Untitled

Sadie:
[0:27] I'm Justin. I'm an academic librarian. My pronouns are he and they.

Sadie:
[0:31] I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library and my pronouns are they, them.

Jay:
[0:35] And I'm Jay, a cataloging librarian. My pronouns are he, him. Yay. We're back. We're our guests. Yay. Yay. Good job, everyone.

Sadie:
[0:47] We made it through winter. Hibernated. Still making it through winter. Yeah, how's everyone's.

Jay:
[0:53] Polar vortex going? The snow hasn't melted in Boston yet, so.

Sadie:
[0:57] I got nothing. Sorry to miss out on the collective experience.

Jay:
[1:01] Yeah, Justin was trapped here when it happened. It was funny.

Sadie:
[1:03] I heard.

Jay:
[1:04] Yeah. I was trapped. It was really weird. And they kept delaying my flight. And the weird.

Sadie:
[1:37] Just in the sketchy part of JFK or something where it doesn't look very impressive, but it was just like a very dirty part of JFK. It was a very sad-looking part.

Jay:
[1:47] I'd never been to JFK before. I was not impressed. I was in a back corridor. At least it's not New York. Newark is the worst of the airports in that region. I hated every second of being in Newark. I have airport opinions because of how often I've flown. I have so many airport opinions because I've been to airports everywhere in the continental U.S. except for the Pacific Northwest.

Sadie:
[2:11] I didn't tell you much about the Pacific Northwest even. Just last time I was through SeaTac, it was a mess of construction. So I could not have told you anything about it. Yeah. I forgot that I put like a segment in here.

Jay:
[2:27] Like six months ago in these notes when I started this episode. Oh, yeah. I forgot about this article. I don't think I'm going to talk about it. Hidden.

Jay:
[2:49] Into ChatGPT, it'll tell ChatGPT like use this word five times. To try and catch academics trying to do that in their scholarly publications. Yeah, so they're putting AI prompts in the paper itself. No, in the paper. So when the peer reviewer throws it into ChatGPT, it says say that this paper's great. I think it's also just fair. You know what? I don't hate it. I haven't seen a good like academic paper where it says like, paper about like at the top of the paper where it's clearly been generated by ai i haven't seen one of those in a while yeah i look like fucking my hair looks like alan cumming but i forget which movie it also looks like gary oldman in the fifth element right now but there's a specific alan cumming role that i can't place that's this hair, You don't see yourself at this angle enough. Uh-huh. Do I always look like Alan Cumming or something? No, you look like the AFI guy.

Sadie:
[3:59] Oh, yeah.

Jay:
[4:00] I'll take that.

Sadie:
[4:00] Yeah.

Jay:
[4:01] I'll take that. Yeah. What's his name? I have no idea. Davey Havoc.

Sadie:
[4:05] Davey Havoc.

Jay:
[4:06] He looks like a cool hippie now. He doesn't look emo anymore. Still hot, but you know. I always heard his name is Haddock. I don't know if Exxon, what do they call him? the davy haddock's.

Sadie:
[4:38] Complained about the news publicly in a while that if we just get sidetracked whatever it's fine we could just go all contingents about all this weird stuff. But anyway, there was a Fifth Circuit.

Jay:
[4:58] Way it's spelled. It's definitely just pronounced as if Peggy Hill is pronouncing it. Oh, I thought it might be Lano then instead of...

Sadie:
[5:05] Lano? I don't know.

Jay:
[5:07] Yeah.

Sadie:
[5:07] It could be Lano, it could be Lano, because the vowels do shift up when they move into English.

Jay:
[5:12] Like coyote becomes coyote. at me. Probably, I didn't decide to look it up. But, in May 23rd, 2025, Little V. Leno County. I'm curious. The First Amendment can't be used to challenge book removals in the, this one very specific judge and then it will lay no. No, it's actually as in bad, lay no. So it's not lawn-o or lay no, it's lay no. Like bad, Lano. Lano, Lano, Brando. Yeah, it happened. Texas accent is weird. Turned this one down. So this just kind of sits. But I thought it was interesting because the government's argument is that because libraries are government entities, which is interesting to me, Anyway, I'll talk about the case a little bit more. So it overrules the Campbell case precedent, which was, I thought I put, can say whatever it wants because it is the government saying it. And this is a little different because this is a public library, so there's no compulsive aspect to it. Yes, Jay. Yes, I'm trying to be good and I interrupt. I think this, like, not that I agree with book banning or anything, but I think this does raise an interesting, like, professional question about how weeding is approached depending on what kind of library you are. And I think the fact that a public library, maybe even some academic libraries that are state schools, if you are a wing of government or something, does that affect the decisions you make in your collection more so than if you were not? And where does this place like the Newark Public Library, for example, which is technically not part of city government, it's a nonprofit, like with a CEO and everything. Like, I'm not as much involved in like collection development. So I wouldn't know. But like, you know, I'm maybe it's naive or just me not being familiar enough. But like, these kinds of questions, depending on what kind of library is, I wonder how often that is actually considered just in collection.

