Local elections and sex/gender/trans issues

Interesting about spoiled ballots being examined so closely and read out to candidates. That's tempting.

I'd decided that I will vote for the two Labour candidates who did actually respond to my emailed questions about sex based rights: understandably (party line and all that) not quite how I'd have wished, but thoughtfully and respectfully. None of the other candidates responded at all. Plaid Cymru haven't even put a flyer through the door - not sure why they've bothered fielding candidates!

I've told the candidates clearly that while this is local, I'm never voting Labour in a General or Welsh election again until they sort this out, so I feel like I've done something useful by countering the dismissive 'never comes up on the doorsteps'. (One candidate said that it's come up quite a lot...) I feel like the local elections are a chance to send that message clearly 'up the line'.

I think they are waking up to the possibility of getting more votes. Very few Tory MPs care about women’s rights on principle.

The big problem happened under labour - the lie that men could become women

We can't blame just Labour or just Tories for a worldwide movement. They aren't the ones in power in Canada, Sweden, the US, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia...

Exactly. Unfortunately the Tories have not protected single sex spaces in the their 13 years of power...

No, but they at least appear to be waking up to this as an issue, whereas the Labour party have completely divorced themselves from evidence and facts and are determined to push ahead even further to the harm of women and girls, and our removal as a category of people defined by our sex.

Exactly. Unfortunately the Tories have not protected single sex spaces in the their 13 years of power...

She asked if I'd personally not been able to use a single-sex space in a local leisure centre or park (spaces I brought up when she said this wasn't a local issue)

God she's either deliberately disingenuous or thick as mince. Loss of single sex spaces will clearly become more and more of a local issue if Labour party policy gets its way!

That question is a total giveaway of how your candidate thinks. She's privileged enough that it doesn't affect her personally. She's only willing to get behind stuff that affects her, or is populist bandwagon stuff.

Ex labour members in my household. All voting for a local independent. All spoiling at the next general election UNLESS Labour or Green sort it out.

I will not accept misogyny from the right or the left & I will not be guilt tripped into putting women's rights and child safeguarding to the side for other issues. They intersect with those other issues anyway. Furthermore, if my labour candidate is lying to me on biological sex, then I don't trust them on poverty, climate or racism anyway.

Yes Tory central might look at the council elections but so will labour and other parties and if they make big gains (mid term governments always expect a loss) then they will take it as a message to completely destroy women's rights

You are right. I am sorry for the Labour Candidate I was going to vote for who is great on women's sex-based rights, but the party HQ will just take labour votes as an endorsement of their current positions, and I don't want that. The Tory candidate is also excellent on women's sex based rights, so I am voting for him.

And yes. I see the way I feel obliged to vote as the responsibility of the current Labour leadership and party for taking a position so poisonous to women's rights and safety.

All of this. First time ever, I am completely indifferent to party politics.

If they "know what a woman is' as you put in then why is it that all this gender based stuff is happening under them?

That is a bit like complaining the worldwide pandemic was their fault as it happened under them. The 'gender based stuff' doesn't come from the Tories - they are responding. Yes they have not been quick enough to realise what has happened but they are the only party that now seems to be listening and not just blindly following the ideology. The big problem happened under labour - the lie that men could become women so men had to be given access to female spaces if they had a GRC. This left the door wide open.

Yes Tory central might look at the council elections but so will labour and other parties and if they make big gains (mid term governments always expect a loss) then they will take it as a message to completely destroy women's rights.

I know, it feels like a big hope that Labour policy nationally will change and maybe I'm being too optimistic. Luckily for me my local Labour candidate is what you would call Gender Critical and has stuck with the party to try and change it from the inside. However my ward has always swung between Conservative and Independent.
My MP is a safe Labour seat so at the general election I will protest vote in some way if me necessary.
It is such a shit situation to be in. I think we need to keep political pressure on over the next two years but like you say how can we trust Labour. I certainly can't with the current leadership. Labour need a massive overhaul before I can vote for them in the GE.

Really it's the civil service. Just look at the furore over the Conversion Therapy. Civil servants put pressure on government ministers to introduce it (many civil servants are representatives of Stonewall), and they're the ones who draft the laws and leak stuff when it's not going their way.

We're seeing a lot of issues where civil servants don't want to do what the minister (and consequently majority of public) have requested.

