Harry and the Human Rights Violation: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Harry Harman lived at the library. The New Concord Library. Population: 10 000. His bed was his mother’s house, and that’s where he slept. But every morning at 8 a.m., he walked to the refurbished Victorian mansion on Division Street and unlocked the main entrance to the library and switched on the lights and sighed with satisfaction at the sight of all the rows and rows of books. 

 It was a beautiful world of ideas.

 And he was the manager.

 Actually, his title was Director of Library Services. But he thought of himself as the manager, just like a person who runs a store.

 On one side of the main hall were books bound in blue. These were the fiction books. On the other side were books bound in green: the non-fiction section, including reference. The Library Standards Commission implemented those standards to make sure that the public was not confused about the nature of the books. For about a decade now, the government had been issuing new regulations regarding library operations in its efforts to create Social Harmony.

 Since Canada had such a diverse population whose various interests and values could come into conflict, it was thought that a body of beliefs and best practices was necessary to promote tolerance, foster diversity and social cohesion. Hence the development of Social Harmony.

 Libraries were seen as an integral part of that strategy. Enlightenment was seen as the key to bringing people together. The better educated people were, the more likely they were to cast aside prejudices. Libraries were instrumental in the search for truth. Or the best versions of it. This truth was what would bind people together through a set of common values and further national unity.

 Harry was proud of his contribution to Social Harmony. The world of ideas was awesome and so eye-opening. He was proud to be a gatekeeper to that world. When he unlocked that door and turned on the lights at 8 am every morning, he thought he had the best job in the world. Directing people to knowledge. Opening minds. Changing hearts. Being an important member of a societal effort gave him feelings of transcendence.

 He went into his office on the other side of the front desk and turned on his computer. He poured some coffee into his mug and sat down at his monitor. It was time to moderate the New Concord Library’s online book club. It was a modest effort—there were only a dozen regulars. But it was active and productive.

 He would not have had to moderate the content of the message board, were it not for the abrasive postings of a participant who went by the name of Liberty Bell. The software already filtered the usual four-letter expletives, but not vulgarly used words that punctuated her writings.

Of course welfare leads to laziness you douchebag. If you give people money, they won’t be motivated to look for work.

Harry highlighted the word “douchebag” and pressed the “delete” button. He then replaced it with pound signs.

Guns are good! They shoot potential murderers and rapists. Liberals should be in love with guns: they can defend the defenseless and avenge the downtrodden. Only pussies and criminals should be worried about them. Naturally, that’s why liberals hate them.

Harry eliminated the word “pussies” and then approved it for publication.

Islam is a vile religion. It approves of pedophilia and enslaves women. Why anyone would want to convert to that mind-death cult is beyond my comprehension. You’d have to be a retard to want to join, and probably have a predisposition to brainwashing in the first place.

Harry shook his head at that comment and erased the word “retard” then allowed it to be posted.

Part of him thought he should react with more horror at her opinions. But actually he was bemused; bemused at how their coarseness conveyed a lack of experience and sophistication all the while seeming so smug and harsh in their certitude. Her adolescent hubris that made her so sure of herself despite her inexperience, made him smirk.

He knew that in fact, Liberty Bell was actually a tall, scrawny sixteen-year-old named Stacy Cameron. Liberty Bell had mentioned that she was a high school student, and he had checked out the books she had borrowed to for the club. Not too many teenagers sign out the book club selections.

He didn’t actually mind doing the moderating. Too many of the world’s teenagers were disengaged from current affairs and he thought it was a positive thing for a student so young to be thinking about important issues, even if her opinions were outrageous and her language bordered on the obscene.

She’ll grow up, he thought.

 Soon the employees started checking in for work. There was Mrs. Keeble and Mrs. Quigley. Harry felt a little weird calling them by their first names since they were so much older than him. Then there was Josh Kramer, his twenty-something assistant who worked in the office beside his.

 He showed up in Harry’s doorway.

 “I have this week’s new acquisitions,” he said as he carted the boxes of books into his office.

 “Oh great!” Harry picked up a book. There was nothing like the feel of a new acquisition. “You pick great books, Josh.”

 “And you know, with the new budget coming in, we’ll be able to buy more.”

 “Such a shame more people don’t sign out these books, “Harry lamented. He sat down and browsed a book on Middle Eastern Archeology. “There’s just so much to learn.”

 “I think people have been too sucked in by the internet. There’s nothing like having a book in your hands.” He said as he fished through the box of books. “The feeling of having knowledge right in your hands, and not some transient writings on a screen.”

