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

Looks like there might be a legal challenge over this:

Arts Council England faces legal threat over magazine’s withdrawal of poet’s work

Publicly funded journal pulled poem citing writer’s ‘social media presence’, with solicitors alleging discrimination over gender-critical views

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/mar/03/arts-council-england-faces-legal-threat-over-magazines-withdrawal-of-poets-work

Telegraph is now reporting about Polly Clark's situation

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/03/03/gender-critical-author-work-cancelled-snp-magazine/

In any hugely competitive field, it’s becoming so transparent how easy it is for (often) relatively privileged white men to take down any women whom they might suspect to be a professional threat, simply by pointing at them and saying TERF. Horrible irony how common this kind of thing seems to be in the arts. Feel like we all need to start doing public readings of The Crucible, and 1984.

These guys are going to hold on to this relatively new power for as long as they possibly can. It’s a great weapon for them. Just the latest most palatable form of age old sexism and male entitlement to set limits on what women are allowed to do or say.

Worth noting how any mention of feminism or women's rights has been cast as 'problematic' and any woman speaking up on the matter is assumed guilty until she performs public abeisance to men.

Thanks for sharing. How many more cancellations will there be before this madness ends?

This is also appalling!! Two poets now! How many others are already toning down their voice in public then. Fuck that!!

These blokes will soon not publish ANY women at all because they are female and might therefore be women’s rights supporters. I can’t express in words how un creative and un principled and undeserving of creative control these absolute fuckers are.

In the 70s there were women’s publishers who published novels by and/or written for women. Does a publisher like that exist in the poetry scene these days? Could it, if it doesn’t already? I’d definitely contribute to a crowdfunder.

Women desperately need to be allowed to speak and write without male censure and censoring. As a society we can’t ignore that there is this hostile silencing environment around women and the apparent dangers of what they might be thinking. They can’t bear it if women break the character that they’ve automatically assigned to us.

Jenny Lindsay from Freedom in the Arts has an Opinion piece in the Scotsman

https://archive.ph/9QmOC

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/its-not-more-money-that-scotlands-culture-sector-needs-its-respect-for-artistic-freedom-5615560

It's good to see reporting by a non-rightwing news publisher, as I want these stories in front of people who refuse to see the problems caused by pandering to trans activism. Readers of the Mail and Times are probably sympathetic already. Mind you, not sure about readership of the Scotsman, which was pro-union in the independence referendum.

A new-ish article in the Telegraph

https://archive.ph/YtG66

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/07/arts-council-aftershock-magazine-cancelled-poet-porn/

not sufficiently ‘sex-positive’ about ‘sissy porn’ and ‘cross-dressing’

After what she went through with her husband, she's not supposed to publicly complain about his behaviour? She's not allowed to live her truth without being penalised for it? And iiuc the label 'sissy porn' was coined by the men who create it and who watch it.

So, let’s get this straight. A publication that specialises in publishing the work of trauma victims, and receives public funding to do so, refuses to publish a rape victim’s work because she is not sufficiently positive about sex? Seriously? I’m assuming they also refuse to publish the work of other rape victims, those who have suffered sexual assault and abuse and anyone who has been groomed - presumably unless they reframe their trauma in sufficiently sex positive ways.

If only people who are so easily traumatised by words would think for a moment about how traumatising it must be for us women who are seeing our words abused and stolen from under our noses!

If the trans community wants to set itself up as the Nation’s thought police then it needs to realise that by doing so in such petty and vindictive ways it is destroying any possible validity of their arguments when set against the logic and truth of GC belief, arguments which are already already wafer thin, based largely as they are both on the stealth appropriation and repurposing of language and the loud and shouty voices which appear to be the only comeback against overwhelming evidence.

Sorry, I don’t mean to imply that the effect on the women whose work has been cancelled is petty, it is not, it is an affront to their scholarship, good standing and critical validation, it is the act of cancellation that is petty, vindictive and spiteful.

Jo Bartosch in the Critic

https://archive.ph/9CL9l

https://thecritic.co.uk/tedious-transgression/

I don't know how women like her, and some men, manage to write coherently about this fuckwittery. Not just coherently but actually make sensible points about the hypocrisy, misogyny, racism, etc.

Good article.

Thank you for the link, excellent article.

What I don't know is how intelligent, well-informed analyses like these exist in the same milieu/same time/space continuum alongside what you so accurately describe as fuckwittery.

Read one publication, and it makes sense; read another apparently similar one, and it is Fuckwittery Central.

I wonder how the publishers of a male writer would react if he wrote a blog about how his marriage fell apart because his wife kept posting sexually explicit footage of herself on the internet, and he couldn't cope with it emotionally. They might tut about his prudery, but would they blackball him?

We need to get that tested under a pseudonym! A male would get a completely different reaction for sure

Agree. I have written a poem about Oct 7th. I have decided not to take it to the writing group I belong to (large and locally prestigious) for criticism because I would be outing myself re Israel which would cause me problems - have decided the same about my GC views. But it is inhibiting. And it is worse, I think, in publishing.

I’m going to be publishing one of Abigail’s poems on the Trans Widow’s Voices website soon.

Thrilled to have been able to publish one of Abigail’s poems.
https://www.transwidowsvoices.org/post/abigails-story

Also If you would like to show your support for Abigail, copies of her collection of 100 poems "Out of Eden" are available to buy direct from her via email to [email protected] at a cost of £10 including UK postage.