I didn't know how angry I was until a LibDem dared to drop a leaflet through the door

[beenandgoneandbackagain]

Title says it all really.

Man dropped leaflet on to mat whilst I was near the front door. So I picked it up, saw it was a LibDem one and walked out to catch up with him and made him take it back, saying I was disgusted with his party's attitude to women.

He didn't even know, and his response was to angrily tell me his wife is a feminist.

Obviously she is not aware that feminists are not welcome in the LibDems.

I told him to go and do some reading on the LibDem's view of women.

But the whole episode made me realise how angry I am about the current attack on women's sex-based rights.

Really, really, angry.

Dippy perhaps if you, as someone who does the vital constituency work for them explained why their policy on trans issues is wrong, you might have more chance of influencing the policy than members or potential voters

I think Procrastinator1 has a point. Withdraw your labour or threaten to do so.

Do they have a different definition of 'kind' that I'm not aware of?

I really don't think they have thought it through to that extent. They cannot have, otherwise they'd see the obvious contradictions. There simply cannot be any questioning of their Liberal principles of tolerance and kindness. The socialist side of them seeks, instinctively, always to side with the perceived under-dog.

The socialist side of them seeks, instinctively, always to side with the perceived under-dog.

It's a shame that they can't see that the real underdogs in this are the girls, not the 'brave and stunning' Rachel McKinnons.

My (female) cousin is a Parliamentary candidate for the Lib Dems. I told her I would never, ever vote for the Lib Dems while they provide a home for people like Aimee Challonner and while they provide a fertile home for this idiotic ideology.

She had never heard anything about AC. Didn't know anything about the issue. Said it had never been raised on the door step.

I think we finished the conversation with her thinking I was a tin foil hatted lunatic.

Most people - even the politically engaged - still have absolutely no idea this is going on. And then with the Lib Dems you've also got the barrier of their need to do some virtue signalling before you can get on to the meat of the matter. Exhausting.

I helped with leafletting and telling but resigned my membership after receiving Lynne Featherstone's email. I was asked why and sent off a lengthy email about all the reasons and received a thoughtful response about how there were other women in the party who also felt that way and that they would share it with the higher ups.

Do contact them - you might be surprised! If you can send your response to your local main point of contact as well as the national party, you stand more chance of hearing back I think.

If he chose to tell you his wife is a feminist that presumably suggests he isn't.

If you can send your response to your local main point of contact

I rather think ours might be Sarah Brown.

I'm hoping he will go back, tell his wife about the awful woman who wouldn't accept his word that the LibDems are pro-woman, and maybe she'll google and peak

It doesn't take too long on the internet to realise what a shit-show women are being sold.

Echoing what some other LD activists have said. The majority of our local party are concerned about Brexit, climate change or local issues and are only dimly aware of this. The little they know about it is that we ought to stand up for the rights of the minority.

Most local parties are currently preparing for local elections in May and will be responding to feedback they get on the doorstep. If the people whose votes they’d like to win aren’t talking about this issue, then it’s not going to feature as an election issue and most activists will continue not to think too much about it.

One of the ironies of being a democratic party , with policies decided by the membership is that all it needs is a smallish group of determined members on the right day, to bind everyone into a party policy, and there’s nothing that the leadership can do about it without severe political risk.

The vast majority of Lib Dems aren’t actively campaigning for men to have access to women’s safe spaces, and hardly any have the power to change the policy. Unless your local party are actively campaigning on trans issues - and some do, like Cambridge - it’s probably not fair to shout at your local leaflet deliverer. But definitely tell them why you won’t be voting Lib Dem. It will get reported back, and enough reports will start to make a difference

Tap335 I think Treats has it. When I go to conference I get my say, but so do others. And as someone up thread pointed out, the Lib Dem membership is classically liberal and prefers to let people get on with their own lives and to ban as few things as possible. It's why the Lib Dems have often passed pro-porn motions in the past, for example.

As public discourse develops and we learn that pro-porn can be anti-woman, and that 'kind to transwomen' can mean 'leaves women behind', I think things will change. But I don't want my fellow activists to look at me as tin foil hat brigade (as rightreckoner's cousin did) because that will make me easy to ignore. Slowly, slowly catchee politics. Frustrating, but normal.

The socialist side of them seeks, instinctively, always to side with the perceived under-dog.

It frankly beggars belief that they believe the under-dog is the 6ft 2 male bodied agp fetishist and not the 7-16 year old girls expected to share bathrooms with them, regardless of how they feel about it, regardless of whether they'd prefer a single sex space to deal with the start of menstruation. Apparently being an 'under-dog' only matters if you're male.