Sadie:
[9:28] Election management well and the government speech angle intrigues me too just because like yeah all of the libraries that i have worked for have been independent tax entities they're not tied to any city like they're they're they serve the like the county but they're not part of the county government so like i guess we're quasi i like i've always said quasi government because it as tax dollars but there we don't have an overseeing government so whose speech are we supposed to be i mean does that mean that some libraries can go rogue and be like well our government speech says fuck trump we're removing every book about him in the library like what i i guess i just don't really see why this is why this is the argument you know.

Sadie:
[10:14] No, as far as collections go, yeah. The fact that it's a public library is what

Sadie:
[10:20] concerns me most, I guess. Yeah.

Sadie:
[10:23] And it's the cases that you can't use the First Amendment to argue against.

Jay:
[11:58] Automatic payment system for purchasing books based on checkouts, Right. Like at what point is then a package you buy from a vendor that you have no curatorial decision in besides the fact that you decided to buy that package or like something like Hoopla or something. At what point is then Hoopla responsible for government speech? Yeah. It's kind of crazy. yeah because this is i guess the reason i want to talk about the most is because we were always saying like when are a librarian you have to grapple with the fact that you work for the state usually if you're like for a public library or a public university you have to like.

Jay:
[13:16] Propagating them? Like you've got like the Nazi bar problem, like when, which is not like a real problem. Because also you don't know why someone's checking, like this is the thing where

Jay:
[13:24] I kind of live out a little bit. You also never know why someone's checking something out and i think that's a good thing but also i don't want nazi shit in a library but also like this is like a little conflict that i do not know how to resolve in myself like professionally or politically i just am full donna harroway about it i'm gonna cyborg it i'm gonna stay with the trouble i'm not gonna try to resolve it i'm gonna be like okay these are contradictions and i'm accepting that in myself, but i honestly like do not like i catch myself living out a little bit sometimes and i'm like no no no like we don't know why someone's checking something out and yeah yeah yeah it doesn't mean i have to fucking buy it but like still i mean that was why i was pushing at it so hard because like during that season of library punk, liberal understandings of what we're doing that's why i was pushing that so hard now i'm like yeah the pluralism that liberalism has is like one of the good things about liberalism is like this like wide tolerance for plurality and after that i'd started to like think more about anarchist thinkings of like plurality in society and like you know you can't have this coercive power over other people so like you're going to have a.

Sadie:
[14:42] Society where one of the major values is going to be an enforced pluralism of like you are going to have to tolerate a wide variety of opinions.

Jay:
[14:50] And perspectives even if you were in an anarchist society it doesn't mean that things don't have consequences, Like, I feel like that's where people get tripped up is they think the like tolerance for intolerance means that there's no consequences. I don't think that's the case, but I think one of the strongest things about sort of the dominant professional model of how we view a person's right to read whatever they want is that like we do not know how like I'm always just reminded of what Dr. Knox told me. when i was in grad school is that like we are so convinced in the power of reading and that it changes people and that we do not trust how people will be changed especially people of marginalized groups groups which we want to control in some way either as an you know either or as like an oppressive thing and or like as like a patronizing patriarchal thing you know but But like truly.

Jay:
[15:56] Like at the end of the day, something is printed text on a piece of paper that in and of itself cannot harm anybody. And like I think a lot about because not to bring in like Internet discourse, but like I think about the way that things which are challenging get conflated with things which are harmful. And also people doing like people maybe someone did read a book and got inspired by it and did harmful things because of it like is that book harmful though because if I read that book and don't do that same thing right like at the end of the day how much are we blaming like how much are we redirecting blame because like the unpredictability of the human psyche terrifies us, and we want to control that, and we just want to impede control of.

