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The US ultra-right should leave the UK alone!!!

452 replies

StandFirm · 14/04/2025 10:59

I was going to use a rude expletive in the thread title to truly reflect my thoughts on this. I've known about this insidious creeping influence for a little while but reading the article in the link below has made me livid. We are not going to be censored by foreign actors who understand nothing about our culture. I have often observed a false sense of familiarity among Brits regarding American culture but it goes both ways, and this attempt at dragging us along into the dark pit of ignorance should stay the fuck away from here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/14/librarians-in-uk-increasingly-asked-to-remove-books-as-influence-of-us-pressure-groups-spreads

Librarians in UK increasingly asked to remove books, as influence of US pressure groups spreads

Anecdotal evidence suggests a rise in requests to take books off shelves, particularly LGBTQ+ titles

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/14/librarians-in-uk-increasingly-asked-to-remove-books-as-influence-of-us-pressure-groups-spreads

OP posts:
Thread gallery
12
Conistonhawks · 15/04/2025 00:16

This is what really worries me- the rise of far right groups and groups like incels. It’s chilling and I can really see history repeating itself

TheWombatleague · 15/04/2025 00:16

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 14/04/2025 23:39

I don't think people are worried about their children being sympathetic towards trans people, more that these books glorify self harm.

I don't. I think a majority are simply transphobic. I think the issue has been pushed by the ultra-right, particularly but not exclusively in the US, to get women to vote for them. Which is how we end up with women voting for a proven misogynistic sex offender as President of a government that's removing women from senior positions and from history.

www.cbsnews.com/news/shoshana-chatfield-admiral-to-nato-fired-senior-military-officers-ousted/

First they came for the trans, then the gays, then the blacks & women.

lifeturnsonadime · 15/04/2025 00:17

TooBigForMyBoots · 15/04/2025 00:07

And I'm talking about the fact that Labour are no better.

You should check out FWR. They have threads about what this government are doing. They're doing better than the last one wrt women's rights to single sex spaces.

You should also check your political tribalism. I'm a feminist, my tribe is women.

I've seen some of your posts. You parrot the current governments narrative and ignore the needs of women in favour of the wishes of males who identify as trans women.

I don't think that's any form of feminism.

I have no doubt you will respond to this but it's late and I'll leave it there.

ElbowsUp · 15/04/2025 00:19

SinnerBoy · 15/04/2025 00:07

ElbowsUp

What instances of women advocating for their rights have been "shut down ferociously" by the UK government?

She didn't say the Government, she said "the left." Alison Bailey, Maya Forstater, Kath Stock and Jo Phoenix, among numerous others have been bullied and hounded mercilessly by trans zealots - usually seen as being on the left.

There are libraries which refused to stock, or hid copies of Stock's "Material Girls," as well as other feminist books. Trans zealots in publishing companies refused to let them publish etc.

Zealots at the Guardian drove Suzanne Moore and Hadley Freeman out, rather than let them express their free speech.

It's not just one side, it's extremists on the left and right, which are a problem.

I agree that grass-roots attempts to cause censorship (colloquially known as cancel culture) come from both sides; though the right wing media have done a good job at pretending it's something that only the left do.

But I do think that "censuring" of that nature is distinct and apart from freedom of speech concerns, given that freedom of speech refers to the right not to be oppressed by the state for expressing a view. "Freedoms" describe a person's relation to the state, not in relation to other people.

The right (particularly the US right, not so much the UK) are the ones attacking freedom of speech itself, and I find that far more nefarious and do not welcome their influence.

TooBigForMyBoots · 15/04/2025 00:22

lifeturnsonadime · 15/04/2025 00:17

I've seen some of your posts. You parrot the current governments narrative and ignore the needs of women in favour of the wishes of males who identify as trans women.

I don't think that's any form of feminism.

I have no doubt you will respond to this but it's late and I'll leave it there.

Maybe you're mistaking me for someone else. I challenge you to find one post where I favour the wishes of males who identify as trans women. You won't, because that is an outright lie you just posted @lifeturnsonadime.

ElbowsUp · 15/04/2025 00:26

Conistonhawks · 15/04/2025 00:16

This is what really worries me- the rise of far right groups and groups like incels. It’s chilling and I can really see history repeating itself

What I've found really chilling, in recent days, is Trump passing executive orders to have the justice department investigate people who criticized him.

