With apologies for the length of my messages (and possibly for hijacking this thread!) I’m posting my exchanges with my local libdem councillor, with some identifying info removed.
FROM ME: I am concerned, however, that the Lib Dems are failing to protect women's rights and also the rights of children, and have instead been duped by lobby groups such as Stonewall who make misleading assertions as to the law as they wish it to be, rather than as it actually is.
Sex - whether someone is biologically male or biologically female - is a protected characteristic in the Equality Act. Women’s single-sex spaces and services matter for the dignity, privacy, and safety of women and girls. The Equalities and Human Rights Commission has recently confirmed that the Equality Act:
allows for the provision of separate or single sex services in certain circumstances, and that
people whose sex is different from their expressed gender may be excluded if doing so is a proportionate means to achieving a legitimate aim, such as for reasons of privacy, decency, to prevent trauma or to ensure health and safety.
I absolutely believe that transgender people should be treated with dignity and respect. However, that does not mean that the rights of 51% of the population should be sacrificed in order to spare the 'feelings' of a tiny number of male bodied people - and that those seeking to question this should be silenced by accusations of transphobia.
Why is this issue relevant to the local elections?
Local councils are responsible for or otherwise involved in the provision of a number of women's single-sex spaces and services. In particular:
Public toilets, and sports/leisure centre changing rooms. There are very clear safeguarding issues if anyone who 'identifies' as female is allowed access to women's toilets and changing rooms. It cannot be right that a male-bodied person can get changed and expose their genitalia to women and girls in a women's changing room. It just can't!!! Further, it is chilling that anyone who seeks to challenge this is silenced and accused of transphobia (there are numerous reports of this happening, including most prominently with the US transwoman athlete Lia Thomas who exposes their genitals in the women's changing rooms - female athletes have been warned not to complain about this).
While I appreciate schools are
not a local council issue, the above is now being played out in secondary schools across the country, where alarmingly girls are being forced to get changed and showered in front of male-bodied pupils who identify as female and whom the schools permit to change in the women's changing rooms, again due to a fundamental misreading of equalities legislation. Female pupils and their families are again accused of transphobia when they question this.
What message is this sending to girls and young women about consent in particular - that they must budge up and shut up to allow men into their spaces, and that if they feel uncomfortable about a situation they must keep silent?
An appropriate balance can and should be struck between the rights of women and the rights of trans people by the provision of gender neutral third spaces for anyone who does not feel comfortable using the facilities provided for their own sex.
Single sex sports teams and classes. It is also alarming that transwomen (and it is invariably transwomen, rather than transmen) have been permitted to participate and compete in women's sports teams, despite enjoying the significant physiological advantages of having been through male puberty. These advantages are not neutralised by transwomen athletes reducing their testosterone (and even when they do it is to levels multiples higher than naturally occur in women). Each time a male-bodied athlete is permitted to compete in a women's sporting category, it deprives a woman of a place in that competition.
Again, there is a simple answer to this which protects both women and provides transwomen athletes with the opportunity to compete fairly and with dignity: make 'men's' competitions open categories which anyone - male/female/trans/non binary can enter, while keeping women's sport for biological females only.
A related question is of women-only sports classes or sessions (eg women only gym classes of swimming sessions). Some women for religious, cultural or other reasons, do not feel able to participate in sporting activities with men, particularly when physical contact may be involved (eg a boxercise class). Is it right that they should be forced to quit such classes if a male-bodied person is permitted to join?
It absolutely goes without saying that the overwhelming majority of trans people do not present any threat to women or anyone else, but the same could of course be said of men. The fact is that women should be permitted the safety, dignity and privacy of single-sex spaces to protect them from the small minority of men and trans-women who would otherwise seek to exploit these spaces. Or to put it another way: if we are to allow transwomen into women's only spaces, why not just make these spaces open to everyone, men included?
I’m interested to know where you would stand on these issues. If elected, would you work to ensure that our local authority:
retains the concept of sex where it matters in language, communications, data collection, and policy development;
protects women’s single-sex spaces and services, both in direct provision, and where you have regulatory / partnership influence;
prioritises safeguarding the vulnerable, especially children, in the provision of all spaces and services where sex matters?
It is beyond depressing that at the national level, it seems to be only the Conservative party that is getting these issues right (even a broken clock and all that...)
I look forward to hearing from you so I can decide how to cast my votes.