Libraries promoting body mutilation as “joy” in Norfolk

[CarobBean72]

Anyone here from Norfolk?

Norwich Millennium Library has a display of “Trans Joy”, apparently aimed at children & young people, which IMHO promotes body mutilation & self harm of women & girls & glorifies drug use. In the wake of the Cass Report it’s incredibly irresponsible.

It includes images of hypodermic needles for injecting testosterone, a packer & mastectomy scars, with the slogan “Self-made men play God right”.

Most disturbing is a small figurine of a woman’s lower half, cut off at waist & knees, bearing what appears to be a hysterectomy scar & what is either a pseudo-phallus ( an appendage made from a flap of tissue removed from the woman’s arm or thigh, rolled up and sewn to the groin to mimic a penis ) or a hypertrophied clitoris, one of the often painful effects of testosterone on the female body.

The display is accessible to children as the cabinets stand only a couple of feet high, designed for a child’s eye line and it’s placed next to the 8-14 book section. The cases are by the entrance - not noticeable when you go in but inescapable when you leave.

I can’t believe someone okayed this. If it was promoting anorexia or cutting or glorifying steroid abuse to children and teenagers, we’d all see it for what it is. Instead, it’s promoting self-mutilation under the banner of “Trans Joy”.

It’s especially irresponsible in the week the Cass Review revealed how poor the evidence base for so-called “gender affirming care” is and how little followup there has been to assess regret and de-transition rates.

Ive been trying to find a contact for the head of Norfolk Library Services - it’s a woman called Kerry Murray, who is also the Safeguarding Lead! But I can’t find any email listing for her.

Any suggestions?

Sharing images with trepidation: it’s a horror show!

Post edited by MNHQ

Jesus, what an appalling slip of judgement. Who on earth signed off on that?! It reminds me of the trans pop-up/community exhibition that was on for months and months at the Pitt-Rivers in Oxford, but that was in a separate room and I think there may have been age warnings.

Having this sort of display right next to the young teens book section seems blatantly groom-y to me. I'm assuming a TRA at some high level at that library.

What weight would be given to complaints received from outside the geographic area, I wonder? It would be very easy for the library to dismiss it as a pile-on if women across the country make complaints. I hope the local feminist game is strong in Norwich!

I thought, from your title, that you must be exaggerating. Having that display near children and young people shows how far the norms have skewed. Report them to the local authority via the safeguarding process. Its grooming.

The story isn’t that there’s an exhibition promoting transition. The story is that the exhibition contains explicit content which is targeted blatantly at children, at a place where they go to read, learn, and develop a love of books - and not swallow harmful propaganda. The Cass report has stated clearly that children were put on gender-affirming pathways and potentially dangerous, life-changing medical treatments without taking into consideration their mental health and other issues. This exhibition is both irresponsible and inappropriate.

We sent a press release - also to other media.. But they’re very timid about this issue.

Daily Mail would love this. Just contact them.

Sent to them! Also to a named reporter there.

If I was in the Norfolk area I'd get a small group of terven together to picket the library with a couple of banners and some leaflets, stopping parents with children and telling them what awaits inside.

That should do it.

I’ve been told the exhibition has been taken down.

I think it was intended to be there through the Easter holidays - when there are a lot of kids in!

Is this in the same building as the BBC?

@PaperWalkAndTalk yes it is

That would have frightened me to death as a child.

I know - it’s just we (local women’s rights group) are pretty proactive and our local paper is mostly written by AI with about 3 reporters. It’s the sort of paper with constant basic grammar errors in articles. Hopeless.

Ah, I see Chewyspree. Depressing that so many local newspapers are now going downhill.

Fantastic news! There are now LOTS of comments on their Twitter post whereas yesterday there were none. Plus the other flurry of actions taken.
Well done OP!

I think they saw sense immediately and this is the result.

Dear God, the normalisation and glorification of self mutilation knows no bounds when it’s positioned in the middle of a public library for all children to see as well as people who would never choose to see or know about this.

I sincerely hope whoever is responsible is fired immediately.

Sorry, hadn’t RTFT. Someone still needs sacking.

They knew exactly what they were doing.

In their photo promoting the exhibition on Twitter the female torso sculpture is turned from the camera so the viewer can't see the attached bloody 'penis'.

They knew if a full frontal picture of it appeared on Twitter there would be an outcry. So to achieve their aim of exhibiting it publicly in the foyer of a library used by children they had to hide what it really was.

Utterly shameful.

Did you get a reply?

Thank you for recording this, OP, for the record when in the near future TRAs deny that they would ever do such a thing (cf lying responses to Cass report) but also for proof that something so grotesquely offensive was 'mainstreamed' in a public library.

The more complaints on this the better. Take the complaint all the way through the process and to Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman if possible. That will make the council sit up and take notice. Absolutely disgusting, beyond inappropriate. I would be so upset if my DC saw that. Under what other circumstances would a library show explicit content?!

This material is akin to what is, or was, on Body Modification Ezine. This site covered material from a simple tragus piercing to the more extreme ends of body modification and erotic play (ergo, fetishism).

The community is currently offline following the death of its founder coupled with technical issues with the site. But it was full of content warnings and always made clear that this sort of material is not in any way suitable for children. Back in the day, it was hidden away in a niche corner of the internet and the more extreme areas of the site were only accessible via various disclaimers and an age declaration.

That material of this nature is being publicly displayed in full technicolour glory - aimed at children, not least - is evidence of how far down the rabbit hole gender ideology has dragged this country.

It's a momentous, institutional, systemic safeguarding failing of gargantuan proportions. When any ideology, no matter what its nature, flags 'safeguarding' as a dogwhistle 'phobia', then they are telling us loudly and clearly exactly who they are.

Not yet

I am amazed at how much Norwich has changed from the 20 years ago that I lived there.

When I was there I think there was one gay club that was quite small. Apparently there is now a large "LGBT+" community, and I say that in quotes because when I've read about it it seemed to be made up of heterosexual men who cross-dressed.

Ours in Norfolk is extremely timid about anything to do with the T contingent. They ran a story where Norwich Women’s Rights Group was mentioned - when Norwich City Council voted TWAW & hunted up what they said was a local “feminist group” that none of us had heard of to say we were doing it wrong.

Turns out the “feminist group” was a crafts market…