At the same time, he's deporting certain non-citizens to El Salvadorian prisons (without a hearing, including at least one man who has never been charged with any crime) and is indicating that US citizens will be the next to be deported to El Salvador.

The world is getting very dark.

lifeturnsonadime · 15/04/2025 00:26

TooBigForMyBoots · 15/04/2025 00:22

Maybe you're mistaking me for someone else. I challenge you to find one post where I favour the wishes of males who identify as trans women. You won't, because that is an outright lie you just posted @lifeturnsonadime.

Edited

Do you actually want me to trawl through other threads. I'm not mistaking you one bit TooBig?

You are scathing towards Gender Critical feminists who want single sex spaces because it doesn't suit the Labour narrative or your own.

Or are you doing the GRC thing of saying that some males are legally female?

So is my statement is wrong based on the legal fiction that the GRC created?

I'm tired I'm going to bed now.

TooBigForMyBoots · 15/04/2025 00:30

lifeturnsonadime · 15/04/2025 00:26

Do you actually want me to trawl through other threads. I'm not mistaking you one bit TooBig?

You are scathing towards Gender Critical feminists who want single sex spaces because it doesn't suit the Labour narrative or your own.

Or are you doing the GRC thing of saying that some males are legally female?

So is my statement is wrong based on the legal fiction that the GRC created?

I'm tired I'm going to bed now.

Edited

You shouldn't need to trawl. You've seen and remembered these posts. Surely you can find one.

Let me answer that for you. No, you can't. You can't find 1 post to back up what you said because you're lying about seeing them in the first place.

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 15/04/2025 00:33

TheWombatleague · 15/04/2025 00:16

I don't. I think a majority are simply transphobic. I think the issue has been pushed by the ultra-right, particularly but not exclusively in the US, to get women to vote for them. Which is how we end up with women voting for a proven misogynistic sex offender as President of a government that's removing women from senior positions and from history.

www.cbsnews.com/news/shoshana-chatfield-admiral-to-nato-fired-senior-military-officers-ousted/

First they came for the trans, then the gays, then the blacks & women.

Do you think a book with a cartoon diagram of a girl's body, labelling various parts of her female anatomy in a derogatory way, including describing her breasts as "fatty lumps that need to be cut off" is appropriate reading material for vulnerable teenage girls?

I don't.

If that makes me transphobic then I guess basic safeguarding is now transphobic.

🤷‍♂️

TempestTost · 15/04/2025 00:35

Culture now is very international.

That being said, I think there are some significant factors in the US that can be resisted elsewhere. I work in libraries (not UK) and I have to say I think that in many ways US libraries have created a situation where just this kind of outcome was likely. Thirty years ago public libraries in the US were loved and trusted by conservatives and and liberals, but these days you find that conservatives often feel they have been made to feel unwelcome.

They've made a few major mistake, but the main issues is simply that they have abandoned all pretense of neutrality. It's both passive - due to the fact that something like 98% of American library workers are Democrat, and often the more left of the party, and so it's easy for them to be in a bubble.

But it's also explicit, a huge thing in American libraries now is an rejection of the idea that libraries should be neutral, the argument is that they should be institutions to promote social justice and activism. And the ALA has really run with that, to the point of often inviting Democrat political figures to their conferences.

You also see it at the library level with regard to collections. You will see a lot of complaint about right wing book bans, but the same people will openly say that they will not buy conservative books they don't like, because they don't meet the standards of being good resources. So they are not asking to have books removed - some of these books are not getting into these libraries in the first place (though there are certainly attempts from progressives in some cases to ban books like Abigale Shrier's Irreversible Damage, for example.)

There also IME tends to be a lack of perspective around book challenges, often treating them as if they are necessarily unreasonable. It's important to remember there is a reason mechanisms exist for books to be questioned, and most of those that come under scrutiny are in children's sections, where collection development guidelines state they should be age appropriate. I've seen American library workers argue that if a book is marketed to youth, moving it to the adult section because of a lot of sexual or violent content is censorship. you see the same thinking around book challenges in schools, even though schools have a different mission and set of concerns around appropriate materials, compared to public libraries.

All of this is to say, I think the attitude in libraries in the UK is far more sensible, and if they manage not to lose their heads, they may well find that American style activism doesn't get that far. If, however, they take a page from the American progressives and become explicitly political, they may well see the public become more sympathetic to such ideas.

