148 - Censorship is a Drag feat. Jason and Jordan

Sadie:
[0:28] I'm Justin, I'm a free agent and my pronouns are he and they. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they, them.

Jay:
[0:37] I'm Jay. I'm a cataloging librarian, and my pronouns are he, him. And we have guests. Would you like.

Jason:
[0:43] To introduce yourselves? My name is Jason. My pronouns are he, him, and I'm an academic librarian in public services.

Jordan:
[0:52] I'm Jordan. My pronouns are he, him, and I'm a director of library services. Thank you all right director of library services is that like access services or you're the full director of the whole thing director the whole shebang yeah right i'm i'm just really keen on job titles right now because i'm doing all this job hunting so everything.

Jason:
[1:13] Comes up and it's like oh you're the director slash ceo of this job it's like okay well which is it throws me off certainly that job did not have a salary commensurate.

Jason:
[1:34] Would you tell me a little bit about yourself and why you decide to be an editor for this book? Let's see. I'm a small town boy from Alabama that finished his master's in history and knew that I didn't want to go on to get my PhD. So I got kind of pointed in the direction of library school. I really enjoyed the research and the idea of helping others with their research. So I've kind of bounced around a few places over the years. Landed here about three years ago. Had a career, you know, active in the LGBTQ community, both professionally and And personally, both Jordan and I served together on the board of Inequality Center. That was some fun times. For me, this book was kind of, it was cathartic after several experiences that Jordan and I shared together when we were working together at our previous university or my previous university. And one thing that kind of kept with me was the thought that someday this will be useful to you. And then we just kind of reached this moment of critical mass with all the things going on, that it seemed like a moment right to come out with a book to kind of talk about the experiences we had. And I'll just kind of stop there and let Jordan kind of catch up. And then we'll talk a little bit more about the origins of the book.

Jordan:
[2:58] Yeah, I guess my story is kind of similar to Jason's. I've been in libraries since I was 16, so it's been a minute. And honestly, I think part of my reason for being in libraries, it's kind of the common story. I like helping people, etc. But I also, from my youngest years, I've hated censorship. I can't with it.

Jordan:
[3:17] I know that's not silly, but there's a lot to say. I've edited a book about it. I kind of want to gather my thoughts here. I guess my interest in fighting censorship didn't directly connect to my interest in libraries and my professional work until, like Jason has just hinted at, we had these shared professional experiences at Jason's previous job and at my current workplace where censorship did come into play. And then in the last couple of years, you know, moms, I keep doing this Freudian slip, Moms Against Liberty. I'll do the right thing, call it Moms for Liberty. Started doing their thing. And I think that might have been a little bit of the catalyst for our deciding to edit this book was seeing that, yeah, we've had these experiences and it's going on at an institutional level of other places. And let's gather some thoughts around it. Yeah, we did a whole episode about Moms Against Liberty. And I'm going to take that now because I think it's.

Jason:
[4:35] To Emily Drabinsky's book series. So why don't you tell us how the books got started? So I had a contribution in an earlier book in that series, Out Behind the Desk. So that was kind of an end that, you know, oh, let's start here. And so Jordan and I, our original idea was we wanted to do this book about academic libraries, instances of censorship of LGBTQ materials and services and academic libraries, because there's not a lot of scholarship out there about it. And really, the most thorough treatment of it came from Carmichael's work in the 90s. And there hasn't really been much since then in terms of academic libraries. So that was our initial thought. We did our call for proposals and had just such a tremendous response to that from school librarians, public librarians, archivists, that we decided to expand the scope of the book to just cover libraries in general because there was so much there that could be said and that needed to be said. Jordan?

Jordan:
[5:45] I think that's about right. Yeah, we began with this idea that we would be, you know, working in new territory if we were targeting academic libraries specifically. And then it became very clear as we began, you know, doing a lit review. And kind of, I think, honestly, as submissions started rolling in, in response to our initial CFP, that this was going to be a much more comprehensive project, that it was going to incorporate lots of different kinds of libraries and different kinds of censorship, honestly, because I think one concept that we get at is there are various ways to censor things. So yeah, it was maybe a little bit of mission creep at the outset, but I think that it ended up going in a more thorough direction, I hope.

Jason:
[6:27] One thing that that was important is we wanted to have kind of this toolkit component to each of the chapters. You know, we didn't just want to tell stories. We wanted people to be able to have kind of something to take away from it. Like, how can I use this in my situation? So that's something that I'm hopeful will be helpful in this present moment. Another important thing, and we had to kind of go separate from some great contributions we got along the way, is that we wanted these chapters to be accessible to as many people as possible. And I think some of our colleagues, particularly those in academic librarianship, have kind of this academic voice, if you will, when they're writing, that is not very clear or understandable to people that don't read and speak in that academic voice. And so we had some contributions that were just kind of really up there in the ether, and we tried to maybe tone it down a little bit. And ultimately, we just had to kind of part ways. But it was important to us that we wanted this book to be accessible to everyone. And so that's something else that I want to kind of plug in for.

Sadie:
[7:40] And when did the final draft come in?

Jay:
[7:43] Like what time of year? Like when did the book stop updating, basically?

Jordan:
[7:48] Oh, gosh.

Jason:
[7:48] We got the final chapters in December of 23.

Jordan:
[7:55] 23, yeah. And then there was a full year of basically our final edits to the chapters and back and forth to the publisher before it went to press.

Jason:
[8:05] Litwin and Library Juice Press, they were also impacted by Hurricane Helene. I think a lot of their operations are based out of Asheville, North Carolina. So that also kind of slowed down the publication process.

Sadie:
[8:18] And I'm not actually entirely certain that we have said the name of the book yet so far.

Jay:
[8:25] We're so good at this.

Sadie:
[8:26] We're so good at this. So yeah, why don't you give us the bare bones of the metadata of the book, if you will?

Jason:
[8:33] Well, as you can see from the front cover, the title of the book is Censorship is a Drag, LGBTQ Materials and Programming Under Siege in Libraries. And for folks at home that can't see, I'm holding up a copy of the book. And the cover itself has the title, has Jordan and I as co-editors, but it's been marked out with a black marker. And that was a very deliberate choice that we and the publisher made as part of this statement. Great. Yeah, thank you for the description. I found out recently that we have a deaf listener.

Jay:
[9:06] So that'll really help if we do more description of any visual stuff. It reminds me of those banned book talks. Yeah, you can get. Okay so since this this book kind of wrapped before the election obviously we're a little behind and um i mean obviously all the chapters are very prescient but didn't really know like the flooding of issues that we were going to be dealing with on all different sorts of levels although most of them guessed pretty correctly i would say i think there is um i would definitely love to see like a volume two where people update you know based on what happens during.

Jason:
[9:48] The next year because you know a lot's changing very quickly you know it's funny that you point that out this is a conversation jordan and i have had together and with our series editor emily drubinsky whom i can't say enough good things about she's good people that when when we sent the manuscript to the publisher in march of 24 and then kind of through the year jordan and i had kind of the feeling that you know maybe maybe as a country maybe maybe we were about to turn a corner on things you know maybe this was just going to be kind of an inflection point and and this would just be kind of a book of history documenting what happened and and sadly that was not the case so.

Jordan:
[10:33] Like and actually there's something in i think it's our introduction chapter? Yeah, that I wanted to point to. And this is a passage that I think I wrote. While we've seen encouraging signs that the oppressive measures of the past several years are facing real pushback and even exhaustion within the ranks, as one mom for liberty noted in early 2024, I guess there wasn't as much willingness to do the work that's required to propel the movement forward. There's no reason this can't happen again. So like, I think we're definitely riding kind of under the assumption that, you know, like the election wouldn't fix everything. Obviously, elections don't fix everything. But under the idea that maybe, be, you know, this sort of, you know, moms for liberty movement and kind of, you know, the tensions and the pressures that we were discussing in our book had maybe, you know, reached their highest point and then were beginning to burn themselves out. And then everything else started happening. And we've had the developments, you know, at this like whiplash speed just in the past couple of months. So we did definitely kind of go from the sense of the book being not just a historical document, but in part a historical document to being, I optimistically think kind of a, you know, part of a continuing conversation that we don't want to continue because it means censorship is still ongoing, but it's going on whether we like it or not. Yeah.

