How would you feel about this? Barking up the wrong tree?

[StrictlyHypothetical]

NC for this and prepared for it to potentially get some backs up. However, I am in a position where I have a bit of influence but would not want it to backfire, so I want to talk in hypotheticals. FWIW I am GC and my views have very much been cemented and shaped by this board although I tend to lurk rather than post.

Backbench, but long-standing (and very safe seat) Conservative MP exploring a 'cause' to throw their weight behind. Not afraid of controversy although not a household name by any stretch of the imagination. Outraged at the idea of self-identification, strongly believes that woman = adult human female and willing to publicly say as much. No social media presence so it would be the old-fashioned way.

HOWEVER. Voting record is not exactly woman-friendly. Voted against same-sex marriage, abortion rights etc. Definitely on the far right of the party. Would you welcome support from this person? Or would you see it as more a hindrance?

Any politician who is willing to stand up publicly and speak out on this is important. You don’t have to agree with his other views to seek his support on this issue. And you don’t need to vote for him at the next election if you feel his position on other issues is anti women, but you can still engage him on self ID. And maybe he might develop some tiny bit of understanding of the reality of what women experience in the process.

We need to lose the concept of moral purity. We are where we are because we have one party that is obsessed with winning at all costs regardless of what is right, and one that is obsessed with being right at all costs regardless of whether they win. Both attitudes are ultimately damaging.

Maybe rooting out incorrect use of the Equalities Act would be a good project/campaign - conflation of sex and gender etc and lack of Equalities Impact Assessments.

There is a potential problem that people who are coming at this from a conservative point of view can sound as ridiculous as those defending transgender ideology, and will do us no favours.

Anyone remember Gareth Bennett's outburst in the Welsh Assembly a couple of years ago?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-42343250

UKIP AM Gareth Bennett has been barred from speaking in Senedd debates in 2018 following a speech about transgender rights.

Mr Bennett refused to apologise for saying society could implode if there was too much "deviation from the norm".

If he is the typical Boris Johnson type misogynist (for want of a better description) he probably doesn’t gaf about public criticism for being a git. We all know what a creepy baffoon Boris is and all the disgust hasn’t done him any harm. If this guys the same type then he might be the right type to stand up and make a lot of noise against self ID. Not being on social media might be an advantage because he’s not going to get scared off by the masses of woke bros supporting the trans activists and back off. It also means he won’t get caught being wound up by them and saying something dickish and be discredited immediately. So his speaking up might last long enough for the less anti women tories yo add their voice, and other mps, especially as JS has made the pro self ID stance look like the loony option, so anyone voicing a reasoned argument in the after math will be compared to her interviews, which makes it easy for him to look good- even if it’s just long enough for the other mps to speak up. Plus the journos are currently speaking up more confidently now against self ID and the public is way more aware than previous, and those of us who get it have plenty of reasonable rational easy to make points we can counter the numpties with. We need to stop acting like social media hive mind represents the country, the number of times tories get in show that, huge groups of the electorate don’t use social media much (generalisation of course but I doubt many older women are out there on twitter thinking about this, but would most definitely agree with an old fashioned Tory mp who speaks up to say no to men in women’s toilets). So the trends on Twitter are not what make up the country so we need to step away from acting like we need to convince them.

Thank you for the responses - just for a bit of context, my link to this MP is through my husband’s work but I know him very well and I’ve convinced my husband to really push it - and I do think the MP will go for it.

Some good points about how the MP sees gender roles. It’s not ideal. There certainly is a deeply engrained view of a wife as someone who stays at home, cooks, cleans, looks after the children etc but he also has clear admiration for successful women and has mentored women who have then gone on to hold high profile positions (and indeed been more successful politically than he has ever been). As I said, his lack of social media presence means he doesn’t have misogynistic tweets that will come back and haunt him but I’m sure between his voting record and articles in the local paper there is enough for the likes of Owen Jones to try and ‘cancel’ anything he does or says.

Also interesting the idea of him teaming up with someone more moderate. Sadly I feel that any likely moderate I could think of would be too scared of the backlash such is the culture of fear which has been created around speaking out about how dangerous the current climate is. But I’m saying this third hand so it’s definitely worth exploring

OP, I would be happy for anyone to get involved and expose Stonewall and Mermaids and trans ideology for what it is. It would make your MP's name: there is little public support for trans ideology as the Denton's report acknowledges. Women in the US, Canada and New Zealand are looking to the UK to put a brake on the trans takeover so this could be a very big thing.

