Lessons from National Library saga: When women say they won’t wheesht they mean it

The way the NLS saga has unfolded this past month, in ways perhaps unforeseeable to those who kickstarted the scandal, has ended up showing how such internal huffing is best dealt with – not just by cultural institutions, but by every public body in Scotland. The stooshie demonstrates the dangers of giving in to unjust demands, no matter how vociferously said staff are in making them.

It used to be fairly straightforward deciding what to do in a position of leadership when facing haranguing from employees for you to discriminate against women with perfectly moral and legal viewpoints. But, when it comes to the ‘gender wars’, Scotland has long been irrational.

Despite the Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht anthology gaining a rightful spot in the exhibition, after a public vote put it there, National Librarian Amina Shah capitulated to staff threats to disrupt the project if it was included. Freedom of Information requests by the book’s editors revealed senior staff essentially crossed their fingers the non-wheeshting women wouldn’t find out they’d been selected for inclusion in the first place.

Uniting all the anthology’s contributors - from JK Rowling, to frontline politicians, to anonymous rape crisis service users - is an unwillingness to shut up about injustices meted out to women by gender-identity ideology, which destroys women’s right to vital single-sex services.

Another injustice highlighted in two chapters – including my own – is how the literary establishment has been complicit in ostracising women writers who’ve written about this. Once principled institutions, in hock to a stifling atmosphere caused by activist pressure, have contributed to a paucity of proper debate on an important topic. Having long been an appalled-yet-fascinated follower of the machinations of gender activists, when the NLS story hit, I felt sure I knew how it would play out. From the FOI revelations, I recognised a familiar pattern in how it started, albeit more privately than it often does.

This is the general trend: one or two well-motivated activists locate a target and start fomenting a campaign. Perhaps it’s against a prominent individual opposed to the sacred cow of genderism. Alternatively, a local restaurant, shop, health board, or entertainment venue sparks ire. Mission: destroy, or at least damage, the individual wrong-un, or any business or institution insufficiently deferential to genderist principles.

Words like ‘hateful,’ ‘bigoted,’ and ‘TERF,’ are lobbied around. Then, inevitably, some kind of public ‘open letter’, perhaps vexatious legal action, and accompanying headlines. More wild off-shoots then spread due to the power of that word ‘transphobic’; threats of loud protests or even violence.

Onlookers get the message: oppose these activists at your peril; do not become their target. Such campaigns have successfully upended Scotland’s public sector for years, affecting publicly-funded arts organisations, health boards, and local education authorities. A loss of livelihood has resulted for many, with a depletion of courage from those in positions of leadership resulting.

But this time was different. Upon the NLS news breaking, bringing with it three weeks of humiliation for the institution in the process, women from across Scotland registered disquiet. The authors and editors of the anthology were definitely not wheeshting, but their readers, fed up with this discrimination, really weren’t either.

Groups of women held good-natured reading sessions of the book in the library. Nicole Jones, one of the anthology’s essayists, donned a suffragette outfit to hand- deliver a letter of complaint, outlining the legal risks the NLS faced.

Meanwhile, Alex Graham, a wealthy benefactor of the library who has provided £300,000 to the institution over the past 12 years, reported being ‘shocked and angry’ at Ms Shah’s decision, urging her to reinstate the book immediately. If she didn’t, he’d have to consider whether to continue supporting NLS financially in future.

Far from inclusion of the book threatening the library’s ‘reputation’, as activist staff had insisted, refusal to do so garnered near-universal opprobrium.

In an excellent outcome, last Thursday, the decision was reversed. An apology from Ms Shah was given to the anthology editors Lucy Hunter Blackburn and Susan Dalgety, who accepted. The book is now displayed.

And now? Well, nothing catastrophic has happened. Quite the opposite. The editors of a worthy book are gratified, and readers have thanked the NLS for doing the right thing, maintaining support for the exhibition and visiting regularly. Activist staff, though presumably unhappy, have been effectively muzzled. Wholly incorrect to insist the public would oppose the WWWW’s inclusion, despite it being a triple-week Sunday Times bestseller, they’ve no tactics left to force their employers to bow down to their intolerance.

Here be lessons for all institutions facing discontent from the too-long indulged. Firstly, don’t copy the NLS’s initial response. Bowing to unfounded claims from staff with an agenda counter to the stated aims of your institution - and UK discrimination law - isn’t sensible. As all, from the Scottish Prison Service, to Police Scotland, to the Scottish government know, when women say they won’t wheesht they mean it.

But, should you find yourself in a pickle, do what the NLS has now done: reverse, apologise, be thanked, then get on with doing good things again. Should humiliating headlines and disgruntled funders not be something that appeals, a preferable option remains: don’t discriminate against ‘gender critical’ women in the first place.