Jay:
[11:43] It's funny you mention the burnout of these movements. So one thing we actually did when we were talking, it would have been 2022.

Jason:
[11:51] We actually brought on a comedian to talk about sort of right-wing engagement on the.

Jay:
[12:17] Changed everyone's talking points immediately. And so one thing that we were talking about was, you know, who is going to continue doing the day-to-day work of this? Because you can have rabble-rousers who are big people, like Libs of TikTok, 5,000 across the country by himself. We still are going to have that. Who's going to, you know, the Baptist churches or particularly Southern Baptists. I'm not trying to paint all Baptists with the same brush, but what I said at the time, of how it's regained traction through the election of Trump. And it's kind of amazing to me how much the momentum has installed on attacks on libraries, because, the week, they'll move on to the next target. But they're really impressively hitting on every target and keeping up the momentum just through the sheer force of maintaining, you know.

Jason:
[13:28] Months, but they are really keeping their targets in sight. And it's unfortunate. It we started out the book with a chapter on stoicastic terrorism written by bren nilson and man a chapter like i went back and re-read it again today and it just really knocks it out of the park just kind of setting up this intellectual framework of how and why this is going on you know kind of this three-legged stool you're having the pundit having the medium in this case being the internet and then having the activity and it just you know it feels like the internet for all it's good, has unleashed these forces that allow that fire to continue to burn. Yeah. Even then, without, you know, it's really kind of interesting how.

Jay:
[14:14] Like, Moms Against Celebrity is, like, still doing the day-to-day work. You know, I really thought this is just going to go to the Facebook grandmas, and they'll be the ones writing the letters and stuff, but it's not going to be, you know, essentially an extension of the Ron DeSantis campaign. But that's not true. It's kept up, and that's really not something I expected. Yeah, and even beyond just censorship of queer materials, with the rise of the on-campus protests and encampments against the genocide in Palestine.

Jay:
[14:48] You're seeing now library administrators censoring their employees. There was so recently there was a harvard employee fired for tearing down one of those like free the hostage posters and he was wearing his badge at the time and so that's how they knew it was him and they fired him he was a cataloging librarian at harvard that one of the heads of or whoever's like high like their university librarian or whatever also was like banning library employees from like entering the building when they were supporting students and faculties like silent like protests in the library so it's even beyond just the materials now it's like any sort of dissent of speech if the library doesn't agree with it because apparently that's not what libraries are for now that's news to me but so it's even just beyond materials like employees are being censored or just straight up fired now so.

Jordan:
[15:48] Honestly like that connect i mean there's a there's an experience that i think it's.

Jay:
[15:52] Jason l.

Jordan:
[15:53] But that we recount in the book about i mean jason the the incident.

Jay:
[15:57] Which one yeah which one um relatable yeah.

Jordan:
[16:03] A good librarian does not you know oh.

Jason:
[16:05] Dear god yeah so that anecdote, So that's really kind of at the root of this book, is that inspired this book. These things will be useful for you later. to just briefly summarize we had a new librarian start guess in like 2015 who wanted to to start doing a banned books display and so i did a search in our catalog and they say the collection wasn't great because we just transitioned not long before from a community college to a four-year university and had largely relied on donations from the state library or from the community so the collection wasn't great so of course we don't have a lot of the banned books so i used some retrospective collection development funds from a project i got approval for to purchase every title available.

Jason:
[16:56] On amazon because that was the book jobber we were using at the time all the banned books from the banned books list including the joy of gay sex which became kind of the cause of great Fuhrer and the library for several years. One of the library employees objected to adding the book to the collection, brought the book to a meeting. And we went through this whole rigmarole of, you know, explaining why this book is being added. We got faculty to weigh in on the value of this book in our collection and the staff member just continued to refuse to accept it. And one day in a moment of frustration, the library director at the time, not Jordan, Jordan's wonderful, I was a library director at the time, came into my office and just simply said that a good librarian does not do anything to jeopardize their library or the place of their paycheck. I kind of took that as a veiled threat. And that was kind of the seed for that particular chapter. Academic.

Jay:
[18:01] Libraries have so much porn in them though like have they not heard of like a women's studies department like of the libraries that have porn it's usually academic libraries like this is not new this is not controversial like and.

Jason:
[18:16] What's really funny is joy of sex in the collection yeah.

Jordan:
[18:19] Of course and like i don't like i'm i'm a movie guy and i donate like old dvds of mine to the library that have absolutely filthy stuff in them and i know and like the staff member never objected to that stuff because apparently she wasn't watching the movies but she was able to you know go through this one-off book and find it has graphic illustrations but they're nothing more graphic than you would find in you know the heterosexual counterpart to the book um yeah and i mean it's it's an acknowledged classic you know it's whether she likes it or not it's a classic so but beyond.

Jason:
[18:53] That you had ordered a book that she added to the collection without question tulsa i.

Jordan:
[18:58] Ordered yeah tulsa by larry clark and like i'm sorry that book is every bit as graphic as anything in the edmund white book but maybe she liked me better i don't know.

Jason:
[19:06] I i have what i like to call a resting beer face um that has won me few friends over the years well.

Sadie:
[19:20] It depends depends.

Jason:
[19:21] Where you are at the time but sadie.

Jay:
[19:26] Just shot me.

Jason:
[19:26] Such a look, um i've lost my oh but i remember in the story uh you were i believe it was you who jason who was ordering books and the person was not ordering them yeah we talk about that in our building collection development policy chapter so as i mentioned we were using amazon as our jobber so what we would do is we would send amazon links to a librarian in the library who was responsible for actually purchasing them and and doing all the technical processing to add them to the collection so i faithfully sent um i think one year like i let me back up we were doing this retrospective collection development project i got approval for so each year i would pick an underserved community to buy books for so one year african americans one year native americans and so on and so the year came around i did start out with the gays because that would just be a little too on the nose but you know i started i you know one year i ordered or requested a whole slew of titles from the Stonewall Book Awards and the Lando Awards, so award-winning titles.

Jason:
[20:44] And set them faithfully on, thinking that these books were being ordered for the collection. And it was only later, when we were putting together a book display for Pride Month, that I realized that actually know the books were never ordered and this was the single person just sort of vetoing it on their own with and and sometimes going to the director to be yeah i i think and this was kind of before the whole rigmarole about the joy of gay sex because again i bought that for that band books week project but i i don't know if it was the director that tacitly said no or if it was just this librarian exercising their prerogative. But in either case, the books were not ordered.

Sadie:
[21:30] And something that I really like how the stochastic terrorism and stochastic actions chapter is so.

Jason:
[21:38] High up in the book, early in the book, because I think it pulls together a.

Jason:
[21:42] Lot of the chapters by explaining how this whole thing is connected.

Jordan:
[23:14] Giving everyone the opportunity to be nasty to queer people. And there's also, I think, a component where people are almost forced to internalize this stuff. So it goes back to the idea of community standards, right? If you're working within these sort of widely accepted, or what somebody says is widely accepted parameters, community standards, eventually you're going to internalize that as part of your practice. And it's almost like this panopticon thing where you end up you know with this perception that oh this some force outside of me is going to attack me if i don't adhere to this and so you don't end up taking these risks right like jason did you after these events happened like did you get more you know outgoing with your lgbtq oriented purchasing or did you kind of keep your head down you know.

