I didn't know how angry I was until a LibDem dared to drop a leaflet through the door

Oh, and hey Mr Smiley-doorstepper-canIhaveyourvote. I still think your #askforclive campaign is great. As we agreed, no one should be abused, harrassed, for their sexual orientation or how they wish to present themselves.

(NB: Unless you're excluding from that harrassment and abuse lesbians who receive abuse for not wishing to include dicks within the word 'lesbian'

Or females who, for whatever reason they have, do not wish to have dicks in their vicinity in single-sex spaces. If #Clive excludes them, then Clive is simply a male rights activist in sheeps' clothing!)

Just
most have not really thought it through, nor are well versed in the issues, and certainly not on the circumstances that have already arisen.

Treats
But definitely tell them why you won’t be voting Lib Dem. It will get reported back, and enough reports will start to make a difference

I'd hoped to take your stance on this too.

Until the Lib Dem canvasser came knocking on my door. We had what seemed like a good conversation at the time and he was keen that his MP-hopeful candidate would definitely want to hear more about this.

He shared his email with me (apparently, he didn't do this often, so I was very lucky )

So I took the time to send him a thoughtful email reiterating my concerns around the effect of current trans activism on

• children
• lesbian and gay rights
• women's rights in general

• and also highlighting the treatment by the Lib Dem party of lib-dem supporters who had challenged the current ideology, because he'd said he was unaware of anyone leaving the party over this issue, or people being targeted in politics in general for having different views.

Also flagged to him that I was fairly left-wing in my politics and have been a long-term campaigner for LGB rights (and T until it started trampling over everyone else!), in case he wanted to dismiss me as right-wing. NB: if you're right-wing, that's not to dismiss your politics or beliefs, as we have a democracy. Just that anyone who dissents from 'Transwomen are women' seem to be labelled as one political 'box'.

And in case my lovely smiley-doorstep-heycanIhaveyourvote-canvasser thought this was a niche issue, I highlighted this:

this is a remarkable belief system we are in the grip of, politically and socially. I am allowed to question a Christian's belief in God without being anti-Christian. I am allowed not to believe in Allah, whilst not being anti-Islam. But if I question the subjective belief that a person can change biological sex, or state that I do not believe that a transwoman's penis is biologically female, I am immediately categorised as anti-trans and a hater: .... because it also speaks to our democracy. To politically force through this subjective belief system, to pretend facts don't exist, to penalise and punish people from being able to disagree respectfully, without hate, but still disagree, rings worrying authoritarian bells

And I said I was sure our small group of women who meet up because we're concerned about all of this in our home town would welcome a chat with him or 'MP-hopeful' candidate.

Guess what reader?

Three weeks in -
There's no emoji for 'tumbleweed' so I'm going for a tumbling glitter-ball of silence.

At the moment, to most activists, it looks like any other straightforward case of a minority being oppressed by a closed-minded establishment. Think how many people on here have taken a long time to twig that this situation is quite different.

I take heart in the fact that trans rights have not been taken up as a campaign by the party in the same way as Section 28 or equal marriage were. There are a lot of noisy activists within the party, using the party name as a platform, but the party as a whole are not campaigning for change. Layla’s gender-neutral uniform Bill seems to be as far as we’re willing to go and a lot of members were quite critical of it, on the basis that it oughtn’t to be the subject of national legislation, but up to individual schools.

It frankly beggars belief that they believe the under-dog is the 6ft 2 male bodied agp fetishist and not the 7-16 year old girls expected to share bathrooms with them, regardless of how they feel about it, regardless of whether they'd prefer a single sex space to deal with the start of menstruation. Apparently being an 'under-dog' only matters if you're male.

Again.....most have not really thought it through, nor are well versed in the issues, and certainly not on the circumstances that have already arisen. From a Liberal perspective they probably perceive that women already have equality in law, and now they have moved on to the next 'minority' issue.

There is strange refusal to hear or to see when any problems are pointed out. The attitude is you can't treat all trans people on the basis of what one or two might do; which is spectacularly besides the point. Nobody is denying civil rights for trans people anyway. The willingness to over-look normal safe-guarding rules has to be of concern though; especially when it comes to children.

My local LIB DEM councillors just keep going on about how well uni-sex toilets work in France. The whole business is just a minor issue for them.

The socialist side of them seeks, instinctively, always to side with the perceived under-dog.

It frankly beggars belief that they believe the under-dog is the 6ft 2 male bodied agp fetishist and not the 7-16 year old girls expected to share bathrooms with them, regardless of how they feel about it, regardless of whether they'd prefer a single sex space to deal with the start of menstruation. Apparently being an 'under-dog' only matters if you're male.

Tap335 I think Treats has it. When I go to conference I get my say, but so do others. And as someone up thread pointed out, the Lib Dem membership is classically liberal and prefers to let people get on with their own lives and to ban as few things as possible. It's why the Lib Dems have often passed pro-porn motions in the past, for example.

As public discourse develops and we learn that pro-porn can be anti-woman, and that 'kind to transwomen' can mean 'leaves women behind', I think things will change. But I don't want my fellow activists to look at me as tin foil hat brigade (as rightreckoner's cousin did) because that will make me easy to ignore. Slowly, slowly catchee politics. Frustrating, but normal.

Echoing what some other LD activists have said. The majority of our local party are concerned about Brexit, climate change or local issues and are only dimly aware of this. The little they know about it is that we ought to stand up for the rights of the minority.

