What Book Bans Taught Me About People, Not Politics

For the past few weeks, I’ve been buried in research for my ENG‑190 essay on book bans in Oklahoma. I expected to learn about laws, policies, and political agendas. What I didn’t expect was how much this research would force me to look at the people behind those decisions — and, unexpectedly, the people in my own life.

Book bans are always framed as “protecting children,” but the deeper I dug, the more I saw something else: fear, insecurity, and a desperate need to control narratives. The state says it’s about safety, but the inconsistencies tell a different story. Oklahoma bans books about identity, race, and sexuality while ignoring the media kids actually consume every day. 

It’s selective. It’s performativity. It’s hypocritical.

And somewhere in the middle of analyzing that hypocrisy, I started noticing the hypocrisy in my own relationship.

I kept hearing, “Get off my back,” every time I asked a simple question. Meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t unsee the things that didn’t add up — the sudden disappearance of timestamps on every account, including mine. The new social media profile that appeared out of nowhere. The endless feed of other women’s profiles he’d been scrolling through. The way transparency vanished the moment I had access to his accounts.

It felt eerily similar to what I was writing about: someone insisting everything is fine while their actions tell a completely different story.

Book bans taught me that censorship isn’t just about hiding information — it’s about controlling perception. It’s about shaping a reality that benefits the person in power, even if it means gas lighting everyone else. It’s about saying, “Don’t question me,” while quietly rewriting the rules behind the scenes.

And that’s exactly what I was living.

The more I wrote about Oklahoma’s contradictions, the more I recognized the contradictions in my relationship. The state says it’s protecting kids, but the data doesn’t support that. He said he wanted trust, but his behavior didn’t support that either. Both situations relied on the same tactic: deny, deflect, and hope the other person stops asking questions.

My research didn’t just teach me about censorship — it taught me about patterns. About the way people hide behind excuses. About how easy it is to say one thing and do another. And about how much clarity you gain when you stop accepting explanations that don’t match the evidence.

I didn’t expect my ENG‑190 essay to bleed into my personal life, but it did. It made me braver. It made me more honest with myself. And it reminded me that hypocrisy isn’t just a political problem — it’s a human one.

Sometimes the hardest part isn’t seeing the truth.

It’s admitting that you already knew it.