Jason:
[24:01] Uh i absolutely did not like i i i remember when i was like heading out the door i was really tempted to buy another copy of the joy of gay sex because the copy that we bought just disappeared of course it was never having a lot of fun yeah yeah it as an aside the employee that challenged adding that book allegedly was not homophobic because they have a gay cousin that they're very fond of of course so maybe they they gave it to their their cousin um.

Jay:
[24:39] I think they're the gay cousin.

Jason:
[24:45] So, it has had a chilling effect for sure. Like when I, I left, I left the job. I moved on. I was content to stay there for the rest of my career. I still miss that community. I had like a community of scholars that we have a group chat that is active every single day. I miss working with those people. But I left and I talk about this and in one of our other book chapters, look at the title list or no, I've got it in our little sheet here.

Sadie:
[25:20] Is it at what cost?

Jason:
[25:22] Yes, at what cost? I talk about this with queer battle fatigue, that that's the result of not even just being an advocate, being a gay person in a situation where you're being asked to explain something, being asked to defend something, it takes a toll. But when you are an advocate, you know, buying books, doing programming, and you experience this backlash, you know, it takes a professional and personal toll. You know, for three years, I had to go on anti-anxiety medications because of everything, like just the culmination of it all. And this was even before the pandemic. So it takes a toll. And I, I've kind of recalibrated my scholarship, my service since then, you know, I reached out to, well, when we had it here in Florida, um, reached out to the sponsor, oh gosh, the, the safe zone training on campus. Cause I was, I used to be a safe zone trainer and I, you know, I was interested in doing that here and, you know, kind of getting involved. But I said, I do not want to be the face person. You know, I'm happy to work behind the scenes. I don't want to be the face person. I had, you know, these bad experiences before and I'm happy to be a worker bee, but please don't put me up front.

Jason:
[26:46] Yeah. Jordan, you mentioned community standards.

Jordan:
[27:06] To say in terms of this anti-queer movement? I think it, well, I mean, I guess for one thing, it kind of brings us to this sinister incident for the drag story time that we had, where I think community standards also came into play as a concept. So basically, I want to say that it was the end of 2018. We had the idea that we should do a drag story time in our academic library, that this would be a fun kind of offbeat event for finals. It would be a stress buster, and it would be definitely a way of getting attention. It drew the wrong kind of attention it got the attention of a state legislature who effectively said i think this are not the kinds of events that we should be supporting certainly not with taxpayer money so and really jason you should be you and this is more straight for you because i think you ended up kind of taking the administrative brunt of this didn't you.

Jason:
[27:56] I you know and i wasn't even the one that initially organized the event wasn't even my idea or on my radar but i was the sponsor of the student group pride at uafs at the time so you know we had the idea of hey let's get the student group to sponsor this and we'll just house it in the library and and that kind of put me front and center i remember there was you know everything was fine we our library director at the time had gotten approval from her immediate supervisor everything seemed fine and then And, you know, when the state legislator, who ironically or not so ironically, is now on the state library board.

Jason:
[28:38] Got wind of it and all these things started blowing up and then you know the university was getting pressure from the local community and from alumni you know at that point things started to hit the fan and i had both the provost and the associate provost come over to my office i had never seen either of them in the library before much less in my office and that was really kind of daunting to have both of them sit down and you know go over the particulars of this event with me and we talk about this in some detail particularly in our toolkit of if you're gonna do it this is how you should do it and part of the issue was is that we had included the library's logo on the flyer and so you know the legislator had really latched on to that and said that the university was endorsing this event because the library logo was on the flyer and so ultimately you know the decision was made to just take the logo off the flyer and everything would go forward But it was a real stressful time.

Jordan:
[29:37] But I also think going back to the ADF community standards, that was sort of the cliche that came into play a little bit. And I don't remember whether that phrase was actually articulated in the whole thing. Certainly the concept was. But it wasn't the community getting upset. It was one or two people in the community maybe getting a few of their online followers stirred up about the whole thing. But the community's reaction really, it seemed positive to me. People did not seem to take the event. It wasn't like, you know, like small town rises up to oppress, you know, the, you know, the gays within. It was really, you know, this agreeable event is happening. People who want to show up are going to show up. Those who don't will avoid it. But it ended up, I think the opposition kind of painted themselves as being, you know, the voice of the community in this whole thing. And I think that's what happens a lot of time with community standards. Somebody who's vehemently against something will represent themselves as being, you know, the authority on it. They are the ones who speak for the community, whereas the gays or the minorities, whatever, are not, you know, by dint of being minorities, they cannot speak for the community. That's the dynamic that I think was in play in this event. I think that's the dynamic that's in play so much in so many of these situations where, the community really a minority within the community is there to the press materials programming whatever.

Jason:
[30:48] It ended up being a really lovely event and a news crew had come to film it and they actually packed up and left early because it was so anticlimactic you know in the in the height of all the drama that led up to i mean with all the drama you would have thought a drag queen was planning it but.

Jay:
[31:05] Um and like i think a mistake that people make when these kinds of things happen is to like actually take the argument as valid like oh how dare they have a drag queen around the children don't that's why would why do the drag queens only go to the children and not the like elderly and stuff it's because they're all pedophiles and we go no no we're not and it's like that's that's actually not the way that you tackle this because then you're like giving their argument any validity at all and that's just not what we should be doing by like having this like Like, oh, we're squeaky clean, like sexless figures. Like, we're okay to be in your community. It's like, no. Like, well, that's bullshit.

Sadie:
[31:52] Something kind of similar happened at one of my former library systems where they organized a drag story hour for the first time. And the area was very, very rural, but surprisingly democratic in the places where there were actually people. And the library that was holding the event was the biggest city in the area and they kind of did that where people were all up on the facebook being like well blah blah blah why is this you know why is this pervert reading to our children etc etc and for some reason the idea that somebody got was to go okay but she's a local school teacher to be like this is this is something that, you know, she's, you know, this is just something she does on this, but this is like, she has the, you know, she has the qualifications to be doing this just as well as one of our like children's librarians kind of thing. What's the thought process? But then as soon as they were like, well, no, she's a local school teacher, like nothing about this is going to be inappropriate. The first thing that got asked was what school does she teach at? Right. Which then is just escalates it immediately.

Jay:
[33:07] Why is she a schoolteacher? She wants to be around the children.

Sadie:
[33:12] At that point, the PR fucking shut down. Like they thankfully just shut down that line of questioning whatsoever. And we're just like, we're we're not talking. We're not answering any more questions about this. We are going ahead with the event as scheduled, you know, not answering any more questions about this. If you want to come, come if you don't. And it went off without a hitch because it was like three people. Right. Who probably didn't even live in that part of the county. They probably lived like an hour and a half away or whatever. But like that, I cannot imagine being that person being like, I'm going to spend my time doing this thing for my community and representing my community only to have to be like, well, where is your job at? Right like that's fucking terrifying even if ultimately the event goes perfectly smoothly like you said jason it's still like it's still it's queer battle fatigue that's probably the best like way i can that's such a good term for it but yeah the don't don't pretend like their arguments are valid is really the thing and yeah we.

Jason:
[34:17] Are are circling around it's perfect because You know, just don't accept the premise.

Sadie:
[34:23] Yep.

Jason:
[34:24] And and unfortunately, you know, the university being a public institution, they had to accept the premise because one of the people throwing dust up in the air about it in the legislature was chair of the committee responsible for the university's state funding. But, you know, to their credit, and I really, you know, if anyone from there hears this podcast, I do want to give credit. They did continue with the event. You know, we did get asked a ton of questions afterwards. You know, how is this event funded? Was any public funds used for the event? That God none were, or I'm sure someone would have gotten fired. So all of it had either come from the local nonprofit, the quality center, or from the student group. Yeah. Yeah, it's on the topic of community standards.

Jay:
[35:12] I there's another way we can approach it, which is when someone is saying that they speak for the community. I think also a lot of people, particularly like liberal minded people, think less of their community. But you shouldn't think that in yourself either. I think you should kind of assume the best. These are just really loud, annoying people.

