To think trying to close down a library/archive because you don't like a event is just not on

[thecraftyfox]

Yes, it's trans related. If that gets your hackles up, stop reading now.

The small but very important Working Class Movement Library in Salford has been around for ages and does what it does brilliantly on a teeny budget and wth predominantly volunteers. It's such a valuable resource for historians and well, anybody interested in things like the Suffragettes, the Union movement etc.

In February they're hosting a talk by Julie Bindel on growing up and coming out as a lesbian in 1970s North East England. Julie Bindel wrote this article in 2004 which states that transwomen are not the same as women. www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/31/gender.weekend7 Since then she has been harrassed and hounded for it.

As a result the WCML is being bombarded online by transactivists in an attempt to punish them. They are giving them dreadful reviews despite never going there, attempting to cause financial damage by trying to stop funding and promotion of the place and getting people to call them. If you don't like it, don't attend. The talk is not about transpeople, it's about Julie's life and work which has been enormously important for many women, especially her work with women who have been abused. I can't understand why a small library can't host this event without being subjected to such vitriol and harrassment. Am I being unreasonable to think that if you don't like what somebody writes or says, you don't start a campaign of harrassment and act like a spoilt child. www.facebook.com/wcmlibrary/ the comments and posts are just unbelievably spiteful.

Bindel should be allowed to speak, but not under the LBGT History Month label. If the library just dropped the LGBT it would be fine

So a woman, who is a lesbian and also working class, shouldn't be speaking at an event during LGBT History month, about her own personal history of coming out as a lesbian in a working class community?

That's the general principle, but to deny Julie Bindel as a speaker at a Lesbian GBT event - a woman who has been a trailblazer for women in this country - that's where the reasoning gets bonkers. And reveals the complainants' ignorance of history, and lack of respect and honouring of people who have made it possible for those who come after them to live better & freer lives.

Do any transactivists stop to reflect - or even just read some books about their own history? How the freedom for trans men & women to claim a place in our society is due to so many feminist activists?

The ignorance and lack of respect just astounds me.

I'm not LGB or T myself so perhaps I'm missing something but I find the view that someone shouldn't speak at an LGBT event because other LGBT people disagree with their views quite bizarre. I wouldn't expect there to be anymore agreement amongst LGBT people than amongst anyone else. I thought the point of campaigning for equality was that everyone is different and people shouldn't be put in stereotyped boxes. I thought it was all about celebrating diversity, not trying to silence anyone who doesn't see the world exactly as you do. It makes my brain hurt.

Agree with countess and thisyear

Lesbian identity is being erased by the trans movement. Lesbians being told either they're deluded and they're really trans men, or that they are bigots for not wanting sex with transwomen.

Let Bindel speak.

ThisYearWillbeBetter

I agree to an extent but I do think trans activists have a right to object to Julie Bindel, she's certainly not a friend to trans rights and has said some pretty appalling things about trans people generally. I can understand why they object to giving her a platform (in the same way we might object if she had made racists comments alongside her other work for feminism). What I object to is the extremist way they're going about their objections.

HermioneWeasley I really don't think the majority of trans people support the idea that lesbians are really trans men, where did this come from?

Julie Bindel is lesbian and working class and came out inthe 1970s, so I can't see why there is a problem with her speaking at an event set up to discuss that subject. Surely she is the most appropriate person to do so. Should she step aside in favour of a middle class, 23 year old, male trans activist who has a beard and all his bits but likes to wear a dress on Thursdays?

All I see here is yet again, the trans rights agenda trying to no platform a woman's lived experience.

Bindel, as a lesbian, has every right to speak as part of LGBT week. Note how it's only "hate speech" when someone disagrees with TA's and yet there are vocal factions within the trans community that think lesbians should have to have sex with men with penises (transwomen lesbians who are effectively biologically men - they rarely have surgery - with a sexual preference for women) and that women should be referred to as menstruators, pregnant people and so on.

No one gives a crap when women are being erased from their LGBT umbrella, the recent National Geographic cover made that obvious.

Why should the L bit of LBGT not be as prominent as the T bit?

Oh right, yes I forgot - lesbians are women who prefer to make their personal lives with other women, thus rejecting all the poor menz. That's why it's OK to make them invisible and trash their history and try to shut them up.

