By Michael Dudley, March 14, 2025
Public libraries are supposed to uphold intellectual freedom by allowing the public to access materials representing a wide range of perspectives. In recent years, however, many Canadian librarians have applied this ideal selectively in practice. Particularly when it comes to gender identity ideology, which has been embraced wholeheartedly by the profession under the banner of ongoing celebrations of 2SLGBTQ+ Pride.
Books and speakers arguing from a gender-critical perspective have been largely shut out of collections and spaces, preventing library users from even learning that there is another side: namely, that many women’s rights advocates argue that policies enabling limitless gender self-identification—particularly by men—pose a threat to the rights, safety, dignity, and privacy of women and girls.
Alongside other institutions in Canada (including and especially major media outlets) public libraries have for the most part deliberately prevented Canadians from gaining an informed opinion on this controversial issue, in spite of the fact that the Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA) affirms that “all persons in Canada have a fundamental right…to have access to the full range of knowledge, imagination, ideas, and opinion, and to express their thoughts publicly.”
The Federation’s Code of Ethics further states that: “Librarians and other information workers are strictly committed to neutrality and an unbiased stance regarding collection, access and service…Librarians and other information workers distinguish between their personal convictions and professional duties.” Where the gender debate is concerned, it would appear that librarians’ personal convictions have indeed influenced professional decisions.
To illustrate: I live and work in Winnipeg where it is impossible to borrow a copy of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our Daughters – Abigail Shrier’s 2020 investigation into the massive increase in young girls seeking gender transition – unless you care to drive more than 40 kilometers to a faith-based college in the town of Otterburne, Manitoba.
On the other hand, according to the Online Computer Library Center’s FirstSearch catalogue, at least three Winnipeg libraries stock the autobiographical picture book I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and trans-identifying reality show star Jazz Jennings, as do some 22 other Canadian libraries, with 1,690 copies listed worldwide. By contrast, the body-positive picture book My Body is Me by Rachel Rooney (which its publisher Transgender Trend describes as “celebrat[ing] similarities and differences while challenging sex stereotypes”) is listed in FirstSearch as being held only at Vancouver Public Library, with a mere 6 additional copies recorded worldwide. Ironically, While I am Jazz is championed in “banned book” campaigns, Rooney’s book has been condemned as “hateful” by activists, with its author suffering intense backlash from the publishing and book trade industries.
There have been (it should be noted) some courageous defences of intellectual freedom regarding this controversy in public libraries. In late 2019, Toronto Public Library’s City Librarian Vickery Bowles drew the ire of many activists (and TPL’s own union) by allowing gender-critical feminist Megan Murphy to hold a public talk at TPL, defending the decision in the name of free speech and professional principles. In 2021, Halifax Public Library also angered many (including Halifax Pride) by collecting and retaining Shrier’s Irreversible Damage in the face of local opposition.
For the most part, however, librarians’ antipathy towards gender-critical authors and works has translated into open partisanship and advocacy. In the summer of 2023, London Public Library cancelled a speaking event sponsored by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (of which I am a member) on the basis of anticipated objections to the gender-critical views of the speaker, British scholar Joanna Williams, citing the Library’s commitment to “anti-oppression.”
In 2020, the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians penned an open letter essentially siding with opponents of Murphy’s appearance at Vancouver and Toronto Public Libraries. Another “Open Letter to the CFLA Board On Intellectual Freedom”, signed by 242 librarians from across the country, decried the “three position statements put out by the CFLA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee since 2017”, one of which had defended libraries’ retaining Irreversible Damage despite requests that it be removed. The signatories argued that “using Intellectual Freedom only to defend transmisia does not reflect the views of many in the CFLA’s affiliated membership”, even though the three position statements do not defend “transmisia” (i.e., aversion towards or hatred of trans-identifying people) and pass no judgments on either books or speakers.
Vancouver Public Library and the British Columbia Library Association would go even further in the wake of Murphy’s 2019 speaking events in Vancouver, by advocating for actual law reform to, (as BCLA put it) “clarify and address gaps in the legal framework that governs the public use of space in libraries” – in other words, if the arguments of gender-critical feminists do not meet the standards of hate speech under the current federal Criminal Code (which they most certainly don’t), then the law itself should be rewritten so that they do. VPL would also go on to lobby in support of the Federal Government’s efforts to police online speech in order to “reduce discrimination and hate.”
This abandonment of the long-standing professional principle of institutional neutrality took no account of the possibility that there might be legitimate, good-faith gender-critical arguments held by their community stakeholders that have nothing whatever to do with “hate” or “bigotry”.
To cite just a few: because women are inherently vulnerable to sexual assault by all men – not just those who are trans-identified – gender-critical feminists defend their right to female-only spaces. The LGB Alliance advocates for the sexual sovereignty of gays and lesbians to accept only members of their own sex as partners, not those who “identify” as such. Female athletes and their supporters are protesting the unfairness of women and girls being forced to compete against biological men. And, as I have previously argued at the Heterodoxy in the Stacks (the Substack of the Heterodox Academy’s Libraries Community), “gender inclusive” policies in intimate public spaces such as washrooms and showers are quite unacceptable to some cultural and religious groups, such as all non-liberal Christian denominations, Islam and all non-liberal forms of Judaism, so such policies are in conflict with multiculturalism.
