Mick Hartley

From the Telegraph:

JK Rowling’s books have been removed from shelves in a San Francisco shop after the author said she would fund her transgender critical advocacy with the profits from sales.

Booksmith, which refers to itself as a “group of queer book lovers”, has stopped selling Rowling’s titles in response to her new legal fund, created to support “women’s sex-based rights”.

“With this announcement, we’ve decided to stop carrying her books,” the San Francisco bookshop wrote on Instagram, encouraging fans of the Harry Potter series to buy second-hand copies instead….

The move sparked a censorship row on social media, with one person commenting: “So you’re going to curate your selections to only sell books by authors that you agree with politically. Good to know. I’ll be shopping elsewhere.”

Another accused Booksmith of “choosing to silence someone you disagree politically with”.

There's something about the book world that draws in these airheads, as Matilda Gosling showed with her report this week on the state of publishing here in the UK.

Julie Bindel in the Telegraph:

The bookstore is a commercial enterprise that seems quite happy to forego certain profit by refusing to stock such hugely popular titles as the Harry Potter series and Robert Galbraith Strike novels; virtue-signalling is clearly considered much more important. But when it comes to identity politics and gender nonsense, publishing is one of the worst-affected institutions. During a tour in the US to promote my book on feminism, one bookstore cancelled my event at the last minute because a trans activist customer had complained. This was despite the fact that it had sold out.

The revenue from JK Rowling’s books probably funds a good chunk of the publishing industry worldwide, yet these for-profit enterprises would rather have huge display tables groaning under the weight of books by trans activists that barely sell at all….

It would be interesting to know whether this particular bookstore will be ploughing through its thousands of titles to check that all of its staff agree politically with the premise of each and every author and the contents of each and every book.

It looks very much as though this so-called civil rights movement is actually a witch hunt against women – for the crime of daring to assert our rights rather than rolling over and capitulating to misogynistic bullies.

As it dawns on the extremists that they are going down with a sinking ship because they overreached on their demands and bullied and cajoled refuseniks, their rising desperation only makes them look more ludicrous. Some time ago, when yet another trans activist announced on X that he was burning Rowling’s books, she had the perfect riposte: “I get the same royalties whether you read them or burn them. Enjoy your marshmallows!”