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

Name changed for this; I know NLS inside out. Be in no doubt, the stakeholders that they are so scared of are their paymasters, the Scottish Government. Also, believe me when I say the vast majority of the staff are normally very supportive of Amina Shah, who has been a transformative and thoughtful boss, and those staff deplore the actions of the tiny faction who have backed her into a corner on this issue by threatening disruptive action.

These issues will continue to happen in the Scottish public sector unless and until the Scottish Government holds its hands up and says it was wrong to impose Stonewall law throughout the sector. It seems unlikely that will happen any time soon, unfortunately.

This is a great spot Arabella. Should we all nominate TWWWW?

'Banned Books Week UK is led by Index on Censorship as a parallel campaign to Banned Books Week in the USA. It ran successfully for a couple of years prior to the pandemic and is re-launching in 2025. Index invites booksellers, libraries, literary organisations, publishers, schools, writers and any other organisations interested in getting involved with the campaign. The aim of Banned Books Week UK is to become a truly nationwide campaign. Follow us on X.'

Reading the FOIs it sounds like Shah has been the driving force behind the ban

I know! Hence my frustration the semantic rhetoric around the world play ban/ withdrawal is doing my head in. TRAs are arguing the it wasn’t banned because it is in the collection, or will be and by that I mean the National Libraries entire collection of books. Which is a very different entity from the exhibition and whilst it wasn’t banned from the big collection, which is not possible to access without process, it was most definitely banned from the exhibition.

whikst the distinction between words might feel unimportant in the scheme of things this word play is currently holding sway and undermining the point very successful. When significant GC folk like John Pike argue with TRAs conceding it wasn’t a ‘ban’ but a ‘withdrawal’ he concedes a point that is all important the evidence no longer matters as their rhetoric becomes, as it is, the book was never banned.

I know that is not true but I want people to argue the point that it was a ban because the exhibition and the collection are not the same so inclusion from one does not automatically remove the idea of ‘ban’ from the other.

Sales of the book have shot up. Banning books doesn't work.

Lucy Hunter Blackburn

We donate all royalties from the book to organisations helping women silenced elsewhere in the world. So one good thing comes of the National Library of Scotland's censorious behaviour. We've just shot up the sales charts. So well done there, at least,

She's definitely made the decision, reversing her initial instinct to include it, but she's probably made a correct calculation that there would be comparatively less hassle and bad publicity this way than the other.

I have no doubt that the blue hair bunch would have made an almighty fuss, picketed the exhibition, picked up media coverage far more widely and had Barr, Mcdermid & Cummings coming out with supportive words.

Still cowardice, but she'll likely still have her job this way and probably not have to make any humiliating apologies. I hope I'm proven wrong.

Luckily, women aren't likely to make an almighty fuss or pick up media coverage.

They might make a fuss

They won’t get as much positive media coverage

It'd been bugging me since I saw it - you know what that video strongly reminds me of? Does anyone else remember that odious video from a couple of years ago made by a TIM who was 'educating' lesbians that they were bigots if they refused to have sex with transwomen. Same vibe - condescending tone, head tilt, smug smile. Obviously not the same person but very much an 'educating the unbelievers' sort of similarity.

I suppose the National and it's editor are this multiverse's version of Constable Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets.

The guy that did a song version?

Lord, I hope not.

Just saw that JKR had reposted a guy's witty comment about TWWWW on X. I'm actually really 😬 about the responses.

So many saying the book wasn't banned, transphobes, bigots, women need to shut up etc etc.

https://x.com/euanmccolm/status/1955958416771371328

Bit depressing tbh.

women need to shut up etc etc.

That old chestnut. Works every time.

The email trail is so chilling. You can watch the process unfold bit by bit - a library sacrificing all of its principles and then congratulating itself for being progressive.

IcyJoMarch · Today 12:28

Email from Alison Stevenson, 2 June 2025:
As the Legal Deposit copy of the book has been caught up in the processing backlog caused by the British Library cyber-attack,

Please, Sir! The dog ate my homework, I mean the budgie, sorry, my Nan died tomorrow!

Acquisitions placed an order for a print copy last week and this will be available in the Reading Room by the time the exhibition opens.

Quick, go to Waterstones! Or maybe one of those horrid GC termagants will drop one off?

The book was published five months before the British Library cyber-attack. How long does it take legal deposit copies to reach the six copyright libraries in the country?

It can take a while - it needs to go to the ALDL first and they have a backlog, then they distribute to the libraries so a long delay is not unusual as it then needs to be catalogued.

I look forward to a flash mob of claws (calmly law abiding women) sitting in the NLS quietly reading their copies. I’m very far from Edinburgh and don’t know the building but there are presumably chairs, benches, cafes that can be sat on for the purpose?

https://www.thenational.scot/news/25387374.national-library-scotland-responds-claim-banned-book/

False news and ragebait.

The book has not been "banned" or "censored".

"The other 323 books – one of which was The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht – were placed on shelves in an open reading room, according to the National Library."

I’m looking forward to action against the Library on censorship, freedom of speech and discrimination.

There will also of course be the issue of Government funding of an institution that does not uphold its own values and those of all Libraries.

and yes. The flash mob would be a highlight too lana

Waterstones isn’t far

Just noticed sales have gone up on the book
I’ve also ordered Volume 2 of Boiledbeetles ( and mumsnetters !) book ( 100% of profits go to support women's charities ).

‘Today a reader, tomorrow a leader’ - Margaret Fuller

A bloke pretending to be a woman telling the 'truth' that WWWW is in the library for anyone to read and that it was one of 200 rejected oh and some bla bla about 'anti trans views' in the book.

The usual guff.

Oh Chrissy,
Well, you came
and you posted without reading,
The rest of the thread.
Oh Chrissy,
Well, you came
And you posted that shit article
But The National's a joke
Oh Chrissy....

(Dammit, now I've got an earworm for the rest of the day)