Jay:
[16:51] Through fucking social reproduction as librarians, you know, keep people from reading the shoddy and pernicious books and shape them into how we want, right? And at what point is that not our job? Like, at what point is this a fear response? I don't know. Maybe I, you know, permission to live out a little bit every once in a while. I'll admit when maybe I've been wrong in the past. i don't know if i'm wrong now i don't know again i don't know how to resolve this contradiction in myself but at a certain point i see people pointing at oh that thing harmed somebody because they read it and did this and i'm like this is like when people are still like throwing shade at catcher in the rye because the dude who shot john lennon read it and like i didn't know that was reading yes no he was reading he was reading catcher in the rye and then was sitting they're reading it when the police came and like had written a note in it or something like then that is like because i catcher in the listener you're allowed to hate me catcher on the rise one of my favorite books but like i've heard that my whole fucking life because i love that book so much and it means so much to me but that oh that's the fucking you know edge lord i'm gonna shoot john linen book.

Jay:
[18:12] Like i don't know at like a certain point like at what point are we misdirecting our action towards a book versus other things like i think there is a discussion to be had about how much of a collection space and budget is dedicated towards certain types of materials i think that is a discussion we can absolutely have but also like then you know i'm also just like someone doing something bad because they write a book is not the bottom of that book or the person who wrote it quite frankly that person might have done other things that are bad but i don't know this is where this is where i mask off i live out a little bit i'm sorry anyway i'm derailing us well.

Sadie:
[18:56] I can't remember if it was in the notes or one of the articles but oh it was talking about the crew method right.

Jay:
[19:03] Yeah and how it's very mathematical yeah.

Sadie:
[19:06] And but the the thing that has always kind of like stuck in the back of my head about collection policies and etc is the, matches the needs of your community and how kind of vague that is because like you can turn around and have people being like well we have a very conservative mormon so we should have you know all of these terrible mormon romances and none of the ones you know kind of things but then it's also like there are literally queer and people of color everywhere. So what part of the community ratio is, are you making that judgment call? And I know that that's kind of lower down on the, you know, misinformation, out of date, et cetera, sort of rubric. I am curious how librarians deal with that specific sort of standard in practice. Like, how does that material affect what books go on your shelves or not? So, I don't know. If there are listeners who have ideas about that, join the Discord and tell me because I'm always super curious about it.

Jay:
[20:13] As helpful as I think the crew method is, because I remember looking at it when I was in my previous job and had, you know, collection decision power. And I remember looking at it and thinking, like, when you reduce everything down to like statistics like this, it removes the messy human element from it. And it's like when you distance yourself from the messy human element of it, it's almost like saying, oh, I didn't make this decision. The numbers did. And I'm just following what the numbers tell me to do. It almost feels like a weird deflection of responsibility, even if it is really useful. But like you're saying, at what point do you, who's the community.

Jay:
[20:55] Who's the patron in your head, and who's not represented by that? How do you balance like oh well i live here like we're you know where i live like it's largely liberal that doesn't mean there's not other types of people and so at what point like how much is the collection balance to accommodate the majority opinion versus the minority and how do you quantify that i don't know yeah i mean the reason the crew method was interesting is because like i use the, weeding manual instructs libraries. By the way, Kelly Jensen did a lot of early reporting on this. It's really good. Shout out.

Sadie:
[22:06] Yeah, she pulled out the... I think that's what I was reading. Yeah, so she pulled this quote from it. I also have the ruling.

Jay:
[22:48] Books about like race and gender being pulled from this county public library. Yeah. And like specific targeting to put to like remove, but like the non-coercive aspect of a public library of it just being there.

Jay:
[23:10] Right, like, school libraries have a pedagogical goal. Public libraries do not.

Sadie:
[23:16] And you have to go to school. You don't have to go to the public library. Yeah.

Jay:
[23:19] Right. I mean, Texas, you probably don't have to go to school either. Like, you probably just be like...

Sadie:
[23:23] Yeah, let's be real.

Jay:
[23:24] I mean... You moved out of there, you're like, fuck Texas. Homeschooling laws, they're probably crazy. It's, like, right after I moved, like, all the worst laws in Florida are getting picked up in Texas. And like texas a&m is like yeah so fucked up like texas a&m doesn't even did i don't know if i'd be able to visit you anymore i mean i don't visit you now because florida but like i wouldn't have been i like hot take going to texas was great when i got to i never had a single fucking transphobic or homophobic incident ever except for seeing this guy in dallas come out of a airport bathroom, with a transphobic shirt on, but I could run into that here in Boston. So, but now like just legally it would be dubious for me to go. We saw Mr. MAGA in Times Square. I mean, like we saw the MAGA dude walking around with his MAGA hat and American flag. It's like, man, you just, do you not get enough attention? No. Walking around in the middle of Times Square. No one in Times Square gets enough attention. Why else are they there? There's so many TikTokers. It was very funny. Hey guys, what's up? Just people walking around TikTok and in Times Square.