Broadly speaking, the gender-critical view holds that any attempt to override biology in law in favour of individualistic identity claims makes it impossible to articulate the human rights of women. The Women’s Declaration International’s Declaration of Women’s Sex-Based Rights sets out the gender-critical agenda in nine Articles—two of which are directly relevant to the mission of publicly-funded libraries:
- Article 4: Reaffirming women’s rights to freedom of opinion and freedom of expression;
- Article 5: Reaffirming women’s right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
These two articles are, in effect, robustly supported by the democratic and ethical commitments of librarianship in both Canada and the United States, as expressed in the CFLA’s Code of Ethics and the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights. Nonetheless, the incessant repetition of the rhetoric targeting gender-critical feminists as “hateful” and “bigoted” – and which, we should note, has inspired well-documented death threats against such authors as J.K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock – has, troublingly, found a receptive audience among many of my librarian colleagues.
For librarians to demonstrate such resolute unwillingness to entertain opposing points of view on this issue – when they are, after all, professionally charged with teaching critical thinking skills – exemplifies what Canadian philosopher Mark Kingwell refers to in his 2024 book Question Authority as doxaholism, or an addiction to “the feeling of righteousness that comes from unassailable conviction.” For the average individual, doxaholism certainly constitutes an epistemic vice; for the public-facing information professional, however, doxaholism risks undermining that profession and the public trust in it.
I believe all this constitutes a significant relinquishment of responsibility, characterized by four failures of professionalism:
1. A failure to serve the public interest
On its own terms, the debate over the right of women to be recognized for their sex-based status in the law, in public spaces, and by other institutions in society – including sports and corrections facilities – concerns everyone; there is decidedly a public interest in ensuring this debate is an informed one, for it affects the legal status of half of Canada’s population. To serve the public interest, public libraries must give space to books and speakers arguing this point.
2. A failure to represent the interests and perspectives of all contending parties (“taking sides”)
By purposely avoiding the purchase of this literature, or through the cancellation or denying of room bookings featuring gender-critical speakers, activist librarians are openly siding with one contending party against another stakeholder group – one whose interests and beliefs are actually fairly consistent with the mainstream of the Canadian public.
3. A failure to facilitate dialogue, thus exacerbating conflict and polarization
By preventing robust dialogue through collections and spaces, activist librarians have not just failed to facilitate dialogue but have actively exacerbated the already intense polarization by contributing to the mischaracterizing rhetoric of “hate” accusations – accusations that are, as we’ve seen, fueling threats of violence against gender-critical authors.
4. A failure to defend authors against threats of violence and death
Surely, it’s possible to advocate treating trans-identifying library patrons respectfully – and those with gender dysphoria with understanding and compassion – without uncritically aligning the profession with activists whom, at their most extreme, are regularly threatening authors with violence, rape, or death. Yet, as far as I know, no library organization has ever disavowed these reprehensible actions or raised them an intellectual freedom issue. If authors writing on any other controversial topic were collectively subject to the sort of threats as are gender-critical feminists, our professional associations would have long ago condemned this violent rhetoric, championed the rights of these authors to publish their works, and given prominence to their books during such events as Freedom to Read Week.
All these failures are the consequence of an overall movement away from librarians’ commitment to neutrality, which is not just manifest in this particular debate, but which has been promoted in both the critical scholarly literature and official declarations from the American Library Association, (which accredits Canadian library schools) as a means of confronting all matters of social injustice, notably racism.
However, for all its hold on institutions over the better part of a decade – such that any opposition or questioning was sure to elicit online mobbing, “cancellation”, job loss, or worse – gender identity ideology is almost everywhere in rapid retreat: The UK (following the release of the devastating Cass Review) has banned puberty blockers for those under 18, while in the U.S., newly re-elected President Donald Trump has repealed federal recognition of sexes beyond male and female, ended federal financial or policy support for pediatric gender medical interventions, and instructed the Department of Education to disallow schools to socially transition K-12 students. Several European countries have similarly pulled back from the “affirmative model” of care.
Canada has become an outlier. As Chan Kulatunga-Moruzi argues in “Why is Canada falling behind the science in treating gender-distressed youth?” elite consensus and biased major media prevent Canada from joining other countries in rethinking the “affirming” model.
I would add that the lack of genuine debate in this country over gender ideology more generally may also be owed to a failure by librarians to contribute through collections and programming to an environment that would make such an informed debate possible. It remains to be seen if the damage this activism has done to the mission and reputation of librarianship is, in fact, reversible.
Michael Dudley is a librarian at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of the 2023 book The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy: Knowledge, Rhetoric Identity and blogs at Heterodoxy in the Stacks.