 “I know, people said that the internet would augur the death of books, but I think they’ve just made them more important. Knowledge on the internet is so superficial and so based on hearsay. A book is so much better argued and more permanent. That’s what makes them so necessary to this world.”

 Josh put back the books and pulled out an envelope that was on his cart. “By the way, Harry, you got a letter—“

 Harry shrugged.

 “From the Human Rights Commission.”

 He was intrigued. Were they going to honour him for his noble work as a herald of Social Harmony?

 It was a fairly fat envelope. He pulled out the cover letter. As he read the letter, the colour drained from his face.

 “What’s the matter, Harry? Are we being sued?” Josh said in a playful manner.

 He nodded. “Yes!”

 Josh looked at him in disbelief. “What?”

 Harry sat back to re-read the letter. “There’s a complaint lodged against us.”

 “By who?”

 “Gisela Gruber.”

 Josh’s shoulders sank. “Gisela Gruber? Why?”

 He got up and slammed the envelope on the desk. “Because she can, that’s why!” He slumped into his chair. “We’re being cited under section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Code.”

 Gisela Gruber was a woman’s studies professor who was on a year-long sabbatical and living in New Concord at her cottage in order to devote herself to her writing. About six months ago, she began contacting Harry—first by email, then in person—about a library book entitled Population Perils: A Review of Demographic Crises Around the World by James Robinson PhD. Harry was surprised to hear from her—or at least her surrogates—since he had not had any contact with her in the last three months. He figured that that was the amount of time it took for her application to wind its way through the complaints process. 

 Ms. Gruber’s objection to the book was that in the face of lopsided sex ratios in various parts of the world it recommended that sex-selection abortions should be banned.

 To suggest a curb on such a fundamental right in this day and age was inadmissible. In the eyes of the good professor, it amounted to hate speech.

 Now of course, since the author and the publisher were American, she could not take up her complaint with them and persuade them of the rightness of her cause.

 She had to contact the library to express her offense and demand that it be removed from library. The right to abortion was a hard-won right and any suggestion that it should be curtailed for any reason whatsoever could unleash the forces of misogyny and lead down the path to its complete prohibition. For decades, feminists had worked tirelessly first to legalize it, then decriminalize it and finally to stigmatize and suppress every proposal for guidelines to frame its practice. The slightest breath of dissent could unravel the present day social consensus on the matter and ignite the dying embers of the anti-choice movement. The gains that feminists had made were too fragile in the face of omnipresent patriarchal impulses that were still buried deep in the hearts of the people. Allowing that book to stand on the shelves of the New Concord Library was far too risky.

 It had to be eliminated.

 Ms. Gruber had had several email conversations on this matter and even met Harry at one point. But nothing could sway him. As a supporter of abortion on demand, he was sympathetic to her struggle to keep abortion accessible and legal, but he did not believe that this one book posed that great a danger. The social consensus on this issue was strong, and sometimes it was a common practice that it was sometimes acceptable to limit the exercise of certain rights for the greater good. And on this premise, he thought that this book should be displayed for the sake of discussion.

 Ms. Gruber was exasperated by his inability to understand the essence of her complaint. Sure, he supported legal abortion on demand, but he didn’t get it. He did not understand the extent of patriarchy, nor was he able to step back, discern the sexism in his own thinking and self-correct. He was, fundamentally, a fake progressive. In other words, a liberal. A man who deluded himself into thinking that espousing broadminded social policies was sufficient in counting himself among the standard bearers of an egalitarian and democratic society. A man who was ignorant of the fact that it was not enough to vote progressive, but to think and act like one.

 Harry could not believe this was happening to him. He considered a model proponent of Social Harmony. He wasn’t some crazed wingnut anonymous spewing filth on some message board. He was a fine, upstanding citizen who worked towards eradicating hatred. And now to be accused of hatred? It was all too much.

 “I feel really bad about this, “said Josh. “I’m the one who chose the book.”

 “No, don’t blame yourself, Josh. If I had just stopped displaying it, it would have been solved. “

 “But now, if you lose this case, your job could be in jeopardy.”

 The colour drained from Harry’s face. The prospect of losing his job terrified him. What would he do with himself? Who would hire him after such a disgrace?

 But this couldn’t be. This had to be some mistake. How could he be the subject of a Human Rights complaint?

 All he had to have done was remove the book. Problem solved. The government would pay the damages: $5000 for “hurt feelings”.

