1st Government National Adviser for LGBT Health appointed - and a panel

[ReSistersUnited]

From the government website:

• Clinical adviser in the NHS appointed to advise on LGBT health issues

• Expert panel also appointed, which will focus on key issues such as conversion therapy, improving access and tackling inequality in healthcare

• Government Equalities Office to host inaugural national LGBT conference (Monday 18 March)

What's this all about then?

Some of those are VERY loaded terms aren't they?

Why is conversion therapy the first point? Do they mean, actual conversion therapy - or do they mean stopping counsellors from being able to explore reasons other than trans for children presenting as trans - like trauma, ASD etc.

What's this all about? Is this a surprise or did people know it was happening?

Actually this could be a good thing in a way.
Of 103,000 people living with HIV in the UK, 30,000 are women, the majority of whom are black Africans or from other black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Public Health England figures show that 25% of new HIV diagnoses in 2016 were in women, and women are more likely than men who have sex with men to be diagnosed with a CD4 count lower than 350; a marker of late diagnosis.
Doesn't this make the case for collecting accurate data on women and transwomen.
I was annoyed at the publicity around putting LBGT at the heart of the NHS.
What does that even mean for everyone else. If any group is at the heart it's children.

Looks like it's something to do with this National LGBT Survey 2017: Healthcare amongst lesbian and bisexual women Research report March 2019

this is going to get a whole lot worse over the next few years.

No doubt. It's utterly depressing.
Penny Mordaunt doesn't understand her brief, and her shadow Dawn Butler is equally clueless. It's inappropriate for the Minister for Women and Equalities to declare herself an 'ally' of Stonewall, an organisation that demands acceptance of heterosexual males as lesbians. Stonewall doesn't represent the whole LGB population - it is using National Lottery funds to pay a 'cotton ceiling' campaigner to influence public opinion.
I find it staggering that the only people in parliament who understand the threat to women are two men, David TC Davies MP and Lord Moonie.
Where's Harriet Harman?

That "Healthcare amongst lesbian and bisexual women" report:
"Unless otherwise stated, all findings relate to cisgender lesbian and bisexual women who responded to the survey."

At a glance, about half of the report seems to focus on transwomen. Why report findings relating to 'lesbian transwomen' at all? How are they relevant in the context of women's healthcare?

Lewis Turner is the chairman of Press for Change

www.pfc.org.uk/index.html

Funny his bio above doesn't mention that

You would expect a Health Panel to be part of the Department for Health, rather than the Department for Equalities.

This week, the Equalities Department demonstrated that it has a shaky understanding of health needs when it launched its Lesbian, Bi and Transwomen Health campaign. So that was a good start!

Why would you leave out transmen? Why would you ignore the very people who suffer the same health conditions as their sex as well as poor long-term health due to transition? Why?

What sort of Health panel can't see what we can all see - that men and women aren't the same?

What sort of Equalities panel sidelines females and centres males?

twitter.com/WomenEqualities/status/1105484845042597888

James Morton, Manager at the Scottish Trans Alliance and member of the Parliamentary Forum on Gender Identity

see James Morton's contributions at October 2018 TRA conference organised by Jane Fae:

OP TheHarpySings 'We’re Still Here Conference 8th September: A report from the inside'

Hi all

First off, I’m a regular poster, have been here for years under various usernames, it I’m posting here on a name change as I don’t want this traced to me.

On 8th September there was a conference held in London a Bloomsbury Baptist Church which was called We’re Still Here, which featured a variety of panels and workshops and was attended by many prominent people in the pro-GRA reform camp.

I decided to attend to find out what was being said as it was clear that they did not want anyone to attend that wasn’t a TRA or an ally.

What follows are my notes from the day. But first a few notes on attendance:

There were probably 80-100 people in attendance. Overwhelmingly white. Mainly older transwomen. A couple of transmen. Some Mermaids delegates (continues)

(extracts)
4) Equalities Act

So… there was a kind of informal meeting during lunchtime about The Equalities Act which was being run by everyone’s favourite advocate for extreme porn, Jane Fae. Edward Lord turned up, straight from a meeting with the City of London Corp. PlEASE NOTE THAT FAE AND LORD DID NOT WANT THIS SECTION TWEETED.

