United Kingdom

On the one hand, you don't really want to give people the power to decide what books are available. Assholes would use that to remove queer books, for example.

On the other hand, that power is already implicitly in place. There's finite space in a library, so they must choose a subset of all possible books. I'd want to know how the existing processes work before suggesting changes.

Let people read whatever book they want and make up their own minds. Libraries aren't supposed to be a "ministry of truth"

The right doesn't need the left to do something to do it, they just do it. Reform in Kent already tried to do a ban against books with 'transgender themes' (this was later revised to adult transgender books being in the children's section after backlash). If we're going to not exercise power, it should be for something more than a fear the right will also do it, because the right doesn't care and will do it anyway.

About the author...

In March 2022, O'Malley was slated to speak at an NHS conference on gender dysphoria. The event was cancelled following complaints by NHS whistleblowers, researchers, and trans rights activists, who accused a majority of the speakers as having a "record of extreme prejudice towards trans people". Open Democracy said the speakers had "close links to proponents of anti-trans conversion therapies".

On 10 May 2022, TD Mick Barry raised issue with O'Malley's invitation to the [education] conference, referring to a Twitter Spaces conversation in which she stated "I don't think you need to give empathy at all, none, zero. I think I should because I'm trying to understand them" when asked why woman should have sympathy for who they describe as autogynephiles.

LGBTQIA+ activist Izzy Kamikaze also shared link to the released audio. O'Malley has sent a legal letter to Barry accusing him of defamation and sent similar language to Kamikaze for sharing the link

In 2022, O'Malley appeared in a video produced by the Ickonic film company, which is largely owned by antisemitic conspiracy theorist David Icke

(The space-lizards guy)

In August 2025, the Irish Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy published a piece in which they criticised O'Malley and Genspect as holding an "anti-trans stance" and wanting to marginalise trans people, saying that psychotherapists needed to be alert to disinformation. In response, O'Malley initiated a legal case against them and the writer of the article for defamation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_O'Malley

But I don't think her books should be banned or anything like that, even if she was malicious. And there's certainly an ounce of truth in her therapeutic work: there's a whole lot of people who are gender-questioning, nonbinary, or nonconforming, and they should be encouraged to explore those possibilities rather than just be smacked with the trans label. In that sense, I'm of the opinion that clinical psychology has broadly made an overcorrection (understandably...) and can be too eager to see patients as having GD. But for every person sharing a story about feeling like they were influenced into seeing themselves thru a trans lens by providers, there are many more who felt oppressed or denied or disbelieved when they sought care... So it's a difficult subject with a wide range of experiences.

Having space and time for exploration and deconstruction is important. The problem is that there are lots of bad actors who hedge their bigotry with the same language as this to disguise their prejudice and push an agenda informed by nothing but fundamentalism or essentialism...

The problem is that it is probably written like shit and at best it’s a « gateway drug » for Christian Facsist rethoric