Local elections and sex/gender/trans issues

Male toilets may well not be safe for self ID transwomen

Oh Elaine.

NAMALT. It's very naughty to assume that some poor male intends anything towards you until after you've been harmed by them and have absolute evidence. The fact that whether or not they harm you is entirely in their gift is no reason (apparently) for you to justify not wanting to make yourself vulnerable in the presence of total strangers who are male.

And you can't possibly know they're male, after all, no one's done a genital check or checked their chromosomes.

And if one does decide to harm you then you can always call the police and use the justice system. That'll make it all better.

You need to unlearn your bigotry and reframe your trauma, and - what's that line from Mermaids last week? Something about irrational fears are no excuse.

Females are told all this terrible, insensitive, cruel stuff constantly when they try to explain any feelings (and bitter experience, and evidence) about where and in what circumstances they feel safe to pee. So sauce for the goose and all that.

I must admit I don't know anything about that. How would passing of the electoral commission's recommendations then have stopped the government now from abusing its majority now to remove it's independence?

Just looked at the Leeds results. Very poor turnout in most wards. An average of about 25- 30 spoiled votes some as many as 42 and others only 15. So not as many as I hoped, but quite a lot where there were only totals of 3000 votes cast

Yes, Elaine, let's try to understand the structural reasons why males as a sex class are unsafe shall we?

Nobody does record what is on the spoilt ballots, but the parties do notice. You do of course get the usual, 'they are all wankers' and drawings of penises. So a co-ordinated campaign of 'respect my sex if you want my x', would be seen by the candidates, their agents and the returning officer - so potentially a number of people. The battle now is to get the parties to realise that sex is determined before birth and cannot be changed.

Male toilets may well not be safe for self ID transwomen but why should women have to be the ones to give way? I wonder if EG will be making attempts to get proper mixed sex loos installed i.e completely enclosed with a washbasin and clearly labelled as mixed sex?

Nobody records what is written on them. If they did it would make for a very entertaining compilation one day. 😀

😂😂😂😂 that's just perfect. Mhairi had to make way for a male with special gender feels. Wonder if she regrets all the trans adulation.

Yes I think it probably is. A lot of people would vote differently in a GE.

Absolutely but until then this "racist", "ridiculous", "gullible", "fascist" (I'm sure I've missed some) may have to vote Tory for the first time in her life.

I do not believe they are pro women's rights but they are the only party not proposing to change the law to actively dismantle the protection provided by the EA 2010 and that matters for every woman.

There were no local elections here yesterday but we have a by election coming up and as soon as I know who the candidates are I will be asking them about their position on single sex spaces and vote accordingly.

Fifteentoes so you would agree that the lib dems should not have voted against the electoral commissions recommendations when they were in coalition, because they didn't win the referendum on proportional representation. If they had voted through the electoral commissions recommendations then, then this bill would not have happened.

Also, why do these people always claim that women just come up to them and compliment them on their looks?!!

It is like that story book 'Brenda the wolf' or similar name which indoctrinated preschoolers with the fact that sheep must be nice to the Wolf in order to avoid being eaten.

Sturgeon had time to congratulate Elaine Gallagher, who was standing for a different party, but has still not said a word about the death threats to Joanna Cherry.

Aye, I smell shite when I hear them say that. Are they constantly running into ‘pick me‘ women in the toilets? 🤔

This a thousand times!! It’s such a simple thing for Labour to do and yet they just can’t….

i can’t take the fascist stuff flying about seriously 🤪

Low turnout is generally A Bad Thing, but it might make the number of spoiled ballots more significant. Is it legal to disclose what was written on them?

@Clangyleg the number of rejected ballots is published along with the election results, usually underneath the number of votes that each of the candidates polled, ward by ward.

I'm looking at one ward where there were more rejected ballots than the lowest ranking candidate received!

Good to see that spoiled votes have been noticed in Wales. Can anyone else find out where there might be more than usual? . Are numbers kept?

Elaine tweeted this.

Just had a look at my local democracy website pages - there has certainly been an increase in spoiled votes in the last year.

Some terrible turn-out figures, too - as low as 18% in one ward.

One ward was won by just 20 votes!

Yep. Me too. I'll vote Labour again just as soon as they say very clearly that single sex spaces are legal, essential in many cases for adequate child safeguarding and that women's rights matter.

I won't hold my breath.

Hoping this might get some traction in the media now. The issue that's always ignored .. JK Rowling has retweeted it so it's getting some attention. All our individual protests hopefully making a difference.

From the article:

She said: “The number of women I have seen who say ‘hello I like your look."

One of two things are happening there:
Either these women know that Elaine is clearly male and are saying this sort of thing to 'be kind'/virtue signal/fawn (you see this quite a lot in online groups eg. Beauty groups that are female dominated and a very obvious male comes on with various 'looks' and women are falling over themselves to them how amazing they look).

Or

People don't clock that Elaine is male and Elaine is bullshitting.

Because, let's face facts - if Elaine were an actual woman of that age, dressed in that way, no one would be complimenting on her on her 'look', she would be invisible.

I hope Elaine does get a full post bag though asking for advice on making more bin collections inclusive.

Proud to be from Cardiff if this is true

‘A counting staff member pulls me aside to say there is a definite pattern in the spoiled ballots, with many saying 'respect my sex to get my x', appearing to be a coordinated campaign. One ballot even had a ranting essay’

twitter.com/alexgseabrook/status/1522597660452134912?s=21&t=ZJLOzGlN5mmSrvTAay4S3Q