Up to you whether you warn your Tory MP that while many women and women's groups and campaigning groups will support any investigation into the trans cult, they will want to distance themselves from the anti-women track-record and far-right attitudes s/he holds. At the end of it we'll want to know why it took a misogynist to do what nice liberal MPs should have done.

I've been trying to get my robust and outspoken Labour MP to take a stand on it for two years now and while in private she seems GC, in public she's come perilously close to being a trans supporter. Nobody nice and liberal is likely to take this on any time soon and in the meantime children and young people are being abused, male crimes are being recorded as female and women are being attacked and their rights undermined. I don't care at this stage who gets this massive scandal exposed as long as someone does it. Good luck to you and your MP.

I'd go for it, OP. If he approaches the issue with confidence, that may encourage more moderate members to back him up. Safety in numbers and all that. After the recent Swinson debacle, the time is clearly right to bring this into mainstream debate.

Also interesting the idea of him teaming up with someone more moderate. Sadly I feel that any likely moderate I could think of would be too scared of the backlash

OP, I don't know how these things work, but would it be worth him getting in touch with James Kirkup, to sound him out about MPs he knows who might be a little more sympathetic?

Kirkup might be willing to approach an MP who he knows would understand, and sound him/her out.

It's incredibly frustrating, because it will only take a couple. Most people think this ideology is bonkers. But backbone location requires like minded friends.

Go for it OP. The one thing we do know is that countless MPs are now aware if this and what a shitstorm it has become. All the revelations from the Tavistock are enough to persuade the most timid of people that there is something wrong. This Mail article from yesterday would be a good place to start because every parent understands how vulnerable children are to grooming / persuasion and the issue of children being able to give informed consent is straightforward to argue:

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7785275/NHS-prescribing-hormone-blocking-drugs-children-young-three.html

He needs to spend time learning everything we know and working out how to express his concerns without coming over like some religious bigot or sexist dinosaur. And he really does need to have distinguish between sex, gender and sexuality and the difference between LGB and T and Q.

Ideally he needs to be briefed in detail, and rehearsed, by the women who have been publicly standing up against the trans movement for the last few years – the WPUK women etc. The moment he starts bellowing about deviants and confusing LGB people with T and Q and non-binary, he'll be lost. So he'll need a lot of intensive training before he starts taking this on. Who knows, it might make a feminist of him!

We need to lose the concept of moral purity. We are where we are because we have one party that is obsessed with winning at all costs regardless of what is right, and one that is obsessed with being right at all costs regardless of whether they win. Both attitudes are ultimately damaging.

Brilliant, incisive summing up, Doobi

She doesn’t need to warn him how his anti women voting record might effect him. He’s an adult not a baby and presumably he’s well aware of how politics works being a seasoned mp. Women don’t need to baby men and do their work for them.

I don’t understand the concern after him being right-wing or conservative. He doesn’t need to win over the woke, or twitter, mainstream media, the left or even the centre ground; he just needs to win over conservation MPs.

This is an issue that crosses all political spheres. We can work together on one issue and disagree on others. Before Republicans in the US went extreme right wing, they used to team up with Democrats on bi-partisan bills all the time.

It sounds to me like the advantages of another mp speaking about this outweigh the negatives that have been mentioned. In the debate that David tc Davis organised he stood there completely alone. The government is Conservative. The right of the party is currently powerful within it. That's the world we are in and we need to work with it.

I assume he knows David tc Davis - he should speak to him. There was also a Lincolnshire Conservative mp who wrote about this in the local press.

All women in society lose out if self-id is enshrined in law. Those who oppose abortion, those who oppose same-sex marriage and those who hold conservative views around the roles of the sexes - these women have as much to lose as those on the other side of these debates.

Your MP has every right to stand up for these most basic rights we have as women - the right to organise as a sex around common interests arising from our sex and the right to legal set asides on the basis of our sex (spaces, sports, services).

These rights transcend the abortion debate, they transcend the same-sex marriage debate and they transcend the sex roles and sex stereotypes debates.

If your MP wants to champion the right of an elderly female relative to receive care only from female staff. Or the right of my 14year old nieces to set boundaries around their own bodies, especially when they are in a state of undress. Or the right for my nieces to assert their boundaries against any male, no matter how they identify. Or the right for my underage family member to access MH support long before cross-sex-hormones.

Then I say excellent choice and he is welcome to fight this issue alongside us.