P.s. I, like a lot of librarians, see it very much as a calling, and I've been dismayed for years at the abandonment of the basic ethos of libraries that made them so important to the maintenance of liberal democracy. And it really isn't the Republicans who started that shit. It's one of the greatest sources of my negative feelings these days toward political progressivism, they have let down the gates and destroyed institutions I love.

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 15/04/2025 00:35

TheWombatleague · 15/04/2025 00:16

I don't. I think a majority are simply transphobic. I think the issue has been pushed by the ultra-right, particularly but not exclusively in the US, to get women to vote for them. Which is how we end up with women voting for a proven misogynistic sex offender as President of a government that's removing women from senior positions and from history.

www.cbsnews.com/news/shoshana-chatfield-admiral-to-nato-fired-senior-military-officers-ousted/

First they came for the trans, then the gays, then the blacks & women.

By the way, you have an astonishingly poor grasp of history if you think they "they came for the trans" before they came for the gays, the blacks and the women.

The latter three groups have been persecuted for millennia. "Trans" is a new phenomenon.

timbitstimbytes · 15/04/2025 00:44

I can sense you are appalled by this, and I don't blame you reading the piece as it is. However, the journalist concerned has conflated censorship with safeguarding, probably deliberately and doesn't mention what books are in question, why they are of concern or what organisations are expressing these concerns.

As you probably know, the USA has the First Amendment which allows free speech, much freer than the UK, most Americans both those on the Right of the political spectrum are proud of this fact.

The main organisation that is pushing for so called book bans is Moms for Liberty (as mentioned in the writer's piece the week before: and their issue is that books which aren't age appropriate are being made available to schoolchildren. They are not a religious organisation.

But honesty, if a journalist starts a piece with the phrase "anecdotal evidence" with no real substance or balance to the story you should probably give it a swerve. It doesn't seem to have passed any criticism from an editor who if they were any good would have raised this issues as it isn't an opinion piece.

TempestTost · 15/04/2025 00:53

saltinesandcoffeecups · 15/04/2025 00:13

So I read the article… it seems a bit light in evidence that the US is meddling. Did I miss it or was there something pointing to US involvement?

Of course it is.

cariadlet · 15/04/2025 01:22

@TempestTostThank you for your detailed and thoughtful post. It gives a great insight into what's happened in libraries, particularly in the US.

BlossomBlanket · 15/04/2025 03:14

TooBigForMyBoots · 14/04/2025 22:18

The left? What, like the Morning Star readership? Remind me, what PM first put Self ID on the table? What PM reduced the cost of a UK GRC to a fiver? What back bench MP reported Twitter users to the police and tried to do all sorts of shady shit to silence other MPs?

Edited

Like Novara Media fangirls. Morning Star are old left.

BlossomBlanket · 15/04/2025 03:24

ElbowsUp · 14/04/2025 21:26

Free speech means the right to speak freely without legal consequences or government censorship. What instances of women advocating for their rights have been "shut down ferociously" by the UK government?

(And was the government "left wing"?)

Edited

Scotland

PollyHutchen · 15/04/2025 03:26

I think there are specific problems in the UK around children's fiction and non fiction. The publishing industry has been heavily captured by gender identity ideology, so there are a lot of titles promoting this getting into libraries.

It is worrying if highly contested ideas are presented as factual information. In terms of fiction, stories that appear to be about kindness, diversity etc may be putting forward some other narratives ie that it is bigoted to talk about biological sex. ('Jamie' by JD Lapinski is an example.) Children's fiction is never an idea-free zone.

Some parents have understandable concerns about the age-appropriateness of what is on offer in particular sections of the libraries - and staff should deal with these concerns in the same way they should address concerns about broken equipment or anti social behaviour ie by prompt investigation.

But many library staff are too exhausted by a regime of cuts and closures and reorganisation - in which they have to do more and more with less and less - to be able to do this quite time-consuming sort of safeguarding

Meanwhile because UNISON, CILIP and many senior people in Local Authorities have been captured by an ideology which is essentially about queering childhood, staff also have reason to fear that they will not be supported if they act on concerns about a title that is not suitable for a child or young person.

PlanetVulcan · 15/04/2025 06:52

cariadlet · 14/04/2025 21:32

I read the article but as it was in the Guardian, I took it with a pinch of salt.

It talks about the main group of books being complained about as being those with LGBTQ+ content but doesn't give examples.
I would have liked a link to a proper breakdown of what books have been complained about, how many complaints were made by individuals, how many by organisations and naming those organisations.