Edward Lord. He was dressed like Tweedledum. Or, if I’m feeling generous, a Mario Brother that doesn’t get invited to Xmas dinner anymore.

Mr Lord was very bumfaced about the Andrew Gilligan article about him in July and said that opposition to the GRA consultation just wanted to “cause mayhem.” He directly mentioned the Man Friday Hampstead Pond stuff.

Apparently “there have been no incidents of men turning up to the women’s pond but Man Friday turned up to the men’s pond and demanded admission- by force if necessary.”

As of 8/9/18, 15.5k people had completed the attitudes survey.

Lord said that TW were entitled to the protected characteristic “Woman”- he said the Gov dept on woman and equalities has confirmed this. Apparently the brave and stunning vexatious litigator Giuliana Kendall has something to do with this being confirmed.

Edward Lord is worried about the 125 elected members of the London assembly or whatever the fuck Londoners have governing the city. Not all of them are onside. He is worried that all of this is going to be discussed at committee and that “terfs are going to protest”.

Jane Fae said that JF has been in contact w/ YHA and GirlGuiding. Fae is of the opinion that the law doesn’t distinguish gender and sex. They are not defined and parliament will not define them.

The TRAs are fully prepared to take local councils to court of they try to invoke EA2010 for reasons of sex. JF was nodding at Giuliana when JF said this.

James Morton (Scottish Trans Alliance) said to be “strategic about test cases to ensure strong case law”.

Edward Lord agreed. He also said that the City of London Corp city solicitor and the Chief Exec are “strong allies”. (continues)

6. GETTING THE GRA WE WANT

This was a workshop with 3 experts sitting with groups and talking through activism. They were:

Helen Belcher (Lib Dems, Trans Media Watch)
James Morton (Scottish Transgender Alliance)
Alex Moore (GenderJam). Moore is from N Ireland.

James Morton gave some insight into tactics the TRAs will probably start using in England and Wales as they were successful in Scotland.

He said the TRAs need to build allies in mainstream women and children’s organisations so it looks like they care about them.

He also said what worked in Scotland's was a “constructive, friendly, innocent” tone when debating or in dialogue with the GC side. To be mindful about who is watching- essentially like what we do with the lurkers on the FWR board. To make the TRAs look like the reasonable side.

James also said that in dialect with elected officials, to clarify that the trans side aren’t silencing anyone but want to clarify the misconceptions being bandied around by GC feminists.

The Scottish GRA changes will probably be put forward in the 2019-2020 parliamentary year.

Belcher has been meeting with MPs and members of the House of Lords. Most of them don’t really understand the GRA and don’t have much time to think about it thanks to the Brexit FUBAR. “Education” of law makers is needed and that’s what Belcher is doing.

Apparently the TRAs lack the infrastructure they had in the 1990s and early 2000s so they need to think carefully and coordinate.

Belcher said to re-iterate to MPs that the EA2010 is not being affected and no one is losing any rights (wtf).

Apparently in terms of political support, the Tories are split about 50/50, Labour, Lib Dem's and SNP are all onside. The Greens were NOT mentioned.

The big fear on the TRA side is that this Government won’t survive long enough to get this through- again because Brexit.

According to Alex Moore, Arlene Foster of the DUP went to a Pink News event and didn’t seem to know much about this. In NI no one really cares about the trans issues because everyone is focused on same sex marriage and abortion.

Alex then moaned about the Together for Yes campaign’s transmisogyny and that the campaign completely erased the experiences of trans and NB people who need abortions. Alex would like a legal change of gender to be free of charge and as easy as changing your name.

Helen Belcher was annoyed at GC feminists using “emotive arguments” regards rape.

HB said that the pile ons pro self-ID MPs get from the GC side if they say something supportive of the trans side are not helping the GC cause. Maria Miller told Belcher that MPs got loads of abuse in the run up to marriage equality and that abusive messages, tweets from GC feminists will only harden MPs against the GC side.

HB also said something snide about “mouthy” female Labour MPs who speak before thinking on Twitter- especially on a Friday or Saturday night after they’ve had a few drinks.

Apparently the TRAs have civil service support and that the Stonewall report and Gov survey are strong bits of evidence they have which is helping them win arguments.

