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

So the story is: some barmy "guidance" is issued and libraries either know nothing about it or just ignore it.
I guess that wouldn't have made an interesting headline for the Telegraph though.

This seems to be happening more and more on threads, linked to articles. Comments are made that make it obvious the poster hasn't read the article.

The article names a few libraries where this was happening and in fact asked them to comment.

And I have a horrible feeling I said this in a post I made yesterday. Even if it is only a tiny percentage out of all libraries, it still isn't right. It isn't right because it isn't the role of libraries, and it isn't right because the library users of whichever area are being deprived on access to books they might want to read.

Hopefully the Telegraph article will have made other libraries be more aware and that should someone start to talk about the guidelines being introduced, will be better informed.

Have to say if only we had had articles like this when queer activists started infiltrating committees and professional networks to push their TRA agenda.

How much better it would have been to have had it clearly spelt out that they were the trojan horse that would enable erasing women's rights and the concept that sex wasn't a biological fact but a choice.

It’s hard to know what side you are on Ruby. I assumed initially that you are gender critical and are referring to section 28 to show how wrong it is to ban books and for public bodies to dictate what people read? And that’s it’s tolerant and inclusive for people to read widely and freely according to their interests.

But then I remembered how crazy and incoherent the ‘arguments’ of gender ideologists are and thought you may actually be using an example of intolerantly banning books to argue for banning books in the name of, erm, tolerance.

That’s the thing with gender ideology. It’s so hard to tell when it’s being spoofed and when it’s real.

There is no risk that a library could do something like this. I mean, they may let men into women’s prisons over this nonsense, but a library could never be influenced.

Amongst other things, under the Public sector equality duty,

(1)A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to—
(c)foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.

Do you think that demonising feminists as TERFs for believing that biological sex exists (a belief which is worthy of respect in a democratic society) is a way to foster good relations between people who hold different beliefs?

Perhaps you can explain how this document is likely to help to foster good relations between those with different protected characteristics.

Most public type libraries also have mandated commitments to freedom of information, and participate in things like freedom to read campaigns.

This kind of guidance completely goes against that.

I have seen this kind of thing in action though, where a library stood by those principles in refusing to remove a book, but bent to the will of activists in terms of not promoting the book, and even including a list of other recommended books, in order to give the borrower a more balanced view.

All totally opposed to normal library operations.

Caro Betts tweets
Having noticed that in all the libraries throughout Staffordshire there’s only ONE copy of @HJoyceGender book and ZERO copies of books by @Docstockk @hannahsbee or @sharrond62 I thought I’d have a little meander to see what they did deem shelf-worthy 1/11

https://twitter.com/BettsCaro/status/1686747643626635264?t=JWkT7wi0q8qoR8cNfO4Bmw&s=19

This is disgraceful. It's obvious some libraries are failing to provide a proper service. I'm not sure what political stripe Staffs is but politicians should be held to account as well.

And yet its a fine line between banning books and hiding them.
Its an even finer line when the actions to be inclusive to one group exclude another.

In the same way that no-one was taking away trans rights, no-one is stopping trans people from going in to libraries and taking out books.

Comments are made that make it obvious the poster hasn't read the article.

As the article is behind a paywall that's hardly surprising.

If someone wanted to list the libraries suspected of following this advice we could always check their catalogues.

As the article is behind a paywall that's hardly surprising.

Sigh -

To repeat what is in the OP and nearly always is, it says very clearly if you paste the Telegraph link into the archive.ph web site home page you can read the whole article.

I think you will most OPs on FWR take the time to find if an article is archived.

Okay?

Hope you enjoy the article now that you can actually read it.

👆

Having seen up thread that three councils have been named I checked out their catalogues.

Leicestershire has two copies of Joyce, none of Stock, one of Barnes and a generous six of Bindel.

West Berkshire only has Barnes but does have two copies of that.

Gateshead none of any.

As a test I checked whether these authorities had Paris Lees and Grace Lavery's books - Leics and Gateshead had one copy each and, sadly for Grace, no-one had that one at all! I assume no-one will be claiming that Grace is being censored?

I'm still not convinced that this is proof of anything terribly sinister. We don't know if any customers requested any of these books, or how books are chosen in these quite small authorities. If back in 2021 you'd had the Kathleen Stock book pop up on your very long list of books to select from and you knew nothing about it (and there were no customer requests) it wouldn't necessarily jump out as a "must buy".

