Books That Can't Be Challenged

July 7, 2025

Legislation in Florida means that I can no longer make books that include the term “Gulf of Mexico.” That state is a big market for the company I work for, and we have to make sure our books remain buyable for customers there.

It isn’t the customers’ fault. I would imagine that many librarians (our main customers) have left-leaning politics. But their hands are tied. They put their jobs at risk if they buy educational materials that contain banned terms or ideologies. What else should they do? Quit? Would you?

I make educational materials, so the Gulf of Mexico does come up often enough. When management announced this news, I was literally minutes away from finalizing a book that contains this term. I did end up sending it to the printer without changes, so we’ll see if that decision comes back to bite me in the ass.

In the past, there has been talk of shifting focus to “books that can’t be challenged.” Historically we don’t really make a lot of books that a right-leaning person might take issue with. They’re educational books, after all. They are based in scientific research and fact.

But as the crazy train keeps rolling in, things are changing. Scientific fact is being challenged. I heard about another publisher having one of their books get banned in a red state because it contained the word “reproduction.” Possibly the most unproblematic, unsexy way to talk about sex imaginable, and it got banned.

I’m sure topics like evolution and natural selection are next to be banned. Climate change, maybe. American slavery? How the government works? Who knows.

And of course, books that cover marginalized cultures and identities, especially people of color and LGBTQ+ people, are at risk.

Not that they weren’t already.

Years ago, I was made to remove the word “transgender” from a book. It was just a sentence about some corporation donating money to an organization that helps trans people.

But even that was deemed questionable. Challengeable.

In the end, we had to work around it by including the organization’s name but not the word “transgender.” You know, since the word alone triggers conservatives, but they’re unlikely to look any deeper than surface level.

I’m still mad about that. I understand that the business needs to make money, and I don’t entirely fault them for that since it puts food on my table, and the tables of my coworkers.

But at the same time, it would be great if profit could take a backseat to ethics and morality for once in human history.

(And then I feel like a hypocrite, since I choose to continue working there. But should I feel that way? A for-profit company has better ability to take a financial hit than a regular person with a mortgage. At what point does the regular person become accountable for decisions made by people with more power than themselves?

Complicating things further, I'd bet money that on an individual level, the majority of my coworkers and managers do not agree with this decision. But they have to comply in order to serve the company, which in turn keeps us all fed... I don't know, it's just wild that the company takes precedence over the people who make it up. But I guess that's capitalism, baby.)

Anyway, I imagine that at some point in the future, educational publishers will just avoid LGBTQ+ topics altogether.

I’m not sure how to avoid other topics that conservatives don't want students to know about. Like, you can’t really talk truthfully about the history of this nation without acknowledging slavery, Jim Crow, treatment of Native American nations, internment camps, etc.

Though, I guess truth is not really on the docket anymore.