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GAG demands Vancouver Women’s Library ban books
February 5, 2017 - 1:13pm
Quote:
In an interesting display of the blooming neoliberal tendency to turn the world into their self-defined “safe space,” an organization ironically named GAG (Gays Against Gentrification) has demanded the new Vancouver Women’s Library (VWL) ban books written by women....
The reasoning is presented in their introductory paragraph. The demands are due to “the ongoing violence against trans women, sex workers, and IBPOC (Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour),” and what they call, “settler-colonial violence”. But what connection a Women’s Library has to the violence anyone anywhere experiences remains to be seen, and is not detailed in their demands. As seasoned feminists know and center in their messaging, violence is perpetrated (in a large majority) by men. Furthermore, violent males aren’t taking their cues from women’s books and libraries.
If you go to the Vancouver Women's Library home page, linked below, you can make a donation.
Here is the list of books GAG wants banned:
-Admission Accomplished – Jill Johnston
-Against Sadomasochism – Robin R. Linden, Darlene R. Pagano, Diana E. Russell, Susan Leigh Star
-Amazon Odyssey: Collection of Writings – Ti-Grace Atkinson
-Buddhism after Patriarchy – Rita M. Gross
-The Female Man – Joana Russ
-Female Sexual Slavery – Kathleen Barry
-Feminism Unmodified – Catharine A. Mackinnon
-First Buddhist Women: Poems and Stories of Awakening Susan Murcott-Gyn/Ecology – Mary Daly-
The Idea of Prostitution – Sheila Jeffreys
-The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade – Sheila Jeffreys
-Intercourse – Andrea Dworkin
-The Lesbian Heresy – Sheila Jeffreys
-Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women – Geraldine Brooks
-Not a Choice, Not a Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade – Janice Raymond
-Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography-Of Women Born – Adrienne Rich
-Pornography: Men Possessing Women – Andrea Dworkin
-Radical Acceptance – Tara Brach
-The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism – Janice Raymond
-Women As Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women’s Freedom – Janice Raymond
I have a new reading list!
Not sure why you didn't post a link to the original article, Sineed, but here it is...
http://tinyurl.com/h3bqmgo
Whoops!
Anyway that tiny url link doesn't seem to work. Here is the link:
http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2017/02/gag-demands-new-womens-library-ban3/
Here is a list of GAG's demands:
https://archive.is/9MNCP
And here is how the women at the bookstore were attacked:
http://i.imgur.com/5bYJsy1.png
same people who tried to discredit Van's womens march.
banning books written by women ...... a whole new level.
expropriating Indigenous and POC voices is gravey on the whole new level.
Yes, it is the same people who tried to discredit the Van women's march. And if you read their list of demands, they not only want the women's library to exclude certain books, but also they will be supplying a list of books they expect them to stock. It's male privilege hiding behind post-modernist gender theory.
Are you saying that GAG was behind that? Not quarrelling here, just curious, because I thought that was BLMV.
I suspect that banning books from public libraries is not something any of us would support. If you don't want to read a book, then don't read it.
To be fair, it doesn't sound like this is a "public" library the way (say) the Vancouver Public Library is.
But that's all the more reason that they aren't somehow accountable to the taxpayer at large. Sounds to me like some women said to themselves "we need this" and then went ahead and made it happen.
My guess would be that some, if not most, of the books on the "to be burned" pile are probably available at the Vancouver Public Library.
Well, it was a gag order.
I've read some of those books. Do I agree with every word in all I've read? Nope. But I don't recall any of them being sexist, racist, anti-Indigenous or "whorephobic". Odd, isn't the term "whore" a nasty insult for someone in the sex trade? We had to come up for different expressions to replace "media whore" and "corporate whore", which definitely do NOT refer to sex workers. One can be critical of the petroleum industry or many others without phobia of people involved in those sectors.
The Women's Library should tell GAG to stuff it.
Yes and why can't they have that? I personally don't feel a need to attend a woman-only library, but if there are women whose activism runs that way, what's the deal with the guys showing up and demanding to dictate how the library is run and what books it carries?
You guess correctly; I searched for, and found, many of the books at the VPL. I guess that means GAG will be picketing them next.
they're all the same people acting between groups of differing names. some exploiting others while claiming to be allies.
they hate the feminists in Van who won't cave to their demands.
this goes back to the women's pharmacy and a long fight with Vancouver Rape Relief and Woman's Shelter.
Sineed called it for what it is.
Purple Sage Feminist provides some of the details of the actions of GAG in addiction to her usual cogent commentary:
https://purplesagefem.wordpress.com/2017/02/04/queer-fascists-attempt-to...
