Lord Paddick resigns the LGBT LD executive

I've just seen these updates on Twitter via @feministroar that confirm the LGBTLD twitter account is run by Sarah Brown.

I suspected this for a couple of reasons:

1. because Brown has a recognisably vicious and dismissive style of posting, and likes to be in the spotlight and in control and
2. because Brown seems to have deleted a fuck ton of older tweets and made an effort to sink into the background somewhat after becoming infamous as a raging misogynist lesbophobe. Controlling this account gives them anonymity to continue their previous behaviour without having to be accountable.

The tweets also say that the LGBTLDs are not an official group within the lib dems but are a recognised support group. This is interesting because it is demonstrative of how a small but committed group of activists can gain control of a political party's agenda by claiming to be representative but without accountability - then shut out dissenters to control the conversation, which in this case seems to work out as shutting out and silencing lesbians.

@feministroar has more tweets on this topic and is a top tweeter worth following imo.

I'll believe the lib dems are starting to give a shit about lesbians when they shut down that Executive and remove the four people that are running the lgbtld twitter account (they said it's four people, I think it's likely it's Brown on their own). Those people shouldn't be allowed to hold positions in the lib dems again. There's no shortage of evidence of their hateful, alternately aggressive and dismissive treatment of women so allowing them to represent the lib dems tells me everything I need to know.

Ugh what disgusting misogynistic behaviour from LGBT LD. How on earth despite the resignation of Brian Paddick (a really prominent gay man in the party, and after all the TIm Farron mess, what should be the keen sensitivities in Lib Dems about LGB issues...) in that content, what on earth is going on here centrally in the Liberal Democrats, not to be coming down like a ton of bricks on this vile agressive non liberal behaviour from this group who still seem to cheerfully carry the party’s name and logo? Unopposed by the existence of any inclusive-sounding organised group of Lib Dem LGB voices?

I was hoping that somehow through Paddick raising this issue (for which I am grateful to him), the central Lib Dem’s previous commitments to free speech would be reaffirmed (if not in the interests of women specifically, i’m trying to be a realist here about party politics ..) then there would be someone to vote for.

The fact this rotten, aggressively silencing behaviour and total lack of lesbian representation on a key (the only?) Lib Dem LGBT group which has been posting puerile attacks on gender critical lesbians on social media has not been strongly, publicly distanced from by the central Lib Dems is shocking.

That tells me the party are not engaged in this area in the slightest and don’t care about Brian Paddick’s experience as a gay man involved in that group and the serious problems in it, the party doesn’t care about positively, actively representing lesbians, OR women, AND when it comes down to it, the party doesn’t give a crap about free speech when it affects the above categories of people. Ugh. how miserable. It’s election time, it’s almost like they don’t want these votes.

I really want the central party, not Brian Paddick (as very promising as his recent statements have been) to very rapidly sort this out, distance the party from this sorry mess and condemn this behaviour, and reaffirm their commitment to free speech.

If they said they believed in open debate around issues that affect women and girls, even better.

If they said they would do what they could to promote women’s and girls’ and children’s rights, better still. I would be all ears..

Shocked by how vile and extreme Sarah Brown is. My god.

thanks for all the history

I've been lurking about reading this stuff for a long time I guess! I read a bunch of pretty fantastic women on twitter and learn a lot, some of the trans activists they have had to deal with are memorable to say the least.

Maybe lesbians aren't interested in joining a committee which has a male member who describes vaginas as offputting and tells people to suck their cock.

Bigots!

Thanks for all the history RosenbergW

It is just

This is the core problem of this whole identity schtick. If challenged on the imbalance of women and total exclusion of lesbian women the Lib Dems will just counter it by insisting that the males of group are women and that a proportion of those are lesbian women.

Representation sorted!

Maybe lesbians aren't interested in joining a committee which has a male member who describes vaginas as offputting and tells people to suck their cock.

Speaks volumes, doesn't it?

One woman on the executive of 11 people.

And she is outnumbered 4 to 1 by men identifying as women. Despite them supposedly being a tiny percentage of the population.

