Pathetic response from Anne Main MP

[PygmyHippoBob]

I'm one of several women who wrote to Anne Main (Conservative MP for St Albans) prior to the GRA consultation closing. I gave my email careful consideration and it turns out her staff have either not read it beyond the subject title or decided to ignore the content completely:
_
Dear [ ],

Thank you for your email and for sharing your concerns with me.

I want to assure you that this Government is committed to working for transgender rights and to promote equality in society. We have already made significant progress in this area by drawing up guidance for all employers and service providers as part of a £3million programme to tackle transphobic bullying head on. The Government have published an action plan that will aim to improve the lives of the LGBTQ community.

The Government acknowledged that the gender recognition process is not currently working which is why they commissioned the recent consultation with the aim of reforming the existing system. The consultation provides information about how to reform the GRA and further, to make it less bureaucratic and intrusive for transgender people. The consultation included recommendations such as:

No medical diagnosis or presentation of evidence for trans people to get their identity legally recognised
Recognises non-binary identities
Gives all trans people, including 16 – 17-year-olds, the right to self-determination, through a much simpler and more streamlined administrative process.

Following its release, those who work in the Government Equalities Office will carefully consider if safeguards are needed and what they might need to be.

However, I agree that more must be done to help transgender people with the unique and frequently difficult challenges that they face. It is utterly unacceptable that they face some of the worst discrimination in our society and this consultation is the first step forwards in addressing the difficulties that they face.

I am looking forward to the publication of the Government’s response in due course.

Thank you again for taking the time to write to me.

_

For anyone interested, here was my email to her:

Dear Anne,

I have just responded to the government's Gender Recognition Act consultation, as has my mother who also lives in St Albans.

I hope this is already on your radar, but if not, I wanted you to know how important it is to me and other women for single sex spaces to be preserved. Spaces where women are vulnerable or at a disadvantage to men have been sex segregated for many years for good reason: toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, prisons and sports.

The Equality Act 2010 permits men to be excluded from single sex spaces, but this exemption will be rendered useless if every organisation is supposed to decide whether excluding a particular man is a proportion means of achieving a legitimate aim, every single time a man attempts entry, and at the risk of expensive litigation if they get it wrong.

Men who 'identify' as women, however sincerely, are not in fact women. Men (regardless of how they identify) are far more likely than women to commit violent crime. Men who decide to identify as women do not suddenly become low risk, and they do not suddenly stop being sexually attracted to women.

It is not just a question of safety, but also privacy and dignity. If I was to ask for a female nurse/doctor to carry out an intimate examination, it would be distressing to be unable to object to being examined by a man just because he identified as a woman. In some religious groups women are not permitted to mix with unfamiliar men, so if all public spaces became prima facie mixed sex, these religious women will have to stay at home.

There is also sport. Women and girls will be less likely to participate in sport if they are competing against men and boys. However much men suppress their testosterone they still have the benefit of larger skeletons, larger muscles and larger hearts and lungs. Can you guess the sex of the person who won the women's 2010, 2011 and 2012 English fell-running championships?
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/14/champion-runner-lauren-jeska-jailed-for-attempted-of-uk-athletics-official-ralph-knibbs

I am concerned by the fact that small children are being encouraged to think of themselves as transgender when for most, the feeling of not fitting in or not feeling right in their body is an adolescent phase. Children should not be encouraged into taking hormones that will render them infertile or into mutilating their healthy bodies. The government, charities and schools are being advised by Mermaids UK - the CEO of which took her son to Thailand when he was 16 to be castrated.

The only MP brave enough to have spoken out about this is David Davies:

twitter.com/DavidTCDavies/status/1045288789608992769
twitter.com/DavidTCDavies/status/1041095111134900229

It's disappointing that no women MPs have put their head above the parapet. I hope you will be the first!

I look forward to hearing from you.

That’s a disgrace!

@ladydickisathingapparently... Yes maybe Herts Ad good idea, or perhaps threat of Herts Ad first if we want to get a meeting with her...? Are you on FB?... Send me a DM and I'll add u to the St A F-in-the-pub messenger chat

I like the idea of going to meet Anne in a group.
I had no idea the Peahen Pub was a hotbed of feminism! Don’t think I know any of you IRL.

I too would be very interested in meeting Anne Main in a group. I’ve also had replies on Brexit from her that ignore every point made. Keen to make the acquaintance of the Peahen Plotters!! Might be useful to draw up a letter together for the Herts Ad.

Waves frantically, jumps up and down

I live in St Albans, am a GC feminist and am a SAHM so am able to attend daytime surgeries to put our concerns to AM in person.

I'd also love to meet other feminists in a pub. 

Definitely go and see your MP in person.

What they really believe when face to face has so often been different from what they are prepared to commit to writing in these dangerous times.

I've just got back from a 15 minute meeting with my South Coast Labour MP.

Great chat. He had sent me the cut and paste style letter we are all getting earlier this year. I subsequently sent him the polling results form Helen Stanisland and went to talk to him about that. He was very very open and receptive and thanked me for coming and said I had prompted him to really think about his position on this. He was himself alarmed by the recent Karen White case and was absolutely willing to listen and consider my points. I told him mumsnet had been campaigning and researching and we were raising our concerns to make sure we were listened to in this major change.

