Who Bans And Who Gets Banned?
Neil Gaiman was a stalwart of what is termed woke culture, he was a successful liberal writer who ticked many boxes. He was held up in contrast and as a counterweight to J.K. Rowling. He was as the Times of India headline put it, “what people wanted JK Rowling to be”[1] But now he is undone and it seems he may be just the type of man Rowling was warning women about i.e. predators. Allegations of sexual abuse have tarnished if not destroyed his reputation in some quarters, and studios are busy cancelling or putting on hold further planned seasons of his shows, and his publisher has broken with him. All this of course, before he has been legally convicted, a nuance that Gaiman himself may not appreciate fully.
Gaiman as the poster boy for the trans movement came out swinging early on for pronouns. He was one of over 1,200 writers, literary agents and senior staff at major publishing houses who wrote an open letter to Rowling on the issue,[2] emulating an earlier letter written by British writers.[3] The figures from the major publishing houses even stated their role and the name of the publishing house they worked for, amongst them Penguin, Random, Bloomsbury and Faber. It was a veritable who’s who of the literary world.
Gaiman, to be clear, did not threaten to rape or murder J.K. Rowling or any other gender critical figure. But neither did he speak out about the countless rape and murder threats levelled against people like J.K. Rowling. When he said “Your pronouns matter. You matter. You are loved.,” he was not extending that love to women who were being threatened with rape on a daily basis. No. His love was for men who demanded access to women’s spaces.
Though more importantly, perhaps for this article about cancel culture and literature is that he never had anything to say about the calls for Rowling to be cancelled, for her books to be withdrawn, or her name removed from the Harry Potter stories etc. That was never going to happen, she is far too successful. But it did happen to lots of lesser-known gender critical writers. Some had to go round bookshops to make sure staff were actually putting them on the shelves, instead of hiding them in storage or on less visible shelves, even when they were recently published and belonged on the Just Published shelf.
He is fully unaware of what was happening across the US in terms of censorship, he has been a victim of it and spoken out against it over the years. Right wing Christian zealots throughout the US have regularly asked for books to be banned from local libraries or removed from school reading lists. The American Library Association complies data on challenges to books in libraries and calls for censorship. It notes a surge in such requests since 2020 and the fact that many such requests are organised by groups. In 2023, they recorded requests relating to 4,240 unique titles. Public libraries accounted for 54% of challenges and school libraries 29%. Just under half the titles challenged were of what are referred to as LGBTQIA+, with no differentiation between them, though it does indicate that most of these attempts came from conservative and right-wing evangelical Christians.
Additionally, instances of soft censorship, where books are purchased but placed in restricted areas, not used in library displays, or otherwise hidden or kept off limits due to fear of challenges illustrate the impact of organized censorship campaigns on students’ and readers’ freedom to read. In some circumstances, books have been preemptively excluded from library collections, taken off the shelves before they are banned, or not purchased for library collections in the first place[4].
However, censorship is not restricted to religious nuts, and soft censorship is now common in bookshops with staff frequently hiding books, putting them out of sight and in other ways restricting access. Gender critical feminists have frequently had to run the gauntlet on this, with bookshops and libraries refusing to hold events, even when the events themselves had nothing to do with gender critical material. The author was beyond the pale, as Gaiman now is, and therefore to be banned. On censorship and the internet, Gaiman described it thus.
He has here neatly described most trans activists and a huge section of the liberal wokerati. But he has never spoken out in defence of Rowling’s right to say what she says. His own site contains no references to her, other than 20 year old references around copyright and inspiration.
In the context of the US and the banning of books in public libraries, there exists a myth that book bans, is an activity of the religious right only. It isn’t.
For activists, the purpose of literature and art should be to convey positive messages and correct the social imbalances. For example, in a paper published in the January 2021 issue of the School Library Journal, Amanda MacGregor, a Minnesota-based librarian, bookseller and freelance journalist, affirms that “Shakespeare’s works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism and misogynoir” and should be banned in schools. As the Journal reports, many other teachers in the US refuse to teach Shakespeare questioning the 'whiteness' of his plays.[6]
And apparently there were 11,851 books banned in Texas prisons, some of them no doubt banned by religious nuts. So, who banned Shakespeare in the same prisons? And why? This is a critical question. Spoilt brats jumping up and down in US universities about being offended or needing trigger warnings, the same type of people for whom the instructions on bottles of bleach that say Do Not Drink are aimed at. Incapable of critical thought.