Jason:
[35:36] Um it puts people on the defensive and what i one thing i was thinking of was years.

Sadie:
[35:59] Alabamans who are queer in alabama like it's about them you know you can't how could it get more about alabamans right yeah and so exactly saying like we're having a drag story hour in our.

Jason:
[36:22] Think circumvent a lot of the argument by saying this is all run locally this is your community and it's we touch on that and the collection development chapter because, you know, like you were saying, this university is located in kind of a rural area. It's the biggest town in that part of the state. And so, you know, the library is the only place that some of these people are going to find these books, the only place they're going to see themselves represented. Otherwise, you know, we had, I think, one gay bar in town and that was it. We had our, you know, quality center. We were small but mighty. And so it's so important to have these materials, to have these programming, because we're part of the community. You know, community standards were part of the community. That's why we also were collecting materials about the Hispanic community, because that part of Arkansas has a huge Hispanic population. That's why we got books about the Native American community, because we're next door to the Choctaw Reservation. And I think that needs to be the angle that we push back with, is that if you want to talk about community standards, we are part of the community. Yeah, I think people are hesitant to believe that because they want.

Jay:
[37:41] Why a lot of this centers around parents and children, because there's this sort of fear that a lot of people have that their children are going to go off and do something that they don't quite understand. But that, experience is so curtailed as a child. Like when we talked about the rights of children to read and know things, you know, you can say there's like.

Jason:
[38:14] This is an extreme minority in our community, but you don't know. Yeah.

Jay:
[38:19] Even if there's only one person, that person exists, you know.

Jordan:
[38:24] Like during our time in this area where I'm still there and Jason has since left, but we we've known multiple people who, you know, like married a woman young and then came out later in life. Like that's, that's a story that is common here because people don't have, they don't have access to this crucial aspect of their identities. And I'm not going to say that having these materials and libraries to represent the entire community would necessarily be the cure all for that, but it wouldn't be a problem. It would help at the very least, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we've done tons of episodes where we've said, you know, how did you find information about being.

Jason:
[39:01] Also, I just saw a book at the library. You'd be surprised how often the library comes up. That was the case for me when I was kind of coming of age, finding a book in the library. I still remember that moment, a light came on and I realized that I'm not a freak, that there's not something wrong with me. And I don't think the people screaming about community standards appreciate that, how lonely and scary it can be to grow up as a queer person, or at least, you know, when I was growing up.

Jordan:
[39:33] Or maybe they do to some degree. Oh, go on. Yeah. And why it takes them having like a gay child to.

Jason:
[39:43] But they can't imagine beforehand what that reality would actually feel like.

Jay:
[39:48] It can also be important to be a little bit i don't know if prefigurative is the right word but like even if you don't know if there are queer people in your community which there are but even if they're say there weren't is it so horrible to have books about queer people in your collection even if they're not quote in your community like the books what's in a library and who's in a community doesn't have to map like one-to-one like there might one day be queer people. People might want to learn about queer people. Like, queer people are just cool and we should know about them. I don't know. Like, this whole thing that a library's collections have to perfectly map onto the community members, I think sometimes gets us into problems like this.

Jordan:
[40:31] And that's kind of what collection development is about, right? It's about foreseeing the needs of your community before they're explicitly articulated to you. You know, like, that's a good job of collection development. Yeah, and it's why it starts at the school libraries.

Jason:
[40:45] Because that has a.

Jay:
[40:47] I'm missing the word. But you have, when you learn things in public school, you are forced to learn them and forced to learn about them. In a public library, you're sort of free to learn about it. There's a coercion aspect to public.

Jason:
[41:33] Unforced force of being interested in something or a better argument. When you're talking about queer battle.

Jay:
[41:41] Fatigue i also wanted to talk about like creating division why are you creating division in your community when you talk about, focal point of it though because we bring attention to it, but we're not starting these things. And I think maybe people can feel a little, I don't know if it will help with the battle fatigue, but realizing that you are going to be seen itself rather than a person who's just trying to explain the conflict to other people. Sarah Ahmed talks about, like writes about this phenomenon a lot, especially around like, Like being a killjoy, like a feminist killjoy, like, or like being a troublemaker because she's the one who would like bring up issues around like racism or sexual assault in like faculty settings and stuff. And that there's a quality to like complaining that is sticky, right? It sticks to the person who's doing it. And then they're seen as the source of the problem. she writes about this a lot i highly recommend her work yeah if folks are interested in this kind of phenomenon of like what why am i seen as the problem when.

Jason:
[43:02] I'm just pointing out the problem and.

Jay:
[43:04] It's because complaining has this sticky quality to it you know.

Jason:
[43:07] It's funny you know it's good i'm reaching for a pen and pad to write that down that that happens um and i touch on it in the queer battle fatigue chapter that as the sponsor of the credit uafs um group you know the students came to me with a question about gender neutral bathrooms and so i you know wearing my hat as the faculty sponsor i went to a senior administrator with the question of do we have gender neutral restrooms on this campus and what is our policy about gender neutral restrooms And I never got a reply from him. So, you know, I was diligent and, you know, followed up three times. And he finally just said, tell the students to use the bathroom that they're most comfortable using. But at his next staff meeting, he said, Jason Phillips is a troublemaker. Yeah and i wasn't i wasn't trying to stir up the issue and that was actually an issue that had created some national attention for the university a few years before about the question of you know accommodating a trans student so i wasn't even stirring up trouble i just was asking a question what is our policy but asking the question meant i was a troublemaker it.

Jay:
[44:21] Means you're the source of the problem because people didn't know there was a problem until you brought it up.

Jason:
[44:25] Yes yeah yeah Yeah. I also, to remind everyone, I do try and make a list of everything that we mentioned in an episode. So.

Jay:
[44:39] Amit's books and The Joy of Gay Sex and everything else we've mentioned. So those will all be linked in the notes. If you're a librarian, buy them for your collection. Exactly. Buy like three copies of The Joy of Gay Sex so everyone knows how good it is.

Jordan:
[44:52] And also buy several copies of Censorship is a Drag.

Jay:
[44:55] Yes, that too. Wink.

Sadie:
[44:58] The library punk recommended reading list for your library.

Jay:
[45:03] And remember, you are also a patron of your library. Even if you don't do collection development, you are also a patron and you can request things.

Jordan:
[45:10] But to be honest, I have not bought a copy of our book for our library yet. And here's why. Honestly, I'm still working at the place where these experiences happen. And I... I think the atmosphere is distinctly more sympathetic. It's distinctly more sympathetic to diversity now, but I'm still mindful that I'm working in the South and that is a region that still has all these tensions, these pressures, these increasing, you know, aggressions toward LGBTQ people. And I have administrative support in this thing. You know, our, our, our chancellor bought a copy and brought it to me to sign it. And I was touched by that. Um, but at the same time i'm like do i want to put a target on my back if i don't necessarily have to in this case you know and like it hurts me not to have a copy of my own book and the library where i work but also i'm like maybe this is best for now maybe maybe the situation will feel different in a few years and i'll finally you know steal my nerve and do it but up to this point i haven't felt comfortable with it yeah.

Jay:
[46:05] Yeah picking your fights.

Sadie:
[46:06] Is important um it really is i've always talked about that i mean on the whole range of issues of like you know.

Jason:
[46:48] In terms of like that kind of thing happening which is a strange sentence to say but it's true like no one has come around with a list of like here's every time your your website says gay or lgbtq, I'll be the face of this because it's fine. But that's a line I'm willing to draw, but it's, it's, you know, it's also because like, I'm willing to move. I'm willing to get a new job. I'm, you know, that's, that's not everyone's position.

Jay:
[47:41] One of the, actually, this is good. One of the things that comes up multiple times in the book is the political nature of libraries.

Jason:
[48:21] As a big thing of saying the ALA is against this because this is an attack on all queer people existing. It's not a library-specific issue, but we're going to talk about it from the library perspective.

