Julie Bindel, the veteran feminist and lesbian activist, has said she intends to take legal action after a council cancelled a talk she was due to give.
Bindel was scheduled to speak at Aspley library in Nottingham on Saturday but the 90-minute event was cancelled the day before. She says she found out when she was already on the train and ended up speaking in the library car park.
The council said it cancelled Bindel’s talk because of “the speaker’s views on transgender rights”. In a statement, it said: “Nottingham is an inclusive city and as a council we support our LGBT community and have committed to supporting trans rights as human rights through Stonewall.”
The row highlights the sometimes bitter and polarised battle between trans activists and gender-critical feminists.
Bindel had been booked to speak at the library by Nottingham Women for Change, and the talk was titled “Julie Bindel: her work, in her words”.
Bindel said: “I was going up to speak about feminism, about violence against women. I was invited by a group of community activists who are trying to keep the library open.”
She said she was paying her own expenses and had no plan to talk about transgender issues. She found out the talk was cancelled at about 4pm. The group that had invited her then urged people to come along between 11am and 12.30pm to hear her speak outside the library. “All welcome. Women will not be silenced,” it said.
Nottingham city council released a statement on Saturday from Adele Williams, the deputy council leader, and Neghat Khan, the portfolio holder for neighbourhoods, safety and inclusion, explaining the reasons for the cancellation. It said Bindel’s views on transgender rights were at odds with the council’s equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) strategy.
It said no information had been given to the library service about the speaker’s “views on transgender rights”. “Once we became aware of this, we took the decision to cancel the booking. We did not want the use of one of our library buildings for this event, taking place during Pride month, to be seen as implicit support for views held by the speaker which fly in the face of our position on transgender rights.”
The statement was variously welcomed and criticised. The writer Simon Fanshawe, one of Stonewall’s founders, wrote that if Bindel, “a lesbian who has spent her adult life fighting for women’s rights and against violence against women, is ‘at odds with your EDI strategy’… it might be the strategy that needs challenging rather than the lesbian.”
Bindel has been accused of transphobia because she says does not believe trans women can legitimately say they are a woman.
Bindel said she was talking to her lawyers on Tuesday with a view to suing Nottingham council. “Enough is enough,” she said.
A council spokesperson said there were no plans to add anything to Saturday’s statement.
• This article was amended on 27 June 2022 to correct the surname of Adele Williams, which was given as Williamson in an earlier version.