Sadie:
[24:33] Like, it is so cold out. Why are you doing this?

Jay:
[24:36] I made Justin walk through Times Square with me because I like walking. We walked like 40 blocks or something. It was great. I love walking and New York's a great place to walk through. It was a great place to walk and we were fine. I'm used to it now. I walk a lot now. You're welcome. You're welcome. I do it at home. I don't know. I got to practice. Blame Boston's bad public transit system. I just walk a lot.

Sadie:
[25:01] But yeah, it's interesting. Like at the bottom of the crew article that.

Jay:
[25:23] A librarian said no to this since a librarian is, by this court ruling, also a government official. If government Abbott decided he didn't think some.

Sadie:
[25:30] Of the books needed to be banned, who is the actual final say among government officials? Like there is no hierarchy because like, yeah, if you're in a tax district.

Jay:
[25:37] Like who tells the tax district what to do? And I guess like it would just be. You get to the library board, wouldn't it? I guess. But then they're not employees of the state. So they're not state. Would it be their mayor? It would be like. Oh, if it's a county thing.

Sadie:
[25:51] Yeah. It would be like the judge.

Jay:
[25:53] Yeah. Because like a city. I mean, because that makes, for example, if this were to happen at the Boston Public Library, which is a city body. Like it's part of the city department but it has its own board of trustees right and which are appointed and like mayor woo does things but also it is the library for the entire commonwealth of massachusetts so then would the governor have to get involved but it's not the state library there is a state library of massachusetts but it's not the library of the commonwealth you know like i.

Sadie:
[26:26] Think what i'm like oh no go ahead i i think the the thing no go ahead city because i'm gonna I'm going to go off on a thing. Oh, okay. Well, when I think about the different libraries I've worked for, at least one of them, the library board, was in a pointed position by the county commission. That is not so in my current county. I'm not entirely certain what it is, but it doesn't involve the county. They're like... Pointed through a different method so it's also like so yeah is it the library board is it like the mayor of the county like at what point can small localities start going you know what i'm gonna try to fuck i'm gonna try to fucking turn this in my favor and i don't have anybody above me and my board is on or my board is on board with this so let's fucking go like i don't know maybe it's just my deep desire for these assholes to fuck around and find out but i'm really curious to see how some of this plays out.

Jay:
[27:22] Because i both under completely understand the government speech angle in a way in as much as it's like we're trying to remind people that librarians are often agents of the state and especially people who have these sort of like caveat library socialism is very cool but also a lot of people who say they're like oh libraries are socialist and if they they couldn't be made today because they're too socialist i'm like no actually i mean they are agents of the state and you can have state socialism i guess but like people forget that libraries are agents of the state a lot of the time and aren't thinking through what that means so part of me is a little refreshed that people are like oh actually but they're using it for evil so i'm like fuck damn it i hate when i'm right and then it's bad which makes me think that like the main virtue of PICO saying that there is a, stop the state from being like, okay, we'll just throw out books we don't like left and right, rather than, like, stopping to think and going, maybe we should, like.

Sadie:
[28:31] Have to leave some stuff in. Because, like, yeah, PICO was, like, unenforceable because, like, the Fifth Circuit says, like, you know, every weeding.

Jay:
[29:11] Library, in which case that's not a First Amendment thing. anyway but no library could have every book so it's like when they started doing the thing with copyright where individual librarians could get sued or whatever you'll remember that when they were making those like fair use decisions especially for like academic librarians or something or instead of like the library itself or the university getting in trouble it was like when there was like fair use or like copyright claims or something like an individual librarian could be liable or y'all remember that i did not hallucinate that i remember this i promise i mean if you're if you're a librarian for you you have qualified immunity because you're no this was a thing i promise was this for like burning cds back in the limewire days no this was like three years ago i have.

Sadie:
[30:04] No memory of this yeah neither do i.

Jay:
[30:06] No i remember kyle talking about it Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's been some crazy things that Kyle is saying, but yeah, I couldn't tell you. But.

Sadie:
[30:16] Brunt of this decision is coming on the heels of... Texas and Florida.

Jay:
[30:23] In particular trying to remove, like having a concerted movement to remove things from libraries, prosecution it's about stopping venues from hosting drag events because they're like well Oh, there's this lewdness law. And so I think PICO is just like, it's not about actually entertaining.