He had a party helper there with him, ex army man who was very sensible and had experience of de-transitioners in the army (wow), who invited me to come along to a union representatives meeting and talk to them about this!

Please go and talk to your MP, they are not all going to call you a bigot!

I recommend the polling as a start point as this is evidence that the general population are not of the belief that males should be treated as women for all purposes!
Link to poll.

uploadfiles.io/wxbzm

Excellent! Snorbens massive...... @GreebolsMySpiritAnimal @ThelmaRB check your inboxes!!

Aw. Feeling nostalgic for the peahen* now. I was born in St A but am now a transnortherner.

Maybe the ‘ye olde fighting cocks’ is more appropriate a meeting place, considering the subject matter?

Ha! @BettyDuMonde maybe thats what we should call ourselves !

OP would you mind if I used your original text as a starting point for writing to my MP?

Gemme please go ahead! Hope you ellicit a better response than I did.

Why am I not surprised that Anne Main replied to you like this she is one of the most disassociated MPs and I am gutted she's mine!

The trains issue has recently highlighted her utter disregard for the feelings of her constituents

UPDATE!!

In response to the follow up letter sent by a number of Mumsnetters and pub-going feminists Anne Main MP has done an astonishing reverse ferret:

Dear [name],
Thank you for recently contacting me further via letter (dated 13th November 2018) about the concerns of yourself and a number of my constituents against the Government’s proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act.
It seems there may have been some miscommunication and I would just like to clarify my position for you. I can assure you that I fully agree with you on the concerns you have raised in your recent correspondence, in particular your concerns about children being encouraged to follow surgery or even lifelong medicalisation and, as you all do, I disagree with the principle of allowing people to change their legal sex through a process of self-identification, in particular without proper consultation and involvement with a doctor. In addition, I agree with you that males should not be able to gain access to female-only spaces or that women should be subject to intimate procedures by male, if they have requested a female professional instead.
Unfortunately, due to a high number of prior diary and parliamentary commitments until the New Year, I would be unavailable for a meeting at this moment in time. However, if you desire, I would be happy to write to the Minister for Women and Equalities to make her aware of your concerns and to request the Government’s comments in response to the queries highlighted clearly in your recent correspondence. Please respond to this email should you wish for me to do so.
Thank you again for your letter and I hope that this email has clarified my position on the proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act currently being put forward by Government.

Wow. Reverse ferret indeed.

"miscommunication" my arse.

Still. It demonstrates that the sands are shifting.

Well done for following this up, OP. Sounds like you just single-handedly educated your MP on the issues.

And yes to getting Anne Main to write to the Minister with your concerns.

The more of these that end up on Penny Mordaunt's desk, the better.

It also gives you an excuse to contact your MP again to ask for an update on whether they've heard from the Minister. You can use that opportunity to further educate your MP at the same time.

I can't claim the credit! That goes to Candidpeel for drafting the joint letter, and the other signatories ThelmaRB, Greebo and pombear

Farkin ell! Good effort. Presumably her staff have a number of 'topic bins' into which they toss all letters received, whatever the angle, and the first letters just get a boilerplate response.

Still waiting for any response from my MP to my letter about 'assigned at birth' being used in government documents. I think perhaps she's hoping I'll die forget about it. Time to pursue it. I'm really scared of trying to do this face to face but I think I'll have to.

Fantastic reverse ferret! Well done St A's women for your persistence.

As good a reply as that is, how the first reply was so spectacularly the opposite is concerning for how poor a grip she has on what her staff are doing on her behalf (or she's telling both sides what she thinks they want to hear.

Wow! Well done

Blimey! Brilliant lobbying! and all round.

Hooray for Mumsnet and all the ladies who came out for at the Peahen, the Crown and the Craft and Cleaver .

This is what we sent:
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We are writing to you as constituents who are concerned about the government’s proposal to reform the Gender Recognition Act, and we request a meeting.

Several of us have written to you previously (names & dates) and we have all received an identikit reply that suggests that you or your staff misread our emails or misunderstood our concerns. Please make time to meet with us.

We share your commitment to equality. We agree that people who are not gender conforming in their appearance or identity should be protected from discrimination or victimisation. But this should not (and does require) undermining women’s rights to safety and privacy, freedom of association and a place in public life.

We are also concerned that children who may not fit in easily, or who are suffering from anxiety or depression are being encouraged to hate their bodies and to go down a pathway of sterilisation, surgery and lifelong medicalisation.

We do not agree with the principle of allowing people to change their legal sex through a process of self identification. We do not agree that males should be able to gain access to female-only spaces such as changing rooms, hospital wards and prisons, and into women’s sports.
We do not agree that women should be subject to intimate searches and procedures such as smear tests by male people if they have requested a female.

Our concerns are likely shared by many people in St Albans. A recent representative poll across the UK carried out by Populus found that only 13% of people support the idea of removing doctors from the process of gender recognition, and fewer than 1 in 5 people think that male bodied people should have access to women’s spaces.

Your email responses have left us concerned that our views have been been misrecorded as being in agreement with the government’s proposals, rather than raising concerns about it. Please make the time to meet with us.

[signed with names and addresses with a naice pen]

We also sent graphs of the findings from the "Women Ask Questions"/Populus survey.

....i'm not sure if it was the naice pen or the survey which did it, but every little helps!

Great work from you there, candid.

No wonder Anne Main caved.

💪💪women doing it

Well done, that's excellent