Modern Book Burnings Require No Fire

On Artistic Freedom and the Silencing of Inconvenient Voices

Conversations about censorship are not new to artists. From the destruction of artworks featuring adversaries of old civilations to the policing of language today, censorship and restriction of artistic expression is an unfortunate yet ubiquitious part of human history.

But there was one place I consistently found solace: Books and the writers who pen them.

Writers all over the world decry censorship as a loss of thought-provoking work, showcasing political ideologies (and their related harms), power, and the overall right to free expression. Journalists, novelists, and writers in between frequently speak out against book bans, burnings, and other freedom-crushing attempts to censor voices, as they’ve — we’ve — been doing for centuries.

Censorship Has a Sordid History

In an article written for Smithsonian Magazine in 2017, Lorraine Boissoneault shared: “Books and libraries have been targeted by people of all backgrounds for thousands of years, sometimes intentionally and sometimes as a side-effect of war. In 213 B.C., Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang (more widely remembered for his terracotta army in Xian) ordered a bonfire of books as a way of consolidating power in his new empire.”

Historically speaking, Qin is not alone. Lots of folks in power come to feel threatened by any test of their power or control, seeking to crush their competition by limiting or silencing dissenting voices. As cultural mores change and new folks get into positions of power, outlawing alternative narratives becomes something like competitive sport.

From outlawing and burning books and materials about Bacchanalia, to executing non-Christian philosophers, to jailing physicists and cosmologists, human history is rife with censorship as a means of controlling populations.

There are few tools that pose a bigger threat to humanity than censors. Free societies cannot survive without freedom of expression, including free speech, and there is a concerning increase in authoritarianism to squash speech that flies in the face of current socio-political populist narratives.

Historically, tyrants and authoriatarian governments have called for censorship, going so far as jailing Galileo for suggesting heliocentricity, laughing at Harvey for suggesting that the heart — not the liver — circulated the blood, and discrediting Semmelweis for suggesting that docotors should wash their hands. Scientitists and experts, renouned in their times up to their moments of dissent, were threatened with consequences for speaking out against narratives.

I, for one, refuse to play such socio-political games.

Retaining Free Expression Is a Choice

I’m a free-speech absolutist, and I uphold the first amendment of the constitution of the United States as the pinnacle of human freedom. For what good is the means of communication if we are unable to communicate freely as we so wish? To lose free speech is to lose art, to lose the very energy and vitality behind creativity itself by limiting the expression of the human condition and experience.

Silencing people rather than talking to them is dangerous, breeds resentment, and creates unease. It also causes those with differences of opinion, principle, and philosophy to code their language and hide in the darkest reaches of society, including the internet. This reality makes it difficult for the average person to know what kind of person they’re talking to, purchasing from, or otherwise interacting with. And there’s a lot of social pressure for average people to self-censor their language. But if you read my review of Cultish, requiring in-group members to change their language or disregard their histories is a mark of cult behavior.

There is no choice left if we are not free to speak for ourselves, even if the speech we make is controversial, even if the speech we make is faux snake oil, even if the speech flies against the current narrative, challenges cultural norms, and makes some people uncomfortable.

But I work in books, and I thought that, here in the 21st century, I was safe from censorship and in good company.

Modern Book Burnings Require No Fire

Since the advent of the printing press and the ability to mass-produce books, book burnings have been a rather popular (albeit unsettling) way to symbolize that which is unacceptable and direct folks to that which is acceptable. But in the 21st century, given the sheer number of books published on a day-to-day basis, publishers and platforms alike no longer need to burn the books to symbolize the unacceptable. Instead, they merely refuse to publish or platform that which they don’t like.

Back in early 2023, when I was still part of a major American freelance editor’s organization, I opened my email inbox to find a job alert: An author sought a developmental editor for her science-fiction novel satirizing what she qualified as “the gender wars” from a place of experience, compassion, and empathy.

The author was a detransitioner who had been gaslit and abused at the hands of gender affirmation doctors, rather than being given the therapy she needed to accept herself exactly as she was with the understanding that nobody is born in the wrong body. The author wanted to work with a story developer to revise her manuscript from the ground up and noted, in her job posting, that she wanted to maintain her integrity as a detransitioning author while respecting transgender folks who have successfully transitioned or otherwise desire to transition for a number of personal reasons.

I reached out to the author directly, and while circumstances in her life arose such that she had to table her science-fiction novel for a later time, we had a great conversation about science fiction and books broadly as a tool for socio-cultural topic exploration and for delivering cautionary and inspirational messages to readers.

All very standard, benign conversation.

But the next day, the editor’s organization made a move I did not anticipate. The job post was classified as “hateful” and subsequently removed, and there was an internal communication sent to all members, including me, apologizing that such a job had been posted and made some editors feel uncomfortable.

What should have been a directive to editorial professionals to pass on jobs they didn’t want to accept instead became a blistering appeal to silence the author for daring to speak against the medicalization of body dysmorphia. In short, the detransitioner’s voice was being effectively censored by a major editor’s organization — an organization that openly speaks out against book burnings and other means of creative censorship — because a few adults didn’t like what the author wanted to say about her own experience.

This is a modern book burning.

I explored the horrors of pedophilia and child sexual abuse not only from my own experience as a child victim but from reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and feeling the stomach-clenching circumstances under which Dolores lived. I explored intimate-partner violence and the idea of consent by reading Anne Desclos’s The Story of O and reflecting on my own adult sexual encounters and experiences. Those are just two examples of uncomfortable topics safely considered and contemplated when explored in the pages of books.

The hypocrisy, then, of the editor’s organization to silence a detransitioner’s voice because her story was uncomfortable was very real, as was my rage. It took me only a few days to introspect, cancel my membership, and move the fuck on because the editor’s organization to which I had once belonged had devolved into an authoritarian cult: This book good; that book bad.

And that was my cue to leave.

Free Expression and Speech Means Accepting That Which We Don’t Like

Now, I know that the editor’s organization to which I belonged was not an extension of government and, therefore, could choose to censor those voices it didn’t prefer to hear from. They absolutely can symbolically burn the books they don’t want to accept, but I don’t align myself with organizations that openly champion censorship no matter how well-intended the reason for doing so.

There are lots of folks who want to curb free speech that is “hateful,” but when it comes down to it, hate speech as a standalone phrase doesn’t really exist. As Reason’s Emma Camp pointed out in an article published earlier this month, “While threats aren't protected by the First Amendment, ‘hate speech’ most certainly is. Speech that is merely offensive—and not part of an unprotected category like true threats or harassment—has full First Amendment protection.”

And this is important.

Trying to define that which is hateful is an act of folly, given the evolution of language and cultural mores over time, not to mention differences in language use-cases even between members in the same or similar cultural and geographic groups.

What we find hateful today may not be considered hateful tomorrow. That which is considered misinformation today may very well be proved true tomorrow.

We’re not required to like it, support it, share it, or repeat it, but to remain free, we must be willing to accept that folks will have thoughts and opinions we don’t like.

We must accept that authors may write books we don’t like, books we don’t want to read, edit, coach on, or otherwise interact with.

But, as I’ve said before, freedom and diversity are synonyms. We can’t have one without the other, and without both, we don’t own ourselves or the trajectory of our creative lives.

♥ Fal

Have you left an organization or otherwise terminated a relationship due to censorship? Want to talk about censorship of books or other creative ventures? Drop your thoughts below.