Yes, because it's always a woman's role to make space for everybody else, and sacrifice their own identity and history. Women's identity and history is insignificant compared with any man's.

Further - if Ms Bindel is to be expected to speak not just for lesbians (the L in LGBT, remember!) then we don't we require that every gay man who speaks in public speaks on behalf of lesbians or transmen?

Why do we require that women look after everyone else, but we don't require that if men?

Oh yes, patriarchy. Women have to be the nurturers, the sacrificers. Because gender. Which is, of course, fixed, immutable and all about the feels. Never about structural inequalities and oppression.

Some of these transactivists are really just shooting themselves in the foot. All this has achieved is to attract publicity to the working class library. Publicity well deserved, I say.
Similar to the ocassion where transactivists reported a charity drag race (for a children's hospice, no less) to the police as a hate crime.
All it really achieves is to make them look like twats. The world does not revolve a very small group of trans people. Why should other groups be expected to censor their identity and activities in order to avoid offending this tiny group of transactivists? There is room for everyone.

What about the bi rights agenda? It's not trans people who are against Bindel speaking. It's some Bi, Trans, Gay and even Lesbian people. Why are you making this all about trans?

tiggy

And some bi people (like me...) aren't against her speaking.

I don't like her at all. But I don't think that non-platforming is the right way to deal with twats people you happen to dislike and disagree with.

Why is Ms Bindel responsible for placating any group of people? She is speaking about HER history as a working class lesbian.

At a library dedicated to the history of working class lives (have you ever used that library, Tiggy? Or studied working class movements?)

For an event during LESBIAN,G,BT History month.

Why is a lesbian speaking about lesbian history during Lesbian GBT History month so terrible?

Can you give me good reasons why such a talk should be banned?

I feel so sorry for this library. People who disagree with this have been contacting the libraries funders to try and get their funding withdrawn. That is appalling. And I would think the same if it was a speaker I strongly disagreed with.

this

Actually, the only thing that cold sway me is a large number of lesbians
protesting. She is after all meant to be a representative of the L. And if a large number of Ls were to say 'not in my name' or something similar that would be different.

I personally honestly wish the woman would not speak publicly (not just in the library).

And if I were passionate enough I'd go there and ask questions (or maybe even protest infront of the library). I wouldn't try to close the library (that's actually even more disgusting than non-platforming) and I wouldn't try to non-platform Bindel.

I mean seriously, non-platforming is bad enough. But trying to close the library/get funding withdrawn etc? That's just so reprehensible. Smug twats.

With reference to the attempts to get funders to withdraw from the library, I like to hope that anyone with enough interest in the history of the working class to be funding the library, will have an astute enough understanding of what is going on to treat the protestors with the disdain the deserve.

The Green party is against.

lgbtiqa.greenparty.org.uk/news/2017/01/05/lgbthm-bindel/

I agree with the above comments about shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, it's a library for heavens sake, about history and the protestors are trying to stop a writer talking in public about their own personal history. What next, do they want to get in there and burn all the books they disagree with?

No-body should should be "non-platformed" by anybody.

But then those that make the most noise objecting against "non platforming" are often those that do the most "non platforming". IMO

The library is a tiny place reliant on volunteers. I don't understand the mindset of people who would try and get it closed down.
If they were hosting the BNP, I would sign a petition asking them to reconsider it, but I would not try and get them closed down.

tiggy

What are you trying to say? So, a political party agrees with the people trying to non-platform Bindel... why would that have any kind of impact on my opinion...?

Ah, the Green Party, that bastion of defending the working class.

From that piece

As the hosts of the event, the WCML are in a position of power in choosing who attends and therefore made the choice to invite a speaker who victimises marginalised groups of the community. They are therefore wrong to imply that they have been “victimised” by receiving criticism, and need to listen to the people who have been hurt by the choices they make and at the very least address the concerns raised rather than ignore them

What a pile of bollocks. I tell you what, if some people don't like who the library has chosen as their speaker, they can start their own library and then invite whoever they want.

People need to stop trying to rewrite other people's histories. It's like the Rhodes statue all over again.

Given that the Green Party think it's ok to refer to women as 'non-men', I don't really give their opinion any weight in issues regarding feminism.