As with all the threads about the Labour Party it does feel lsometimes there isn't much perspective on how the general public feels about "the trans issue" and what priority it gives to it. None of the GC books in my authority (and we have a good range) have generated as much demand as Suzanne Heywood's Wavewalker to list one example of a popular non-fiction title.

Sorry, post above should have said - "one copy each of Lees".

My PC has a block on that site so still can't read it.

I did find the names of the three authorities which is what I was looking for.

My PC has a block on that site so still can't read it.

If it is your PC surely you are able to decide which sites you can or cant visit?!

Helen Joyce's Trans was on the Times best sellers list.For a library service not to have a copy is a disgrace. Stock selection is not just a matter of requests but about a wide ranging stock including material of minority interest.

Being gender critical, per se, isn't a "protected characteristic."

If your religious or philosphical belief excludes or denigrates others, then the balance is different.

For example, if you think that gay people are going to hell, women should not be in libraries, or that "in a sane society" all members of a protected group should not exist, then the balance should be in favour of gay people, women, and transgender people respectively.

Gender critical views are worth of respect in a democratic society and holding gender critical beliefs is a protected characteristic under the classification of religion/belief. As has been proven in law.

Here you are:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/employment-tribunal-rulings-on-gender-critical-beliefs-in-the-workplace/

'Gender-critical beliefs include the belief that sex is biological and immutable, people cannot change their sex and sex is distinct from gender-identity.'

'gender-critical beliefs can be protected from discrimination under the Equality Act 2010'

"If you think that............all members of a protected group should not exist"

This old tosh again.

JFCOAFB.

I don't often browse my local library....but I have borrowed many many GC books from my library lately. I want to read all of the GC books and this keeps me from spending all my money on books!! Not had any problems borrowing these books

I know. That was a trite post.

I see.

So presumably, if you lived in a country with a very traditionalist approach to sexual morality, you would support their library system avoiding books that contained material sympathetic to LGBTQ+ issues?

I don't quite understand the lack o imagination of people who support this kind of approach to freedom of information in libraries. Surely it must be obvious that it was precisely this principle and commitment that allowed what were then controversial books to be added to those collections?

Having seen up thread that three councils have been named I checked out their catalogues.

Well given that prior to the article this thread is based on the Telegraph had publicly exposed libraries who were either not stock or hiding GC books hasn't it occured to you that maybe a few thought well we dont want to be exposed.

So at the time of the article being published it was news.

But the fact that it was news could well have made other libraries check their stock.

And as we know from this thread, made individuals ask libraries about GC books.

Why wouldn't you be glad that a story that was true at the time of writing have in the first instance alerted library management that maybe staff are not behaving with equality, and has alerted library users to the fact there may be a problem with some libraries not stocking GC books.

Seems a win win to me.

Just a shame that a paper like the Guardian is equally concerned about libraries providing a good service.

Spending all this effort to try and deny there is a story just because it was in the Telegraph, seems a strange slant to take on the issue.

Mine isn't too bad, got a lot of books on feminism but only one gc book by cordelia fine. Have requested the Helen Joyce one.

If your religious or philosphical belief excludes or denigrates others, then the balance is different.

How do GC beliefs "denigrate" anyone?

Maybe some of the rhetoric can go too far from some people, but the core beliefs?

Do you mean that GC don't accept the validity of trans identities as they have recently been defined? If so, then that can just be a good thing and correct.

With "exclusion", again, that can just be a good thing to do in certain circumstances. We can't assume that "inclusion" is always the correct approach, especially when people are demanding access based off how they identify!

Trans-activist can think GC is bad because GC wants to exclude and doesn't respect the dignity of trans people.

GC can think trans-activist is bad because trans-activist wants to invade spaces based off of nonsense identity claims and doesn't respect the privacy and dignity of women.

I don't think it's for a library to be taking sides and trying to settle this kind of question.

As Section 28 has been mentioned here, I'm probably the only one that defends it...

Firstly there is nothing wrong with "censoring" a school library. There are all sorts of books that especially younger children shouldn't have access to at school.

And note that the left-wing that the Tory Party was dealing with back then, may well have wanted to ban books themselves. See from 2 minutes in:

I believe the real issue, is that certain education authorities or teachers were pushing their left wing political views in an unbalanced way.

So it's not just that material would have been thought to be inappropriate to the age group, it's that the teachers had no interest in giving different sides of the debate.

You aren't being "censored" when someone stops you from using your teaching position to push propaganda on young children.