Jay:
[48:33] This sort of the fear, the failure of neutrality as a policy, which is never really a policy. In fact, it doesn't really come up anywhere in most libraries, codes of conduct or anything. And it made me think there was a discussion recently in the SkullCom Shit Talk.

Jason:
[48:57] Things like that from their website because they work directly with the federal government to get grants. And we were going back and forth about, is this a sound move? Is this too.

Jay:
[49:14] Know, I think most people actually lean towards saying, yeah, it was a good strategy because of the direct nature of their work with the federal.

Jay:
[49:21] Government at this moment.

Jason:
[49:22] It was a good retreat. But I don't, again, I still, it's the same thing with that DEI collection. I don't know how I feel about like that. Like, I think that might be a line for.

Jason:
[49:34] Think about strategic retreats, I guess? I know it's a difficult one. It's funny you mention that i'm on a ala committee and the chair of the committee, is a librarian with the federal government and they recently said that their term is up in june and they are not staying on the committee and i don't think they're staying involved or active with ala and i think that largely has to do with with what's going on and that that is kind of a strategic retreat for her in this situation and i i feel badly but It's tough. It's really tough because we talk about in one of our chapters, if we had to do the drag story time again, would we have done it? And no, I would not have after having lived through that. And that's the line that we have to kind of draw is that we are professionals, but yeah, I got to keep a roof over my head for my four cats and two dogs. They're bums and they depend on me. So i i understand some of these decisions that they got to keep the lights on they got to they got to keep the grants rolling in or they got to do this but it's also it's a scary time because what what's going to get lost in this process and you know assuming you know god willing four years from now we inaugurate someone new and different and better are we going to be able to kind of wind back the clock on this or how much of it's going to be sticking around with this for a while.

Jordan:
[51:03] Yeah I think that's my, And I think, I mean, these are things that, you know, we thought, we thought it was, we thought it was on the way and we thought it was going away, but it's, it's not, you know, and like one thing that came up recently is we were doing these like kind of like book talks on YouTube for our press. And somebody asked the question in the chat about how does how does this stuff, you know, sort of echo or rhyme with the NEA censorship of the 80s and 90s, you know, works of art being censored, you know, the government is funding, you know, works by, you know, Andre Serrano or whatever. And we can't allow that to happen. It's the same conversation again. So even if we get somebody better in office who maybe doesn't actively hate libraries and gay people, that's not to say that this sort of tensions driving moms against liberty and similar things are going to fade. I'm afraid these are battles we're going to have to fight again and again, and it sucks. But each time we're going to have to choose our role within the battle.

Jason:
[51:57] I reckon some real politicians are going to use the IMLS like they used to use the NEA.

Jay:
[52:04] Oh, go ahead, Jordan.

Jordan:
[52:07] So look at what's happening now with the ALA, where it's literally being weaponized against entire state libraries because of one remark that the former president of the ALA made. The ALA before this was, I think it was widely seen as this unimpeachable organization. It's the ALA. How could we possibly think anything bad of it? But now it's being weaponized against states. If a state library association mentions a connection to the ALA, there's legislation to defund that. That's happening, what was it, Montana? It's happening in Arkansas. So these former authorities are no longer really, whether or not they're fighting on behalf of librarians, they're not leveraged in the same way that they were before. The authorities themselves are under attack.

Jay:
[52:51] And like with the sort of like being where do you draw the line between like what's being strategic versus what's bending the knee or, you know, where do we make these decisions and how and why? It's it's sort of like does taking language off a website mean you can't do the work anymore is sort of where i would like if if me taking a word off of a website means that i don't have the fuzz on my tail but i still do the work like it's more about like like.

Jay:
[53:28] Be like people who need to know can know it you know i know there's like this feels like maybe like related to like discussions of the closet right and like visibility and representation like this happens with with trans people a lot like what is representation versus what's putting a target on us like there's a reason why trans women are so visible and so attacked it's because they're so visible right like there's a lot to do with like the politics of the closet and of representation and people being like no i have to be visible and i'm like i am visible to the people who matter to me and everything and it's like and i i'm not saying like we should all go back in the closet because fuck no we shouldn't we should do sodomy in their faces but like you know if i if i can take a word off a website and that's going to keep me my job like i'll take a word off a website you know like that that's where i would draw that line but being organized is what's important here is what's very important yes sadie yeah.

Sadie:
[54:37] Well and i also just kind of think of it as like again like individual lines.

Jay:
[54:43] What's the line.

Sadie:
[54:44] For me gonna be but also like what hits am i willing to take so other people don't have to take them.

Jay:
[54:51] Like like.

Sadie:
[54:52] In the past couple of months i've been thinking really like you know everybody's talking about moving to canada and all of this shit right which has been a very difficult topic but i have three trans nibblings who are teenagers living through this time and i'm thinking you know if i stay and fight even if they somehow go to a supposedly better country, I'm fighting so they can come back, right? For their future. So I'm willing to take those hits. I'm willing to be the visible queer that I am. So they could possibly be safer in the future kind of thing. And like, that can also apply to our jobs and our communities. Like maybe you keep your head down at your job because you need to keep your job and you're not going to push the envelope there, but maybe outside of your job, you volunteer helping with like immigrants find legal help and teaching, you know, learning Spanish so you can help your neighbors stay, you know, stay away from ice.

Jay:
[55:55] You know?

Sadie:
[55:56] So it's like, it's not, it's not that zero sum game, but we all do have to play it individually, but we all also have to know which part of our communities we can take the best hit for and which ones are too personal for us to withstand, if that makes sense at all.

Jay:
[56:13] Also unionize.

Sadie:
[56:14] Also unionize, like seriously, like I feel like a lot of that is like, so so much of that right now is like voting rights and unionize work on voting rights and unionize maybe then like yeah anyways that's devolving but you know that's kind of where i'm at at this point.

Jason:
[56:32] The jordan and i were involved with and i want to like i want to say this about arkansas when i moved to arkansas in 2013 like yeah it's conservative state there's a lot of religious conservatives there but there was also kind of this really broad streak of libertarianism where i never felt uncomfortable being openly gay in arkansas because people were very live and let live there for a time and so when we would do interviews with the press we would always say the most important thing that we can do for our community is to be out and open to show people in the closet that it's okay.

Jay:
[57:16] Yeah.

Jason:
[57:16] So even if that's what it takes doing is just being out and open and just finding small ways to help the community, that will still be enough for our brothers and sisters that are in the closet or that are running scared. Yeah.

Jay:
[57:36] Yeah, I was always very like, even like early in my transition, when I would do instruction, I was very open about the fact that I was queer, because like I wanted, because my first career, my first job at a library school, I lived in Utah. And like, I wanted the people who, I mean, because like, contrary to popular belief, like less than half of the people in Salt Lake City are practicing Mormons. And the Mormons I did meet there were like, kind of cool. like i went on a date with a socialist mormon one time that was kind of fun they're there i promise wild you're fucking wild.

Jay:
[58:14] But like i was always very open about the fact that i was queer and that i was trans because i knew that there were probably kids there who were exposed to that when they were younger and like i wanted to show them that it was okay and also to challenge them because sometimes you would run into people who needed to be challenged but that's why they were there and not at brigham young university so that they could be challenged so yeah full shade on brigham young but you know yeah of course the the one thing that i worry about with because you know a website is just a poster board that is the outside face of your organization it doesn't say you know i would prefer spark.

Jason:
[59:08] Feels like i think we might sometimes overestimate how clever we are in terms of well we'll back down here but that means they won't.

Jay:
[59:17] Target us and you get targeted anyway and and every time you see something on social media where they're like oh they back down on this but it was strategic don't you know it's the criminology, got they still you know they know that these organizations are their enemies they know that the ala is ultimately not on their side so it doesn't really matter if the ala takes a stand or not so there's there's definitely times when we have to pick our organizations to be actually saying the things that they need.

