National Library of Scotland censors The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht

[OhBuggerandArse]

Took it out of their centenary exhibition because the staff LGBT+ network kicked up a fuss. Craven. This really needs massive public challenge and push back - if the National Library isn't able to fend off the censors we are utterly lost. https://x.com/EthelWrites/status/1955390550494023958

New chair.

https://media.nls.uk/news/new-chair-appointed-to-national-library-of-scotland-board-1

And the FUCKING BBC:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq83vvw83y8o.amp

'Ms Shah told the BBC podcast Front Row the initial decision to exclude the book was because it "detailed violence, aggression and anger online or in real life," which did not fit with the remit of the exhibition.

She also said she feared that the highly-charged and polarised debate around the issue of gender meant there was a risk of violence to both the authors and staff at the library who had raised concerns.'

This bullshit is exactly what I was cautioning about upthread. They are taking the reports of violence against women, the threats from library trans activists, and DARVOing them.

Ombudsman complaint it is, then.

I'd like to know why Drummond Bone went as chair - was that coincidentally the end of his tenure?

Bone's 4 yrs ran out 30th September, so yes coincidentally. He was briefly reappointed, I suppose til they found a new sucker.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/public-appointment-chair-reappointed-to-the-national-library-of-scotland-board/

Have we even got any more institutions to lose faith in? I'm struggling to think of a single one that hasn't ended up lying and acting dishonourably over all this crap.

We had to take the fucking government to court.

We had to take the NHS to court.

Women have taken Universities to court.

The BBC, every arts body, and now the libraries.

Every time, they've lost. We've been proven correct over and over, the law is on our side, and yet they still continue with the fudge and the hypocrisy.

It's disheartening, but we can't let this fuckery grind us down.

I don't remember most of the titles - old lady brain, sorry! - so can anyone confirm that all the other books are 100% sweetness and light?

Otherwise we could get out our green ink and complain about books that fail to "meet the remit of the exhibition" by "detailing violence, aggression and anger online or in real life"? 😁

I understood that she’s read it and then it was some of its contents, ie the accounts of abuse and violence levelled at GC women , that made her 180 after the aggro/bullying from the LGBT staff network

Completely agree about institutions - I never, ever thought I'd feel this cynical and disheartened by the Scottish Parliament and Government in particular.

On the other hand, it's shown some fantastic grassroots talent and ability in Scotland - for example, MBM have been absolute powerhouses in analysing and challenging policy and if the Government had any sort of sense, they'd be looking to MBM for help. They won't though.

I think the investigator got the right end of the stick, but it was unforgivable that in her Front Row interview Amina Shah didn't make clear that the violence and threats in the book were accounts of things that had happened to the women contributors - she was so ambiguous in the way she described it that a listener unfamiliar with the story could reasonably have understood that the book itself contained violent threats against others.

Is Bone a common surname in Scotland?

We had a Miss Bone for a teacher, from Glasgow.

I used to be a member of CILIP (library association). They have been distinctly quiet on this issue.

Yet they were keen enough to comment when a Reform councillor wanted a "trans-inclusive" book removed (which ended up not being there in the first place) from Kent libraries.

Librarians do "weed" collections to remove books that are battered or never borrowed. But they should not be censoring collections.

I remember now - one of the books was Bernard Malamud's "The Fixer". Which I've always considered a bit too grim to want to read.

Winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Kiev, 1911. When a twelve-year-old Russian boy is found stabbed to death, his body drained of blood, the accusation of ritual murder is levelled at the Jews. Yakov Bok - a handyman hiding his Jewish identity from his anti-Semitic employer - is first outed and blamed. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit. What becomes of this man under pressure, for whom acquittal is made to seem as hopeless as conviction, is the subject of a terrifying masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction.

Absolutely not detailing "violence, aggression and anger online or in real life". Oh no.

Still, I shouldn't take the piss. I think Shah knows she got that wrong.

She thought “I don’t fancy dealing with that. Women will complain but in a civilised way that I can ignore”. Tbf fear of the TRA loonies is what’s been going on generally, not just at the NLS.

The cynic in me did wonder whether the “independent investigation” was welcomed by the library management because it was going to go public with what they had had to deal with internally. Although it didn’t name names everyone in the library will know who the individuals are have been found to be acting in a threatening manner

Hopefully the workshops will be the kind of thing that the people who don’t attend will be looked askance at for , and there will eventually be consequences for the threatening and inappropriate behaviour . Possibly some really vicious retro cataloguing or a lot of mouldy things to sort out
(I’m sure I also read that civil service staff networks being somewhat curtailed)

Good fucken god.

Vole, thank you for insights and for your persistence. It can't be easy working there in this situation. I can think of quite a few women writers who would be interested in attending the event on women's books.

I'm completely unconvinced Shah has admitted - even to herself - that she was in the wrong and failed in her duties.

😳😳 I mean that's some chutzpah