In 2025, Alberta’s premier and head of the UCP party, Daniel Smith, and Education Minister, Demetrios Nicolaides, told Albertans that explicit books were in their public school libraries. They singling out four examples: Fun Home by Allison Bechdel, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Blankets by Craig Thompson and Flamer by Mike Curato. The announcement, in a very pearl-clutching fashion, included out-of-context examples from all of the books above to show how just how “explicit” they were, and induce fear in the parents. Soon after, Nicolaides proposed a ban on several books so that the poor, poor Albertan children could never be exposed to such debauchery.
The Alberta government set out some guidelines, and demanded the school boards provide a list of books to comply. And they did–sending a whopping list of over 200 books that would need to be banned, if they were to follow these guidelines. This included a ton of classics taught in class, of course–one of them being A Handmaid’s Tale, prompting author Margaret Atwood to even get involved, writing a short story about the affair.
The Alberta government claimed this was “vicious compliance”. No, they were not out to ban all of these books, of course not.
They were after comics.
Pictures are Worth a thousand Words
Book bans are always a heavy subject, and I’m more than glad to see the response to the Alberta book bans have been incredibly negative. No one wanted this. Well, okay, some people wanted this, but we’ll get to that.
What I am a bit sad to see in this discussion is this isn’t just about books. These are specifically targeting comics and graphic novels. Comics have a harder time, see, because it isn’t just words. There’s pictures. It’s as much visual as it is reading. So this opens it up to immediate criticism–sure, you can write about sex, you can fully describe it, but if you open up a book on a sex scene, you’re not greeted with pictures of dicks and vaginas. But a comic…? Oh no. Of course, these are only drawings of dicks and vaginas. And also maybe drawings of characters being violently beheaded, or stabbed, or whatever. Comics can be edgy like that, and I’m not denying it. But they’re an easy target–Amie Wright, the head of TCAF, explains even the history of it in Canada here. Interestingly, though, it wasn’t the edgy comics that were targeted… it was autobiographical, coming-of-age ones.
And most notably… dare I say it, queer.
It was not lost on a me when 3 of the 4 books singled out were queer. It was almost laughably predictable, really. Gender Queer is one of the most banned books in America right now, so of course Alberta would follow suit. These books are not titillating sexcapades, they are memoirs. Of queer people. And growing up, and especially growing up queer, will inevitably mean you will have to talk about sex.
Why is it always about sex with you people?
You know, yeah. Why is that. It couldn’t be that sex is a normal thing most of us experience at some point. Couldn’t be something you deal with at a critical age. Couldn’t be that, when you’re surrounded in a heteronormative world, you can’t help but feel odd and left out when what’s expected of you doesn’t happen.
It’s a common tactic to sexualize anything queer. It’s so tried and true, it’s a bingo card free slot, at this point. Queer sex, and queerness in general, is often hyper-sexualized, simply because it doesn’t fit the “normal” view of sex. And yes, sex is important to queer people–very much so. But let’s not kid ourselves, here–it’s important to everyone. Sex is everywhere. It’s in fiction, it’s in nonfiction, it’s in advertising, it’s in books, movies, TV, magazines, YouTube–you name it. What sex is appropriate? It’s funny that some books considered classics that have sex are regarded as (usually) fine, but all this newfangled stuff is outright abhorrent. Or, you know, perhaps it’s because with it, kids could explore their sexualities beyond just being straight or cis! Uh oh.
I’m not here to say that young kids should be exposed to sexual imagery. Not at all. In fact, all four books that were singled out are clearly not meant for young kids. But also: all four books are clearly not pornography. At what point are we looking at anything sexual and deeming it inappropriate? All of these comics are coming-of-age stories, many are autobiographical, and therefore include sexual imagery to illustrate a very important part of their life. The art here is clearly not meant to be titillating–it isn’t sex for sex’s sake (not that there’s a problem with that), but to illustrate a point. Why should the author have to censor that? Why do you think kids–and by kids, I do mean young teens who are no doubt already exploring their sexualities–shouldn’t see something like this?
But that’s what this whole ordeal is about, right? Just making sure young kids don’t get a hold of explicit comics? These comics that were, supposedly, available to them! But why do they need to be banned, then? Why does the government get to decide this, and not the trained librarians? And is it really, truly, harmful for some kids to read this? Especially at impressionable ages, those ages you hit puberty, and you begin asking those questions? Here is someone’s book, who might have answers. Why deny those specifically?
Careful with that treasure box!
So, I have a stake in the game here. I grew up in Alberta. I was in the Catholic schoolboard system, and while these bans are affecting the public board, I feel like the Catholic one was probably way ahead of the game in this respect.
I didn’t have any sex ed in any of my schooling. I got a little bit about puberty, and the changes you could expect with it, but anything about sex was not talked about at all. The only thing I ever remember learning remotely about sex was in religion class, where we read a story about bears. Now, picture this–here I was, about 13-14 at the time, already gone through puberty and getting all those lovely questions and urges, and here was the school’s answer to me: read a children’s story. A story about bears with “special treasure boxes” which were meant to represent virginity. The story followed a bear who “gave away his treasure” to another (female) bear, only for her to show everyone what was in his box and laugh at him. The lesson was to not give it away too early, or you’ll be ridiculed. Save it for marriage, I guess?
