Honestly I'm struggling to decide who to vote for. I will vote but reluctantly.
I am annoyed at the suggestion that women should 'suck it up' and vote for a party because 'Brexit is more important and more pressing now' and that fighting the trans issue is something that can wait until after Brexit.
I personally don't share that vote. Not when rights are being eroded and damage is being down now, and once legislation or rules have been put into place they are a lot harder to reverse. You have to first have a result to review policy, which in effect ultimately means a scandal that has broken on such a scale that forces slow, beaucratic jobsworths to be forced to change things. Anyone who saw last nights panorama might realise that even then it can change nothing, because these issues affect the vulnerable most (as in people who can't or don't vote for a variety of reasons).
The fight can't wait.
And wait until when?
We still don't know when Brexit will be done. And what do we class as done? When we formally leave the EU (who knows another extension might happen), when we end the transition phase (if we get one) or once we get a final trade deal with the EU completed?
This is the problem for me. Brexit isn't a singular event. It's an ongoing process that one way or another is going to go on and dominate politics for years yet. Possibly a decade or more.
Meanwhile the trans issue is actively harming people right now. Vulnerable groups of children, ethnic minorities, families, old skool transsexuals. As well as eroding at the very concept of democratic debate and political oversight and accountability.
Personally I hope that people will vote, as I think the concept of political debate and political oversight is most at risk if the Brexit Party get a decent result which they can catapult off and destroy the Tory party in the process (if you are not familiar with the word the term 'brexcel' as in incel who uses Brexit to further aims is one that I've seen coined with a certain amount of legitimacy and merit). Women's rights will most definitely suffer with a very hard Brexit.
There is no 'right' answer here.
Women's rights are at severe risk due to a pincer movement by the left and right. RIGHT NOW.
Some of the 'you must vote because the trans issue is less important and we can fight it later' sentiment does feel like it's belittling the scale of the issue and I take somewhat personally as no one really wanting to fight for people who have been already badly effected. It's like saying, you just aren't important enough for me, and brushing it under the carpet until a 'more convenient time'.
At the same time I am very aware that voter demoralisation and the trans issue were deliberately used in the USA election to further Trump's aim. I'm mindful of the same dynamic here.
Spoiling my ballot is not what I plan to do. I can however understand why some want to do it and in some ways I'm glad. Though I fear the implications all the same.
I just hope that everyone planning to spoil their vote has through long and hard about their decision from both angles and come to an informed decision on that basis.
The essence of a liberal democracy is the basic right to disagree on politics and express that political view without coercising people by authoritarian means of control.
We are in this mess because of rising authoritarianism on all sides. We aren't going to get out of it, with more of the same! You have to understand and value the underpinning principles of liberal democracy in order to fight for its preservation.
Its the heart and soul of the current political argument that everyone seems to have forgotten, even amongst those who profess they believe in those principles.
And that's why authoritarianism is winning.