faintingviolet

Marjane Satrapi, cartoonist and film director, best known for Persepolis

I really felt quite distressed of not receiving an invitation.

Gender Queer: A Memoir was only the third most challenged book in the United States in 2025 per the American Library Association's tracking, down from second in 2024 and first from 2021-2023. This book will be seven years old in May 2026, and it's now spent five of those years in the top three most challenged book in this country.

Here is an excerpt from the ALA report:

"The 2025 data reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) shows that the majority of book censorship attempts continue to originate from organized movements. In 2025, 92% of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials, and decision makers, up from 72% in 2024. Less than 3% of challenges originated from individual parents. The most common justifications for censorship provided by complainants were false claims of illegal obscenity for minors; inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes; and covering topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice."

Another example of how book banning is now originating from government officials is HR 7661, a federal level book banning bill hastily penned by Republicans after Trump's last State of the Union speech. If passed, this bill would pull federal school funding from any public school in the US which offered programing or literature with “sexually oriented material,” including depicting “gender dysphoria or transgenderism” or “lewd or lascivious dancing” (aka drag.) If this bill passed it would essentially ban every trans book from every public school in the US, unless a school was willing to risk loosing its federal funding. This bill has 20 co-sponsors as of April 22 2026- if one of them is your representative please call them and tell them you don't support this bill! It has unfortunately already passed it's first committee- Kelly Jensen, writing for Book Riot, has a vote breakdown in her excellent article on the bill here.

We need to kill HR 7661 if we want to protect trans books in public schools. Please call, email, or write your House Rep to say NO on HR 7661! EveryLibrary has a letter you can sign and a call script (copied below the cut).

A forty hour work week is considered full time.

It’s considered as such because it takes up the amount of time we as a society have agreed should be considered the maximum work schedule required of an employee. (this, of course, does not always bear out practically, but just follow me here)

A person working the maximum amount of time required should earn enough for that labor to be able to survive. Phrased this way, I doubt even most conservatives could effectively argue against it, and out of the mouth of someone verbally deft enough to dance around the pathos-based jabs conservative pundits like to use to avoid actually debating, it could actually get opps thinking.

Therefore, if an employee is being paid less than [number of dollars needed for the post-tax total to pay for the basic necessities in a given area divided by forty] per hour, they are being ripped off and essentially having their labor, productivity, and profit generation value stolen by their employer.

Wages are a business expense, and if a company cannot afford to pay for its labor, it is by definition a failing business. A company stealing labor to stay afloat (without even touching those that do so simply to increase profit margins and/or management/executive pay/bonuses) is no more ethical than a failing construction company breaking into a lumber yard and stealing wood.

If you don't already know you have issues doing so, squat down real quick. Bend your knees all the way and touch the floor. Just make sure you can do it. Okay? For me? And then stand up all the way and make sure you can balance on one foot.

If there was ever a tumblr post worth sending to your mom, it's this one.