They are saying there is no risk to reforming the GRA and are asking MPs “what is the risk?”

In the group I was in they also talked about how changing your gender multiple times should be allowed and shouldn’t be seen as “bad intentions”.

James Morton talked about how they can get rid of “gender” markers on things like IT systems and places where it isn’t relevant- apparently GDPR might be able to help them here.

JM’s campaigning tips were to gain trust in the local community- and to approach moderate feminists, “correct misconceptions and forgive any ignorance they may have displayed”. They want to gain trust and make themselves likeable.

Apparently small acts like helping to campaign about period poverty or retweeting the local branch of Women’s Aid will make a difference and result in some reciprocation. They want to make it look like they care about Women's issues so they don’t appear threatening (continues)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3398737-We-re-Still-Here-Conference-8th-September-A-report-from-the-inside

I remember seeing the job ad for this National Advisor on NHS jobs and Linked In- can’t remember the exact figure but it was a v senior salary- I’m going to say ballpark was something like 90k-120K.

Then - they had what sounded like an assistant or deputy advisor role to that - a ‘National LGBT Programme manager’, which was paid somewhere in the senior manager ballpark, 60-70K kind of area. Kind of salary that you would get after several years experience of managing a large team (20+ people?) in an strategic role elsewhere in the public sector.

Thing was, oddly, management of Programmes did not, IIRC, figure much in the Job description for the Programme manager job. Also- oddly- one of their main responsibilities was to keep the diary of the National Advisor post. [hmmm].

Both of the jobs could be mostly worked from home IIRC. Which IME is highly unusual at such a high pay bracket. Neither job with any significant line management to correspond to salary.

I can’t see the job ads any more but here’s a link in case it’s cached somewhere. (NHS England
National LGBT Programme manager. London or Leeds based.
jobs.england.nhs.uk/job/UK/West_Yorkshire/Leeds_London/NHS_England/Admin_clerical/Admin_clerical-v1444954?_ts=1)

So while both these roles could have an important impact if filled by a professional kind of person who would be advocating for eg young people’s access to specialised mental health services.. and not just someone who would treat the role politically and call for affirmation...

It does seem weird that for high salaries the recruiters had quite low demands. Not sure if that means the roles are actually about more being a bit of a figurehead so they actually didn’t want big hitter applicants in post bringing in their own agendas, or whether if the standard NHS/public sector professional bar is being made quite low in terms of what the skills and experience of the job demand for the salary- which would result in widening the field a great deal- to allow someone to be in post not for perhaps for the skills and experience that they bring but perhaps for who they are, or for what they represent?

Anyway hopefully I’m wrong and these will be real impactful roles making a great contribution to improve health care for LGBT people. But will be interested to see who they have appointed and what their backgrounds are.

So who is going to tell the trans women that TE aren’t W, and they had really better get that prostate check booked in and aropnpissing around trying to get breast exams and smear tests (or moaning about lack of call up for screenings). That’s the main health issue I can think of.

Well, that and scrapping the giving our puberty blockers like sweeties (jelly babies if you will) to tweens and young adults on request.

Can some sane member of parliament please sit down with Penny, Dawn and others and just sense-check with them what's going on? (I know, 'sane' and 'member of parliament' right now may not go together!)

No MP wants to have a 'Lord Steel' moment 40 years in the future do they (and no, I'm not saying trans activism =Cyril Smith here, I'm saying 'think things through')

Dawn?
Penny?

Don't be a Lord Steel-in-waiting.

Think.

As my mum used to say ‘what goes around comes around - eventually’.

Can some sane member of parliament please sit down with Penny, Dawn and others and just sense-check with them what's going on?

They understand, they just don't actually care, it's not that they haven't "Got it", they know what's going on, but they are the ones pushing this.
These people are the ones who are in control of the ideology being pushed.

Over the next year we really need to be preparing and educating our peers and friends on what is going to happen, the GRA changes won't be stopped, but the public will pull together and not follow them.

We need more grown ups in government. Ann widdocome perhaps. I can just imagine her...

When they talk about conversion therapy, they're not talking about gay conversion therapy. They want to move the U.K. to an affirmation approach like in the US. So rather than watchful waiting, children will proceed immediately down the gender identity pathway of their choice, cutting off their healthy body parts as they go.