If he is worried about taking a stand on women's rights, we also need a strong voice on freedom of speech and academic freedom as well as a defender of our right as a stakeholder group to take part in a public process of scrutinizing a law proposal that affects our rights without needing to hire security or endure threats of violence or vandalism.

If he is worried about taking a stand on women's rights, we also need a strong voice on freedom of speech and academic freedom as well as a defender of our right as a stakeholder group to take part in a public process of scrutinizing a law proposal that affects our rights without needing to hire security or endure threats of violence or vandalism.

That's a good point.

As well as MPs challenging the ideology, we need them to get behind even being allowed to challenge it. He could start there.

If he is worried about taking a stand on women's rights, we also need a strong voice on freedom of speech and academic freedom

This is an excellent point. The Conservatives have previously said they would address the existential threat to freedom of speech and thought in universities. Women are being bullied, no platformed and silenced by authoritarian fanatics. Could you suggest he looks at Dr. Louise Moody, Rachel Ara and how universities are suppressing freedom of speech? It is incredible that this repressive environment has taken hold in the institutions where it should be anathema.

I agree with pp that speaking to other MP’s would help, personally I think opposition to this issue should be cross-party if at all possible, we know there are MP’s from various parties who oppose this ideology. So I think it would be helpful if he can contact them.

As others have said it can be approached from many ways, such as raising the issue of how the ideology is impacting children, getting this ideology out of schools, how people are detransitioning, how lobby groups have gained influence, how it is impacting women and girls, and how it is stifling free speech.

I do think that the ideology itself needs to be challenged by a broad group, rather than it seem like just a backlash from the right wing. Otherwise we may stop this ideology advancing further in the short term, but long term it will pop-up again when another government comes in. I think it is important that opposition to this ideology is not portrayed as just another section 28, which is what lobby groups are already trying to do. So having a broad range of voices speaking out would be the most beneficial.

As well as MP’s speaking out, and hopefully reversing what this ideology and the lobbyists have done, I think it is equally crucial that the media continue to publicise the nonsense of the ideology, and the multiple harms it is doing to many groups of people. Once the majority of the population see this ideology for what it is, it will be consigned to history, and that is what ultimately needs to happen in my opinion.

For me the concern about his other views isn't about moral purity, it's about whether he will encourage or inhibit other MPs to speak out. His audience here is his fellow MPs, not potential voters or mumsnetters.

The job that needs doing is giving MPs courage to voice in public their private concerns. So if one MP does this, potentially it creates more space for others to speak out. Once four or five are at it, the flood gates open.

But if an MP isn't respected by his peers (ie is thought of as an old windbag), or says frankly bonkers things like Christopher Chope, then his speaking out could actually inhibit others. His concerns will be characterised as fringe, dated, prejudiced etc and he won't have given cover to others to speak.

Just looking through here again and began to wonder... If he is known to hold very right-wing and unpleasant views on women's issues will the other MPs with more liberal views take the slightest bit of notice if he starts on about transgender issues? I live in Wales and have a Welsh Labour MP who I urged to talk to David TC DAvies about transgender issues. She was astonished: some of his views are not at all woman-friendly. I had to work hard to persuade her that on the transgender issue he really got it and that he'd done something very important in holding the HoC event.

So maybe he needs to come in on the freedom of speech angle, perhaps focussing on academics and universities.

But if an MP isn't respected by his peers (ie is thought of as an old windbag), or says frankly bonkers things like Christopher Chope, then his speaking out could actually inhibit others. His concerns will be characterised as fringe, dated, prejudiced etc and he won't have given cover to others to speak.

That was the point I was trying to make with my post about Gareth Bennett in the Welsh Assembly.

He sounded deranged and his comments were seen as so offensive that he was barred from the Assembly until he apologised. He probably stopped anyone with real concerns from speaking out because they wouldn't want to be associated with him or what he said.

So maybe he needs to come in on the freedom of speech angle, perhaps focussing on academics and universities

thatdamnwoman

I think that’s the angle because the Conservatives have already said that they are going to tackle the threat to freedom of speech in universities. Dr.Louise Moody, Rachel Ara, this is the link. OldCrone I think you have a good point, I would hope that even if this politician is on the right of the party, he isn’t going to come out with offensive drivel, that would be really counter productive. I think the academic freedom line is a good way to introduce it. There was a Telegraph article recently about Conservative students being threatened and silenced. I will try to find it.The threat to freedom of speech, the bullying tactics of the lobby, the silencing of dissent, these are all linked issues and the Conservatives absolutely should be looking at this

And this is why I can’t read the feminism section of Mumsnet.