Free speech blow as national library bans book opposing gender self-ID
The National Library of Scotland (NLS) has been accused of a 'shameful' capitulation to censorship after it emerged that The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht, a collection of essays by gender-critical women, had been cut from a major exhibition celebrating the institution's centenary.
Members of the public had been asked by the library, which promotes itself as a national forum for 'ideas, debate and discussion', to nominate books which had shaped their lives for inclusion in a ten-month public display intended as a 'love letter' to the power of reading.
However, despite The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht receiving double the number of nominations necessary to guarantee inclusion in the Dear Library public display, Amina Shah, Scotland's national librarian and the NLS chief executive, decided not to include the book after a staff backlash.
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