Am I wrong to bring women’s rights into a council election

[Fancyfencepost]

Just had a visit from the local councillor asking for my vote. I said that I couldn’t vote for any party who didn’t support women. The response, “ this is about the council, not that, about bin collections and road repairs.” Think I might have thrown him a wee bit but surely he could have had a better answer?

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of those results by sex.

@DameHelena I completely agree with your point. Many women I've spoken to have initially said they support the "Trans Women are Women" movement. However, after chatting with them with regards to issues surrounding rape crisis centres, hospital wards, prisons etc they ALWAYS change their outlook.

I am extremely concerned by the erosion of women rights.

You don't like the result, so you dismiss it out of hand, very rational take.
So show me some more (and more convincing) surveys.
And answer the point about people supporting the general/hypothetical idea of mixed facilities but changing their minds when the actual consequences are made clear.

@Maskless

I wasted a whole hour of my precious time searching for the candidates' email addies, and only found Labour's.

So I emailed her my question, taken from SexMatters and tweaked.

Her reply was, solely: "Have you asked the other candidates?"

Someone started a local facebook group to discuss the council elections, asking, what policies or issues are important to you? I joined and replied, if they want my X they have to respect my sex, and saying that I would like to retain the existing laws on single sex spaces. I did not mention the T word at all.

Within 5 minutes of posting I received an unsolicited private message from a strange man. He said he worked very closely with the local police chief, reporting hate crimes. He said that if my thread "morphed into" transphobia, I was being held responsible, and he would be reporting me via this supposed hotline to the top brass, for committing a hate crime.

A bit of googling showed me this was a gay man who holds some position in the local "rainbow" group.

The thread then turned into mud being slung at me, a pile-on of woke locals calling me bigot, terf all the usual things. As far as I could tell, none of these vicious people hurling abuse at me were trans.

The moderators then banned me from the group, saying my OP was divisive, controversial, incendiary, caused ill feeling, etc.

I am now silenced, my character assassinated around my town and neighbourhood, and there is now nobody in the group sticking up for women's interests.

I never once referred to the T.

This is sickening. I'm so sorry this happened to you, Maskless. Decent people who have read the abuse will be feeling for you too, but their opinions probably won't appear on the Facebook thread as they've been warned off. More people agree with you than ever appear on public forms, for exactly that reason. But they all have a vote, and the issues are becoming more widely known every day.

YANBU Op. The Labour councillors I helped vote in , first thing they did literally ,was vote for to extend the license of the dodgy landlord who owns a lapdancing club near a school and for Stonewall endorsed gender woo education stuff. Won't be making that mistake again!

@SerendipityJane

My angle is much more the engagement with politics generally, rather than this single issue. So ....

It's a shame that all the people that have suddenly found it really clever to ask political parties "What is a woman ?" now, when it's pretty much too late. Where were you 10, 15, 20 years ago when all of this so called "debate" was sneaking in to all political parties ? Because that was the time to stop it. Not now by badgering some poor bewildered volunteer whose main aim in life is to move a bus route, restore bin collections and keep a library open.

That's unfair, SerendipityJane. How is anyone other than a party member supposed to know what is sneaking into political parties? The gender-identity movement made phenomenal gains at great speed, in those early days, through secrecy and dishonesty (eg misrepresenting the law, which Stonewall still brazenly does).

But how was anyone else meant to know that? I've been a feminist for more than 50 years. I keep up to date with the news. But I had no idea what was happening, especially no idea of the size and rapacity of this takeover movement.

No canvasser is going to report any of this back, and will flag you as a house not to return to

Riiiiight, so they don't report it but they do flag it?

On what database(s) does this 'flagging' take place? Is the Information Commissioner of all this 'flagging' by you and your Party?

Im old enough to rember debates on racism or economic inequality, and there was always some nut who would who would loudly pop up and spout nonesense, rubbish offered up as truth.
And yes, we were all wicked and delusional for not buying whatever justification for predujice the nut was going on about.

Nothing ever changes.

@SoftwareDev

I've just had a look at my local candidates. They represent the following parties:

• Alba Party
• SNP
• Scottish Family Party
• Liberal Democrats
• Scottish Green Party
• Conservative and Unionist Party

ARGH! Who is a GC woman supposed to vote for in amongst that lot?

Alba. They, and ISP, are pro-women's rights and the safeguarding of children.

They're also both pro-Indy, but I don't think that's much of an issue at Council level if you're not. If you're concerned that their leader Alex Salmond is "sleazy", it won't be him you're voting for.

(Plus, he was found not guilty/not proven on all charges, by a majority female jury - and the defence case was not covered by any mainstream media. I read Craig Murray's contemporaneous account, before he was jailed for writing it, and it was shocking.)

@NoHateOnlyDebate That survey was interesting thank you. I note that the last 4 lines where transgender is clarified that it is clear that the majority of women do not want transwomen in their toilets.

As you wrote This shows that the majority of women polled do feel the same as me on this issue of toilets presumably we are all in agreement and transwomen should use facilities other than the single sex ones for women?

It does get reported back. I told labour doorknockers I could no longer vote for them as they don't want a woman is. First was an apologetic man, second was a fantastic woman who knows all about the issue and was later able to tell me that this is now a campaign issue in the local area.

Bring it up - it's absolutely worth it.

