Recommended reading - what books would be confiscated from your house?

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

Am slack jawed reading about the police removing a book from a woman's home which she believes was to "check" her thinking.

It gave me pause to look at my own bolshy bookshelf with scribbles of sedition.

What books have you read that some might consider "problematic" but which you found particularly helpful, interesting or challenging and which maybe led you to these boards?

Jenni's book is by Heather Brunskell Evans, I think it might be this one:
www.filia.org.uk/latest-news/2020/11/27/book-review-transgender-body-politics-by-heather-brunskell-evans

I'd recommend Kathleen Stock, of course
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/material-girls-by-kathleen-stock-review-bkqxckqqr

Helen Joyce, this is the one that every MP was sent.
www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/trans-when-ideology-meets-reality-helen-joyce-review-b944183.html

Milli Hill - not about trans but about obstetric violence
(presumably this was reviewed before Milli said she thought that sex is a thing)
www.aims.org.uk/journal/item/give-birth-like-a-feminist-review

Maya Dusenbery's "Doing Harm" is a few years old and there are other versions by other authors examining medical misogyny, but, this is my favourite of them
therumpus.net/2018/04/doing-harm-by-maya-dusenbery/

Inferior by Angela Saini is similar but looks at the sciences in general
www.chemistryworld.com/review/inferior-how-science-got-women-wrong-and-the-new-research-thats-rewriting-the-story-/3008048.article

Who cooked Adam Smith's dinner by Katrine Marcal is a feminist critique of economics wbg.org.uk/blog/who-cooked-adam-smiths-dinner-a-review/

In Control by Jane Monckton Smith is about predictors for male violence which end in the murder of women www.college.police.uk/article/dangerous-relationships-and-how-they-end-book-review

The Mental Load by Emma (no surname) is a cartoon book about who does what in a home and why www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic

The trouble with women by Jackie Fleming is hilarious and beautifully illustrated. www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/16/the-trouble-with-women-jacky-fleming-feminist-cartoons

There are others. If the police wish to remove my books I will expect a receipt and for them to be returned to me. Although, if they were a bit dog eared by the time I got them back because they'd been quietly shared round the stations, well, that would please me enormously.

For balance, I have read Juno Dawson, Shon Faye and have attempted Alok Vaid-Menon's three times now...honestly, I know you don't get as much time to read as you'd like, so I recommend saving those treasures until after you have read and reflected all of the books on your "oh, that looks interesting" list.

Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine. So good to have some arguments to counter some of the pseudoscience and (deliberate) misunderstanding of science on this issue. I shall keep it hidden in a trough of chickenfeed and excavate an area under the floorboards where I can read it in safety. Do we have to start wearing berets and trenchcoats yet?

I've also got Fury, a memoir by Kathryn Heyman. It's a novel about a woman who runs away to be a deckhand in Timor after a traumatic sexual assault trial.

Apparently about trauma and survival. I bought it as an adjunct to The Body Keeps the Score which is a popular science book about trauma.

I do have some Pratchett and poetry, not everything I read is a deep dive into female misery.

(though, come to think of it, the Pratchett is all the witches and gender bending dwarves and the poetry is all Hollie McNish, Wendy Cope, Carol Ann Duffy and Liz Lochead. So, yeah, maybe I need to re-read some Jackie Collins as a matter of urgency)

I haven't read Fury yet.

I'll take it with me as my luxury item to the cell, though. I've put a pair of tweezers in as a bookmark, if I'm there for 10 hours I could probably manage to have a go at my tache and eyebrows.

Maybe 1984 at a stretch. Depends what mood they’re in, no?

They might need to take it for some handy pointers.

If you have small children you might want to hide anything they have dinosaur related; Harry and the Dinosaurs is a fine work of treason and sedition.

You've got me seriously worried about my copy of The Cassell Book of the Austin A40.

I’ve got an old London A-Z. Very concerned. Ask a 1970s ladybird edition of the Two Naughty Kittens.

