books banned, and so the campaign was launched.

Another book that caught her attention was Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) , by L.C. Rosen. This was noted for references to anal and oral sex and a detailed description of male genitalia and advice on how to give oral sex.

The campaign received world attention including a report from the BBC. Books complained about for "pervasive vulgarity" include:

• Lawn Boy , by Jonathan Evison
• Losing the Girl by MariNaomi
• Me Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
• Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez
• The Nerdy and the Dirty by B.T. Gottfred
• Forever for a Year by B.T. Gottfred
• Jack of Hearts (and other parts) by L.C. Rosen
• All Boys Aren't Blue by George Johnson
• The Handsome Girl and Her Beautiful Boy by B.T. Gottfred
• A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
• Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
• Drama: A Graphic Novel by Raina Telgemeier
• Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen Vol 2, Official Movie Adaptation by Simon Furman
• The Breakaways by Cathy G. Johnson

Ludicrous academics at the University of Northampton have issued a trigger warning for George Orwell's novel 1984 on the grounds that it contains explicit material which some students may find offensive and upsetting.

The book is one of several literary works which have been flagged up to students at Northampton who are studying a module called Identity Under Construction . They are warned that the module addresses challenging issues related to violence, gender, sexuality, class, race, abuses, sexual abuse, political ideas and offensive language.

In addition to Orwell's book, academics identify several works in the module that have the potential to be offensive and upsetting including the Samuel Beckett play Endgame , the graphic novel V For Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd and Jeanette Winterson's Sexing The Cherry .

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said:

There's a certain irony that students are now being issued trigger warnings before reading Nineteen Eighty-Four. Our university campuses are fast becoming dystopian Big Brother zones where Newspeak is practised to diminish the range of intellectual thought and cancel speakers who don't conform to it.

Too many of us -- and nowhere is it more evident than our universities -- have freely given up our rights to instead conform to a homogenised society governed by a liberal elite "protecting" us from ideas that they believe are too extreme for our sensibilities.

A Northampton University spokesman said:

• While it is not university policy, we may warn students of content in relation to violence, sexual violence, domestic abuse and suicide. In these circumstances we explain to applicants as part of the recruitment process that their course will include some challenging texts. This is reinforced by tutors as they progress through their programme of studies.

Offsite Comment: RIP Satire

24th January 2022. See article from spiked-online.com by Brendan O'Neill

I suppose it was only a matter of time before the woke mob came for Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel that suggests it is a very bad thing to censor inconvenient opinions, to memory-hole problematic culture, to treat alternative ways of thinking as a species of mental illness, and to engage in orgies of spittle-flecked hatred against those deemed to be the enemies of correct thought?

See article from spiked-online.com