Tools of the Patriarchy: Censorship and the Stories Those in Power Find Dangerous – Ms. Magazine

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Tools of the Patriarchy: Censorship and the Stories Those in Power Find Dangerous PUBLISHED 10/9/2026 by Claire Masquida

Book bans do more than remove titles from shelves. They narrow the stories women and girls can use to understand their bodies, choices and experiences—while the overwhelmingly female library workforce is left to absorb the backlash.

Tools of the Patriarchy is a column on the tools that establish men’s dominance in society, or, in other words, uphold the patriarchy. Whether or not these tools are used intentionally, they contribute to a world in which women are not equal to men.

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Every fall, Banned Books Week (Oct. 4-10, 2026) arrives with a familiar visual language: stacks of novels wrapped in caution tape, displays of frequently challenged classics and lists inviting readers to discover what someone, somewhere, did not want them to read. This year’s theme—“Let Books Be. Protect the Freedom to Read”—comes amid another record-breaking year of school censorship.

There is something almost fun about reading a banned book when censorship is presented this way. But the current wave of book bans in the United States is harder to romanticize.

PEN America recorded 11,982 school book bans affecting 7,370 unique titles during the 2025-26 school year, the highest number since the organization began tracking bans in 2021. Among the books banned for the first time were Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World, Lessons in Chemistry and Jane Eyre.

The books disappearing from shelves are not random. Censorship campaigns continue to sweep up stories about women’s sexuality, sexual violence, reproductive autonomy and girls coming of age, alongside books about LGBTQ+ people and people of color.

Stories are also one of the places girls first encounter women who leave, resist, desire, survive, refuse motherhood, question authority or name the harm done to them.

On a recent episode of Smithsonian magazine’s podcast There’s More to That, former librarian of Congress Carla Hayden recalls the suspicion surrounding romance novels in the late 19th century: They might give women ideas about marriage and lives beyond their prescribed roles. The vocabulary has changed, but the fear of what women might learn from reading is hardly new.

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