Until we organise as well as the transactivists we're not going to stem the problem

Nottheprimeminister thank you for your post.

I watched the last debate and it was painful. Caroline Flint was a lone voice questioning how any changes would affect women and was shut down very quickly. Apparently gender neutral facilities are all fine because of aeroplane toilets and sex is a very old-fashioned concept anyway (of course it is! Your ancestors have been doing the sex since we were slime).

Do you happen to know -

• If you go and talk face to face with your MP in a surgery, is it confidential? I assume it is because I know people go to see them with personal issues that could land them in a lot of trouble if it wasn't.

• What is the status of 'policy' and 'guidance' documents that are developed or taken up by public sector orgs (schools, hospitals, prisons etc.) and how do we raise objections about these, when they are based on government committee reports, rather than laws that have been debated in parliament?

Would a legal challenge get anywhere? After all sex IS a protected characteristic - so to remove it's protection should be against the law in some way?

The problem is that even without the Gender Identity bill getting near being made law, there are already some significant and harmful consequences of current teaching and trends. Misleading reporting is one -- particularly the description of an absconding rapist as a 'vulnerable woman'. Persuading girls to ignore their own feelings and boundaries is another. Allowing or encouraging children to use 'puberty blockers' when neither the child nor the parents understand the effects is another.

I've lurked on lots of these threads but just posting now. I want to find out more about the gender identity bill and then contact my MP. Thanks all of you for helping to raise awareness of this issue.

In the meantime I noticed Janice Turner (The Times columnist) wrote in support of Jenni Murray in her Times opinion piece today, in case that's helpful?

dorade you asked for somebody who knows the workings of Parliament. I do, and have name changed for this. You're right that a Friday sitting is not likely to be well attended. Looking at the business for that day, I would make an educated guess that they won't get to this Bill. It's quite far down. It won't become law at the moment. However, there was a related debate sometime in the last few months, so the issue is on the radar. I've only skim read it, but there appeared to be zero mention of trans rights potentially affecting the rights of biological women.

I've never really been interested in feminist issues, or done much reading. This issue has got me though. I don't know quite what to make of the current trans debate. I've always been very much of the mindset of live and let live, but I can't reconcile some of the things I've read with that world I want my daughter growing up in.

One other thing, we need to look after ourselves. We will get a lot of nasty shit thrown at us. Try not to take it personally, the people who throw shit do not see you as a person. Be very careful about putting any RL data out there and take whatever breaks you need to recover and preserve your wellbeing. You don't have to read everything that comes back at you. I think this will be a long battle but I'm up for it!

Great advice pencils

Here's the link again for those that missed it earlier (am thinking now it might be better in its own thread):
www.transgendertrend.com/cps-schools-project-the-erasure-of-sex-and-the-silencing-of-girls/

I don't have much spare time at the moment and can't do anything under my real name unfortunately but I have a couple of ideas from totally unrelated campaigning I've been involved in:

• If people can actually get to see their MP - i.e. go to their surgery and talk face to face, rather than just write, they can't ignore you, are far less able to fob you off and, IME, are more likely to take the time to listen and try to understand your concerns. Take a couple of shortish printed articles to give them (nothing too ranty!) and follow up with an email. I'm pretty sure whatever you discuss will be confidential but if someone who knows can confirm this it would be good.

• we need a better petition. The citizen go one starts by saying the whole idea of protected characteristics is PC gorn mad. I couldn't sign it. Ideally, we'd have one on the government petition site, but the person who started it would become very publicly visible under their real name. Maybe we need to find someone whose views are already well known on this who might be willing to start it - Julie Bindel? Magdalene Burns? Rebecca Reilley Cooper?

The other thing with government petitions is they will reject it if there is already a similar petition open. This means it's important to get the wording right the first time. If a petition gets posted that is full of factual inaccuracies or has a nasty cruel tone we'll be stuck with it and won't be able to post another better one that people would be more willing to sign.

• coordinated action on Twitter. I had to come off there a while ago after stupidly outing myself to colleagues and I've been meaning to make a new account for gender critical stuff - I'll do it on Monday. The beauty of twitter is you can be anonymous unless you're a pillock like me We need to follow and retweet the fuck out of each other. We need to @ anybody who can make a difference - media, politicians, scientists, parenting orgs, anybody relevant with lots of followers. We need to organise around specific events, e.g. this LSE event. They'll be live tweeting throughout and using a hashtag (which they've helpfully published ahead of time). We could do a twitter storm to coincide with their event. We could do a thunderclap. We could tweet the fuck out of their hashtag.

These links might be useful:

Parliamentary procedure for Private Members Bills

More on Parliamentary procedure

Bill page for the Gender Identity (Protected Characteristic) Bill

Fake - take a look at the link upthread on ghostlygoulie's post

fakenamefornow

ghostlyghoulie linked to it at 11.27 today.

I support this. Tell me what to do and I will do it!

The CPS pack is really sinister and the analysis is excellent

What's that?

The CPS pack is really sinister and the analysis is excellent. This needs as wide a circulation as possible.
I'd suggest this is posted in the staff room so that teachers can have a look as they'll be the ones having sight of this as it hits schools.

I do wish I could do something about this, I find it incredibly worrying how little debate is accepted on this and any deviation from the "trans women are women and anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman" line is seen as bigoted. Very reassuring to see how many see this for what it is here and read of how much support the Sunday Times has received for Jenni Murray.

Placemarking. I'm in London next Tuesday but have an interview the next day so won't be able to go and raise hell in the evening, but otherwise am very interested in getting involved.

I get on quite well with my MP and can have a word with him I think. When is it all happening?

Yes, I read it Bev and was horrified. But the teachers I know (nursery/primary) are all very much against sex discrimination and gender divisions, and wouldn't need much persuading to reject this stuff out of hand. A little bit of a culture change about girls and boys not being determined by preference for pink and sparkly, makes all this stupidity obvious.

Although the outcome of this nastiness is sweeping and absolutely unacceptable, it is all founded on something so flimsy and ridiculous that it ought to be easy to demolish.

Sorry I'm a bit inarticulate tonight. I can't seem to find my words!