You Should Be Worried About Literary Censorship

Romance is a political issue. Sponsored by INCOGNI: https://incogni.com/princessweekes

With Project 2025's orchestrators poised to gain real power through Trump's election, combined with fears of a TikTok ban and widespread issues with literacy—from basic reading to media and news comprehension—we find ourselves in a paradox: an endless sea of critics, analysts, and reporters covering countless topics, yet a remarkably poor public understanding of these issues.

Therefore, on my second-to-last video of 2024, I want to illustrate exactly why romance and smut are political issues.

Timestamps

00:00 Backlashes
02:02 Housekeeping!
03:55 Obscene?
14:19 Oscar Wilde
22:23 Radclyffe Hall
29:39 Lady Chatterley's Lover
36:34 BookTok
41:32 Credits

Plugs:

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Special Thanks to Joey for Editing and Emotional Support.


Sources:

THE PIRACIES OF "LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER": 1928-1950
Jay A. Gertzman
The D.H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 19, No. 3 (fall 1987), pp. 267-299 (33 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44233862

The Taint of the Pornographic: Defending (Against) "Lady Chatterley's Lover"
J. M. COETZEE
Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Winter 1988), pp. 1-11 (11 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24777730

Metaphysics and Sexual Politics in Lawrence's Novels
Patrick McHugh
College Literature, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Jun., 1993), pp. 83-97 (15 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25112032

A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde
Ari Adut
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 111, No. 1 (July 2005), pp. 213-248 (36 pages)
https://doi.org/10.1086/428816 // https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/428816

Lesbianism, History, and Censorship: The Well of Loneliness and the Suppressed Randiness of Virginia Woolf's Orlando
Adam Parkes
https://www.jstor.org/stable/441599

https://lithub.com/the-republicans-project-2025-is-disastrous-for-books/

https://lithub.com/thank-god-for-the-sex-i-found-in-my-mothers-romance-novels/

https://lithub.com/remembering-samuel-roth-the-bookseller-who-defied-americas-obscenity-laws/

https://www.pbs.org/education/blogs/pbs-in-the-classroom/what-is-media-literacy-and-how-can-simple-shifts-center-it/

https://medialiteracynow.org/challenge/what-is-media-literacy/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Regina-v-Hicklin

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-anthony-comstocks-chastity-laws/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/comstock-act-transform-abortion-debate-180982363/

https://glreview.org/article/1928-out-came-hall-and-woolf/

https://archive.org/details/trialofladychatt0000chro/page/72/mode/2up

Prochain épisode

S01E453 - I finally watched Girls ...