If you want to vote to help women then know that your Tory vote doesn't help all women.
Muslim and other segregating faiths will be massively impacted by the mixed sex spaces caused by TWAW. They will not be able to use a toilet or participate in sports and forced to stay more within their own community and closer to home. A vote for a party that can see sex is very much a vote for marginalised women.

I will be voting based on local issues, and fortunately my council has not signed up to the Stonewall scheme (the neighbouring one has and that has meant gender issues coming into the fore in that area).

So the gender debate is not happening locally as it appears it is only happening where Stonewall have influence. If my council were part of Stonewall's scheme then that would be something I would be asking local candidates about.

Why do posters think the Tories will protect single sex spaces? They have been in power since 2010 so surely most the responsibility for erosion of them and their replacement with mixed sex spaces lies with them.

If they "know what a woman is' as you put in then why is it that all this gender based stuff is happening under them?

As said upthread, it was Labour who brought in the GRA. (Gender recognition act) which put into law the fiction that men can be women.

And it was Tony Blair (Labour) who took the country into the Iraq war. No crime is greater, to my mind, than taking the country to war for no good reason.

And it's not the Conservative councils who are painting the stupid rainbow crossings.

Just saying...

I have voted. I don't think I've ever felt quite so disenfranchised in my life. I was very very tempted to spoil my ballot, but then I decided that in the end for me personally, I had to express my views on the local council formation by voting for someone (totally understand why others would spoil their ballot papers though!)

I am not completely ideologically opposed to the the Conservatives (this issue aside) and I have voted for them in the past, although not since the Brexit vote. And to be honest if it hadn't been for partygate and this abysmal Rwandan policy I would have voted for all three tory candidates (I could vote for up to three candidates). But although these are local elections and people should be voting on local issues, I did not want my conservative vote to be taken as an expression of support for the national government (which they will totally do if the results are good for the conservatives.

My current ward is three councillors - two labour and one tory. I only voted for one candidate - the current tory councillor and it was very much a vote for him personally rather than his party. Reasons are:

• He's a decent chap. Long-standing councillor who does a lot for this area.
• Very supportive of female sexed-based rights.
• Against the Silvertown tunnel (I live near the route)
• The council as a whole is quite strongly Labour held and this is not in doubt to still be the status quo after the election. The conservatives are the only opposition to Labour on the council (no other parties currently have councillors). The neighbouring borough has a one-party council where every single one of the councillors is Labour (probably will still be the same after this election). I think that regardless of party politics that this is bad for democracy and that councils work better where there is at least some opposition to the main party.

For anyone who is choosing to spoil their ballot paper please be careful how you do it! Guidance is available here votingcounts.org.uk/spoilt-ballot

i agree with others who have said to write “Respect my sex” but maybe write it diagonally across all candidate names?

if you are ok with that don’t justify it by saying you are a feminist

why anyone thinks they can tell others what they are is unbelievable.

these types of posts are always from the Labour supporters / left

we all get one vote and can use it according to issues we find important

Hear hear!

I am voting Tory because I want to. I hardly think they have a monopoly on sleaze especially when you consider local government - just look at Labour''s corrupt behaviour in Liverpool. My local labour candidate is awful too especially on equality (and I don't just mean sex equality) and they have recent history of antisemitism. It was labour who passed the GRA that left us in this mess. And labour who left the NHS with PFI debts. But I am in Scotland and the SNP have been proving whatever Tories can do to ruin the NHS or education they can do better. So I am considering my local candidates and I will not vote for one who is not prepared to recognise women are discriminated against because of their sex. If they refuse to listen to women on this topic but instead blindly follow an ideology, how can I trust them to listen to local people on any topic?

if you are ok with that don’t justify it by saying you are a feminist

The move from sex to gender has, here and across the world, and will continue, to lead to women and girls being sexually assaulted and sexually intimidated, to women being unable to safely access survivor's services and having to self-exclude, to women being disbelieved about rape as their offender identified as a woman, to women having to shower alongside men, to women prisoners being threatened with punishment for attempting to assert boundaries, to women being unable to win in sports they have trained their whole life for, to women and girls being shamed for trying to assert the most basic boundaries around their own bodies.

If these really fundamental rights are not a feminist issue then then I genuinely don't actually understand what you think you mean by feminism.