As Magoo correctly surmised, many of those books are available at the Vancouver Public Library. So why attack and harrass a group of volunteers who want to provide a curated selection of woman-centric books?
GAG may have shot themselves in the foot with this one.
Let them start their own library. What someone else wants to make available to the public is none of their business.
Just looking at the titles and authors I expect I might not agree with everything that is in those books. That said, if they were looking to galvanize people on this issue, putting out a call to burn books is a good way to do it.
You'd think they might have remembered the lesson on this from 70 years ago.
My turn for the whoops. I think it didn't work because the goddam keyboard I was on was giving unsolicited extra servings of "L". I've changed it, but doesn't seem to have made a difference. Anyway, thanks for posting the original.
In the interest of you acheiving some closure on this, the problem is that you removed the extra "l" from the link text (title), not the link URL. FWIW, you could have left it in the text, or even added some more l's -- the text can be anything you wish, but the URL has to be correct.
If it's any consolation, it must be a common typo. That's why the link doesn't just return an error ("404 Page Not Found") -- someone bought the domain "tinyurll.com" to catch viewers when it happens. So you might have helped some guy earn a tenth of a penny.
Do you have anything I could click on here? Still not quarrelling.
Truth be told, if the original article hadn't mentioned GAG or anyone else, I'd have probably assumed BLM. Immediately confrontational, an immediate list of non-negotiable demands, focus on "trans-women" rather than "trans-people", claims of "violence" that don't have anything in common with real violence... where have we all heard this before?
rational people know this.
ive never heard of any of them and now i want to read them all.
no ability to reflect into the rational.
Oh I didn't say that I wouldn't want to read them (I have read several of those authors), nor that I wouldn't agree with some of it.
I just expect I woulnd't agree with all of it. I think it is actually good to read things you disagree with.
Conversely, had they said "We're not here to tell you about books already in your holdings; we just think you should also add THESE books, which we will provide to you free of charge to lend to those interested in reading them" then they'd have certainly put the VWL into "check", if not "checkmate". How could VWL refuse without becoming the new censors?
I'm comfortable giving GAG tips because it's too late for them to try it. Meanwhile, let the flames dance. Nobody must ever read certain ideas, I guess.
That is sad about BLM in certain places, because it started up against the very extreme violence of police shooting Black people, most often unarmed.
There is an odd antifeminist current among some groups of transpeople. Transpeople do often face discrimination and even extreme violence, but I think it is almost always at the hands of homophobic men.
And now they're about re-funding the "Asian stage" at Toronto Pride, just as "Gays Against Gentrification" is about making sure women don't read books about feminism in Vancouver.
I haven't read anything to make me think that trans-men are among that vanguard. Which is part of why I always find it fascinating when some "trans" issue is solely about "trans-women". It sometimes seems to me that trans-men are most interested in living their lives without being bashed or evicted, but trans-women desperately need to tell "cis" women how to do their feminism.
But I'm just a white CAMAB, so don't put too much stock in my opinion. I'm just CAMABsplaining. :)
I think everyone on the spectrum is dealing with political issues. Particularly now, given C-16, and bathroom laws. The most vocal trans activist I can think of off the top of my head is a man - Patrick Califia.
But of course it makes sense that trans women would concern themselves more with feminist issues. If there seems to be more accusations perhaps it is because both are communities dealing with some oppression, and see each other as oppressors.
That is not the case for the society of men.
And not to re-open that can of worms, but it is not just a one-sided fight, even if I have heard the silencing argument more often on the side of trans issues.
I think the more important thing to remember though is that there are plenty (probably a majority) in both these communities who don't engage in this.
Fair enough. But I've never heard of trans-men complaining that "cis" men masculinism excludes them, or that cis-men or cis-women won't have sex with them.
It would seem that the trans-women community feels that the cis-women community is oppressing them by loaning feminist books. But I'm not aware of the the cis-women community feeling oppressed by all the trans-women who don't choose to borrow and read them
No. But I have read critiques of C-16. But again, that is for another thread. My only point is that this is not just one sided, and more importantly, there are many who do not engage in this fight.
Dictating what books people must read and cannot read is messed up.
Trans men benefit from some non-zero amount of male privilege.
I think the people who complain most about not getting laid are the MRAs.
what's getting laid got to do with this?
Sorry, I was indulging in Magoo's thread drift. I'll stop.
in this context then i would agree with magoo's premise as i ave heard complaints along those lines
but i don't know about whether mras are getting "laid" or not.
Here's a video of these entitled dudes.
https://vimeo.com/202847662
"I'M A WOMAN!!"
Um no dude. No you are not.