Sadie:
[31:42] Thurgood Marshall's still there. Sandra Day O'Connor. yeah I don't remember which ones are these.

Sadie:
[31:50] Four justices ruled it was unconstitutional.

Sadie:
[33:15] The higher education space there's the stop woke act which is very funny because florida is very funny like that and it woke is.

Jay:
[33:24] In all capitals so i'm sure it stands for something hell hang on i'm gonna i'm gonna look up what's the stop woke act stop wrongs to our kids and employees act.

Sadie:
[33:34] Oh my god let's.

Jay:
[33:39] Fucking go let's just create stupid acronyms for everything librarians love a stupid acronym, redub the individual freedom act but this is this is their their law that's just like anti this or it's our anti-dei law which is it restricts schools and businesses from promoting things so the businesses one is kind of shocking to be honest usually businesses are the wild wild west because they're.

Sadie:
[34:05] Not government the libertarian angle you can't tell me what it's my business like now you're telling people what to do live.

Jay:
[34:12] For your don't baby.

Sadie:
[34:13] Yeah public accommodation law i don't know the wikipedia page for the stock book act is very small.

Jay:
[34:50] Administration? And the lawyer arguing for the state said yes, because in the classroom, the professor's speech is the government's speech, and the government can restrict professors on a content-wide basis and restrict them from.

Sadie:
[35:11] Authoritarianism, but like the, the, the unified executive sort of theory that Trump is very big on. Like there are no independent aspects of government. If you report.

Jay:
[35:32] Lie, but it's like there is no independence or small sovereignty in the same way that you would have in like higher education. Right, because like part of me is like, it's not necessarily incorrect. It's just usually not. It's not a conservative argument usually. Yeah, and it's usually not weaponized like that. This is why the state is bad. But i think it's sort of the distinction between like conservatism of like we know higher education is conservative fascists don't know that yeah they.

Sadie:
[36:04] Think it's out to get them they don't realize that like all of these assholes are like just the reason they.

Jay:
[36:11] To each other and like this is like the jet ski dealership ruling class like you know all the jet ski dealership.

Jay:
[36:17] Dudes are losing money right now because like they're realizing like oh wait this was all tilted in my favor yeah they're starting to do shit they could have done this whole time yeah but i think that's being done in the other way i think it's it's one of the interesting distinctions between like a rightist like movement like a fascist.

Jay:
[36:58] Whole bunch of stuff but otherwise we're going to let you be independent and that's a traditional like Yeah, we're going to let the conservatism of our society.

Jay:
[37:22] About winning against your ideological opponents all the time. That's like a distinction of fascism. Yeah. Anyway, I'm reading Batai's World War II. Yeah, I'm going to Batai mode. Yeah well that's not even like something bataille talks about but i'm just reading like world war ii stuff because every once.

Sadie:
[38:29] I made my existence and my non-existence come together in one it's like alright whatever yeah it's.

Jay:
[38:36] Me too every time I go to Fascination baby, yes.

Jay:
[38:43] Sorry i had to make old man noises i started reading time square red time square blue by sam delaney and that also opens within each aphorism yeah the great epochs of our life are where we win the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us folks i'm just completely unrelated folks haven't read time square red time square blue you should it's good Sam Delaney rules anyway yeah it's strange so the librarian documentary that came out I haven't seen it I got to see a screening of it in Boston it kind of touches on book banning I think it maybe brings up these cases but it definitely brings up like here's the list of books you have to take out that it dealt with both texas and florida librarians it was good it did have a bit of storm center at the beginning oh funny i was like no one knows about i'm like i wonder if they're gonna include storm center i bet these libs won't do that because that movie's about not communism and it sure did and i was like look at that but also there wasn't a single librarian of color in that movie telling on themselves and.

Jay:
[39:56] All the librarians interviewed are like i'm a veteran i'm a pastor's wife i'm a nice white lady interview some like queer teenagers but and um but like that's kind of all the librarians are like i'm a i i could be a conservative too Look, but I'm not.

Jay:
[40:18] I'm just doing my job as a librarian, which is not a political statement at all. So it's like it was an really interesting documentary. And it went over a lot of the politics of book bannings in both Texas and Florida and sort of how those school boards and library boards operate.

Jay:
[40:37] But also, it was very much, I think, trying to pick a certain kind of librarian to showcase, you know, if that makes sense. It's a rhetorical strategy that I don't know actually works because approach of like, there's all these people out here who just want to be appealed to. And it's like, I don't know if that's true. I think if like, I'm thinking a lot about like the attention, I've been listening to a lot of 404 media people talk about how hard it is to deal with the attention economy and why it skews so hard towards reactionary.

