SJW demand Femininst books banned from library

[MercyMyJewels]

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

My head is going to explode. TRAs are demanding that certain feminists literature is to be banned on the basis that they are written by TERFs and SWERFs. Are you fucking JOKING? What the fuck is going on in Canada at the moment?

[MrsTerryPratchett]

Muphrey's Law!

[mirrorisnotmyfriend]

The good thing about all of this is that it will help more women reach peak trans quicker, and really brings to the fore that much of what the TA agenda is about is just thinly disguised hatred of women and misogyny.

[venusinscorpio]

What is this "Gays Against Gentrification" shit anyway? What "gentrification"? As if they needed to spell out with their nasty acronym that what they are doing is about silencing women. No really, we do get it.

[CaoNiMa]

I've signed the petition.

Things like this usually make me angry, but this one makes me desperately sad. Banning books. We're on a slippery slope.

[lemonpoppyseed]

Librarians don't like it when you try to ban books in their libraries...

[Xenophile]

Well, gentrification is when well off people buy properties in poor neighbourhoods in areas that are close to cities. Which prices the people who used to live in those neighbourhoods out. This has a knock on effect of the shops that previously sold things that people could afford leave to be replaced with endless artisan bakers and boutique butter emporia.

In the 80's this was done by "yuppies" in places like Clapham, Balham and Streatham in London.

Fuck knows what that has to do with a women's library though.

[venusinscorpio]

Sorry, I know what gentrification is. I should have made myself clearer. But like you I can't see the relevance.

[Xenophile]

No worries, it's not something everyone knows so might be helpful to the ever present lurkers.

I've thought some more about what relevance it has, and I can't even see what dog gay men have in this fight.

[ArcheryAnnie]

Thing is, whenever I've had experience of women setting up women's facilities and spaces, it's often been working-class women setting it up on a shoestring, sacrificing time and resources they don't really have, to help other women. Gay men and TW are much more likely to be at the forefront of gentrification, as they are much more likely to have disposable income (gender pay gap, plus less likely to have kids - or in the case of at least one prominent Canadian TW I could mention, have plenty of kids but don't pay for any of them).

Also, I get that they'd hate Dworkin, but what on earth have they got against Joanna Russ?

[SomeDyke]

".........but what on earth have they got against Joanna Russ?"

She wrote a Sci-Fi novel/set of stories called "The Female Man". In one alternate world, the two sexes live separately and males that don't fight to the death when threatened with rape by their fellow males get surgically changed into (trans)women (because they don't have real women, the sexes being totally separate). Because of this, Joanna was accused of 'transphobia' and also a supposed rabid hatred for femininity (you know, not liking ritualised submission and fluffy pink stuff gets you accused of all sorts, naughty ole second-wave supposed feminist that she was!).

Oh, I recommend it BTW!

She supposedly 'recanted' before her death, but the links I can find seem to be broken...........

Iain Banks (who wrote 'ordinary' fiction and Sci-Fi as Iain M Banks ---- or it might have been the other way round!) I see has also been 'transphobed' for 'The Wasp Factory'....................

Dead Sci-Fi writers and supposed transphobia, is this a trend?

[ArcheryAnnie]

SomeDyke I hadn't remembered any of that! I have read The Female Man, but it was an age ago, so I think I'm now due a re-read.

(Thanks, GAG, for the reading list!)

[nooka]

That's an interesting perspective MrsTP. I had rather assumed the conservativeism we've experienced here was just small town stuff as we live in the interior in a small town that feels quite 70s in many ways (some very positive like children playing out). It's mixed with people being genuinely very nice, and a strong perception that it is Canadian to be nice.

At a national level we've gone from a socially conservative with a strong Christian bias government to one that is I think overly focused on being right on. Our PM has publicly declared he is a feminist and very visibly attends Gay pride etc, but obviously hasn't noticed any of the issues of Bill 16 (for gender identity to be protected) for women. Unfortunately the opposition to the bill has largely come from Christian social conservatives so has no doubt been dismissed as regressive and nasty.

[MiddleGround]

There is a petition about this:

www.change.org/p/protect-feminist-books-at-vancouver-women-s-library?recruiter=668934470&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=share_twitter_responsive

[ArcheryAnnie]

There's a report of the launch here:

www.feministcurrent.com/2017/02/07/vancouver-womens-library-opens-amid-anti-feminist-backlash/

Short version: trans activists blocked, threatened, intimidated women going to the opening party of a library. These trans activists destroyed property - books, a poster - and shouted and disrupted the event in a highly aggressive manner.

I honestly don't know why they haven't been arrested. They've been threatening, physically intimidating, and committed criminal damage. At the very least I'd think Canada of all places would nick them for smoking in a non-smoking public place!

[ArcheryAnnie]

And I totally think the women's library should have a display of the destroyed books in a case in the library, with a short note on how the books were destroyed.

[OneFlewOverTheDodosNest]

It's appalling this has happened (I'd say shocking but it sadly doesn't surprise me)

It seems such a massive own goal to demand the banning of books anyway - surely it's common knowledge that the way to get people to want to read a book is to ban it? I doubt Archery and I will be the only ones using that list as a recommended reading guide...