The Keller Independent School District board voted last month to ban any book that contains “discussion or depiction of gender fluidity.” “Gender fluidity,” like “Critical Race Theory,” is an existing term that conservative groups have co-opted and redefined as a fear-mongering tactic. While gender fluidity has been used for decades as a label for people who experience their gender as unfixed — changing anywhere between occasionally to daily — it’s been (incorrectly) defined by Keller ISD as: In short, it has banned any book that acknowledges the existence of transgender or nonbinary people from schools, including high schools. FIRE argues this could be used to also ban any media that shows gender nonconforming characters, and could even be applied to Disney’s Mulan. FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh explains, They are hoping that these billboards draw attention to this violation of the First Amendment. This policy isn’t in isolation, either: Texas has banned the most books of any state in 2022, and Keller ISD has been one of the biggest players in this surge of censorship. Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books. To find out how to fight book bans and censorship, check out our anti-censorship tool kit and sign up for our weekly Literary Activism newsletter.