I suspect a minority of complaints were made by homophobes who were unhappy about positive depictions of same sex relationships.

I think it's more likely to be people pushing back at the promotion of gender ideology. Members of a number of Women's Rights Network groups, for example, have asked their local libraries if they hold certain titles and have sometimes asked for inappropriate books to be moved from the children's section to the teenage or the adult section.

This ^

I'm a left wing atheist and women's and children's rights campaigner and have asked for schools to remove particular books from their school libraries... These books contain graphic descriptions of sexual activity that can be accessed by children as young as 11. Sadly they are targeting LGBTQ+ children because it's easier to shoehorn explicit content in and then claim that evil nasty homophobic bigots are trying to ban books.

Certain men have always tried to tag along with gay rights campaigning To try and legitimise their "minor attracted persons" "identity", it's always been insidious and damaging to gay rights and mostly to children for obvious reasons.

SensibleJaneAndrews · 15/04/2025 07:12

It’s books like Material Girls, Trans or My Body Is Me which are actually restricted by libraries and bookshops. I’m naturally liberal but I am horrified at trans propaganda being targeted at children. Women in this country opposing this is not “ultra right” mad has nothing to do with the US.

CaptainFuture · 15/04/2025 07:17

BlossomBlanket · 14/04/2025 21:23

Of late - they have been the left, I haven't swallowed any narrative, I have seen with my own my eyes what happens to women who say they should be allowed to advocate for their rights, many many cases, shut down ferociously, by the left. The left did that. So forgive me if I'm not gracious enough to not feel a twinge of schadenfreude that some are getting a taste of their own medicine, I wish I were a better person.

This.
The left have been very happy for a significant amount of time for supporting purity spirals. Look at all the academics or those in health care hounded out of their jobs for 'wrong think' in particular TWAW capitulation.
Probably how it's going to go...'who's going to speak out, now it's very clear that very few people will want to speak out as they've seen what happens to those who do!

StandFirm · 15/04/2025 07:22

When I last looked at my thread there were only a handful of replies!
A couple of points to comment on:

  1. someone mentioned not seeing evidence of US involvement - to clarify, this article doesn't imply meddling by the US as a country but what I find concerning is that pressure groups (from the US) are trying to push a Christian ultra-right agenda. They are the same people who have been trying to ban classics across the board in the US. A lot of them are creationists as well. They are an objective disaster for American culture. They have already successfully destroyed a number of liberal arts colleges.
  2. It's naive to think that this has anything to do with TRAs or defending women. Their agenda is to the US what the Taliban are to Afghanistan. It's about regressive fundamentalist 'values'. Oppression masquerading as tradition.
  3. There are always improvements to be had on the free speech/freedom of expression front. People who care about preserving it should band together and do everything to stop a very great evil which is undermining freedom in the US and being exported abroad by aggressive proselytising groups who have a narrow bigoted view of Christianity.
  4. Such views should not be welcome in the UK. I feel about them the same way I feel about fundamentalist Islam or any other fundamentalist religious group.
OP posts:
CaptainFuture · 15/04/2025 07:30

@StandFirm what's your thoughts on the UK and many many people getting involved or having heavy opinions on the US elections?

GeneralPeter · 15/04/2025 07:34

@TempestTost Fascinating post, thank you. You should do an AMA or a thread or article about this.

NoWordForFluffy · 15/04/2025 07:35

@lifeturnsonadime At the time afaik it was a work around for the fact that gay marriage was at that point illegal.

I feel like this is a thread derail but I wasn't aware of that fact and I'm always interested to be corrected or told I am wrong if that turns out to be the case.

I looked this up a while ago, and the GRA was required by the ECtHR, yes. However, you're right that it was essentially because gay marriage wasn't legal then, meaning that a transwoman couldn't marry another man. In addition, pension ages were different then, and a GRC allowed a TW to get their pension at the same age as women.

Now those issues are moot, I'm not sure what purpose the GRA has, other than creating an (unwanted / unnecessary) legal fiction.

TankFlyBossW4lk · 15/04/2025 07:35

lifeturnsonadime · 14/04/2025 23:17

So you stand for books which encourage children to a pathway of self harm and bodily mutilation.

Nice.

Wow. A book that says it's ok to be different leading to self mutilation. Man, the ridiculous drama in your head about this. Do books about crime encourage people to be serial killers. Of course not.