Jason:
[59:47] To say because you need something to rally around.

Jay:
[59:49] The homosaurus ain't changing shit for the record. That'd be very funny to try it and anti-clear the homosaurus. You just take it down at that point.

Jason:
[59:59] And there's several references to that source in our book too.

Jay:
[1:00:03] Hell yeah. Yeah. Jay is our local homosaurus board member. We're turning into a collective and you can apply to be on one of the several little committees. And if you're so interested in being involved, Brie Watson put a bunch of links to things in various listservs. Cough. Help us, we're only like six. Give us your free labor.

Jason:
[1:00:28] I got my start in librarianship as a copy cataloger, so I may have to.

Jay:
[1:00:32] Hell yeah, let's fucking go.

Jason:
[1:00:34] I'm going to light. Yeah, we talked with the Queer.

Jay:
[1:00:37] Liberation Library folks. They're all they're all moonlighting on on that whole project and they have no institutional support. It's all local, to, you know, very quickly rewrite their stuff in order to get the next round of grant funding. But how long can we rely on that? Do we need to start looking at other forms of funding, you know, union funds or crowdfunding or things outside of the government? Because right now the government's not.

Jason:
[1:01:14] A reliable funder. Can I just say that drag queens are really great fundraisers?

Jay:
[1:01:21] Hell yes, they are. that.

Jason:
[1:01:23] That's another lesson jordan and i took from the equality center is we used to host an annual gala featuring like at least five or six drag queens and that was that was such a bomb fundraiser.

Jay:
[1:01:36] Everyone loves a lady who's very pretty but looks a little bit like a venus flytrap being a little bit mean to them that's like a universal like the maslow's like hierarchy of needs that's like the The bottom one is like a lady being mean to me and she looks like a monster a little bit.

Sadie:
[1:01:55] A little bit of a predator.

Jay:
[1:01:58] Yeah. So, pro tip.

Sadie:
[1:02:02] Maybe not that word, yeah.

Jay:
[1:02:05] Yeah, and also local funding sources. You know, public libraries are funded locally, making sure you have your community on your side.

Jason:
[1:02:13] And it's a difficult tightrope, but it's important.

Jay:
[1:02:16] I think to your union like the the support of your community members is what gives you as a union power you can't go on a quote i mean when there's no such thing as an illegal strike the only illegal strike is a failed strike remember that kids but if you go on a strike even if you're not allowed to cough the way you do that is by having community support so that you don't piss them off by being a public servant who is now on strike right and you show them how it's, inconvenience, but they're like, yeah, it is inconvenient, and they're mad at the right people and not you.

Jason:
[1:02:48] Right.

Jordan:
[1:02:49] And I think that's something that we kind of harp on in one of our chapters where we talk about, is it building and defending, Jason, where we talk about how you have to have an investment in your community before anything goes wrong. I mean, obviously, there are situations where that won't necessarily help because obviously there are plenty of libraries who think they have community support and then, surprise, the rug's pulled out from under them by some cranks or whatever but if you have a foothold in your community people really recognize the the value of your resources that will at least give you people beyond your staff who will fight for you if the shit hits the fan like you don't want to be left alone fending your for yourself in these situations you want to have people writing letters on your behalf and making noise to the state well jason you haven't you, You have an example close to home about this, don't you, from Alabama, just the last couple of days.

Jason:
[1:03:38] Yes, I was going to mention that. To Jordan's point there real quick, we talk about that. He actually wrote that part of that chapter talking about how librarians and libraries were not really built or poised to sort of defend ourselves because it's not our mindset. And so that's why it's really essential to develop these communities of support and allies. And in the academic setting, you know, that's your faculty and your faculty senate.

Jason:
[1:04:07] What Jordan mentioned, though, is, and this kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, how things are different in 2025 from when we started out with this in 2022, is, you know, the bans and the protest has become more institutionalized. You know, they're taking over school boards, they're taking over library boards, they're taking over the state library board, which happened in Alabama. Chair of the library board in Alabama is also the Republican Party leader of Alabama. They just fired the state director of libraries because there were libraries that were getting funded from the state library that had these banned books in their collections. The notable example being Fairhope Public Library, which Fairhope is neighbor of the small town I grew up in and Daphne. And the community has rallied around this public library. They had a city council meeting where basically one of the city councilmen gave a full-throated defense of the public library and said, we don't need outsiders telling us how to run our library. And that has been so effective in the defense of this library. And the amount of money they're getting from the state that's been suspended is kind of minimal from what they're getting locally. But I think that's kind of the thing is like rallying the community support that we don't need outsiders telling us what to do. And the people protesting and challenging these books aren't even members of our community.

Jason:
[1:05:35] And I think really kind of rallying around that kind of particular perspective could be effective. So there was an issue that me and Jay were talking about.

Jay:
[1:05:46] And I wanted to, I think this would be the best time to pull it into the podcast, which is the discussions about the Library of Congress subject headings and the difference between that and local cataloging. So.

Jay:
[1:06:15] Source in order to make sure that things are still discoverable. Especially with the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, and Denali back to Mount McKinley is the main two things that happened recently. Yeah, but there's labor issues. Jay, why don't you go ahead and say what you were thinking. So, yes, it is absolutely true. you do not have to like go into your catalog and change all of these over i saw a lot of people going like you're complying in advance if you don't do anything and to that i say do you actually know what doing authority work in a catalog is like especially at scale and also do you know all of the plate like are you not using oclc records because oclc will change them over and other people will add them in are you going to always change them when they come over do you have an automatic process do you pay a third-party vendor to do this for you are you in an academic library and so you don't think about these things like do you have electronic resources like ebooks and stuff that come in through a discovery layer where the mark record never even touches your catalog these headings are going to get into your catalog whether you like it or not which sucks this is bad and i hate it and it's bad that we rely on lc so much including internationally.

Jay:
[1:07:36] Like lc stuff affects does it like affects cataloging at an international scale right and so when the people were like well if you don't use local headings if you just sit back and you're complying in advance and like who's doing their authority control and and so like these questions of like labor around censorship and around like stuff this this particular regime is trying to impede upon libraries like, there's only so much you can do as an individual, and this is why organizing and stuff is so important because it's like if, libraries won't even pay for us to do the authority control if they want to shell out a third party to do it like, They're not going to fund just doing, okay, well, Denali is now Mount McKinley, so we want to make sure it's not Denali again. To which I want to say, why aren't you doing that for every single place name in your catalog that has an indigenous counterpart to it? Why don't you work with your local tribal communities to see what language they might actually want changed?

Jay:
[1:08:46] And it's because of money. We don't have the money to do that because that's like a project and it's not necessarily sustainable unless you have money like in a budget line for it. And so, like, I guess with, like, some of these issues around, like, complying in advance and there's only so much you can, quote, be an activist at work, like, especially around, like, censorship, like, how much of this has to do with just, like, we aren't given, we don't have, we aren't given the money to actually put the labor towards this problem the way it deserves.

Jason:
[1:09:19] It's it's not you don't have the institutional power to do this institute do this, authority control so i don't know i just wanted to run that past you two and see if you had any thoughts i you know i mentioned earlier that i started out my career as copy cataloger while i was finishing up grad school and i was i started out in that time where you know cataloging departments used to have a ton of copy catalogers to do this kind of authority control to do these kind of record updates and they you know started losing these positions through attrition and and people retiring and you know they started relying more on vendor records that they were getting from their book jobbers. So if we're going to make this change, who's going to be there to do it? You know, we're cataloging departments, technical services departments are less than half what they were 20 years ago in terms of staffing. So it's a huge labor issue.

