Parliament debate on homophobia today, tweet MP if you would like lesbian voices to be represented

[Wanderabout]

Peter Kyle MP is opening the debate. If you agree with the concerns of some lesbians, highlighted in the article below, you may want to tweet him and ask him to make sure your concerns on lesbophobia and the range of lesbian voices and concerns are represented in the discussion. You could also tweet/contact your own MP.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/the-silencing-of-the-lesbians/

there's a backbench debate on “homophobia, transphobia and biphobia” which will offer some clues about how willing MPs are to acknowledge the complexity of the gender debate and the interests of the different people and groups concerned. Perhaps some of the things I’ve mentioned here will be raised. Perhaps."

Crispin Blunt saying the GRA consultation is urgent and needs to include non binary.

At 16:25 he is talking about a campaign of transphobic misinformation. He is directly comparing this to section 28.

Kirkup needs to do an article on that statistic

16:36 Lloyd Russel-Moyle, Labour talking about Sophie Cook being assaulted and abused via twitter. He reads out a transphobic tweet that uses the T word a lot.

He says she recieves hundreds and hundreds of these tweets every week

He says there are 300,000 trans people "or thereabouts" in the UK and that they need better representation, repeats that we have a very gay friendly parliament and we need to "move forward" and have a trans friendly parliament

Hannah Bardell, SNP, starts with a quote from Hillary Clinton. It is really interesting that it's the Clintons who our MPs are holding up here, not any home grown LG activists.

Lots of mentions of Stonewall throughout though, as having fought for LGBT rights for 30 years I think. Didn't they only just add the T when Ruth Hunt took over?

The comparisons to homophobia against LG and transphobia against T have been a theme throughout, the people making them clearly see homophobia as being yesterday's battle (in the UK) and trans being their own today. And yet, and yet, all the examples of homophobia are of rights abuses like denial of right to choose a partner or get married, and outside of the UK of incredible violence. When they talk about trans it's about self harm and tweets. It's a difference that can't help but stand out.

16:40 figures from Stonewall that a third of trans uni students have experienced negative conduct from staff in the past year, followed by a repeat of the 45% trans teenager suicide attempt stat.

16:45 Dawn Butler says we have fallen from #1 in Europe for LGBT rights four years ago to #4 now and that the governments delay on the GRA has created a "hostile environment for the LGBT+ community"

Butler "Some of the language used especially around trans issues is very reminiscent of the language used in defence used about Section 28 decades ago" 16:46

Continues "and on some social media site there is talk about reintroducing Section 28 for trans people. We must not let that happen."

16:49 "I don't want to argue about this, I just want to move us forward" - Is this the parliamentary version of #nodebate?

The whole bit between 16:45 and 16:50 is chilling imo.

16:45 Dawn Butler says we have fallen from #1 in Europe for LGBT rights four years ago to #4 now and that the governments delay on the GRA has created a "hostile environment for the LGBT+ community"

I heard that and thought it was a very a revealing thing to say, all the the focus is on T. She is not hearing or being fed anything else. And she has been fed the S28 line. I wonder who that will get blamed on?

Christ. That is #NoDebate