Key donor joins revolt
Daniel Sanderson in The Sunday Times (UK):
Scotland’s national librarian is facing mounting pressure to reinstate a gender-critical book which she banned from a major exhibition, after a key donor joined a revolt against the move.
Alex Graham, who has given around £300,000 to the library, said he had been “shocked and angry” to learn that The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht had been excluded from an exhibit that he personally supported with a donation of about £20,000.
Graham, the creator of the television show Who Do You Think You Are, urged Amina Shah, Scotland’s chief librarian and the chief executive of the National Library of Scotland, to reverse her decision.
He said that if she did not, he would have to consider whether or not to continue to provide lucrative donations to the library, as he has done for the past 12 years.
…
The Times revealed on Wednesday that it was pulled after a backlash by the library’s internal LGBT staff network, which claimed it contained “hate speech” and that displaying it would cause “severe harm” to workers.
They threatened to “notify LGBT+ partners of the library’s endorsement of the book” if management did not cave in.
This concept of “severe harm” could do with some inspection. Is it true that displaying a book that rejects trans ideology would necessarily cause severe harm to anyone? How do they know? What’s the chain of causality?
We know they don’t like being told that men are not women, but is not liking something “severe harm”? That seems to be the assumption, but I wonder if they’ve poked at it hard enough.
“I think this was a fundamental mistake and the correct thing for the library to do would be to put up their hands, admit that and reinstate the book,” Graham said. “Instead, there have been weaselly responses.
“The library is not saying they have taken it out because it contains hate speech, because it does not. They’ve taken it out because of some ill-conceived notion that someone might be upset by its presence. That’s not a good enough reason for me.”
“Someone might be upset by this” is not a very powerful argument, because it applies to everything and anything. People can have hissy fits for very flimsy reasons, and for no reasons at all.
An insider within the cultural sector in Scotland said the decision was symptomatic of a wider trend of managers being seen to cave in to demands of young, activist staff members who have little resilience or tolerance of views different to their own.
And who have learned that they can get their way by driveling about harm and upset and severe harm.
It’s time to put them back in the box.
Ken donor?
Well, paper cuts can be pretty nasty.
A librarian, of all people, should know that books are about ideas, and that the purpose of a library is to provide free access to all kinds of different ideas. Libraries are places where censorship has no sway. Don’t they have special “banned book” exhibits every year? This year, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht should be front and center of that exhibit as well. If I were a librarian, I’d melt away of shame, like the Wicked Witch of the West , if I even thought about suppressing a book because of its viewpoint or ideas.
‘What’s the chain of causality?’ I’ve mentioned before (I think here) that I recently found myself in an embarrassing DEI presentation (though I was in a small English-speaking country, all of the material seems to have come from the US) in which the presenter stressed the idea of ‘harm’ as opposed to ‘offence’ – she did seem to be aware that highlighting the latter would invite scorn, so made a huge effort to push the former. And I did invite her to explain how this ‘harm’ comes about, with predictable results. (Her answer wouldn’t even fly in this situation – she pointed out that people living in environments where their ‘inferiority’ is salient have poor health effects from heightened cortisol – which I agreed was true…but how was that relevant to all the stuff she was preaching?)
maddog1129:
Reminds me – during the ruckus about Elizabeth Gilbert being pressured to withdraw her book, somebody online posted a link to the “Freedom to Read” statement. This was first put up by US librarians during the height of the McCarthy terror. It stated:
“No art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the political views or private lives of its creators. No society of free people can flourish that draws up lists of writers to whom it will not listen, whatever they may have to say.”
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/freedomreadstatement
Colin Day:
Ought toe core wrecked?
Blatant blackmail, then? ‘Do as we say or the mob will descend’. I no longer read ‘LGBTQ as a series of letters but as a name akin to a vaguely Middle Eastern-sounding terror organisation. El-Jibitiqu has made its demands.
Dang it. I usually spot typos, even my own.
Sorry Ophelia, I do hope that you are able to get back to sleep.
AoS, you are a genius. Please may I now use El-jibitiqu whenever and wherever appropriate?
Tigger, thank you, and you are more than welcome to use it.