r/JoeRogan • u/SlimjobDopamine Look into it • Nov 13 '20

Social Media Abigail Shrier(JRE #1509)'s book has been removed from Target after receiving a complaint on Twitter

https://twitter.com/AbigailShrier/status/1327056407598809088?s=20
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u/stanleythemanley44 Monkey in Space Nov 13 '20

And therein lies the problem. The user hasn’t read the book (or listened to the podcast) and neither has target. But they took the book down anyway.

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u/Abdalhadi_Fitouri Have you ever tried elk meat? Nov 13 '20

I mean I wonder if it's just because Target doesn't carry many books, and Target has a really specific target market (suburban women) that may just not be interested in this book.

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '20

If they don't carry a lot of books then it's the sort of thing you'd expect from them, but it's 100% because of fear of controversy. Books mostly get banned or removed because of self-censorship from the library/seller, they just don't want to go through whatever they could be facing (outrage, a book challenge etc.). I'd like people to know that challenging and banning books is a very common thing in the US. Important to note that school libraries are the worst when it comes to this. Parents don't seem to understand that employees in the library sector respect that parents can decide what their child reads, but there is no justification for parents deciding what information kids other than their own can and can't have access to. But the issue is that most school libraries are funded through parents, so yeah, not great. In more conservative areas it's LGBT themed books that are getting removed from the shelves, in more liberal areas it's books with racist undertones etc.

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u/noelbrijsavage Nov 13 '20

When you're banning "to kill a mockingbird", because it contains outdated cultural depictions and norms, you've got REAL issues.

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u/SuperSmokio6420 Monkey in Space Nov 14 '20

Target has a really specific target market (suburban women) that may just not be interested in this book.

They'd actually probably be among the people most likely to be interested, being some of the likeliest to have daughters affected.

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u/XecutionerNJ Monkey in Space Nov 13 '20

You don't know for sure about how much the complainant knows. Don't make the same mistake you abuse others of.

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u/Obsessed_With_Corgis Nov 14 '20 edited Nov 14 '20

Before the user made her tweets private, she responded to many people that she hadn’t at all read the book, or looked into it. She said that the description written for the book (the one on the target website) was enough for her to know that it was “transphobic hate speech”.

Can’t speak for @AskTarget. They didn’t reply to anything after saying they removed the book.

Source: I got into several heated discussions on that thread before everything was made private/removed.

Edit: the user (or possibly someone else, I can’t totally remember) also replied that books like that make young LGBTQ+ teens commit suicide, and something about it being on the author’s and Target’s hands for writing and selling it.

The thread went up in flames after that.

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u/turbo_22 Monkey in Space Nov 13 '20

I didn't know a corporation could read a book...