I have an awful lot of the books mentioned in this thread - Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, Abigail Shrier, Caroline Criado Perez for starters. That's not to mention the classics: Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millett, Dale Spender and so on. I think it would be too much for the Gwent police, though I'm rather enjoying the idea of them taking the books away and then sitting down and reading them to see what seditious material they contain.

I'm willing to donate a book or two to the station.

We could all send them something for quiet moments on shift. There must be loads of those if they have staff available to man handle women in the middle of the night.

They removed it because it had her notes inside. This is literally checking for WrongThink.
I assume her private notes will be used against her. I'm assuming some comparison to terrorism will be attempted.

I not only have a lot of the books mentioned in my house, I have put some of them in my girls' school library ...
'The grace year', 'Trans', 'Testosterone Rex', 'Material girls', 'The second sex', Woolstonecraft, Rowling (Potter & Strike) and others. So much danger! Don't tell the other librarians, I'll be drummed out!

@RoyalCorgi

I have an awful lot of the books mentioned in this thread - Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, Abigail Shrier, Caroline Criado Perez for starters. That's not to mention the classics: Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millett, Dale Spender and so on. I think it would be too much for the Gwent police, though I'm rather enjoying the idea of them taking the books away and then sitting down and reading them to see what seditious material they contain.

Will they be sent to gulags after reading the books? Will they be able to claim for the intellectual harm incurred by reading facts and ideas that cultural relativism means were not dangerous at the time but are incendiary now?

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

I've got a model clitoris on my bookshelf.

Is that an automatic penalty of "strip search and slagging off of saggy tits and hairy everything"?

Because I could try and hide it. I think I could blu tac it over my actual clitoris.

Well, they’d have to find it first.

@AsTreesWalking
My school librarian used to let the student “library assistants” pick new books for the coming year (I know, imagine schools having budgets for libraries…) - absolutely delirious with the power I was the first time I did it. And the last and each time between.

@BrideofAberdeen

Luckily I have lent out my Irreversible Damage and Trans to two different friends! Will keep passing them round

My son bought me this for Christmas. My jaw was literally on the floor reading it!!

I'm torn on whether I wish I had a Grimwoire or even a copy of The Golden Bough

I'm just glad no-one seems to have a Malleus Maleficarum. They already seem to know quite enough nonsensical rationalisations for burning women at the stake.

@CompleteGinasaur

I'm just glad no-one seems to have a Malleus Maleficarum. They already seem to know quite enough nonsensical rationalisations for burning women at the stake.

That was the one that I was trying to remember.

And I meant Grimoire.

Very expensive education, I had - watched an awful lot of Hammer horror films after coming home from the pub on Frightnight Fridays. I'll never forget Witchfinder General.

Confound them by making use of Project Gutenberg’s helpfully ensuring we all have our very own copies of James VI & I’s Daemonologie

Although it is Gwent Police - is there a Ladybird book of Witchburning? Ritual Immolation for Dummies..?

^CompleteGinasaur
I'm just glad no-one seems to have a Malleus Maleficarum.^
Ah, actually...
(Puts hand up embarrassedly)

@NitroNine
Glad to hear it! I let my library helpers choose, I have a budget! (Not a private school- we are very lucky)

@CorvusPurpureus

They'd probably round us both up on the basis of dd1's igcse Art sketchbook.

She did rather a good portrait of me surrounded by swirly suffragette colours & shouty quotes. Some of them decidedly GC.

Bless her, I'd prefer her not to see the inside of a police van for painting a picture.

We must surely be into Extinction Burst phase now? The whole thing is just too ridiculous & soon we can all wake up?

That sounds like some awesome art! 😍

I might get away with it a bit on the basis that a lot of my stuff is on Kindle. Oh wait they will probably check out my phone too...

The Evans book is Transgender Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/aaa8ead4-7ee9-11ec-8532-85a58274df7c?shareToken=3f98650d15e518ea53db325b98696253

I've ordered Material Girls and am thinking of sending a pic of me reading it to the police.