Sex Realism and the new book burnings

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‘Wheesht’ is Scottish Gaelic for ‘hold your tongue’ and the scandal engulfing the National Library for Scotland’s exclusion of a book in its centenary exhibition demonstrates that, yet again, the women of Scotland absolutely won’t.

The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht (WWWW) is a collection of essays by female writers ranging from anonymous bloggers to well-known authors, including JK Rowling. It details five years of the grassroots fightback against the institutional capture of the Scottish political and cultural establishment by trans activism.

With a series of freedom of information requests, the book’s editors discovered that despite being fairly voted in by the public and even passing the Library’s own ‘sensitivity test’, WWWW was pulled from the exhibition following complaints and threats by the library’s LGBTQ+ staff network, who insisted that the suffragette-coloured tome was ‘hate speech’. (The Library reversed the decision after an outcry.)

The Edinburgh International Book Festival was also criticised for not featuring this best seller or any other popular gender-critical books, such as Jenny Lindsay’s Hounded, denying these writers the platform to discuss their work on their home turf. Festival organisers responded that it was an ‘inflammatory’ and ‘divisive’ issue, which they had decided to avoid this year.

It’s not just women that are being bullied out of opportunities for public recognition in publishing. A similar furore has erupted over the Polari Prize, whose stated mission is ‘to discover, celebrate, and promote LGBTQ+ literature written by authors born or based in the UK and Ireland’. Objections to the nomination of Earth by John Boyne, one of Ireland’s most successful gay authors, started as a single complaint but quickly blew up into judges and nominees removing themselves from the competition and an angry open letter from over 800 activists. The organisers eventually capitulated and announced a ‘pause’ of this year’s awards.

Gillian Philip lost her successful career writing youth fiction just for tweeting #IStandWithJKRowling. She is one of 25 case studies featured in the report by SEEN in Publishing and Sex Matters, Everyday Cancellation in Publishing, of authors and publishing professionals who have been cancelled for their gender-critical views in recent years.

But trans authors also claim to be victims of censorship. Politicians and pride organisers recently condemned Kent County Council’s Reform UK leader when she posted on X that the authority had removed transgender-related books from the children’s sections of its libraries, importing the raging debate over the age-appropriateness of kids’ books from the US.

Banned books can of course benefit from the Streisand Effect and both Earth and WWWW have reportedly been flying off the shelves due to the controversy. However, this is little consolation to lesser-known writers and publishers whose livelihoods have been destroyed, or never even given the opportunity to launch.

What can be done to push back against the current climate of a censorious and ideologically driven publishing industry?