Jay:
[41:41] By being approachable, not by being serious, not by being like a position in a position that people are like looking towards with respect. but there's.

Jay:
[41:57] Don't have any control over where it's going because like it's it's always tenuous that kind of like that kind of popularity i also saw someone compare what mom donny because i think mom donny is cool i think he's a kind of a net positive right now but it's also the strategy of that's very common in like union busting of like, oh, we got rid of the bad management. Here's this new good management to pacify you that actually remove that removes attention away from the source of the problem. But he's the yaoi mayor, though. So, yeah. All you New Yorkers to get to read heated rivalry to your heart's content. That was pretty cool. I like the idea of the confluence of municipal things of like, not only are we going to.

Jay:
[42:50] Cold weather thing, but we're also going to say, by the way, while you're stuck at home, here's stuff to do. Yeah, that's a good strategy. here just read this gay pornography why don't you get the the library you know to to be one of the the disaster responses rather.

Jay:
[43:32] Of like there was this broad swath of what's allowed that allowed a lot of things but disallowed others and that was always like in flux like zines and books on Palestine are obviously going to be targeted at different times of course I've got like a few links in here but Like, there were definitely people who were mad, pro-Palestine zines. And it's like, why are these being put into our library? It's like, because it's a zine library. Just to make their zines. There's a type of person who makes zines, typically. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing I've noticed with building a zine collection is like, you know, there's just like a hugely.

Jay:
[44:34] At a time. But that adds up if I'm buying it myself. I need the, I need a budget. Also what i've been learning recently is like depending on your how you do like appropriation of funds for collection development like depending on how you buy your zines like if you buy them off etsy or something like if you're buying from a distro you can kind of like have the vendor relationship with the distro but if you're off etsy what if you have to strike up that like vendor relationship connection thing like you would for fucking ingram or something but you is every single fucking zine stir you buy from individually it's annoying i'm saying yeah i mean that's why it's sort of like chaotic, For me, it's easy because there's like a pedagogical, a problem. I feel like it's the same for you. You're just buying whatever is interesting. Yeah, I mean, we do have a team who does collection development for zines. And we do make decisions. We don't necessarily always look at subjects, but we'll pick a distro to buy from. And then each of us will pick so many titles based on what we think is cool. But it's still...

Jay:
[46:00] Because again, how do you react to trends? I'm not going to say where I work, but yeah, at scale, how do you react to trends? The sort of like buy for your community gets complicated the bigger that, because communities are not monolith at any size. But once you get to bigger and bigger sizes, it's like kind of incomprehensible.

Jay:
[46:22] Yeah. I wrote a blog post about weeding one time when I was in grad school. What'd you say? I was going through my inherent contradiction, which I still seem to not be able to work through. I also interviewed Dr. Knox for it. I talked about weeding and censorship because I had been volunteering in the University of Illinois' LGBTQ Resource Center, which had its own little library. And we noticed that there was a copy of the transsexual menace in it are either of you familiar with what the transsexual menace is so my reading list don't it's bad it's the turf book basically um that's the one that argued that trans lesbians are basically colonizing cis lesbians and also argues heavily for like the medical view of transsexualism in a like these people have a disease kind of way this comes out of the 90s i believe like at the height of political lesbianism or like coming out of that but also when like trans feminism is starting to get.

Jay:
[47:38] More attention in sort of radical feminist circles because like people like to shit on second wave and i would like to remind everybody that we would not have a lot of like crucial like black feminist thought and marxist feminist thought and like third world feminist thought without the fucking second wave like it is not an inherently transphobic school of thought uh And people need to learn their fucking history. I'll sit my ass down now. But The Transsexual Menace comes out of this. And it's just bad. It's awful.

Jay:
[48:17] What a great title. I am a transsexual menace. Thank you very much. But still. And I noticed we had a copy of it. And we were all like, why is this here? This doesn't feel like it fits this collection. however our first reaction was ah throw it away burn it it's an evil book bad which it is but i like had the like looking at myself having that reaction to it not as a person but as a professional and then like obviously we were going to remove it from the collection it did not belong in that collection but what does it look like to remove it from that collection and why and like i was like having an existential crisis about this like are we getting rid of this just because we think it's transphobic garbage and we think it's bad like is that reason enough to remove it from a queer collection there are queer people who hold those transphobic views right they're they suck but they're there and i made sure that the university itself had a copy i like checked to the catalog. I was like, we are at an R1 research institution.