 But this seemed like capitulation to him, and he was a man dedicated to ideas. Restricting sex-selection abortions didn’t seem like such a bad one. After all, how many women in Canada decide to terminate a pregnancy based on the sex of their child? Probably a handful, if that. And of course, there would be medical exceptions. It didn’t seem like such a big deal to him. 

 There was a principal here at stake. Part of him wondered if his stance was worth it. It seemed, after all, like a petty thing. Just a couple of sentences in a book. One book out of thousands. Was he really being reasonable in stubbornly refusing to give in and remove the book? There was so much effort and taxpayer money going into prosecuting him, and there would be so much effort and taxpayer money going into defending himself. He felt sort of selfish for thinking so highly of himself that he thought others should foot the bill for his actions. Buying a book. Putting it on display. Standing up for it. These were all such small actions. Of practically no consequence. How many people would actually read the book? Aside from Professor Gruber, probably no one. It all seemed like much ado about nothing. Why didn’t he save the whole world a lot of time, energy and money and just take down the book? How could he justify himself? The taxpayer might not be happy with his resistance. If he gave in, he could keep his job, and none would be the wiser.

 Part of him resented being bullied this way, especially when he thought the point up for discussion was so reasonable and within the due limits of civil discourse. Who did this woman think she was, telling him he couldn’t display a reasonable book in his library? Okay, it wasn’t his library. But he ran it. He was the boss. The Government of Ontario thought he was competent enough to manage and make prudent decisions about which books to offer and he’d been doing a fine job for the last twenty-five years. No one had ever made such a drama about his book selections. Sure, some were mad about some omissions, and some found a couple of books mildly objectionable, but no one had ever laid a hate speech complaint against him.

 When he thought about the arrogance of this woman, trying to dictate to him how to do his job, it made him angry. She only cared about her particular ideology. She did not care about the free market of ideas. She did not care about debate. He cared. He wanted various ideas offered to the public so that they could discuss and argue them. She only cared about advancing her own ideology.

 It made him furious.

 But what to do?

 He sent Josh to open up the library. Then he sat down as his desk to call his friend and boss, Jack Welland, who worked at the Library Standards Commission.

 Jack was in charge of the department that issued library licenses. Operating a public library without a license is subject to fines of up to $10 000 and a possible five-year jail term. Jack is proud that, in the ten years since the law was passed, nobody had ever been investigated—let alone charged—for attempting to run a library without a license. This meant that the law worked. It had prevented people from setting up rogue libraries that could possibly foment hatred and threaten social harmony. He was proud of his role in preventing such social unrest.

 “Jack, it’s Harry. I got some bad news.”

 “I heard.”

 “You heard? Where?”

 “There was a press release on the internet. Some feminist outfit. They’re out to get us.”

 Harry sank his head into his hand. “Oh crap”

 “My superiors are not happy. They want that book off the shelf. There are even whispers about implementing new vetting policies. My boss wants to talk to me about it this afternoon. It’s embarrassing the department.”

 Harry clicked his tongue. “You’re not going to make me take the book off the shelf, are you?”

 “If it were up to me, I’d tell the bitch to fuck off.”

  “Do they even care about what the book says?”

 “No they don’t care what the book says. All they care about is that this makes us look bad, like we don’t support Social Harmony. Social Harmony is the whole purpose of our department’s existence, and if we don’t support—or look like we’re supporting it—they’re going to start calling for budget cuts. “

 “But it’s a really reasonable book, you know, Jack. It doesn’t deserve censorship.”

 “I know that. But they don’t care. In their eyes, if the government is embarrassed, it’s not promoting Social Harmony. Got it? If the feminists say it’s not, then it’s not. And that’s that.”

 “So what about me?”

 “Well, they’re going to provide you with a lawyer, seeing as this is the result of your particular mandate. But if you lose this case, Harry, they might let you go.”

 “Let me go?”

 “The government is not going to risk embarrassing itself by continuing to employ a human rights violator. And that’s what you’d be if you lost this case, a human rights violator.”

 “But that’s insane! I’m not a human rights violator. It makes me sound like I’m some goddamned genocidal maniac!”

 “In their eyes, you might as well be. It’s the same thing.”

 Harry hung up. Let me go, repeated to himself. This is fucking ridiculous. For a book?

 Maybe I should just take down the book. I’d save my job, and this whole story would be gone.

 But then he thought: what else are they going to ask him to remove? Where does it end? Was this about Social Harmony? Or Indoctrination?

 This couldn’t be allowed to stand.