Susan Dalgety in The Scotsman:

…a few days ago, my friend and co-editor Lucy Hunter Blackburn and I were sent an open letter signed by a motley crew of more than 150 members of Scotland’s “academic, heritage, arts, literary and cultural sectors”.

It was addressed to the board and senior management of the National Library of Scotland and, in the whiny voice of an entitled teenager denied the latest iPhone, complained that the inclusion of a “certain book” in the library’s centenary exhibition created a “hostile environment for queer and trans people working at and visiting the library”.

How would that work exactly? Can people visiting the library somehow sense that the “certain book” is there even if they don’t so much as glance at the centenary exhibition? Does wrong-think exude a poisonous miasma?

The book in question is The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a collection of essays on women’s rights campaigning in Scotland edited by me and Lucy. It was briefly the subject of controversy earlier this year when the National Library excluded it from its centenary exhibition, despite it winning a public vote, after staff concerns that it would cause “harm”.

It was re-instated following a torrent of complaints, and today sits proudly among the 200-plus books that shaped people’s lives, including Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Kidnapped and Juno Dawson’s What’s The T, described as a “no-nonsense guide to all things trans and/or non-binary for teens”.

A splendid display of Scotland’s diverse and inclusive culture one would think, but not, it seems, for the self-appointed guardians of our nation’s culture.

Their missive went on to complain, with no evidence, that “anti-trans activists had been emboldened to harass library visitors”. The library has, in recent months, become “materially less safe”, they said.

And by “materially” they mean…?

It was signed by such luminaries as writer Catherine Wilson Garry, Dave Coates, duty manager of the Fruitmarket Gallery, and Ryan Van Winkle, director of Stanza, Scotland’s international poetry festival.

Peppered among the poets, arts administrators and writers were a number of academics including no less than three professors at Glasgow University and Dr Kevin Guyan, of Edinburgh University, who also happens to be chair of the Scottish Government-funded charity the Equality Network.

A Glasgow University lecturer posted the letter on social media urging people to sign it in support of the library’s queer and trans staff who were “going through an awful time at the moment”.

Are they? Who says? Is the time they’re going through worse than the time women (to choose just one random example) are?

An “awful time” caused, according to the signatories of the letter, by a book written by 34 women about a campaign for women’s rights. A book so powerful that it can cause harm simply by sitting on a shelf next to an Oor Wullie annual. A book so toxic, these modern-day witchfinders cannot even bear to speak its name.

You know…if people are having an “awful time” because of a campaign for women’s rights…doesn’t that tell you more about those people than it does about the campaign for women’s rights? I mean it’s like saying racists are having an awful time because racism is frowned on. “Aw, honey, are you? Well try not being a racist then.” Same with books about women’s rights. If you’re miserable because of a book about women’s rights maybe that’s a you problem and not a that book problem.