Whilst there are differences in the books that liberals and leftists try to have banned and those religious nuts go after, the basic point is the same. Amongst the books some liberals have tried to have banned, other than Shakespeare, are To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee and Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck both of which found themselves in the top ten of books that people tried to have banned in 2020. Harper Lee is a common one that crops up time and again. Surprisingly the Bible came in at No.6 in 2014. And sure, why wouldn’t it? It is a book that speaks positively about slavery, genocide, infanticide, incest with the venerable Lot who fled Sodom and Gomorrah, not only fathering children with his daughter (Genesis 19:30-36) but he had even offered up his daughters to be gang raped (Genesis 19: 6-8). Not exactly bedtime reading for children, but it does show the ridiculous nature of such bans. In most western countries, Christianity and the power of the churches has waned. Not because religious books were banned or removed from libraries or otherwise restricted, but because people fought against those ideas. Fighting ideas with ideas is lost on the Cancel Culture crowd, so too is fighting on the streets. When fascist mobs march, they demand the state intervene to save them, rather than mobilise against them. If they put half the effort into halting Tommy Robinson and the EDL that they do into attacking gender critical women, EDL fascists would never have got as far as they did.
This brings us back to the question posed at the beginning of this article. Who gets to ban books and which ones. There is a simple answer, no one. Ideas are fought with ideas. Literature and art are not neutral, at a bare minimum they reflect ideas prevalent in society. They are not above society. Changes in literature and art arise through changes in society. If we were to ban every author we disagreed with, we could house all the books allowed in just one local library. If we were to ban every book from every author who engaged in deeds that we did not approve of, then the literary field would be empty. Even Ireland’s beloved Oscar Wilde would find himself in the wilderness once again. His relationship with Alfred Douglas is now, rightfully unproblematic, not so his use of working-class teenage male prostitutes. Everyone can find reasons to object to artists.
Though the concerns about Gaiman are extremely muted in comparison to the bile that is constantly directed at J.K. Rowling, something she herself has commented on.
The backlash against Gaiman has reignited discussions about accountability in progressive spaces. While Rowling has been demonised for expressing her beliefs, Gaiman’s accusations have been met with carefully worded statements of regret and promises to "do the work." Critics argue that this disparity reveals a performative aspect to liberal outrage, where the focus is less on justice and more on adherence to ideological orthodoxy.[7]
Graham Linehan, the writer of the Father Ted comedy series, was cancelled due to his comments on Trans. He has been unable to go ahead with his play Father Ted: The Musical. The trans activists have cost him dearly. He should not have been cancelled. But he is in fact a vile reprehensible loathsome individual. Whilst his opposition to men gaining access to women’s spaces is laudable, his odious positions on Palestine and the genocide in Gaza where any call for solidarity with Palestinians is portrayed by him as a call for a genocide of Jews, along with his favourable comments on Tommy Robinson and others, make him a character unworthy of sympathy.
Likewise, Gaiman is not worthy of any sympathy. For years the baying mob he encouraged attacked J.K. Rowling, threatened to rape and murder her and called for her to be cancelled. He has yet to be convicted, though some of the evidence in the public domain indicates that it is quite possible. Will I watch Season 3 of Good Omens if it gets produced? Yes, I probably will. No effort involved. What about Linehan? Yes, Father Ted reruns will be watched. Do I think either of them should be institutionally cancelled? No, they shouldn’t.
Art and literature are to be judged on their own merits. Everyone is free to boycott individual artists and writers based on their politics, if they want, though they may miss out on some fine literature, the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner Vargas Llosa being a case in point. A fine writer, but politically a right-wing apologist for the US. Books are sometimes restricted because of what they say, the age appropriateness of the material, but not because the artist has said something on an unrelated issue. Though I have to confess I look forward to Gaiman’s conviction, should it happen, and I can’t help but feel some delight and sense of schadenfreude at the moment.
References
[1] The Times of India (15/01/2025) ‘Neil Gaiman is what people wanted JK Rowling to be’.
[2] The Independent (09/10/2020). Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood among writers declaring support for trans and non-binary people in open letter. Adam White.
[3] The Guardian (30/09/2020) More than 200 writers and publishers sign letter in support of trans and non-binary people. Alison Flood.
[4] See.
[5] The Guardian (29/08/2015) Interview: Neil Gaiman: ‘my parents didn’t have any kind of rules about what I couldn’t read’. Frances Myatt.