On the subject of polls, these are a couple of years old but probably still valid...

wingsoverscotland.com/abolishing-women/

wingsoverscotland.com/transforming-the-question/

Full data tables available here:

drg.global/our-work/political-polls/wings-over-scotland-poll-5th-may-2020/

drg.global/our-work/political-polls/wings-over-scotland-poll-3rd-july-2020/

The LibDems did come back recently to canvas despite me telling the previous LibDem canvasser that I couldn’t vote for a party that didn’t know what a woman was.

@HirplesWithHaggis - that is interesting - thank you!

Cybernats have our uses.

@SoftwareDev

I've just had a look at my local candidates. They represent the following parties:

• Alba Party
• SNP
• Scottish Family Party
• Liberal Democrats
• Scottish Green Party
• Conservative and Unionist Party

ARGH! Who is a GC woman supposed to vote for in amongst that lot?

Alba and Scottish Family Party and Conservatives have all pledged to uphold women's sex based rights, iirc.

You may or may not want to vote for them after checking other policies.

Our local SNP councillor candidate is excellent. Actually, this will be a good opportunity to broach the subject so I'll do that.

Copied from ForWomen Scotland, I hope they don't mind:

With the local elections coming up very shortly (5th May) it would be great if you would write to your local newspaper highlighting your concerns about self-identification of sex and how this affects local policies. Here are some ideas of what to cover in a letter to get you started!

What is a woman?
In light of the attempts by national politicians to answer (or fail miserably to answer!) the question "What is a woman?", we would like council candidates to face the same question in the paper or at hustings.

Some candidates are trying to avoid the issue by claiming that it is a matter for national, not local, government. This is not true. For example, in many regions schools are making toilet facilities gender neutral (ie. mixed-sex), a situation which has distressed many female students. Several high profile examples have occurred in Highland:
Highland parents petition for all schools to have single sex toilet choices after concerns were raised over proposed gender neutral only facilities at the new Ness Castle primary and nursery school in Inverness

See also the website by concerned parents campaigning on this issue:
www.highlandparentsgroup.co.uk/

Parents of Musselburgh Grammar School persuaded the council to maintain single-sex toilets:
East Lothian Council finally sees sense over single-sex toilets at Musselburgh Grammar School

In Glasgow, council-run services operated by Glasgow Life were told to allow cross-dressing men into women's changing rooms and women-only sport sessions.
Row erupts as cross-dressing men get to use female changing rooms in Glasgow sports facilities

Local authority run venues including theatres and community centres have made toilet facilities mixed-sex.
The bogeyman lurking in women’s toilets is real

Councillors in Fife discussed whether stickers which mentioned women's rights should have been investigated by the police.
Councillor defends police over action on 'controversial' 'Women Won't Wheesht; stickers

In several regions, councillors called for a review of the health and wellbeing survey in schools due to the explicit questions asked. It was the actions of councillors that resulted in this controversial census being removed from many schools.
Fife Council may reject controversial school sex survey

Other councils are failing to collect data accurately - policy documents are littered with "gender" when it should be "sex", or do not correctly name the protected characteristics in the Equality Act - potentially breaching the Public Sector Equality Duty.

All these examples involve decisions made by councillors on committees, including planning decisions where building regulations concerning toilet facilities should be upheld. Scrutinising and monitoring the performance of the council and local services is an important part of the job. As is representing and helping local people - what are your candidates going to do if you need help on one of these matters?

A list of local papers can be found here: www.wrx.zen.co.uk/scotland.htm

Most papers go to press on Wednesday, so if you could write tonight or tomorrow and ask that prospective councillors define a woman, that would be ideal!

I've spent tonight trying to find emails and writing to all my local candidates or to someone to pass on my email. I've agreed to a phone call with one of the candidates tomorrow, but I will take notes and email them a summary of the telephone meeting afterwards.
I then wrote to my MP (labour) to tell them I was writing to all local candidates and how embarrassed I was about other labour MPs and their leader.

I also used the template from Women Uniting to send an email to my local newspaper. I made sure I put lots of local issues in there where sex matters with links (to make it easy for them). I told them where they could take photos too. If they don't run it in the newspaper I'm sure they will put it on their Facebook page.
Looking forward to all the responses.
This is such an important issue. This campaign to write to all our local candidates is a great way of raising awareness and to show local parties our discontent at the national party level. If they don't feed back then that is their loss.

You are a star, Female.

@SerendipityJane

Presumably we'd all be happy with a manifesto commitment to knowing what a woman is ?

No, they've got to put it in to practice and maintain single-sex spaces on council property. Open third spaces by all means but not at the expense of women's facilities.

Alba and Scottish Family Party and Conservatives have all pledged to uphold women's sex based rights, iirc.

Didn't the Conservatives pledge not to raise taxes too ?

[quote NoHateOnlyDebate]@DameHelena

Beside the point. Many women do not (or cannot, in certain religious/cultural groups, and among women who have been assaulted/traumatised by men) feel the same as you.

See attached image for opinion polling for views on trans people. This shows that the majority of women polled do feel the same as me on this issue of toilets, as well as women's services. So should legislation reflect only your personal preferences, or the majority of women?

@BreadInCaptivity good job I'm not a Labour member then, maybe you'll vote for my party! ;)[/quote]
Actually @NoHateOnlyDebate if you look down the bottom of that infographic, you will see that once people are informed that no surgery is required, the public does not agree with you.