And that’s it.
This obviously didn’t serve me at all. I ended up having to get my sex education by other means, and these means were certainly not always safe. Although I’m very lucky I avoided disaster, even in my 30s I’m still facing issues that stemmed from this. Because when you take away ways for people, even young people, the ability to learn about sexuality, they will still find out–and in ways that can very easily be unsafe for them. Even more so when it’s anything to do with queer sex, which has even less resources.
So now I look at these bans–bans on comics where queer authors are exploring their sexuality, explaining what it means to them, how they lived through it even as a teen–and I almost weep. I could’ve had this guiding me. I could’ve felt less weird, less afraid. I don’t understand why you’d take this from kids–except, unfortunately, I do. It isn’t just queer kids, of course, but it is definitely targeted at queer kids. To erase it. In this false sense of protection, you are actively hurting kids. You are taking away something they could very well need.
Who decides what’s right?
Although initially, and falsely, stated that this movement was brought forth by concerned parents, it was actually called into attention by two groups: Parents for Choice in Education (PCE) and Action4Canada, two conservative activist groups who have launched previous anti-queer actions in the past. I know–shocking, right? They follow the usual tactics of groups like this: create a “scare”, usually around sex, appeal to parents, then claim it has nothing to do with queer identities. And unfortunately, it works.
These groups typically target queerness, with the express goal of removing it as much as they can from schools, claiming it has “taken over” the whole system. This is in fact following very much in line with the current book bannings happening in America, using pretty much the exact same tactics.
Is this what we want? We Canadians love to pretend we aren’t like the States, especially right now. But the reality is we are following in its very footsteps–allowing scare tactics like this to influence schools, shocking parents into believing them and not thinking of who this is really hurting.
And it doesn’t stop there–it never stops there.
The Impact
It breaks my heart when I see what’s happening in America to trans rights. I feel absolutely gutted at every piece of news, and then I need only turn my heard and see it happening within my own country. Alberta has been on a tirade against trans rights in the last few years, especially towards queer and trans youth. They recently, controversially, used the notwithstanding clause to push forward with more anti-trans laws. As I was still writing this post, they’ve pushed more and more anti-trans laws, and don’t seem to be slowing down.
Targeting queer books in schools can’t be anything other than a part of this. As much as Education Minister Nicolaides likes to say the UCP’s actions have nothing to do with queer identities, this is a lie he’s told himself, and what so many in Alberta choose to believe.
The book bans themselves are having an impact even on the industry–publishers are hesitating on picking up books that have a higher chance of being banned. This means, publishers are less inclined to pick up books about and made by people of marginalized identities.
Oh, of course, this isn’t just about queerness. Maybe you’re right, Mr. Nicolaides! In fact, I took a peek at Action4Canada’s own list of materials they deem inappropriate, which covers a lot more books in explicit detail. It’s fascinating that on top of simple queer guides, such as A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns (which as far as I can tell, contains absolutely no sexual material), they also include several books by authors of colour, including The Hate U Give (which they flag just because of… swearing…??). Isn’t that interesting. The goal couldn’t be more clear: any books that don’t follow these conservative group’s very narrow scope of what they think humanity should be like, shouldn’t be accessed by children.
Where we are now
As of now, an officially list of the books banned from Alberta schools has been released for the Edmonton board and the Calgary board. Of course, Gender Queer made it into both, along with Blankets, while Fun Home is only banned in the Edmonton board. Flamer is the only of the initial four books to have not actually been banned.
The majority of the banned materials are comics.
As I’ve been writing this post, unfortunately the Alberta government has taken all of this a step further, and introduced new bills that censor educators, and are looking to bring this school book ban to all libraries in the province. This is, frankly, scary.
But to shine a light of hope: most Albertans have been against this whole thing. A survey went out early into this notion, and many parents opposed it, preferring that the government not meddle in affairs like this. There has been significant push back, and this whole movement has been controversial from the start. That’s good. I just hope, as they slide in with their bans on comics, that people still don’t let them. It’s very easy to brush away comics, but that’s a slippery slope if we just let them go through with it.
Recently, the Canadian Authors and Illustrators Against Book Bans has formed, and has been working to also counteract these measures. If you are, in fact, a Canadian author or illustrator, I highly suggest joining, or keeping up. They also have a lovely resources page to also help out.
Following everything about this has been, personally, heartbreaking. To see it happening within my country, within the province I was born in… it’s really been eating at me. I’m just one guy, and I’m no expert on education, or parenting, or even the higher politics of all of this. But I make gay comics, and I was raised in Alberta. So I do have some kind of horse in this race. I think these books–these comics–are important. I think kids deserve so much more than awful stories about bears.
Kids deserve better.
And that’s all I can really say.
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