BP is the only one to have come out and said the behaviour of TRAs in Bristol was 'unacceptable' and 'frightening'.

More on Sarah Brown, this time from the New Statesman:
"I do not accept the logic of certain trans activists that there is no debate – the argument made by the influential Liberal Democrat, and member of the Lib Dem LGBT+ equalities group Sarah Brown, who argues that trans women have more right to define the category “woman” than “cis women”, because women who are born women are necessarily “in a position of privilege over trans women”."

And
"On 15 February, Sarah Brown sent an hours-long barrage of tweets to Professor Mary Beard, berating her for signing the same Observer letter that I did"

I remember that, and it was indeed hours and hours long of insults and ranting.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/when-i-was-raped-it-was-female-only-spaces-helped-me-recover

This isn't about Brown or the lgbtld's misunderstanding women. They are fundamentally opposed to women's rights to set our own boundaries or even have a chat about it.

Apparently Jennie Rigg the Chair is female but I think bi as well.

So still no lesbians.

I disagree this is about the lgbtlds accidentally reading malice and reacting to that.

The lgbt libdem executive committee includes Sarah Brown who "launched a public campaign to name the foul smelling drainage created by his surgically inverted penis (what he describes as “the smegma-like mixture of dead skin cells, gynaecological lube, stale urine (gives it its distinctive smell) and sweat that is sometimes present as a white residue on the end of a dilation stent when a post-operative trans woman withdraws the stent after dilating her neovagina.”) with the name of a prominent Lesbian Feminist anti-trafficking activist" (Julie Bindel).

Also, they "posted a series of ugly, misogynist, anti-gay and anti-feminist rants on his twitter account, the full details of which you can easily google, including statements that lesbian bodies are “off putting”, and “political lesbians must be sexually frustrated”, that he is a “better” lesbian than women because men “have longer fingers” (eww!), and telling lesbians to “suck my balls”. When the former Councilor failed to be re-elected this year (along with many others in the LibDem party) he claimed that “lesbian feminists” caused his political loss as well as a “nervous breakdown” by complaining about his grotesque and disgusting public comments. He violently warned that feminists might someday criticize a man “who has entirely the wrong kind of sense of humor failure”."

You can read more here, Brown even has their own tag:
gendertrender.wordpress.com/2014/06/21/breaking-news-lesbians-stage-protest-of-heterosexual-male-keynote-speaker-at-london-dyke-march-2014-threatened-with-arrest/

This is not hidden information, the Executive must be aware of Brown's history of misogyny and lesbophobia (they are actually in a relationship with another Executive member, Zoe O'Connell).

I don't think the lgbtld's are worth giving the benefit of the doubt on this given their acceptance of Sarah Brown as a member let alone the aggressive and slanderous content on the lgbtld twitter account aimed at women meeting to discuss our legal rights.

Four trans-identified males, only one woman? That says so much. No wonder women’s voices are being lost.

Oh just seen erishigal comment re Rose

What did he say...ive decided i like her

Lots..not its

For goodness sake

Oh hickey is a real charmer

Rose of Dawn made a good comment....lts of disagreement taking place but only a few people being literally violent

And by literally i mean the dictionary definition

I had a look at the LGBT Lib Dem executive committee. Of the 11 people, 10 are biological males (including 4 transwomen). The one biological woman defines as bi, so there is no lesbian representation at all.

Oh yes Andrew Hickey is like the trusty Alsation of the Lib Dem LGBT Twitter account. Every time there are too many pesky women asking sensible questions, he is released out of the gate to bark and write things in asterisks, usually literally. He's showing himself off in all his beardy glory in those exchanges (I've seen his photo). I really try to be nice, but he's a right tosser.

Andrew Hickey probably is a slur, if some more reasonable person got called Andrew Hickey and others thought you were a woman-hating dogmatic ideologue spouting bile and sucking up to other woman-hating males.

Just wanting to add my support to Paddick, a lovely chap who I knew a long long time ago and have great respect for

Oh. I just got my first block, from Hickey. Do I get a badge too?