Jay:
[1:10:28] And I feel like this has touched on something like in our discord, especially when the election first happened, we had a lot of people being like, what can I do at work? Right? How can I make sure that my library, that people in my community know that the library is there for them. And I think our broad answer was, like, a lot of this is going to have to happen outside of work. Like, you're just going to have to start organizing in your community and not just at work. Like... I hate to say that, but there's only so much you can be an activist at work sometimes. My politics do not align with the politics of my workplace. I have to do shit outside of work to feel like I'm doing something in my community sometimes. Like I can do stuff in my union, right? And I can mitigate at work. But like, if I want my library, like if I, what I should be doing is like, well, how can I encourage groups to maybe use the library? Or how can I make sure those dialogues are set up? But like, sometimes things are going to have to happen outside of the approved realms of the state apparatus, you know?

Jason:
[1:11:38] And maybe that's one of the answers or one of the solutions is that for those of us that are kind of, what can we do? How can we feel effective? How can we give in a way that doesn't jeopardize our jobs and our livelihoods? But how can we push back or what can we do to make things better? And maybe that's it. Maybe it's just it's the volunteerism of pitching and rolling up your sleeves and doing the work, like volunteering with Homo Soros. Or, you know, is there an equivalent to homosaurus for the Native American community? And if there isn't, you know, let's start that up. I'm working with there.

Jay:
[1:12:15] There are several, actually.

Jason:
[1:12:16] Oh, good. Good.

Jay:
[1:12:18] Mainly coming out of the Pacific Northwest and places like New Zealand.

Jason:
[1:12:23] So you're rolling up your sleeves and doing that. And the government doesn't control the Internet. The state of Florida does not control the Internet. So we, you know, that is a space that we can have freedom to push back in, hopefully without retribution. To at least keep the fight going and to at least make some kind of positive progress.

Jordan:
[1:12:44] And there's still, I think we still go back to this principle too of self-protection. You can't do everything. You can't be everything to everybody. You have to protect your own interests first and foremost because you're not going to do any good if you ruin yourself. You have to, again, cliche, but you have to pick your battles and sometimes you have to sort of mindfully pass your battles upward to people who are able to fight them for you. There are certainly battles that I wouldn't fight, but I might encourage higher leadership levels to fight them on my behalf because they're in a position where they can do that. It's a sad reality, but I can't be at the front lines of everything. I can't.

Jason:
[1:13:22] And we talked about this in the virtual book talks last week that Litwin and Library Chiefs Press hosted. Those of us that are living in kind of red states, southern states, conservative states, we don't necessarily have the same freedom of action. So those of us who live in blue states or who are in secure positions may have to fight the battle for us for a time.

Jay:
[1:13:49] And I will say that those of us in blue states have a lot to learn from our comrades in the red states as far as how do you do labor organizing in states which are hostile towards labor organizing? Because like it is not illegal to be unionized in those states but that is the propaganda that it is just because you can't do collective bargaining agreements a lot of the time but that doesn't mean you can't unionize it doesn't mean you don't have protections and as you know who knows what's going to happen to the nlrb and everything but like the power of your union doesn't come from the nlrb you know the only reason we have an nlrb is because we're like well I guess we'll stop shooting the boss in the middle of the night, I guess. That's why we have that shit now.

Jay:
[1:14:45] So i don't know but like there's like you know there's like the do you think the the teachers in west virginia who went on strike like had like legal protections to do that absolutely not did a single one of them get fired afterwards no because they had built enough power to be able to do that so yeah like we in the north like there's so many people are like oh the nlrb it's like i give a fuck about the nlrb like that's that's not what gives my union power and like we should we have a lot to learn from our our comrades in the south i.

Jason:
[1:15:23] Was surprised to that when i came here that the state university system florida has a union united.

Jay:
[1:15:31] Faculty and.

Jason:
[1:15:32] I immediately like i was such an easy sell on joining the union when i got here like they you know one of my colleagues was kind of starting to give me the pitch and i was like where do i sign up like i'm i'm ready and i'm on the the the union's bargaining team with the administration.

Jay:
[1:15:52] Let's fucking go that's yeah um and i tell you like you know it's.

Jason:
[1:15:58] Not that far in the past that that there there was union activism in the south so if people would just kind of reach back to you know the days of their parents their grandparents and for the younger generation their great-grandparents you know the the labor was strong once upon a time and it can be again.

Jay:
[1:16:16] Yeah my grandpa was a coal miner and i went he took me to united mine workers of america like union picnics when i was a kid and i was reared on stories of slashing scab tires and all sorts of shit like people used to go hardcore like let's slash scab tires again it's a good pastime teach it to your kids it'll be great and.

Jason:
[1:16:38] As the u.s south is looked to as sort of an internal frontier.

Jay:
[1:17:17] To move on to talking about the advice that you both gave in the toolkit. Given the changes that have happened.

Jason:
[1:17:25] Since the book has come out, is there anything that you would change.

Jordan:
[1:17:28] About that toolkit? I think that we kind of priced in the precarity, like the sort of like deliberate precarity that people are feeling at this point. Like, I think, I mean, that I think has, I mean, that's changed a little bit, you know, like in November before the election, people probably felt their jobs were significantly more secure than they do now. But I think we have sort of acknowledged that there's a real feeling of risk to fighting some of these battles. And again, choose your battles, work with other people, collaborate, collaborate, collaborate with other people, including your community, including people who have fought these battles before to be able to do this more effectively.

Jason:
[1:18:10] Um i think organizing with the community i think that's something that i would really play up more you know building that support in the community hell i'd probably devote an entire chapter to that now um particularly seeing instances like what happened in pharaoh oh the fundamentals are there though regardless of we went from bad to worse but i think the fundamentals are there to scale up and in jordan and i you know when we were kind of preparing for this we had a conversation i'm gonna pull that out because i had it flagged where we were talking about like you know what what would we do in volume two of this you know in the next book if if you know and maybe we'll we'll we'll write that jordan let's put that in the hopper we're already working on our next book project but one thing that jordan had mentioned is scaling up from the idea of individual self-preservation to institutional self-preservation. So that's something that I think we would definitely kind of pivot and also address. Could you expand on what you mean by scaling up to institutional preservation?

Jordan:
[1:19:16] I think we're at a point where libraries, like, I mean, as like this collective entity, which sounds weird to say because libraries are made of people, right? But if we can sort of conceptualize libraries as being this collective thing, I think libraries do feel like there's this sort of existential threat? You know, is funding going to demolish their entire ability to carry out their mission? To what degree are libraries still going to be, even in, you know, a couple of years, to what degree are libraries still going to be, you know, what they are now? And how can libraries, you know, leveraging the individuals within, you know, how do we fight against that? You want to be able to keep yourself safe. You want to keep your interests safe as a person. But if you can reach some Maslow's baseline of having done that, where do you go from there to keep your library the active vital thing that hopefully it's always been?

Jason:
[1:20:07] You know it's not just the librarian advocates with targets on their backs now but i think libraries as as a whole you know with the elimination of the imls potentially you know the the effects of that are going to be devastating and and the work that it was doing what it was funding that's going to be devastating especially for small communities you know is the next step going to be that we're going to be issued you know an approved book list by some organization and if books aren't on this list, they've got to go.

Jordan:
[1:20:37] Okay, so there's legislation right now in Arkansas about that. It's effectively trying to do away with the Arkansas State Library and put the control of the State Library under the Department of Education. And this would basically allow community standards and what the mechanisms funding libraries would be entirely dictated by, if there's adult content in libraries, which we all know what adult content means, they would lose funding. And I mean, that alone is an existential threat to libraries. And like before, maybe before the 2024 election, what was the worst thing that an individual librarian could be called? A groomer, right? But now you have people thinking that libraries themselves are doing the grooming. Libraries, not just like some bad individual within the library, but the entire institution of the library itself is doing this. How do you fight against that? I don't have the answer to that question. I wish I did.

