A talk cancelled by Nottingham City Council due to the author's views on transgender rights has continued to go ahead. Julie Bindel had been due to speak at Aspley Library about feminist activism on Saturday, June 25, but after the booking was cancelled by the council, the talk took place outside of the library instead.
The City Council cancelled the event due to Ms Bindel's views on transgender rights being at odds with the authority's equality, diversity and inclusion strategy. The author said: "My talk was going to be focused on how in many ways for young women things are worse than when I was a teenager in the seventies."
Ms Bindel also explained that her talk was going to be about "how we work together to solve problems facing young women today." For more than 40 years she has been a feminist activist and has successfully worked on many campaigns to end male violence, some of which have led to changes in the law.
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The author added: "Right now we have a situation in the US that will have a massive reaction here with the overturning of Roe vs Wade." She went on to criticise what some have described as transphobia and added: "I wasn't even going to address that issue here today."
Miss Bindel described the city council's decision to cancel her sold out talk as "despicable". She said: "That statement that they put out today makes it very very clear that they have banned me from meeting in a public library citizens of Nottingham because of my beliefs, which are protected in law.
"It's discrimination in law, it's humiliating but more importantly it's disrespectful and insulting to the women and girls in Nottingham to be told they can't hear a feminist voice."
The author gave her talk outside of Aspley library to dozens of listeners shortly after 11am, but a group opposing the talk from Nottingham Against Transphobia were also in attendance. They described the author and her talk as "hateful and transphobic."
Civil servant, Liam McClelland, 34, said: "Being transgender isn’t new, there’s discussions in the Babylonian Talmud about gender categories outside the binary. It's just a shame to see it when there is so much else happening in the UK at the moment." Hospitality worker, Anna Preston, 34, added: "They told the council they were going to do a safety talk. We knew who they were so we were able to contact the council who said no you can't spread hate at the library.
"We are here to show other LGBTQ+ followers that they are not alone, even when things seem dark there's always a lovely trans flag that is going to fly."
Prior to the event, in a joint statement addressing the cancellation, Nottingham City Council Deputy Leader, Councillor Adele Williams and Portfolio Holder for Neighbourhoods, Safety and Inclusion, Councillor Neghat Khan, said: “This was a private booking at Aspley Library by the ‘Nottingham Women for Change’ group and all ticket sales and marketing of the event had been undertaken independently with no input from the council."
“While it was known that the event was going to be from a feminist perspective, no information around the speaker’s views on transgender rights was brought to the Library Service’s attention. Once we became aware of this, we took the decision to cancel the booking.
"Nottingham is an inclusive city and as a council we support our LGBT community and have committed to supporting trans rights as human rights through Stonewall. We did not want the use of one of our library buildings for this event, taking place during Pride month, to be seen as implicit support for views held by the speaker which fly in the face of our position on transgender rights."
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