Lord Paddick resigns the LGBT LD executive

[RedToothBrush]

LGBT+LD @ lgbtlb
Public statement by the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats executive regarding the resignation of our honorary president, Lord Paddick:
1/4
The LGBT+ Liberal Democrats executive has reluctantly accepted the resignation of Lord Paddick as our honorary president.
2/4
Lord Paddick previously tended his resignation, which we declined when he made certain undertakings about his meeting with a group set up to oppose transgender equality legislation.
3/4
We regret that those undertakings have not been honoured. Subsequently Lord Paddick tended his resignation again, which has been accepted.
4/4

Lord Paddick has form for resigning

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brian-lord-paddick-quits-over-tim-farron-gay-sex-comments-lib-dem-liberal-democrat-general-election-a7789816.html%3famp
Lord Paddick quits as Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokespeson following furore over leader Tim Farron's views on gay sex
The former Lib Dem London Mayoral candidate said the decision had been made 'weeks ago.'

He quit as LD home affairs spokesperson as he was uncomfortable with Tim Farron's views on gay marriage. The resignation prompted Farron's ultimately. He is an important and influential figure in the party.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here or why. It sounds like the LGBT LD didn't want him to resign. It sounds like its connected to trans issues and Paddick's position. The timing is interesting.

I don't want to read too much into this. But its suggesting a split in opinion and approach. (I don't believe this shows that Paddick is pro-women's rights. I suspect he is more pro-due process, at least at this stage). And that its damaging to the executive as a whole.

When is the meeting with Paddick scheduled for? It could be very interesting now. Looks like Paddick really is sticking his neck out.

BP is the only one to have come out and said the behaviour of TRAs in Bristol was 'unacceptable' and 'frightening'.

Speaks volumes, doesn't it?

One woman on the executive of 11 people.

And she is outnumbered 4 to 1 by men identifying as women. Despite them supposedly being a tiny percentage of the population.

Maybe lesbians aren't interested in joining a committee which has a male member who describes vaginas as offputting and tells people to suck their cock.

This is the core problem of this whole identity schtick. If challenged on the imbalance of women and total exclusion of lesbian women the Lib Dems will just counter it by insisting that the males of group are women and that a proportion of those are lesbian women.

Representation sorted!

Thanks for all the history RosenbergW

It is just

Maybe lesbians aren't interested in joining a committee which has a male member who describes vaginas as offputting and tells people to suck their cock.

Bigots!

thanks for all the history

I've been lurking about reading this stuff for a long time I guess! I read a bunch of pretty fantastic women on twitter and learn a lot, some of the trans activists they have had to deal with are memorable to say the least.

Shocked by how vile and extreme Sarah Brown is. My god.

And there it is.

Louise @ loolovestea
TBH, I think LGBTLD could do with a bit more 'L.' A quick glance at your profile and apart from a token post of your chair, 3 hrs ago, seems Lesbians are not getting much support on your feed. Please address this. Women matter too. Honest. Am grateful to BP for listening to women

LGBT LD @ lgbtld
Hi Louise. Lesbians are great.

Lesbians rock.

Especially lesbian trans women!

I'm not going to comment further on that statement. My heart just sinks at where we are at. This is supposed to be a body that exists to promote equality.

Ugh what disgusting misogynistic behaviour from LGBT LD. How on earth despite the resignation of Brian Paddick (a really prominent gay man in the party, and after all the TIm Farron mess, what should be the keen sensitivities in Lib Dems about LGB issues...) in that content, what on earth is going on here centrally in the Liberal Democrats, not to be coming down like a ton of bricks on this vile agressive non liberal behaviour from this group who still seem to cheerfully carry the party’s name and logo? Unopposed by the existence of any inclusive-sounding organised group of Lib Dem LGB voices?

I was hoping that somehow through Paddick raising this issue (for which I am grateful to him), the central Lib Dem’s previous commitments to free speech would be reaffirmed (if not in the interests of women specifically, i’m trying to be a realist here about party politics ..) then there would be someone to vote for.

The fact this rotten, aggressively silencing behaviour and total lack of lesbian representation on a key (the only?) Lib Dem LGBT group which has been posting puerile attacks on gender critical lesbians on social media has not been strongly, publicly distanced from by the central Lib Dems is shocking.

That tells me the party are not engaged in this area in the slightest and don’t care about Brian Paddick’s experience as a gay man involved in that group and the serious problems in it, the party doesn’t care about positively, actively representing lesbians, OR women, AND when it comes down to it, the party doesn’t give a crap about free speech when it affects the above categories of people. Ugh. how miserable. It’s election time, it’s almost like they don’t want these votes.

I really want the central party, not Brian Paddick (as very promising as his recent statements have been) to very rapidly sort this out, distance the party from this sorry mess and condemn this behaviour, and reaffirm their commitment to free speech.

If they said they believed in open debate around issues that affect women and girls, even better.

If they said they would do what they could to promote women’s and girls’ and children’s rights, better still. I would be all ears..

I'll believe the lib dems are starting to give a shit about lesbians when they shut down that Executive and remove the four people that are running the lgbtld twitter account (they said it's four people, I think it's likely it's Brown on their own). Those people shouldn't be allowed to hold positions in the lib dems again. There's no shortage of evidence of their hateful, alternately aggressive and dismissive treatment of women so allowing them to represent the lib dems tells me everything I need to know.

