Since 2018 the Quaker Centre Bookshop at Friends House in London has been suppressing gender-critical books by Heather Brunskell-Evans
On 4 September 2018 the Quaker Centre Bookshop hosted an event. It was a ‘booklaunch’ for Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows, edited by Christine
Burns, who is a transwoman and activist but is not a Quaker.
Earlier that year, Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans and
a colleague had published a book, Transgender
Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body. Heather Brunskell-Evans
(HBE for short, henceforth) is a social theorist and philosopher with a
particular interest in feminism and bio-politics. She is a Quaker.
Following the book launch for Trans Britain, HBE
asked the Quaker Centre Bookshop to hold an event to celebrate the publication
of her own book. Two significant differences were the authors’ status – HBE was
a Quaker and Burns was not – and the books’ different attitudes to gender
non-conforming children: HBE’s book advocates a cautious approach to children
who want to change gender, while Burns’ book advocates that they take ‘puberty blockers’
and cross-sex hormones; and it calls women who express concern about these
ideas ‘transphobes’ and ‘Terfs’. (This stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminists;
for more on this derogatory term, see www.terfisaslur.com.)
Now, it has long been the custom and practice of the Bookshop to promote books that are written by Quakers. This could be by hosting a book launch or putting the book on prominent display or both. Neither was the case for HBE’s book, however, and the obvious conclusion is that the point of view that it describes is one that certain Quakers would rather suppress. HBE was informed by Bookshop manager James Newman in December 2018 that her book launch 'cannot take place in January [2019], or in the foreseeable future’.
One reason given was, as HBE put it in her letter to The Friend in December 2020, that:
‘The “safety of Friends House staff” (grown adults frightened by my ideas about the wrong of medical intervention) was given precedence over a book throwing light on practices which threaten the actual safety of children and turns them into medical patients for life.’
At the opposite extreme, another reason given was the risk that the event would attract violent protest by transactivists.
Moving on, HBE then asked if her book could nevertheless be
put on display in the Bookshop. This request too was refused. While Burns' book
was at one time prominently placed at the till and at another time there was a
special display of books on Trans and Queer Theory, HBE reports that, to the
best of her knowledge, her book was never placed on public display.
By way of a postscript, this is what happened to two more books published by HBE. In 2019 she and her colleague published a follow-up to Transgender Children and Young People but so demoralised was she that she did not even ask the Bookshop to stock it. In 2020 she published Transgender Body Politics. For some time (around January 2022 at least) it was not available in the Bookshop’s online catalogue. As at January 2023, a catalogue search for ‘transgender’ brings up eight titles. The only one that seems to be authored by a Quaker and critical of trans ideology is Transgender Body Politics; it is also the only one without a thumbnail image of its cover and it is listed as ‘out of stock’!
PS. 3 Feb 2023.
Getting your book launch cancelled isn’t something that only
happens to HBE. It happens to other gender critical authors too.
Sarah Phillimore’s proposed book launch on 2 Dec 2022 for Transpositions:
Personal journeys into gender criticism was cancelled for promoting
“hate, danger and violence” by the EventBrite ticketing site – as Sarah wrote
in The
Critic on 27 Oct 2022.
PPS. 23 Feb 2023.
As well as being cancelled by the Quakers, Heather Brunskell-Evans has the distincton of also being cancelled from her political party. Here is the sorry tale of how she lost her position as a Spokeswoman for the Women’s Equality Party’s (WEP) policy on Violence Against Women and Girls due to her alleged “prejudice against the transgender community”:
As a result of my views expressed on the Moral Maze Radio 4 on November 15th, 2017 complaints were made by one or more party members, and I became the subject of a 3-month investigation. The Executive Committee upheld the complaints and on February 20th, 2018 my elected position was taken from me.
Read on at www.heather-brunskell-evans.co.uk/body-politics/open-letter.
·
No comments:
Post a Comment