Most local parties are currently preparing for local elections in May and will be responding to feedback they get on the doorstep. If the people whose votes they’d like to win aren’t talking about this issue, then it’s not going to feature as an election issue and most activists will continue not to think too much about it.

One of the ironies of being a democratic party , with policies decided by the membership is that all it needs is a smallish group of determined members on the right day, to bind everyone into a party policy, and there’s nothing that the leadership can do about it without severe political risk.

The vast majority of Lib Dems aren’t actively campaigning for men to have access to women’s safe spaces, and hardly any have the power to change the policy. Unless your local party are actively campaigning on trans issues - and some do, like Cambridge - it’s probably not fair to shout at your local leaflet deliverer. But definitely tell them why you won’t be voting Lib Dem. It will get reported back, and enough reports will start to make a difference

If you can send your response to your local main point of contact

I rather think ours might be Sarah Brown.

If he chose to tell you his wife is a feminist that presumably suggests he isn't.

I helped with leafletting and telling but resigned my membership after receiving Lynne Featherstone's email. I was asked why and sent off a lengthy email about all the reasons and received a thoughtful response about how there were other women in the party who also felt that way and that they would share it with the higher ups.

Do contact them - you might be surprised! If you can send your response to your local main point of contact as well as the national party, you stand more chance of hearing back I think.

My (female) cousin is a Parliamentary candidate for the Lib Dems. I told her I would never, ever vote for the Lib Dems while they provide a home for people like Aimee Challonner and while they provide a fertile home for this idiotic ideology.

She had never heard anything about AC. Didn't know anything about the issue. Said it had never been raised on the door step.

I think we finished the conversation with her thinking I was a tin foil hatted lunatic.

Most people - even the politically engaged - still have absolutely no idea this is going on. And then with the Lib Dems you've also got the barrier of their need to do some virtue signalling before you can get on to the meat of the matter. Exhausting.

The socialist side of them seeks, instinctively, always to side with the perceived under-dog.

It's a shame that they can't see that the real underdogs in this are the girls, not the 'brave and stunning' Rachel McKinnons.

Do they have a different definition of 'kind' that I'm not aware of?

I really don't think they have thought it through to that extent. They cannot have, otherwise they'd see the obvious contradictions. There simply cannot be any questioning of their Liberal principles of tolerance and kindness. The socialist side of them seeks, instinctively, always to side with the perceived under-dog.

I think Procrastinator1 has a point. Withdraw your labour or threaten to do so.

Dippy perhaps if you, as someone who does the vital constituency work for them explained why their policy on trans issues is wrong, you might have more chance of influencing the policy than members or potential voters

Thanks for replying, Dippy, that's interesting.

Talk to them?

I cant. They have me blocked on Twitter, even though I have never once spoke to them.

Direct feedback, not really, but I get sent surveys on national policy which are sent out to all members where I put my tuppence ha'penny worth.

I berated the Lib Dem councillor (seeking re-election) for the Lib Dems hypocrisy in the council chamber: patting themselves on the back about distributing sanitary products to schools as part of their period poverty project, while at the same time expecting ALL girls to suffer the indignity of mixed sex toilets.

I finished with: "I am campaigning against you and the LibDems with every bone in my body".

Dippy and leaf, do you have any way of providing feedback to your higher-ups about the feedback from your leafletting?

And how can you influence the national party?

To me the wholesale redefinition of women as a sex class is a bit more important than potholes.

Needmoresleep there's not a lot of training. Your first time out, you'd be paired with someone experienced. You might get a training session at party conference if you go. In terms of the issues, Dippy is right. For local elections, we talk about local issues - bins and council tax, highways and schools. For the General you might brainstorm as ward level activists - talk about what's coming up in the press etc. We sometimes go over some local political 'history'. But that's about it. We join because we support a broad platform. We are active because we want to make a difference locally. Sometimes that means we're knowledgeble and thoughtful - sometimes not!

I don't disagree, but I do wish people wouldn't yell at political leafleters and canvassers (I'm still a Lib Dem). We don't know everything. We're not professionals. In general, we're happy to engage - that's why we do it. But when we get yelled at, we withdraw.

As a fellow leafleter, I have to agree. I would also add that there is a big disconnect between local and national level politics. The Lib Dems round here don't stand a chance of winning the seat in a GE, but we have a strong local presence and the local ward has a LD town/district and county councillor. We are very much focussed on local issues and do a lot of work in those areas. That is not to say I agree with the national position on trans rights, but I agree with PP that it is a top-level issue and doesn't filter down much to local governance level.

It is the national party that needs to be influenced about this. Local party members and even councillors etc tend to be much more focussed on local issues - housing, public services etc.

The constituency in which I live has always been evenly divided along Conservative/LibDem lines. It's always a straight fight between them while Labour has struggled in the past to get its deposit back. However, in 2017, the LibDems fielded a new, brave and stunning candidate - Helen Belcher - and Helen Belcher's leaflets spoke almost exclusively of Helen Belcher's TR activism, with only a passing (and meaningless) reference to the constituency itself. It resonated so much with voters here that the LibDems dropped vote share and the Conservative vote could have been weighed rather than counted. I'm guessing that LDHQ blamed Brexit.

We must be " kind".

Could you ask them how it is 'kind' to girls to make sure that no matter how enthusiastic they are about sport, how talented, how hard they work, they will never be able to reach the top of their chosen sport if men are allowed to compete against them?

Do they have a different definition of 'kind' that I'm not aware of?