Poet Launches High Court Challenge Claiming She Was “Cancelled” by Taxpayer-Funded Arts Magazine Because She Held “Problematic” Gender-Critical Views

A taxpayer-funded arts magazine has “cancelled” a poet for her gender-critical views. The Mail has the story.

Lawyers representing Abigail Ottley have filed papers accusing Arts Council England (ACE) of failing to properly investigate her complaint against the Aftershock Review (TAR), after a poem she submitted which had been confirmed for publication was then rejected because of the poet’s “social media presence”.

Award-winning Ms Ottley, 73, believes biological sex is immutable and entirely separate to “gender identity”. …

The pre-action letter from law firm Conrathe Gardner alleged that Ms Ottley also endured an abusive marriage with a “cross-dresser who sought to pass as a woman”. This encouraged her to hold “gender-critical views especially in regard to the need for women to have safe and single sex spaces”.

It continued: “While Ms Ottley has used her social media accounts to re-tweet posts by high profile campaigners for women’s rights and single sex spaces, which she considers are invaluable for women’s safety privacy and dignity, including for example J.K. Rowling, this is not and cannot be a lawful reason to refuse to publish Ms Ottley’s poetry.”

Miss Ottley, a former teacher from Penzance, Cornwall, accused ACE of “failing to investigate the matter with proper rigour”.

She said: “On social media I have simply re-tweeted messages from gender-critical people whom I support, who believe that a man is a man and a woman is a woman.

“I am tired of women like myself having to self-censor to avoid being ‘silenced’ or ‘excluded’.”

The pre-action letter said ACE’s decade-long ‘Let’s Create’ strategy is underpinned by four investment principles including inter alia “Inclusivity”. It added: “Here inclusivity cannot possibly mean ‘inclusivity’ of only those whose opinions we agree with, it must be inclusivity of a diversity of lawful ideas: including gender critical ones.” …

The magazine publishes “poetry shaped by survival, identity and lived experience” and aims to celebrate “new and established voices looking at the aftershocks of experience”.

Ms Ottley submitted work for TAR’s first issue and was informed on September 18th that a poem had been selected for publication.

But on October 14th the poet was informed that her prose had been withdrawn by the publication, following an “internal review”. An email went on: “In light of concerns raised about your social media presence, we’ve decided not to proceed with publishing your work in this issue. As a trauma-informed and inclusive publication, the Aftershock Review has a duty of care to ensure our contributors and readers feel safe and respected. This decision reflects our commitment to those principles and is final.”

Worth reading in full.