Anyone who's a Lib Dem and/or knows about how they work, please help!

I was in contact with a couple of local Lib Dem organisers to ask specifically about the trans issue and the guy I spoke to said he and his wife were very concerned about it and that I was saying almost word for word what his wife said. He told me to join and fight but after reading the LGBT Lib Dem Tweets I couldn't bear it.

I will vote for any political party that declares itself against self ID and promises to revisit the GRA and Equality Act. At the moment I have no one to vote for and if there was a general election next month I would have to spoil my vote in protest. It's a desperate situation. I'm an educated, rational, thoughtful, decent person and no party represents my view on this issue.

terfed off - so women have been kicked out and their voices replaced by TRA’s? Says it all.

Christ alive. I had been hoping that the Lib Dem desire for nice outcomes for all would overcome any authoritarian desire to shut up anyone who disagrees.

Perhaps not.

Bet you two MN , the local party won't be impressed by the policy once its fully explained.

my parents are members and had no idea about selfID, and didn't think anyone else in the local party is aware. they said they were going to bring it up with the local party.
will be interesting to see how that goes

A friend just sent me this message:

"The lib dem women's Facebook group has just suspended three members for expressing concern on.....

The silencing of women!

You could not make it up. Specially they were concerned about Aimee Challenor and terfblocker, but also not being able to discuss anything on self id.

I think the women thrown out were the former chair of the campaign group Radical association, plus two others. They are no longer in the group anyhow.

The former chair of the RA was deposed due to being decried as TERF."

Sarah Brown and Zoe O'Connell apparently very dominant in this regard.

Sal Brinton didn't just swig the KoolAid. She went swimming in it.

So this link shows you the current 'Federal Board.' Chaired by Sal Brinton, who I think recently said that she would have no problem with a Parliament made up of 50 % men and 50 % transwomen. Note also Caron Lindsay who was one of the first to welcome Aimee Challoner to the party.

I wish you luck, OP. But I hold out no hope.

www.libdems.org.uk/federal_board

Ex-member here. When I was involved the party essentially had two wings, the grassroots members who did all the leaflet delivery and stood at local councl level, and the ones who made up the committees and the Federal Executive. That seemed to be a lot more about swanning around knowing the right people and being important. They will be the ones setting the tone on TWAW.

It's my impression that the party prides itself on its history of being very pro-gay and pro-lesbian, and sees being pro-trans as part of that tradition.

Policy is made by conference. But I think to have a vote at conference you have to be sent by your local party. I wasn't very involved with that side of things. Delivered a shed-load of leaflets though.

Red toothbrush that is a great useful reply.
Ahagwears - I too am very concerned that absolutely no discussion is allowed, If you say anything you will be kicked out...

Whats the position with your local party? It depends on where you are and whether they have a reasonable presence. You may find that local members have no idea about the subject.

Because the party is federalised, although you join nationally, your local party is your first port of call and generally fairly independent from the central party.

I would guess that informing local activitists in more rural type areas where the LDs have localised strong holds - particularly older members might be the way to go.

The lib dem demographic is weirdly split between older grass roots types and younger more trendy types who do the trans women are women chants or hold office in the party. The localised grass roots types who don't go to conference are the ones you want to recruit.

Also the LDs have a disportionately high number of educators and scientists. I'll be willing to beat there is a large number of them who are feeling equally frustrated/ worried if they know whats going on, and if they don't will be utterly horrified.

Think along those lines. I think there needs to be a groundswell within the party of people having concerns that needs to happen before the upper cliques and the fantatics of the party get tackled by the leadership. At the moment the leadership are probably unlikely to do much, simply because the volunteers who are most active in all the executives and non-local LD groups are part of TRA clique or are TRA fantatics. For the party to run they need their labour. They just don't have the manpower otherwise.

Equally though, its the grassroots who do all the leaflet drops. If they are pissed / upset then its an issue for the central party.

On this score, grassroots type could think along the lines of refusing to help the party on a practical level by withdrawing labour to make a point. Whilst still being a member eligible to vote.

Part of me wonders if one of the reasons for Vince's big idea is to try and break the power of some of the cliques in the party. This is also why his idea will fail, because those with power in the party won't want it diluted either.

My local party is okay.
I have written to some of the MPs and eventually got some replies. I think Brian Paddick is sympathetic but he's hard to contact.
There are others in the party who are concerned. I would suggest joining Lib Dem Women just to add to the numbers there who are concerned.
But I would also urge caution, these are dangerous times and do consider how much you are willing to risk. I tend to be silent with occasional raiding of my head over the parapet.
Do reply to the government consultation on Gender Reassignment.

My position is I will stay until Brexit is sorted, then if it seems at all likely until PR is implemented, but then will reconsider. And I will make it public how debate is being silenced and I as a woman feel unsafe.

They appointed someone a while back (I can't remember her name now but I think she is/was a midwife which gave me false hope on the feminist front) who deals with complaints and concerns within the party. There's a contact on the website. I wrote to her about my concerns including some stuff about sexism in my local party. I was basically fobbed off. She said my complaint had been passed on to the local party but I never heard anything (even though I used to be very active in it) despite my multiple attempts to follow it up. The things I raised on a national level about THAT twitter account were given the standard "it's nothing to do with us" response they were giving everyone at the time.
Basically, I complained and it got me nowhere so I resigned.

I’m a member. Not at all confident that we’re anything other than a small minority- from what I’ve seen on various Facebook chats a lot of kool aid has been drunk and #nodebate is fairly dominant. I’m worried by the way Aimee Challenor has been taken on board as well. She’s entitled to join, but it worries me the way it’s being trumpeted.

I was a member and I stopped over this last year and wrote and explained to them why. I wrote a long and detailed letter outlining all my concerns.

I got a one sentence reply back from what I presumed at the time was a woke work experience person but having learned more now may well have been someone with influence.

It basically said transwomen are women bigot and we don't want people like you in our party (obvs not in those words)

So I don't know.

If the Conservatives came out and supported women in all this I think they would be on their own.

I think all the parties have been taken over by MRAs using this as a woke disguise. Men don't have the same caring and juggling issues in life as women do so they have much more free time to spend doing stuff like this.