[6] Euronews (15/09/2021) Why the ideologies behind ‘Woke’ and Cancel Culture are putting our democracy in jeopardy. Thierry Vissol.
[7] The Times of India op. cit.
Gaiman as the poster boy for the trans movement came out swinging early on for pronouns. He was one of over 1,200 writers, literary agents and senior staff at major publishing houses who wrote an open letter to Rowling on the issue,[2] emulating an earlier letter written by British writers.[3] The figures from the major publishing houses even stated their role and the name of the publishing house they worked for, amongst them Penguin, Random, Bloomsbury and Faber. It was a veritable who’s who of the literary world.
Gaiman, to be clear, did not threaten to rape or murder J.K. Rowling or any other gender critical figure. But neither did he speak out about the countless rape and murder threats levelled against people like J.K. Rowling. When he said “Your pronouns matter. You matter. You are loved.,” he was not extending that love to women who were being threatened with rape on a daily basis. No. His love was for men who demanded access to women’s spaces.
Though more importantly, perhaps for this article about cancel culture and literature is that he never had anything to say about the calls for Rowling to be cancelled, for her books to be withdrawn, or her name removed from the Harry Potter stories etc. That was never going to happen, she is far too successful. But it did happen to lots of lesser-known gender critical writers. Some had to go round bookshops to make sure staff were actually putting them on the shelves, instead of hiding them in storage or on less visible shelves, even when they were recently published and belonged on the Just Published shelf.
He is fully unaware of what was happening across the US in terms of censorship, he has been a victim of it and spoken out against it over the years. Right wing Christian zealots throughout the US have regularly asked for books to be banned from local libraries or removed from school reading lists. The American Library Association complies data on challenges to books in libraries and calls for censorship. It notes a surge in such requests since 2020 and the fact that many such requests are organised by groups. In 2023, they recorded requests relating to 4,240 unique titles. Public libraries accounted for 54% of challenges and school libraries 29%. Just under half the titles challenged were of what are referred to as LGBTQIA+, with no differentiation between them, though it does indicate that most of these attempts came from conservative and right-wing evangelical Christians.
Additionally, instances of soft censorship, where books are purchased but placed in restricted areas, not used in library displays, or otherwise hidden or kept off limits due to fear of challenges illustrate the impact of organized censorship campaigns on students’ and readers’ freedom to read. In some circumstances, books have been preemptively excluded from library collections, taken off the shelves before they are banned, or not purchased for library collections in the first place[4].
However, censorship is not restricted to religious nuts, and soft censorship is now common in bookshops with staff frequently hiding books, putting them out of sight and in other ways restricting access. Gender critical feminists have frequently had to run the gauntlet on this, with bookshops and libraries refusing to hold events, even when the events themselves had nothing to do with gender critical material. The author was beyond the pale, as Gaiman now is, and therefore to be banned. On censorship and the internet, Gaiman described it thus.
You know, it takes one angry person pointing people at one thing that upsets them and suddenly the internet is a hornet’s nest and I don’t think that’s good. Mostly I don’t think it’s good because it means people are having to not say what they think and the point of freedom of speech is that you should be able to say what you think, defend what you think, argue with people, disagree with people. All of that stuff is hugely important.[5]
He has here neatly described most trans activists and a huge section of the liberal wokerati. But he has never spoken out in defence of Rowling’s right to say what she says. His own site contains no references to her, other than 20 year old references around copyright and inspiration.
In the context of the US and the banning of books in public libraries, there exists a myth that book bans, is an activity of the religious right only. It isn’t.
For activists, the purpose of literature and art should be to convey positive messages and correct the social imbalances. For example, in a paper published in the January 2021 issue of the School Library Journal, Amanda MacGregor, a Minnesota-based librarian, bookseller and freelance journalist, affirms that “Shakespeare’s works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism and misogynoir” and should be banned in schools. As the Journal reports, many other teachers in the US refuse to teach Shakespeare questioning the 'whiteness' of his plays.[6]
And apparently there were 11,851 books banned in Texas prisons, some of them no doubt banned by religious nuts. So, who banned Shakespeare in the same prisons? And why? This is a critical question. Spoilt brats jumping up and down in US universities about being offended or needing trigger warnings, the same type of people for whom the instructions on bottles of bleach that say Do Not Drink are aimed at. Incapable of critical thought.
