Group wants to ban feminist books from a women's library - WTF?

[Bambambini]

Who on earth would want to ban feminist books from a Women's Library? Hope that the Vancouver Women's Library stands firm and doesn't bow to this women hating group. Hope the library get's lots if support - this attempt to bully and censor seems to be becoming much more common, unfortunately.

m.facebook.com/notes/gag-gays-against-gentrification/response-to-vancouver-womens-library/379623995740078

Fuckheads. I've donated to the library. The only good thing about this shit is that it unquestionably reveals the true hatred and misogyny behind this ideology.

Bet it was that hulking thug. He was a nasty piece of work.

Can you imagine the uproar if this was xenophobia attacking a Muslim library? Or nazis attacking a black history library? The perpetrators would (quite rightly) be public ally shamed by the msm! But because it's women, nobody seems to care!

www.dailyxtra.com/vancouver/news-and-ideas/opinion/old-politics-in-vancouver’s-new-women’s-library-spark-protest-214967

Someone's written about it but not sure what kind of publication it is.

Amy's drunk the Kool Aid all right. They were asking for it it would seem, with their books you'd expect to be donated from middle-aged Women's Studies grads' bookshelves as she puts it. Such contempt, I mean what could middle aged women know about feminism?

Did anyone else notice the banner ads attached to that article?

'Spartacus' is now an international gay guide app.

Unless we nicked it from them?

Their FB page has all the comments slamming the Library. I was sure the Library had invited transwomen in and had literature dealing with trans issues.

Amy is having to stretch the truth in order to present a 'six of one, half a dozen of the other' story and is ignoring the extent to which the library was prepared to meet the protesters halfway. She can't bring herself to admit she has backed the wrong horse here.

The library was vandalised last night, pathetic. The utter contempt for women is frightening, particularly middle aged women. Women who have contributed and made a bloody difference.

I do hope that watching Call The Midwife helped Pilly to come up with a definition of 'woman'.

Amy is also very young and too prepared to give ground to men like that. She thinks they're on the same side but they aren't. The library has done nothing wrong, nothing, and she can't or won't see that.

with their books you'd expect to be donated from middle-aged Women's Studies grads' bookshelves as she puts it. Such contempt, I mean what could middle aged women know about feminism?

I'm trying to think if I was like that when I was 20. I think I was impatient with any woman (whatever her age) who said she didn't need to be a feminist. I still am.

But when I was 20, I was thirsty for new ideas & seeing new ways to live. And I saw "middle-aged feminists" as offering me role models which the women in my life as I was growing up did not. They were my feminist mothers, if you like. Still are, really.

Virgil yes I definitely felt a sense of kinship with second wave feminists (I was born in the early 70s), gratitude for their achievements and acknowledgement that they benefitted me hugely. I didn't have unquestioning reverence or agreement with all their ideas -they were a very diverse group who disagreed with each other on many things of course. My MIL was involved in some important activism in the 70s where I'm from, and through her I've met some real frontline warhorses who got massive things done. I love meeting them, I often argue and disagree with them but I have a lot of respect for them knowing the rank, overt, societal and institutional sexism they had to overcome.

My generation can't make anything like the same claims but we've been round the block, we've lived in the world a bit, have studied, worked, had relationships, kids, travelled, had opportunities and freedoms many of our mothers never had. It's a weird slap in the face to us, this bizarre Year Zero attitude to sex, gender, feminism, whatever. I met a young person recently and was told "they" were non-binary...he was just a bloke with a bit of eyeliner ffs, you're not reinventing the wheel, love!

It's weird - over the last few weeks, I've been feeling as if I'm back in the 70s. Many of the (very rampantly hetero) men I knew back then wore make up & velvet and so on and so forth.

And the gay men I hung out with dressed as women, but they were very much gay men - the stories they told in front of me & other young women suggested that their sexuality was a very masculine one, altho' with a same-sex preference. Heavens knows how they talked amongst themselves - I got the impression that they would it in a bit in mixed company! But no wimping on about being "really" female - they were very much men. Just gay. Quite normal to me.

This current lot of millennials really seems to think they invented weird sex but they seem very vanilla to me.

Can anyone make out what the graffiti says? I can't!

This space h8 workers. I think. I assume it's about sex workers. And there's 'erfs' on the other wall. Could be swerfs or terfs I suppose!

Thing is, as far as I can see, it is a voluntary organisation open a day a week, starting out. It has relied on donations. So if activists feel their cause is not represented, why are they not just donating some literature?

As far as I know there already is trans literature there. They were fully inclusive.

The graffiti says h8 women and no TERFS no SWERFS. The library is now only open by appointment. It's so sad. The women who created this library couldn't have been more inclusive but that didn't save them.

The librarians are being quite quiet on this issue though. Have they reported these criminals to the police?

It just shows there's no reasoning and no compromise with transactivists.

It's unconditional capitulation, or nothing.

So there is no point trying to be reasonable with these men.

Fight them.

Sorry, just thinking aloud there

Here's a link about the library from the Canadian section of the blog Gender Identity Watch. It reports that

Following the event, a group called GAG / Gays Against Gentrification who describe themselves as “a radical queer collective bringing a queer & trans perspective to anti-displacement and anti-capitalist-struggles” posted a similar set of complaints and demands on their Facebook page “in opposition to the opening of the Vancouver Women’s Library.” Following several absurd accusations regarding the library’s organizers and misrepresentations of different feminist perspectives, the letter lists six “demands for accountability.”

The report then provides the demands (with some pungent GIW commentary). It's just beyond parody. For example, Demand 1 is:

The library needs to be transparent about its funding, organizing policies and affiliations with other institutions, both within the academic system and outside of it.

According to the library’s website, “This library is 100% volunteer-run and funded by library members.” It seems to me that if one wants to understand the library’s “funding, organizing policies, and affiliations,” one might start by becoming a member or a volunteer…

Sadly, the library will probably comply.

Have you read the other 5 demands? Because they are demanding censorship plus it appears that pretty much only books written by TW and sex workers are to be stocked.

When that great yob claims to be a sex worker was the only funny bit of that dreadful video. I found myself boggling.