It frankly beggars belief that they believe the under-dog is the 6ft 2 male bodied agp fetishist and not the 7-16 year old girls expected to share bathrooms with them, regardless of how they feel about it, regardless of whether they'd prefer a single sex space to deal with the start of menstruation. Apparently being an 'under-dog' only matters if you're male.

Again.....most have not really thought it through, nor are well versed in the issues, and certainly not on the circumstances that have already arisen. From a Liberal perspective they probably perceive that women already have equality in law, and now they have moved on to the next 'minority' issue.

There is strange refusal to hear or to see when any problems are pointed out. The attitude is you can't treat all trans people on the basis of what one or two might do; which is spectacularly besides the point. Nobody is denying civil rights for trans people anyway. The willingness to over-look normal safe-guarding rules has to be of concern though; especially when it comes to children.

My local LIB DEM councillors just keep going on about how well uni-sex toilets work in France. The whole business is just a minor issue for them.

At the moment, to most activists, it looks like any other straightforward case of a minority being oppressed by a closed-minded establishment. Think how many people on here have taken a long time to twig that this situation is quite different.

I take heart in the fact that trans rights have not been taken up as a campaign by the party in the same way as Section 28 or equal marriage were. There are a lot of noisy activists within the party, using the party name as a platform, but the party as a whole are not campaigning for change. Layla’s gender-neutral uniform Bill seems to be as far as we’re willing to go and a lot of members were quite critical of it, on the basis that it oughtn’t to be the subject of national legislation, but up to individual schools.

Just
most have not really thought it through, nor are well versed in the issues, and certainly not on the circumstances that have already arisen.

Treats
But definitely tell them why you won’t be voting Lib Dem. It will get reported back, and enough reports will start to make a difference

I'd hoped to take your stance on this too.

Until the Lib Dem canvasser came knocking on my door. We had what seemed like a good conversation at the time and he was keen that his MP-hopeful candidate would definitely want to hear more about this.

He shared his email with me (apparently, he didn't do this often, so I was very lucky )

So I took the time to send him a thoughtful email reiterating my concerns around the effect of current trans activism on

• children
• lesbian and gay rights
• women's rights in general

• and also highlighting the treatment by the Lib Dem party of lib-dem supporters who had challenged the current ideology, because he'd said he was unaware of anyone leaving the party over this issue, or people being targeted in politics in general for having different views.

Also flagged to him that I was fairly left-wing in my politics and have been a long-term campaigner for LGB rights (and T until it started trampling over everyone else!), in case he wanted to dismiss me as right-wing. NB: if you're right-wing, that's not to dismiss your politics or beliefs, as we have a democracy. Just that anyone who dissents from 'Transwomen are women' seem to be labelled as one political 'box'.

And in case my lovely smiley-doorstep-heycanIhaveyourvote-canvasser thought this was a niche issue, I highlighted this:

this is a remarkable belief system we are in the grip of, politically and socially. I am allowed to question a Christian's belief in God without being anti-Christian. I am allowed not to believe in Allah, whilst not being anti-Islam. But if I question the subjective belief that a person can change biological sex, or state that I do not believe that a transwoman's penis is biologically female, I am immediately categorised as anti-trans and a hater: .... because it also speaks to our democracy. To politically force through this subjective belief system, to pretend facts don't exist, to penalise and punish people from being able to disagree respectfully, without hate, but still disagree, rings worrying authoritarian bells

And I said I was sure our small group of women who meet up because we're concerned about all of this in our home town would welcome a chat with him or 'MP-hopeful' candidate.

Guess what reader?

Three weeks in -
There's no emoji for 'tumbleweed' so I'm going for a tumbling glitter-ball of silence.

Oh, and hey Mr Smiley-doorstepper-canIhaveyourvote. I still think your #askforclive campaign is great. As we agreed, no one should be abused, harrassed, for their sexual orientation or how they wish to present themselves.

(NB: Unless you're excluding from that harrassment and abuse lesbians who receive abuse for not wishing to include dicks within the word 'lesbian'

Or females who, for whatever reason they have, do not wish to have dicks in their vicinity in single-sex spaces. If #Clive excludes them, then Clive is simply a male rights activist in sheeps' clothing!)

I don't disagree, but I do wish people wouldn't yell at political leafleters and canvassers (I'm still a Lib Dem). We don't know everything. We're not professionals. In general, we're happy to engage - that's why we do it. But when we get yelled at, we withdraw.