Whilst there are differences in the books that liberals and leftists try to have banned and those religious nuts go after, the basic point is the same. Amongst the books some liberals have tried to have banned, other than Shakespeare, are To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee and Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck both of which found themselves in the top ten of books that people tried to have banned in 2020. Harper Lee is a common one that crops up time and again. Surprisingly the Bible came in at No.6 in 2014. And sure, why wouldn’t it? It is a book that speaks positively about slavery, genocide, infanticide, incest with the venerable Lot who fled Sodom and Gomorrah, not only fathering children with his daughter (Genesis 19:30-36) but he had even offered up his daughters to be gang raped (Genesis 19: 6-8). Not exactly bedtime reading for children, but it does show the ridiculous nature of such bans. In most western countries, Christianity and the power of the churches has waned. Not because religious books were banned or removed from libraries or otherwise restricted, but because people fought against those ideas. Fighting ideas with ideas is lost on the Cancel Culture crowd, so too is fighting on the streets. When fascist mobs march, they demand the state intervene to save them, rather than mobilise against them. If they put half the effort into halting Tommy Robinson and the EDL that they do into attacking gender critical women, EDL fascists would never have got as far as they did.
This brings us back to the question posed at the beginning of this article. Who gets to ban books and which ones. There is a simple answer, no one. Ideas are fought with ideas. Literature and art are not neutral, at a bare minimum they reflect ideas prevalent in society. They are not above society. Changes in literature and art arise through changes in society. If we were to ban every author we disagreed with, we could house all the books allowed in just one local library. If we were to ban every book from every author who engaged in deeds that we did not approve of, then the literary field would be empty. Even Ireland’s beloved Oscar Wilde would find himself in the wilderness once again. His relationship with Alfred Douglas is now, rightfully unproblematic, not so his use of working-class teenage male prostitutes. Everyone can find reasons to object to artists.
Though the concerns about Gaiman are extremely muted in comparison to the bile that is constantly directed at J.K. Rowling, something she herself has commented on.
The backlash against Gaiman has reignited discussions about accountability in progressive spaces. While Rowling has been demonised for expressing her beliefs, Gaiman’s accusations have been met with carefully worded statements of regret and promises to "do the work." Critics argue that this disparity reveals a performative aspect to liberal outrage, where the focus is less on justice and more on adherence to ideological orthodoxy.[7]
Graham Linehan, the writer of the Father Ted comedy series, was cancelled due to his comments on Trans. He has been unable to go ahead with his play Father Ted: The Musical. The trans activists have cost him dearly. He should not have been cancelled. But he is in fact a vile reprehensible loathsome individual. Whilst his opposition to men gaining access to women’s spaces is laudable, his odious positions on Palestine and the genocide in Gaza where any call for solidarity with Palestinians is portrayed by him as a call for a genocide of Jews, along with his favourable comments on Tommy Robinson and others, make him a character unworthy of sympathy.
Likewise, Gaiman is not worthy of any sympathy. For years the baying mob he encouraged attacked J.K. Rowling, threatened to rape and murder her and called for her to be cancelled. He has yet to be convicted, though some of the evidence in the public domain indicates that it is quite possible. Will I watch Season 3 of Good Omens if it gets produced? Yes, I probably will. No effort involved. What about Linehan? Yes, Father Ted reruns will be watched. Do I think either of them should be institutionally cancelled? No, they shouldn’t.
Art and literature are to be judged on their own merits. Everyone is free to boycott individual artists and writers based on their politics, if they want, though they may miss out on some fine literature, the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner Vargas Llosa being a case in point. A fine writer, but politically a right-wing apologist for the US. Books are sometimes restricted because of what they say, the age appropriateness of the material, but not because the artist has said something on an unrelated issue. Though I have to confess I look forward to Gaiman’s conviction, should it happen, and I can’t help but feel some delight and sense of schadenfreude at the moment.
References
[1] The Times of India (15/01/2025) ‘Neil Gaiman is what people wanted JK Rowling to be’.
[2] The Independent (09/10/2020). Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood among writers declaring support for trans and non-binary people in open letter. Adam White.
[3] The Guardian (30/09/2020) More than 200 writers and publishers sign letter in support of trans and non-binary people. Alison Flood.
[4] See.
[5] The Guardian (29/08/2015) Interview: Neil Gaiman: ‘my parents didn’t have any kind of rules about what I couldn’t read’. Frances Myatt.
[6] Euronews (15/09/2021) Why the ideologies behind ‘Woke’ and Cancel Culture are putting our democracy in jeopardy. Thierry Vissol.
[7] The Times of India op. cit.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
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