Jason:
[1:21:29] And then another point that had come up was looking at dear Emily Trebensky and kind of what happened to her during her term as president of ALA. And she talks about this in her forward audience at home. If you read nothing else in the book, read her forward, because I think that that's really the threat that we're facing is, you know, ALA itself did not stand behind our president. You know she was old she was censored she was put in a corner she helped they practically tried to shove her back in the closet um and jordan had kind of had put this in our text thread this tension between i've done nothing wrong and i shouldn't have done this and it circles back to that quote from earlier that a good librarian doesn't jeopardize his library and so are our actions as librarians are they causing harm to our libraries you know is The actions of, you know, Emily, dear Emily Drabinski, you know, which has unfortunately cast a pall on ALA. You know, how long a shadow is that going to cast over libraries in this country?

Jordan:
[1:22:40] And I think we have something in our, again, our building and defending chapter where we essentially try to reframe the cliche about a good library has something to offend everybody to a good library represents its entire community. It's not about offending people. It's about making sure that everybody feels represented and welcome.

Jay:
[1:22:56] Yeah. And I was just going to say it is it has been this podcast position since that'll happen that it is cool and great that Emily is a Marxist and a lesbian and she should be loud and proud about both of those things. And no one should have been going, no, she's fine to be president. Like, no, it's cool that she's both of those things. And I feel like we didn't see enough people in this profession stand behind her and say, no, it's cool that she is both of those things. It is okay that she is both of those things at the same time and that she is open about that.

Sadie:
[1:23:29] We voted her because we wanted her to be these things.

Jay:
[1:23:33] Yes. I believe she was the only candidate for president that we've ever had on because we generally don't care about ALA shit. But like i wouldn't be the librarian i am today without emily drabinsky like i i cite queer in the catalog and everything i fucking do like she's like my hero i love her and like it was the coolest shit in the world when she was on here and yeah like it was so shocking to me that more people were doing that no it's okay like she's fine she's not a groomer like it's fine we're not socialists we're not communists have been said of standing behind what she said and saying it's okay that she's those things like yeah it was bad of our profession to not stand behind her and i think that more generally when we're because a theme that runs through the book is again this disgust towards queer people is the driving force of all.

Jason:
[1:24:28] Of these other things in the culture as far as, you know, they might try to defund your local power.

Jay:
[1:24:35] Plant co-op because they have a DEI statement. I mean, this is a really, you know, I'm a wobbly.

Jason:
[1:24:42] I'm always going to go back to industrial unionism. You know, why not have, you know, a.

Jordan:
[1:24:49] Conversation with all the other public service.

Jay:
[1:24:51] Workers who are under threat? You know, just because libraries and information source doesn't mean you can't work, service or anything else that's going to have a clean environment. It's going to be a target. Make rents. But yeah, the thing has always been, it's cool. Like, gay people are cool, was of what we were saying at the time. That should be the response to saying there's gay stuff in your library, saying, yeah, gay people are cool.

Sadie:
[1:25:25] We fucking rock. Yeah.

Jay:
[1:25:30] I am trying to recruit. You're right.

Sadie:
[1:25:37] Could be one of the, you know, is one of the ongoing threads of this podcast.

Jason:
[1:25:44] Like no i.

Jay:
[1:25:46] Am a crazy pervert you're right about that and that's okay.

Sadie:
[1:25:53] So we've gone a little long but i think we covered everything we wanted to so i'm really glad that you both.

Jason:
[1:26:05] People can look for any anywhere they can follow you don't follow me i'm okay with yeah i'm salty i post pictures of cats on my social media usually my cats i i've i've so checked out of social media these days i've really just since november i've checked out of every fucking thing and have just focused on the work because that's hard that's tough enough right now i'll say that jordan and i i alluded to this earlier but we're already deep in our next project maybe y'all will bring us back for that we are co-editing a two-volume book about the role and place that jk rowling and the harry potter wizarding world has post 2020 and you know her whole unmasking as just a terrifying, terrible bigot.

Jay:
[1:27:03] Nice. The queen of Turf Island.

Jason:
[1:27:06] Yes. Yeah, absolutely. We'll have you.

Jordan:
[1:27:09] Back on to talk about that. This project, like, we are, like, we finished the censorship book, and we're excited that's going on, but, like, My mind is like exploding every day when I look at the list of things like so we have like 50 contributions to this Harry Potter book ranging like all over the spectrum. It's incredible. Like, I'm so excited about this project. Like the censorship book is I'm happy that we did this. But like the Harry Potter one is going to be next level just because it just coalesces so many different like it's like this prismatic thing about libraries. Right. Like there's, you know, like the well-natured, you know, like liberalism of, oh, Harry Potter, you know, childhood literacy and everything versus what happened in 2020. And like, it feels, it feels like it feels emblematic of something. And I'm, we're writing, we're editing this book, I think, in part to find out what that is. So there's our little preview of that project.

Jay:
[1:27:58] My chapter would be Ursula Le Guin's right there.

Jordan:
[1:28:02] Yes.

Jay:
[1:28:05] Is what my chapter would be.

Jason:
[1:28:08] I i think actually i'm co-authoring it we're i'm gonna do like an annotated bib of you know don't do harry potter look at these as alternatives okay.

Jay:
[1:28:18] Yeah it really always was weird when other people in the library were like we're gonna have a.

Jason:
[1:28:25] Harry potter themed uh extended hours for finals and it's like do you not google anything about this person like what what what's going on here like i i get that.

Jay:
[1:28:38] Everyone's age regressing but come on man read another book it's like terrible people can make good art harry potter's is also not good art though yeah jk rowling is not one of them.

Jason:
[1:28:50] Yeah we're co-editing this book with with another colleague of mine current colleague of jordan's and we have like this this group chat and they both recently tackled reading Harry Potter, Jordan, for the first time, and just, like, his commentary through that journey.

Jay:
[1:29:11] It was fucking awful.

Jason:
[1:29:13] Yeah, he couldn't even finish.

Jay:
[1:29:15] You saint.

Jason:
[1:29:17] He couldn't even finish. I've read them several times, so like, before the whole Turfism. So I actually, I did try to reread it in preparation for this, and I just couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't get back into it.

Jay:
[1:29:33] Hmm.

Jason:
[1:29:35] All right. Well, thank you both. Thank y'all so much.

Jordan:
[1:29:39] Thank you.

Jay:
[1:29:39] Oh, thank you.

Sadie:
[1:29:41] Thanks for coming on.

Jason:
[1:29:43] I was looking at y'all's previous podcast and like, just really flipping out when I saw some of the ones that y'all done, like the leather archives and then interviewing one of the hosts of bad gaze. Like that is my go-to podcast when I'm doing road trips. So I like Jordan and I, we were just, we were just, spinning at the thought of doing this. So thank you.

Jordan:
[1:30:08] I saw that you guys did an episode about Kiarostami's close-up, and I am the world's biggest Kiarostami fan, so I was like, I'm going to get that tomorrow morning.

Jay:
[1:30:17] Half of this podcast is like, hey, we don't have an episode. Jay, which weird art house film can you try to force into a podcast context? I'm like, I got close-up. Let's go.

Jordan:
[1:30:26] My husband will not let me watch Certified Copy anymore because he's so sick of me watching that movie.

Jason:
[1:30:32] Jordan's partner, he is so.

Jay:
[1:30:34] Long-suffering because Jordan and his esoteric taste in films it's hilarious incredible.

Jordan:
[1:30:42] The Criterion Closet Boyfriend yeah.

Jay:
[1:30:47] Yeah it was Criterion Movie Boyfriend it was like an Instagram reel of some chick being like I'm dating a Criterion guy, so you watch it for fake and I was like I make people watch it for fake, but jay has good taste in movies so it's fine that's true y'all are both lovely please come out again to know about harry potter and and that'll be great or just any other things y'all are great yeah this.

Jason:
[1:31:20] Was great i i really enjoyed this and keep up the good work i i've really enjoyed this experience always.

Sadie:
[1:31:28] Happy to hear that good night.