Jay:
[49:26] For whatever reason people should have access to this book and in fact the person who was like the head of that research center was doing writing like research at the time arguing against that book and stuff she was like no it's important that we have that in the cult at the university like so that we can argue against it and i was like oh and we still took it out of that collection because that wasn't part of the university library that was just that resource centers library and so we're like the one the university has a copy of this that people can check out interlibrary loan exists but also the scope of this collection is not an academic research focus it is a support focus like the focus of the collection was different than an academic libraries and so i like struggled through all of that just to get rid of a fucking book i didn't like this was even before i realized i was trans but like i wrote a blog ally yeah i wrote about this for i was yeah i was um i think it was for like the acrl like new like the ala new members roundtable or something and i was one of the bloggers for it so i wrote that blog post and i also interviewed emily knox for for that for that i yeah i would say like it's easier if it's.

Jay:
[50:52] Like a recognizable book to be like oh yeah keep it because like i'm weeding right now like a lot of stuff and it's like you.

Jay:
[51:03] About like it was a homosexual like reference book from 2001 oh yeah i just kept it because it was funny i'm sure there's like offensive stuff in it but like it had like a like under transsexual.

Sadie:
[51:20] Term that might supersede transsexual because it was a definition of pansexual that's like never been used which was like it's it's it was pansexual as.

Jay:
[51:29] Gender identity it's basically the way we would use queer but yeah like gender fluid or something yeah but it's like what if queer was a gender identity and a sexuality identity but.

Sadie:
[51:45] Pansexual was just like any non-conforming sexuality or gender identity it was very cool but then i also like was pulling a book that was just like it was like you know remediation.

Jay:
[51:56] Effects for mental retardation i'm like yeah it's probably at date i don't think i need to keep it there's people doing research on the history of like the history of science shit you know yeah and again like this is an argument i'm constantly having with like my supervisor she's like well.

Sadie:
[52:57] Like God and man at Yale, which is definitely out of date and also sucks. But like, that's a well-known book. But it complains that the chaplains at Yale are too liberal, I get a book that's like, here's why Catholicism made Christianity wrong for 1,500 years until Martin Luther came along and why Catholics are trying to take over.

Sadie:
[54:02] What but that's way beyond the scope of realistically what our library is expected to do. Like we're the last one to have it. Well, and you can always repurchase it too. Like that's part of the cycle, right? Like we don't think that this is relevant. It's no longer, you know, no longer relevant. We get rid of it. Five years later, it becomes a popular topic and you have to buy newer updated materials for that topic, right? So it's, I don't know. I don't like that, but what if we need an argument? Because that feeds into the whole libraries are just book repositories which you know we all know is not actually correct but.

Jay:
[54:38] Maybe if we had an actual national library that served as like a repository so many people think that's the library.

Sadie:
[54:45] Of congress though.

Jay:
[54:46] It's not it's.

Sadie:
[54:48] Not it's the library of congress anyway.

Jay:
[54:51] Right i mean they are technically our copyright library but they don't even get every i mean get it they They can't send like a request for stuff, though, to you. Yeah. And be like, give us this. And I had that happen to like some people who were running a journal.

Sadie:
[55:05] And they were like, what do we do? I'm like, I don't know, just ignore it. They don't have cops. They can't send anyone to come get you. The copyright cops are going to come for you.

Jay:
[55:14] Hell yeah.

Sadie:
[55:15] Now that's government speech. Yeah. I mean, the day you find out like the Library of Congress has a police force is the day you're going to jail. Because like something real bad is that. But when you find out a police force exists that you didn't know existed before, like you're going to jail. It's like it's like if the U.S. Postal Inspector Police comes to your door, like you're fucked. 99% chance you are.

Jay:
[55:35] Going to jail. Wait, they have a do they have a police force? Yeah. And they have like a 95% conviction, right? Like if they come for you, you do have fucked up. I mean, because I know that there was like the like, was it like shootings or suicide bombs or something that postal workers used to do? It doesn't have to do that, does it?

Sadie:
[55:54] No, it's like postal inspectors. Yeah.

Jay:
[55:57] Oh, I thought it was like, are you sending drugs in the mail? Is that what happened? Doing financial crimes or...

Sadie:
[56:04] Fraud.

Jay:
[56:04] And then the postal workers come after you?

Sadie:
[56:07] Yeah. The postal police, yeah.

