The Ongoing Call for Book Bans

Lately we have been seeing more calls for book bans. And since we write erotic eBooks dealing with BDSM humiliation stories, the call to ban books that encourage submissiveness in women is somewhat disconcerting. The puritans who cry for these bans ostensibly are defending a woman’s right to be independent and strong in a liberal democracy.

We find it hard not to agree with such sentiments. But we suspect that such calls have more to do with religious opposition to transgressive sex practices than feminism.

European Book Bans

The latest flap has been occurring in Spain:

http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2013/12/16/outrage-over-violence-promoting-gender-violence/ 

A book advising newly-wed women how to be “submissive” has become a publishing phenomenon in Spain while outraging feminists who have called for it to be banned. The book by Italian author Costanza Miriano titled ‘Cásate y sé sumisa (Get Married and Be Submissive) was published by the Catholic Arcbishopric of the southern city of Granada in November and soared up the bestseller list.

The book, a bestseller in Italy, preaches “loyal obedience, generosity and submission” on the part of the new wife and offers nuggets of advice for the newly-wed on how to please her husband. The book currently appears at number 15 on the Amazon bestseller list in Spain but has raised the hackles of modern-minded senoras who staged a public demonstration against the tome and tore up copies. Women’s groups are considering legal action to get it banned arguing that it promotes gender violence. One passage suggests: “We [women] like humiliation because it is for a greater good.”

Time to Re-assert Rights

Gee people, give it a rest. If some women want to be submissive, it’s their right. And if they want to be strong and independent, that’s also “OK”  too. All this new puritanism suggests is that some folks want to criminalize certain sexual behaviors. It’s finally “OK” to be gay or transexual, but the focus seems to be gravitating to what the book banners consider aberrant sexual behavior or attitudes that run counter the the current political thinking about the sexes.These descendants of Josef Goebbels don’t want you to read about such things. And they will use the accusation that such thinking promotes “gender violence.”

Book bans are part of an attack on thinking. And they are always a dead end for democracies. Check your history people… Please.

Leslie Parma 12/16/13

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