Protecting the public
The list includes Mein Kampf and gender critical books…and nothing else.
Works by authors including Helen Joyce and Prof Kathleen Stock were hidden from view by a library service of the Labour-run Calderdale council, and are now barred from being promoted in displays in order to protect the public from offence.
The only other book similarly censored by the library service by being hidden was Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
So, it seems, the Calderdale library system considers gender-skeptical feminism to be on a level with genocidal Nazism.
That’s puzzling for a number of reasons. Like, for instance, the fact that gender-skeptical feminism is not genocidal or genocidal-adjacent or remotely in any way similar to or connected to genocide. Like, also, the fact that there are many cruel or destructive or murderous ideologies promoted in many books other than Mein Kampf yet they are not on Calderdale Libraries’ list of books to hide.
The Telegraph previously revealed that six books discussing the dangers of puberty blockers and gender reassignment surgery were hidden from public view by Calderdale librarians.
Now council documents shown to The Telegraph indicate that staff had not previously taken such direct measures to conceal books, except on one occasion when “a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was moved to our stores following complaints from some customers some years ago”.
In other words Calderdale librarians are saying gender-critical books are as evil and dangerous as Hitler’s book and that no other books in their system are that evil and dangerous.
Ms Joyce, the author of one of the six gender-critical books, told The Telegraph: “I was disgusted, but not surprised, to discover that the only previous example Calderdale Libraries could give of hiding away a ‘toxic’ book concerned Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf.
“Its senior staff have apparently surrendered to the demands of trans ideologues to such an extent that when a crybully threw a strop about a top ten bestseller on the subject of women’s, children’s and gay people’s human rights, they agreed to treat that book as if it was Nazi propaganda.”
What’s the thinking?
Calderdale council officers cited best-practice advice that the books should not be promoted, advice which comes from the group Book 28, an LGBT organisation which has pushed councils to take steps to prevent LGBT people seeing “offensive” and “transphobic” gender-critical books in their libraries .
So why do Calderdale council officers and library bosses take advice from Book 28 and no one else? Why does it not take advice from, say, LGBAlliance? And feminist organizations? And free speech organizations? Why do they give the Trans Police the final and only word?
The controversy began with an internal HR grievance lodged in January 2023 about gender-critical books on display in council libraries .
Calderdale’s library agreed to remove six gender-critical books from public view.
After The Telegraph revealed that these books had been hidden, Calderdale library staff lodged a complaint against their own employer and demanded the books be reinstated on library shelves.
Calderdale council undertook a review of its policies following the outcry against censorship, while stating it had to balance these concerns against what it termed some people’s “acute vulnerability”.
Ok stop right there. That’s where you go so wrong. There is no such thing as some particularly specially inordinately “acute vulnerability” that afflicts trans people and no one else.
It’s more the other way around, really. Trans people – especially the male ones – are pulling a very elaborate and very destructive long con, and women are the people who are rendered “acutely vulnerable” as a result.
This week Ian Day, the council’s director for public service, said that while the books are likely “to cause offence to some people”, the titles do not reach “the threshold required to interfere with legal rights such as the right of freedom of expression”.
He recommended that the council decide to reinstate books, with the proviso that they are not promoted.
So just mild censorship. Thanks a lot.
If they are that “acutely vulnerable” then maybe the outside world is not for them. If they really must go out of doors, they should make it brief. They should wear blinkers, lest they be upset by anything alarming coming into their periferal vision. Looking down at the ground is also to be recommended. For longer, more dangerous journeys, they should be preceded by someone walking 10-20 yards ahead of them, ringing a bell, wearing a sign proclaiming “CAUTION: ACUTELY VULNERABLE PERSON APPROACHING!” This will give people in the vicinity time to hide from view anything that might upset or give offence.
This idea can be interpreted or rephrased a number of ways, some being more subtextual than this claim for particular sensitivity.
Only trans people’s needs and concerns are of importance.
Trans people are particularly demanding and vocal on encountering things they don’t like (like Islamists and cartoons of Muhammad), best not piss them off.
Please don’t hit us, we’ve done what you want us to.
These books are hidden away and we’ll give you a hard time and make you feel guilty about asking for them. And you should feel guilty. Bigot.
We love
Big Brothertrans women even more than you do. Why do you hate trans women so much?I was able to browse a popular independent bookstore last week (I won’t name names), and there was a separate section for gender studies. Out of curiosity I looked it over pretty carefully and found no books to balance the ones promoting gender ideology. It was filled with pro-trans biographical accounts — nothing sciency, nothing critical, no detransition stories. I kind of expected it, as the store is located in a liberal university town. Their website makes the GC books available to order (and they are numerous now), but they don’t shelve a single one. I wonder if they think that displaying the more objective positions on the subject might break the spell? Or maybe they just don’t want trans activists trashing the place.
I remember a time when there were whole feminist sections in similar bookstores, but I didn’t find one there.
YNNB, sounds like time to resurrect the boy in the plastic bubble treatment. They should be in hermetically sealed bubbles, provided with enough oxygen, and with areas for food input and waste output. The bubble should be constructed so it immediately blurs any sign that says ‘adult human female’ or ‘women don’t have penises’, but magnifies any TWAW signs. The suit will have a special voice modifier that will instantly ensure that the pronouns heard by the wearer are the ones the wearer prefers to hear, rather than forcing all of us to say stupid, illogical pronouns.
They should be able to urinate and defecate in the suit so there is no need for special bathrooms. At night, they can clean the waste container out in the privacy of their own bathroom, where I presume they could also remove the suit, since surely they will not have anything in their house to disturb their fragile selves. Maybe on TV – they might need a pair of special glasses for watching TV.
Then they can walk through the world without making the rest of us conform.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Protecting the […]
As with ‘Mein Kampf,’ all it takes is complaint. They are utter cowards and won’t address the issue of vetting books for quality or importance. How much shelf space do they give to astrology or quack medicine?