I've just seen these updates on Twitter via @feministroar that confirm the LGBTLD twitter account is run by Sarah Brown.

I suspected this for a couple of reasons:

1. because Brown has a recognisably vicious and dismissive style of posting, and likes to be in the spotlight and in control and
2. because Brown seems to have deleted a fuck ton of older tweets and made an effort to sink into the background somewhat after becoming infamous as a raging misogynist lesbophobe. Controlling this account gives them anonymity to continue their previous behaviour without having to be accountable.

The tweets also say that the LGBTLDs are not an official group within the lib dems but are a recognised support group. This is interesting because it is demonstrative of how a small but committed group of activists can gain control of a political party's agenda by claiming to be representative but without accountability - then shut out dissenters to control the conversation, which in this case seems to work out as shutting out and silencing lesbians.

@feministroar has more tweets on this topic and is a top tweeter worth following imo.

When LM said LM wouldn't mind all male representation of/as women, here's an example of it in practice! The single woman must be walking on eggshells all the time.

Just noticed this tweet from Lord Paddick from the day before yesterday.

twitter.com/brianpaddick/status/991787226576154630?s=21

“I’m not suggesting eradicating sex, for the reasons you indicate, & for political reasons I’m nervous about using gender (seen by many as conformity to norms devised by a misogynistic patriarchal society) as an alternative. It’s complicated & I’m feeling my way.“

Feeling his way indeed! He’s still listening.

That’s good I think Brian Paddick could do a lot of good even by just raising a few questions about legalising gender self ID and helping more people to get information about women’s concerns and advocating for their existing rights talk freely about things, then make up their own minds.
The misogynist authoritarians will hate that and try to stop him doing that but meh. We see you.

Brian Paddick is worth contacting on this. I received a very decent, thoughtful response. House of Lords website makes it easy to contact any Lord.

Sarah Brown actually stood for election yesterday but "didn't publicly announce or promote" their candidacy, they claim because of the awful abuse trans women allegedly receive on social media, but it is more likely because Brown didn't want their utterly vile history of public misogyny and lesbophobia scuppering their chances.

The LibDems cannot both support women and continue to have an association with Sarah Brown. They know Brown's character and history and yet still they have him as a candidate. No woman should ignore this.

Here are some tweets from lib dem representatives referring to Brown as "female", "bravest", "kindest", "one of the best people I know" despite Brown's well documented vicious actions against women, for example exhorting other TAs to use Julie Bindel's surname as the word for the smegma found on the devices used by trans identified males to dilate their inverted penises.

"Women should support each other. I fully support my fellow lib dem female candidates" -
Jackie Pearcey urging women to support male LD candidate Sarah Brown. Does Jackie really believe that male == female? Or maybe Jackie believes that when a male says they are a female that makes them so? Or maybe it's the surgery that makes this miracle happen? I wonder if Jackie could explain their reasoning here, or why women should support a candidate who calls vaginas "off putting" and lesbians "sexually frustrated", and calls women who question gender "TERFs".

snowflakeespecial.tumblr.com/post/89561501303/breaking-news-lesbians-stage-protest-of

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/20/greatest-sexual-taboo-polyamorous-transgender

Zoe O'Connell is on the Lib Dem LGBT exec as well as Sarah Brown.

Wow, 2 LibDem councillors from that article?!
Seems quite a high representation amongst the Lib Dems, as I know RosenbergW has pointed out before. The size of the agenda there is truly massive. I really don't get how it all goes down on the doorstep!

In related political news

www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/caitlyn-jenner-will-address-the-uks-parliament-on-diversity?utm_term=.tn5lM1jk1j#.kcDM0xKJxK

From Pink News:

"A transgender electoral candidate has shared the “horrendous” insults she faced just an hour after a pro-LGBT Twitter account posted its support of her in Thursday’s local elections.
In 2010, Sarah Brown was voted as the only openly-trans politician elected to serve in the UK when she was named Cambridge City Councillor for Petersfield. She served as councillor until 2014, but is now looking to get re-elected.
But after recent scrutiny of transgender people in Britain in the press and social media, Brown said that she has faced “relentless” abuse during her election campaign this year."

www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/05/03/trans-lib-dem-sarah-brown-twitter-trans-abuse/

& a link to previously discussed:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3211247-The-Lib-Dem-LGBT-twitter-feed-is-annoyed-at-Mumsnet

I love how pointing out that males calling themselves lesbians is homophobic constitutes horrendous abuse according to SB and Penis News.

One of the things I find so odd are SB's descriptions of their mental state.

When entering political life a pre-requisite is the ability to engage in debate and accept that you will have to engage with people who disagree with you on a wide variety of topics.

Expecting to be elected whilst also tweeting about being mentally fragile, missing meetings and taking Valium is not a exactly a great platform from which to convince the electorate of your ability to represent their best interests, when frankly the overwhelming narrative is a single minded pursuit of your own agenda.

I can't imagine anyone else being taken seriously and being supported to stand for election under similar circumstances.

What do you think the response would be to a woman who declared that suffering from PND had left her medicated, in bed, unable to do her role but was still saying vote for me? How supportive would people be?