Accidental TERF library moment!

I hope this is deliberate but my n=1 of my local university (medical) library would suggest more likely accidental. I am about to do a gender-medicine evidence literature search for a professional project and will likely need their help - will be interesting to see their response!

Clever!

I'm impressed that the library even stocks that book.

Please please please if you want a book your library does not hold ask them to buy it. I work in a public library and mostly we try and fulfill these requests.

I hope that's deliberate putting that book on display.

Yes, I’d have tried that if I hadn’t had the option of buying. All the books I have bought are out on loan to friends, so doing good work.

You can request books at your library. Sometimes they will order them in.

I searched for a number of books (Trans, Irretrievable Damage) on my local library database and no matches - ordered them from the nice independent bookshop instead. I assumed they were deliberately not available.
I couldn’t have done that when my kids were small and money was tight though.

@NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision ah! Thank you for the explanation!

There's also a book on gay relationships and lesbian relationship featuring same sex coupleson the covers no less - isn't that terribly transphobic these days?

Ex university library person here who used to set up the displays.
That's deliberate, I'd have done it too
There's no way they didn't know what the book was about 😉

Some might find this interesting, it'a a US based article, but to some extent it applies in the UK too:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/opinion/battle-library-neutrality.html

In my experience the library world is extremely woke. Especially at the librarian level, as opposed to the people who tend to work on the floor. It's been a problem for some time, more in the US than the UK, but it's very common for library related publications, conferences, etc, the kind that library workers read and attend, to almost unthinkingly push progressive political stances and people.

In reality, not all displays, maybe not most, are set up by people who have read the books. Especially with something that they probably feel they are supposed to put up to reflect some kind of social justice topic, someone probably just searched for books related to the topic available at the time they were making up the display.

This thread is also very helpful if you are staring at the OP, scratching your head at what could possibly be surprising about a book display in a library.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

I would not be at all surprised if a large percentage of librarians are GC. (A similar thing happened at my library)

Ha! My guess is accidental. I imagine they will be "reeducated" shortly.
I worked as a library assistant last year and we did all receive an email from one of the librarians attempting to reeducate us when some evil TERF put 'Trans' on the display for Pride month.
It was so bloody pompous and narrow minded that it just incited me to worse acts of book display non- compliance.

Couldn't you just have explained it like @NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision 🙄

Oh lovely. Librarians are not stupid, and are, often, middle-aged women. Unless a customer did it, this is very much on purpose.

(My mum was a librarian and her ex-colleagues are some of the smartest women I've ever met.)

I think that is deliberate, either by a librarian or a customer who chose to rearrange the books on display.

Can you keep an eye on it @RazzleDazzleDay and let us know how the display survives?

The book on the left is a book by a sex realist journalist, which analyses the trans activist claim that it doesn't harm women if institutions classify male people as women. It is on a table decorated by Progress Pride flag bunting. The progress pride flag is a recent variation of the pride flag. One major difference between the pride flag and the progress pride flag is the addition of a segment from the trans flag. So this bunting expressly indicates support for the belief that women may be male or female, and that men may be male or female.

So that bunting is heavily at odds with the book on the table!

For more information, check out this thread. https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4875600-sex-gender-in-2023

I don't get this, maybe I'm being slow.... Can someone please explain?

I believe the "trans" first book is not pro-trans?

What am I looking at?

Why did you rush onto the thread to tell us this?!

The thing is, that is how it should be - various viewpoints on a subject being presented for those interested to read. It shows how far "no debate" has gone that we think think this must have been done out of ignorance or as a subversive act.