With respect, leafletinthewind, you do know about this, because you’re posting here. And you’re choosing for your membership fees to continue to fund Featherstone, Moran and Brown to harangue women and tell them they aren’t wanted. You aren’t going to pull them back from the brink- they’re too far gone. They deserve to be annihilated. And for as long as you continue to prop them up rather than walking away, you’re doing your bit to prevent their annihilation.

I know that there are perverts and paedophiles in all political parties, but the Liberals/ Dems have history.

This is shockingly true. I previously happily voted for them with no clue about this. Small party, easily taken over by perverts and weirdos.

However, in 2017, the LibDems fielded a new, brave and stunning candidate - Helen Belcher - and Helen Belcher's leaflets spoke almost exclusively of Helen Belcher's TR activism, with only a passing (and meaningless) reference to the constituency itself. It resonated so much with voters here that the LibDems dropped vote share and the Conservative vote could have been weighed rather than counted

Awww Lily! You’ve made my night. Belcher is particularly active in anti-women activist circles, and held by higher Lib Dems to be particularly reasonable.

Glad to hear they’re just deranged and it doesn’t wash with rational members of the public.

*clarification, “they’re” in the final sentence of my post referred to senior Lib Dems. Not Belcher.

I was a libdem member for a while and quit before the trans thing over shitty stuff to do with women.

My complaint then was that what they primarily seem interested in liberalising is who men can stick their dick into.

A lot of the thrust of standard trans activist standpoints will appeal to them.

• Sex work is work
• Young people doing sex work is beneficial (there was a motion at their conference to reduce age for prostitution and porn to 16 a few years back)

The trans ideology, linking in directly to pro sex work ideology (why? they are not connected? this is a big question then surely?) and general feeling that it's out of order to restrict the "rights" of young people around their sexuality (what you and I would say is preventing exploitation) and bingo marriage made in heaven.

I’m an ex-Labour Party member. Left with a heavy heart but cannot stomach their views on self ID.
I did think of voting Lid Dems because of Brexit last time but couldn’t after talking to the candidate. She is pro self ID and also thinks page 3 is fine because it’s a woman’s choice😱

I’ll be vote spoiling next time, for the first time in my life.

They deserve to be annihilated.

Crikey, steady on!

I also argued with a Lib Dem canvasser when they showed up. (I was supposed to be having a goddamn day off; I was sick and otherwise in bed coughing my guts up), basically saying that I and a lot of other women feel concerns about self-ID are being downplayed and framed as bigotry by, among other parties, the LDs.

He sold me some asinine bull about how there's always going to be teething problems as we move towards a more tolerant society and talked a bit about how he lives alongside people with different views and lives as an atheist with Christian co-workers and something something gay rights something something. I did not let him get away with pretending that this is about a frickdamned misunderstanding of people who are different to me; this is a clash of rights with an enormous vulnerable group being exploited for their emotional compliance and willingness to please, the LDs have happily created and are enforcing an environment where women cannot defend their own rights without being called bigoted and we are sick of it being framed as 'goodie educated progressives' vs 'baddie confused conservatives', and trusting to our silence will soon not be enough.

I suppose I'm vaguely hoping that more and more women doing the same will begin to push some change but it's a drop in the ocean for now. I rather suspect if he gave it any further thought it would be to dismiss the encounter with a bigoted TERF as another occupational hazard.

The (older male) LD canvasser who appeared at the end of the conversation did say I was quite right to say that last bit, so it seems there is dissent in the ranks. It's not enough but it's a start.

The trans ideology, linking in directly to pro sex work ideology (why? they are not connected? this is a big question then surely?) and general feeling that it's out of order to restrict the "rights" of young people around their sexuality (what you and I would say is preventing exploitation) and bingo marriage made in heaven.

We really can't afford to forget what happened with PIE over 40 years ago. Where men who wanted to rape children argued that children had the right to consent to sex.

PIE was formed in 1974. It campaigned for "children's sexuality". It wanted the government to axe or lower the age of consent. It offered support to adults "in legal difficulties concerning sexual acts with consenting 'under age' partners". The real aim was to normalise sex with children.

Journalist Christian Wolmar remembers their tactics. "They didn't emphasise that this was 50-year-old men wanting to have sex with five-year-olds. They presented it as the sexual liberation of children, that children should have the right to sex," he says.

When Peter Hain, then president of the Young Liberals, described paedophilia as "a wholly undesirable abnormality", a fellow activist hit back. "It is sad that Peter has joined the hang 'em and flog 'em brigade. His views are not the views of most Young Liberals."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26352378

The Lib Dems seem to have learnt nothing from this experience. Being 'liberal' isn't just about letting everyone do what they want. Sometimes young and/or vulnerable people need to be protected. That seems to be the bit they've forgotten about.