New guidance from councils aims to make libraries friendlier to LGBT visitors - by hiding gender critical books

[IwantToRetire]

Libraries across the country are being advised to prevent LGBT people seeing “offensive” gender-critical books, the Telegraph can reveal.

Guidance shared as “best practice” among council-run public libraries suggests measures to be more inclusive, including hosting drag queen story hours and making toilets gender neutral, partly to relieve anxiety for women with “masculine” hairstyles.

Advice on handling “transphobic books” states that librarians should not promote works by gender-critical authors, while mitigating the “risk” that LGBT readers might encounter these “offensive” titles on shelves.
The guidance titled “Welcoming LGBTIQ+ users: advice for public library workers” also suggests that staff limit the number of gender-critical books they stock.

In a section of “transphobic” titles it states: “There have been a few titles published which claim to be ‘gender critical’ and argue for removal of trans rights.

“These authors and their work can be labelled transphobic, and the writers themselves Terfs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists). We, along with many in the LGBTIQ+ community, find these books offensive.”

The guidance was produced in 2022 by an Islington “LGBTIQ+ library” called Book 28, founded by Southwark Council librarian Isadore Auerbach George, who drew up the advice with Lambeth librarian Colette Townend and academic Dr Elizabeth Chapman, whose doctoral thesis was on “provision of LGBT-related fiction to children and young people” in public libraries.

The guidance has been provided to staff working for local authorities, with Leicestershire, West Berkshire and Gateshead council making use of the advice.

The Book 28 advice is also shared on the websites of professional bodies the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland, and charity Libraries Connected, an organisation whose membership includes every library service in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

From a much longer article at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/01/librarians-hide-books-from-gender-critical-authors/

Also available by pasting in the Telegraph link at https://archive.ph

Also Caroline Criado Pereze, Invisible Women. And Home Grown, Joan Smith.

*Caroline Criado-Perez

Defending Women's Spaces - Karen Ingala Smith
Time to Think - Hannah Barnes
Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez
We Should All be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Irreversible Damage - Abigail Shrier

It is quite breathtaking how public institutions such as libraries, health bodies, universities etc have been so overly influenced and so quick to happily turn all policies upside down and inside out. How was this ever allowed? Creepy!

And then fewer and fewer people will use the library, because there will be fewer books and fewer perspectives to read about, so they’ll close it.

Way to go, TRAs!

Oh, maybe that’s the objective. Restrict access to alternative views. Restrict access to learning. Ensure that the only view that is fed to people is the ideologically pure one.

Sounds familiar.

Is it a coincidence that guidance is called Book 28?

I wondered that myself @JellySaurus I'm assuming these people have access to dictionaries. While they are censoring them (with the big red pen), they should look up a few words, like 'hypocrisy' and 'bigotry'.

Does anyone know which Minister ultimately oversees libraries? Is it Culture, Education or Local Authorities?

In Control: How Dangerous Relationships End In Murder by Jane Monckton Smith.

And 'gullible'.

That's pure indoctrination. Surely most books published for young people are fiction. If 25% of library stock held for that age group is LGBT self-help / memoir type stuff, it'll swamp everything else.

Defending Women's Spaces - Karen Ingala Smith

Time to Think - Hannah Barnes

Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez

We Should All be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Irreversible Damage - Abigail Shrier

Home Grown, Joan Smith.

The Whole Woman, Germaine Greer

The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer

Hags, Victoria Smith

Trans, Helen Joyce

Material Girls, Kathleen Stock

Feminism for Women, Julie Bindel

Gender-Critical Feminism by Holly Lawford-Smith

Unfair Play: The Battle For Women's Sport by Sharron Davies

The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society
by Debra Soh

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
by Abigail Shrier

Wild Women of a Certain Age - Magi Gibson

My Body is Me - Rachel Rooney

Born in the Right Body: Gender identity ideology from a medical and feminist perspective by Isidora Sanger

Testosterone, Caroline Hooven

Feminism against Progress, Mary Harrington

The case against the Sexual Revolution, Louise Perry

Galileo's Middle Finger, by Alice Dreger

Men's section:

Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

The End of the World is Flat - Simon Barnes

The Madness of Crowds - Douglas Murray

The New Puritans - Andrew Doyle

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker

It has a spine, in contrast to the idiots who are promoting these policies.

Helen Joyce is collecting censorship stories.

Alright peeps, I want your stories of bookshops and libraries hiding or otherwise down-voting my and other "GC" books. I need details - when and where, what the staff member/librarian said. You can DM me.
https://twitter.com/HJoyceGender/status/1686656071245365248

I think we have not heard the last of this.

These are great suggestions! I have looked at the library’s website and cannot find anywhere to suggest purchases. So, I have sent them a message asking how to do this. In the meantime, I will thoroughly search the book and ebook catalogues and then put in a request for purchase once I know how to do this.

I am so angry that those coming after me in the profession I love are behaving like this!

These people are so dumb, aren't they? do they realise that this will be picked up, spread around and talked about before a rapid backtrack is put in place?

You can make suggestions for additions to book stock by just by emailing the library. They will pass suggestions along to stock librarian. Suggestion I would keep your initial list down to around 3-5 titles otherwise you will be taken less seriously and make sure the books have a UK publisher so focus on British authors.

The more recent the book the better too. So Unfair Play: The Battle For Women's Sport by Sharron Davies which came out recently and is high profile is a good shout for sure.

Not that long ago the library profession was consciously moving away from being seen to be 'gatekeeping' and more about supporting access to information, and information literacy to help people use what they found. Now it seems to be screeching back the other way.

They think it is the mid 2010s when being antiwoman was way easier to get away with. Thanks to the blatant hate they made Joyce's book a bestseller.

This 'hiding' is already standard practice in bookshops - including university bookshops where you cannot even locate or buy any number of classic feminist texts.

Unpacking Queer Politics - Sheila Jeffreys

Gender Hurts - Sheila Jeffreys

@ArabeIIaScott The End of the World is Flat is by Simon Edge, not Barnes. I’m currently reading In The Beginning by him, which is another sharp parody of gender ideology.

Thank you, that’s very good advice. I never worked for the public library system.

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · Today 12:05

These people are so dumb, aren't they? do they realise that this will be picked up, spread around and talked about before a rapid backtrack is put in place?

I actually wonder if it isn't deliberate, in as far as them knowing that they'll be told to stop being silly, so that they can have a performative:

"Boo hoo! Poor us, they're so horrid!"

Another one to add to their basket of fake oppressions and marginalisations.

I have searched my local library online for every book mentioned on here. Two authors are available as e-book only. None of the others appear. Juno Dawson though, why I could use my whole borrowing quota on their books.

I'm actually shocked. I didn't for one second think that was going to be the case when I searched. I'm very angry right now.

Censoring what people are allowed to read

wtaf

how did people become so stupid ?
short hair on women. The reason to make toilets uni sex

Libraries being played by those gender ideology people and don’t seem to have the wits about them to see it