More like a white Friar Tuck

Well maybe I don’t WANT to work double as hard as abled people!! Maybe I deserve a BREAK!! Maybe I’ve been working MORE THAN double as hard for MY WHOLE LIFE and it’s led me to immense burnout & caused me to develop several MORE disabilities!! Maybe I should be ACCOMMODATED so I don’t have to KILL MY BODY AND BRAIN over trying to do what abled people can do!! Maybe I DON’T have to work double as hard!! Maybe if there’s the option to let me NOT work double as hard, I should have it, because I’m already working double as hard JUST TO SURVIVE!!

Source

I work at a library. We do this thing where, every so often, we weed the collection. It hurts to see books go, but it's necessary to make sure there's room in the library for new materials.

I have seen so much support for the library in text, and I've seen folks pass around those beautiful "queer your library" flyers. Keep doing that. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you HAVE to turn your words into action. We MUST remember to actually go to our local organizations and libraries and actually, with our own fucking hands, interact with these materials we want to see more of.

My branch is medium-sized for a library, maybe a little small. We don't have as many materials as I'd like, but we have fundamentals. Tell me why, even with all the verbal support I've gotten from my local community for the library as a resource for our LGBT+ community, every single trans biography and a good chunk of our vaguely queer theory books were on the list. This isn't a scheme to take the books off the shelves, it isn't another bigoted American governmental push. The only thing we look at when we weed is how long it's been since the last time the item was checked out.

Three years.

No one in my community interacted in any meaningful way with the few books on trans life and history we physically had on the shelves for three fucking years.

I promise you the materials you want and need are there, but this isn't a horde. This isn't a static safety net. You have to use them. You MUST use them or, in the future, maybe in three years, they *won't* be there anymore.

I'm also a librarian and queer books are almost always cut first when we have to weed for space or prioritize new releases over old items because no one reads them

I will say, when I worked at a large downtown location, we had a "browsing card" that we would check out items we found taken off the shelf and left on a table, as an example of a book that had clearly been read, just not checked out by anyone

it's possible queer books do actually get a bit of unfair treatment in this regard because people may be nervous or outright scared to check them out onto an account with their name on it. so they get browsed at a much higher rate, but if a library doesn't have a specific system in place (or need for it) to count browsed items, then it looks like they aren't being used and they get weeded

for other librarians, a browsing card is a great idea if you have enough staff for the extra work / enough items left out to justify it

for patrons, check out queer books even if you don't read them! you're not lying or committing any type of fraud. you're keeping books on the shelf long enough for pride season when people are interested in checking them out again and for people scared to use their own accounts or who don't have library cards

for anyone nervous about using their library card, libraries do not keep search histories of what you check out!! this means even if the government does come back with a warrant, *wet farting noise* too bad! it doesn't exist!

It feels like such a small thing, but all movements are made up of small things! We have this mindset that in order to get everything done, everyone must be doing their (or *the*) absolute best at all times. But not everyone can do the same things, to the same degree, with the same amount of productivity or success. Not everyone can; sometimes, they're the ones that need help. Sometimes people just need help.

This post is very much so intended for the people who can. I've seen a lot of replies from folks who say they don't have to (or don't think about) checking out or requesting queer books from the library specifically because they *can* buy them, can pirate them, or already have them in their house or on their computers or phones. But in instances like that, keeping these books in circulation is less for you and more for the people who can't. The folks who come to the library, who don't have access to internet--or even electricity--at home and would never--have never--been able to interact with this "ubiquitous queer community" we have here online who has made so many of these. materials so avaliable to the rest of us.

And... if I can be a little frank. Sometimes the hyperaccessibility of these materials online (through pirating, cheap e-book copies, etc) gives people a false sense of security. It implies that these things are an infinate resource, good for "When I get around to it".

And often, you won't. There's so much to read and so much to do. So much to download and so much to sit down and stare at for hours. That kind of mental scope puts books in people's hands (or phones), but never in their heads.

I live in a province that is currently trying to ban queer books from libraries, and as a library patron, this is terrifying. 95% of the books I read are from the library and a lot of them are way out of my budget to buy personally.

Making Queer History would not exist without the school library I skipped class in to write articles. It would not exist without my friends with library cards for their universities sharing them and getting me access to rare texts. I would not be able to read as much as I do without Libby and Hoopla. If I have ever given you a book recommendation, know that I likely got it from the library first.

I cannot overstate the importance of protecting libraries and checking out queer books. And I want to say thank you to everyone above for being as passionate as I am about queer books in libraries.

Let's be precise about what @queercodedangel got wrong.

What the IRD list actually was:

A private notebook, handed to one person at the IRD, listing individuals Orwell thought were unsuitable to write anti-stalinist propaganda - not people he wanted arrested, surveilled, fired, or harmed - and none of them were.

Orwell believed these specific people were Stalinist sympathizers who would undermine the work of countering Stalinism. You can legitimately think that was a bad call - it was certainly a morally complicated one for Orwell. It was not, however, the act of an imperialist snitch. It was the act of someone who hated authoritarian Stalinism enough to do something uncomfortable about it, while continuing to publicly criticize the British state.

The tension between those two things evaporates the moment you understand Orwell's position: Stalinism wasn't socialism. It was fascism with better branding, and it was destroying the socialist project from within.

History proved Orwell right.

Orwell:

Got shot through the throat while fighting fascists in Spain

Spent decades producing some of the most devastating critiques of British imperialism ever written, including Burmese Days, and Shooting an Elephant.

Called himself a Democratic Socialist his entire adult life and meant it.

Wrote that "every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism."

@queercodedangel is taking one late-life episode, stripping it of all context, and canceling one of the sharpest anti-totalitarian, anti-imperialist pens of the twentieth century - because he wouldn't excuse Stalin's crimes. That's apparently the price of admission to the 2026 left - being ignorant enough to deny that Stalin was a monster.

Calling that "snitching" tells you nothing about Orwell. It tells you that for some people, anti-Stalinism is a greater sin than imperialism ever was - and you can only take that position if you know nothing about what Stalinism was.

That sucking vacuum of ignorance where actual knowledge should be doesn't inspire a single second of hesitation before they confidently preach provable falsehoods. The less @queercodedangel knows about Orwell, the IRD list, or Stalin's crimes, the more confident the verdict. This is what happens when a generation decides memes and reels are sufficient substitutes for actually reading anything.

Orwell spent his life fighting this kind of epistemic laziness - the willingness to flatten complex realities into politically useful, emotionally resonant, self-affirming fictions.

This is why Gen Z desperately needs to read the Orwell and Huxley they've been told to avoid.

reason 1 million why i love zukka: how extra insane it makes hakoda's family tree