In April 1984 the Pan Books edition of Blood and Guts in High School Plus Two was seized by the Customs Department of Wellington, New Zealand, and subsequently classified as indecent. Nine other publications were also requisitioned: four issues of Penthouse (September 1983, November 1983, December 1983, and January 1984); High Low Boom: An Explosives Treatise of Synchronous Historical Duration by Phillip J. Danisevich; How to Kill by Jon Minnery; Improvised Weapons of the American Underground (Desert Publications USA); Field Expedient Methods of Explosives Preparations (Desert Publications USA), and P.F.I.Q. (Piercing Fans International Quarterly, Gauntlet Enterprises USA). Two aspects of Acker's work emerge as key in the decision of the Tribunal to prohibit Blood and Guts in High School Plus Two. The report, signed by the Chairman of the Indecent Publications Tribunal, 3 December 1984, draws firstly on the way in which Acker was classified as an author: ‘The author of Blood and Guts in High School Plus Two, Kathy Acker, has been described by reviewers “as everything from post-punk porn to post-punk feminism”.’ The report then proceeds to comment specifically on the unreadability of the book, stating that it ‘is difficult to read and understand’. The decision statement provides the citation from Blood and Guts in High School printed on the back cover of the Pan Edition as a summary of the ‘story’:

The documents from the Distribution of Indecent Materials Tribunal Decisions bring to light the relation between the avant-garde composition of the work and the work's classification as indecent. The report deduces: ‘The novel purports to be an account of her experiences, almost solely of a sexual nature, written in a disjointed and difficult style, though liberally illustrated with diagrams and sketches.’