Mick Hartley

From the Telegraph:

An Arts Council-funded magazine cancelled a poet because she was critical of pornography, legal documents have revealed.

Abigail Ottley’s poem was accepted by the Aftershock Review, a literary magazine funded by Arts Council England, but later withdrawn by editors with no explanation.

The poet, who is in her 70s, has now applied for a judicial review of the Arts Council’s handling of her complaint.

Legal documents revealed the poet was rejected because she was not “sex-positive” about “sissy porn” and “cross-dressing”.

Ms Ottley, a survivor of rape and abuse, had written a confessional essay about the alleged proclivities of her “cross-dressing” former husband, whom she described as secretly selling and starring in “sissy porn”.

This is a form of pornography featuring men who are submissive and “feminine”. It has been linked in public discourse to transgenderism, which Ms Ottley is also critical of.

In the essay, which was published on her Facebook profile, she wrote: “This diagnosis [of chronic fatigue syndrome] came just before my discovery that my then husband was a compulsive and obsessional cross-dresser and had been living a whole double life making, selling and starring in what I now know to be called sissy porn.”

The Arts Council said the poem was not published because Ms Ottley’s writings were “perceived as stigmatising consensual adult sexual expression” and “reinforcing sexual shame”.

This was said to contravene the Aftershock Review’s policies and its ethos as a “sex-positive publication committed to inclusive representation”.

It read: “Aftershock Review decided not to publish your client’s poem because of your client’s post on 11 October 2025 on the social media platform X. It contained references to alleged sexual practices of your client’s ex-husband which Aftershock Review regarded as capable of being ‘perceived as stigmatising consensual adult sexual expression’.”

Perhaps there are some adult sexual expressions that could do with some stigmatising. Besides, she – Abigail Ottley – wasn’t consensual. She clearly hated it. Doesn’t she count?

Ms Ottley, who lives in Penzance, Cornwall, told The Telegraph: “I find it difficult to adequately express how distressed and angry I feel about the implicit expectation that I should positively affirm the sexual proclivities of a man who destroyed our marriage.

“I am now denied the right to speak out on the subject of my experience. It is unfair and intolerable. I still can’t really believe that my work was withdrawn because of my failure to be properly ‘sex positive’.

“It feels like the silencing and victim-blaming which I experienced as a teenage girl. Have we not, even now, learned better?”

Apparently not. Men must not be criticised for their little perversions – especially under the strict Arts Council-mandated ideological controls.