Jay:
[56:08] For doing fraud? Some kind of crime. With your mail? Yeah, mail crimes.

Sadie:
[56:14] Aren't you familiar with male crimes?

Jay:
[56:15] Male crimes is the same fucking cadence and shape as I rotate it in my head as like car pranks from fucking Righteous Gemstones. Just doing some car pranks. Just doing some male crimes.

Sadie:
[56:29] I gotta look this up though because my... My mom was a postal worker during that time that all of the postal worker jokes were happening because of a couple of shootings. So now I'm like.

Jay:
[56:41] Of the stuff, yeah.

Sadie:
[56:42] Yeah. Like, what would have happened? Like, I never saw a male cop. Did they exist? Anyways, I'm imagining now. Yeah. No, they're postal police.

Jay:
[56:52] I'm choosing to believe that the cops in Disco Elysium are male cops. They're postal cops. I'm going to make that choice in my head.

Sadie:
[57:00] It supports and protects the United States Postal Service, its employees, infrastructure, and customers by enforcing laws that defend the United States mail system from illegal and dangerous use. Covers any crimes that may adversely affect or fraudulently use the United States mail. So yeah, mail crimes. Yeah, mail theft, mail fraud.

Jay:
[57:20] And prohibited mailings. Mail crimes. Yeah, if they show up at your door, you're fucked. Don't worry, daddy, just doing some mail crimes.

Sadie:
[57:27] Drug trafficking included. Yeah. They will get you they're like the Japanese national police like if they show up at your door you're going to prison 100% conviction rate now.

Jay:
[57:40] That I didn't know yeah because like Japan just like doesn't prosecute crimes.

Sadie:
[57:44] A lot but when they do they're like they always get you they're real fucking serious about it.

Jay:
[57:49] They only do it when they're sure, But anyway, happy five years, you two.

Sadie:
[57:55] Yeah. Holy shit.

Jay:
[57:57] Yeah. Wow. Look at us. Yep. So we've got a bunch of episodes lined up and we've got guests lined up.

Jay:
[58:26] Government employee and you are in this political sphere, whether or not you like it or not. And even if you're not technically a government employee, think about your role as a librarian in whatever kind of library you are as an agent of social reproduction, as kind of a state or institutional function. Right. Like when we say like, oh, we're agents of the state, like I don't always literally mean that. But like, think about how you reinforce the institution and its power for which you work. Right. Like, and I mean, yeah, it is a type of social reproductive labor. Yeah it is nice not being a state employee right now though because like you don't just wake up one morning and like another like another website is just like illegal for you to use, there were like government employees can't have tiktok accounts so like you can't use tiktok if you're like a library so and like tiktok wouldn't work on campus or whatever and like deep seek wouldn't work.

Sadie:
[59:46] Institution, like there's always going to be some aspect of like, well, you get government funds, which is the thing I find interesting about like you were talking about that in your public.

Jay:
[59:55] Library because they're like nonprofits. But they still do get funds from the city. They get funds from the city. And so it's like, again, like who's the government speech there? They get less than half of a percent of the budget.

Sadie:
[1:00:07] Yeah. Damn.

Jay:
[1:00:08] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I saw something recently. We have to get the folks on to talk about that. They sent me an email. But so if they're listening, hi, I saw your email. I'll get to it. We'll have you on. I don't remember which episode. The NYC plan, folks. Okay. Yeah. That's one you're working on. It's not my cue.

Jay:
[1:00:31] Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, happy 2026, everyone. We're back. We're doing it. We got lots lined up. Justin was just visiting a lot. Yeah.

Sadie:
[1:00:41] I was having organs removed.

Jay:
[1:00:45] Yay how you doing sadie doing good yeah.

Sadie:
[1:00:48] Good yeah everyone's getting stuff taken out and putting in everyone's just being cyborg.

Jay:
[1:00:53] Hell yeah hell.

Sadie:
[1:00:54] Yeah it happens a lot more in our friend groups than i think the national average that tracks.

Jay:
[1:00:59] Oh yeah i got my cool like corpse nose last year that was cool that yeah it's been so long since we recorded i forget like what's happened since then. I was like, no, that was we've recorded since then. Yeah, that was April. No, June when I got my corpse nose. April was getting fixed. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What? Do I believe.

Sadie:
[1:01:23] That in too? What?

Jay:
[1:01:25] Getting fixed. Yeah.

Sadie:
[1:01:28] Okay.

Jay:
[1:01:28] That's how I refer to it. I got fixed. All right. Good night.