Then they came for the poets

[TinselAngel]

I’m sharing this on behalf of my friend, Abigail who was cancelled from a poetry journal . She says

“This story broke today. It is about me bringing a case against Arts Council England for failing to carry out a proper investigation when I raised with them my concern about the editor of a literary journal. My concern was that this editor may have been acting in a discriminatory manner when he withdraw from publication a prose poem previously accepted with enthusiasm and on the point of going to print because of my 'social media presence'. It is also about the fact that the Arts Council claims to support free speech but has given large sums of public money in funding to this particular journal. My social media activity consists primarily of re-posting gender critical views - that is, the belief that biological sex is immutable - and my views are founded in my own lived experience as a survivor of early sexual abuse, life-threatening male violence, and, more recently, an abusive marriage to a cross-dressing autogynephile who produced pornographic material for the internet and kept all his activities secret from me. I am also one of the women featured in Vaishnavi Sundar's ground-breaking documentary 'Behind The Looking Glass'. It would help my case enormously if this story were to be shared on social media but it is important to the case that any material accompanying the sharing should be phrased in the terms I have used above. This is because, if the case goes to court, the whole case will be about exactly WHICH of my views it was that 'lawfully' triggered this cancellation. My legal team does not believe that the cancellation WAS lawful but we have not proved that yet so, if you are willing to share, please avoid any terminology other than the descriptors shown above. I have a duty to my team to keep the case as 'safe' as possible, not to mention the question of wasted legal fees if it all goes pear-shaped.”

The story is being covered here:
https://www.gbnews.com/news/trans-row-trauma-legal-action?fbclid=IwZnRzaAQP4thleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeaNcf3lKL0iy0eoK2BAw1nRZnASDyZlXJdZbFMzwTbLU5P8TOf7mkdLd9Buo_aem_JMOM_K02vT3tHJyrpidukw

There’s also a public Facebook post about this which should be shareable:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Ge1a5UB21/?mibextid=wwXIfr

At the exact same time as Arts Council England were telling her there was nothing they could do they chucked a whole wodge of cash at the magazine! What a coincidence.

Shared on my Facebook. I see I have mutuals with the brave lady concerned.

Tweet with link to Telegraph story:
https://x.com/rosiekayk2co/status/2027771232574206294?s=46&t=PSGltfjrMyZmBtYq2-AVIQ

Just read this in the Telegraph. She sounds extraordinary. Another case which, if she wins it, you’d like to think would have a powerful role in culling the actions of the thought police.

Brave woman. All power to her.

Well done Abigail.

Is there a link to the poem in question anywhere? There seems no link between the content of the poem and hee GC views which were expressed separately, elsewhere?

Honest to god, the purity police are a weird breed indeed.

Well no. Nobody is surprised by this I imagine. Women have been getting silenced, fired and cancelled for speaking up against harmful trans ideology for years now.

Looks like this has got some people worried.

So, just to be clear, you think that if someone posts their opinions in social media, and they are not in line with a part of society's approved thinking, that person should be shunned, their work rejected though it had nothing to do with their heretical opinions? Wait till a different part of society gains the ascendancy, and hope that they don't behave in the same self-righteous, censorious way to you.

Presumably the three random word user name poster, would rather we were more like North Korea and all art had to be approved for ideological correctness.

Brave lady, Abigail.

I am declining to engage with the three word poster today, viz Operation Let Them Speak.

There's an article in the Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/28/poet-cancelled-gender-criticism/ as I know some people want use a GB news link.

And archived here https://archive.is/gr5Aw

What's so sad, especially for Abigail of course, but that you would have thought / hoped that by now even in the world of the arts they cant censor people for being gender critical.

And who decided that what people said on social media was the basis on which someone got published.

I can see that if you are putting yourself forward as a political candidate that it might be seen plausible to raise concerns about online comments.

But a poem, or even a novel?

This excerpt from an email that Aftershock sent to Abigail

“As a trauma-informed and inclusive publication, The Aftershock Review has a duty of care to ensure our contributors and readers feel safe and respected. This decision reflects our commitment to those principles and is final.”

It's like a parody.

Funny how the person who shall not be named on this thread thinks Abigail believes in an ideology. Literally funny. There isn't anything ideological about biology it's factual. And you don't have to believe in it because it's real.
Also, how would they like to have their work cancelled and other consequences for voicing their own opinions. I suspect they would be just as outraged as Abigail.

It really still isn’t safe out there for free thinking women.

Good for her. More power to her elbow.

What I hadnt realised is that the whole premise of the magazine is that it's for trauma survivors.

Exactly, I know its not a comedy routine, but cant help but say you couldn't make it up.

A woman who has experience trauma writes about it, but somehow her trauma is suddenly not valid because she support gender critical tweets.

So only the right sort of people can have genuine trauma that is worth acknowledging.

Just how low can TRAs go in dismissing the reality of women's lifes.

And shame on all the handmaidens who have facilitated this negation of her experience which she is still living with.

The other thing I would note is that its highly unusual for a weiter/poet/artist to hear the reason their work has been rejected or dropped or not selected.

This dynamic or cancelling is and will be repeated in many thousands of cases every year - we just won't hear about it.

In most cases there's.nothing to be done - an artist is maked as a troublemaker or disruptive or outwith the current orthodoxy and avoided, swerved, or overlooked. Just how the arts work.

But its important that the gatekeepers, funders, decision makers are kept transparent and at least attempts at upholding fairness are made. Otherwise we end up with stale, brittle, boring, meaningless art made according to fear, aversion, cowardice, rule-following and obeying.

Its a hard thing to fight - I think the arts is maybe the hardest sector to grapple with because so much if it is opaque and can be attributed to subjective individual preference. And individually it may not seem that it matters - one poem gets rejected, one art exhibition turns down your submission, one publisher passes. It's hard to discern patterns and wider tendencies. Rejection is a constant in the arts. Nepotism and jealousy and resentment are all inevitable inextricably built in and hard to tackle.

Over time, though, it does have deep and lasting impact on people and cultures. The stories we see and dont see matter so enormously.

Link to info on Abigail Ottley's poetry collection, Out of Eden, published last May, including some of her poems.

An article in the Times

https://archive.ph/l12Z3

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/gender-critical-arts-council-poetry-2dw5c32cs

If anyone's interested there's a link at the bottom to an article about Matt Wallis who started the Aftershock magazine.

Another woman poet in Scotland has fallen victim to discrimination over her views:

https://pollyclark.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-vanishing

Gutter magazine pulled a review of her book.

Taxpayer funded magazine, discriminating (we presume) on the basis of a protected belief. I am so tired of how pervasive and insidious this kind of thing is.

I wonder how many of us don't have a story about contracts we've lost or not bid for, jobs we've not applied for, groups we're not welcome in, friendships lost or changed. How many of us aren't weary of weighing up of whether and how much we can afford to speak out, whether - in any given moment - we're up for the fight and the possible abuse.

I feel for Polly. I really do.