Local elections and sex/gender/trans issues

[DameHelena]

I am REALLY struggling to see who I can vote for tomorrow, due to their position on this issue.
Labour: no
Lib Dems: no
Green: no
Very much would like not to vote Tory (am historically Labour and/or Green and tend to go Green in local elections).
We have a Womens Equality Party candidate, but I can't find their official stance on women's sex-based rights. Does anyone have any knowledge? And how are you voting if you're in the same position as me?

The Tories are in power NOW. They're doing zero about womens' rights. Men are still in womens' prisons, etc. They're not doing anything about that either. Amongst many other things. Laughable to try to pretend coming at this from a feminism stance. I find this type of 'feminism' abhorrent - all about supporting shitty men as long as they say 1 right thing, with no evidence whatsoever that theyll follow through with action

But this argument seems to suggest we live in an adequate world with someone we actually want to vote for. And we don't. We all know we are voting for least worst.

And the fact is, which party is it that we are most likely to see halting the march to the increased replacement of sex with gender, and perhaps even reversing damage done. The tories have halted on self - id, halted on conversion therapy, Priti Patel has spoken to police about recording sex accurately. The Labour party will press ahead with self - ID and further replacement of sex with gender.
The utterly depressing fact is that if you want to see prisons as single sex again we are far more likely to be able to successfully lobby the Tories for that than Labour. There's not a hope of achieving that with Labour. There might be with the Tories. And that's depressing but true. And the people who are responsible for that are Labour activists and the Labour leader and co. Hold your rage at them, not at those of us who are trying to find the best people to influence in an absolutely dire situation.

Laughable to try to pretend coming at this from a feminism stance. I find this type of 'feminism' abhorrent

We all get to decide what is important to us as feminists. Even if people try to undermine it, they are not correct.

I will vote tory as the clearest way of letting other parties know that this issue is losing them votes.
Do you honestly think this is the message they’re going to take from it? That message is not clear at all. They won’t know the specific reason they lost your vote.

If you vote Tory you are absolutely not helping women. At least be honest with yourself
Exactly this. I’d choose to spoil my ballot before I chose to vote for them.

I had no idea what to do but ended up voting labour plus a whole essay on respect my sex or it is the last time I vote for you. Which has probably invalidated the vote anyway. I feel completely unrepresented and a bit miserable about it.

It's between Lib Dems and Labour here with Lib Dems currently holding all seats but apparently tight with a very low turn out. Canvassers from both parties have been at the door this afternoon & admitted the subject of gender ideology has come up a lot. I feel spoiling my ballot paper might actually make a few pennies drop if a lot of other women do the same here - papers spoiled might be greater than the margin between some candidates.

How can voting for the current government send any other message apart from that you are happy with the status quo?

Or terrified of the alternative?

If the status quo is the EHRC saying that single sex spaces can be legal, and a Labour government could mean all single sex spaces abolished - meaning that traumatised or religious women or women who just don't want to share with male bodies are entirely excluded from public life - then maybe some women feel it is the least worst option.

It's possible to think that the status quo, while worse than any other time in living history, is better than Gilead, which is what we'd get if the other side got in.

I am free to criticise Boris Johnson. I don't get thrown in jail for doing so. There have been concerted efforts to throw women in jail for recognising biological sex, for refusing to lie about what their eyes are telling them, for refusing to submit to someone else's ideology. And that's under a government that is generally in favour of 'personal responsibility' and freedom of speech. Imagine what it would be like under a government who forces women to chant 2+2=5 and if they don't expels them from the party.

I have 3 Tory councillors in my ward who always comfortably win. But my council is Lib Dem and my constituency is Tory held but marginal. So I spoilt my ballot and wrote an essay to Lib Dems & Labour mentioning Respect my Sex and self-id plus a more local issue.

First time I’ve not voted but this seemed a much better way to get the point across. Felt good.

I'm in an area with an all Labour council, a labour MP and a labour mayor. I have spoilt my ballot paper (for the first time ever) and written "Respect my sex if you want my X" several times in red pen. I despair at the current state of politics.

Just had a young women conservative at my door doing a ' Get the vote out' thing. I told her I had given both my votes to the Conservatives candidates due to them and the party being best on protecting women's sex based rights, and that was the single issue that I voted on. She replied that that was the reason she is now a conservative too.

That's what I have done previously but now that the Conservatives have taken a more active position in favour of sex based rights and Labour have taken a more active position against sex based rights, I want to make a stronger stand against Labour and for women as a sex class by voting conservative.

Genuinely furious with Labour for putting me in this position tbh.

I thought canvassing was illegal on actual voting day ?

I wrote respect my sex if you want my x on my ballot. I wonder how many other women did the same.

I did!

I thought canvassing was illegal on actual voting day ?

The activities on polling day are to encourage your supporters (whom you've already identified) to go out and vote: Distributing 'Vote Today!' cards, giving lifts to the polling station etc. This was the purpose of canvassing - not to get into arguments but to find out who and where your support was so you could remind them to vote.

At least that was what happened back in the day when I had a political home.

Away to do that now.

@Floisme
Ah, I see thank you very much :)

Can people stop already with the vote shaming, particularly from the Left. It's up to everyone to vote as they see fit, according to their beliefs. For me, it's a single issue and I will vote for the only party that seems to take any interest at all in women's rights.

I did, along with 'sex not gender' and 'Labour losing women'. I also wrote 'NONE OF THEM' across the candidates so my message was clear.

Just voted, wrote 'respect my sex' across all the names would have written the entire slogan but got self conscious at the amount of scribbling I was doing!
When I got back home I realised I'd been so fired up that none of the names/parties had registered with me.
Polling Station seemed very quiet even for a local election. I wonder if the tory voters (very tory area) are also staying home?

Maybe more postal votes? We always do ours that way. DD and DS voted for the first time today at the poling station, as didn't request a postal vote in time.

@RaininginDarling

Was shocking (but not) seeing all the Alliance, People Before Profit & Sinn Féin MLAs & most of the SDLP ones ignoring Standing For Women Northern Ireland asking them the Staniland question. Charlotte Carson is a brave one for not just breaking ranks & saying “no”, but doing so in such a public a public way. She’d a tweet yesterday where she said:

Just had email APOLOGETICALLY asking my position on abortion rights. Do not apologise for exercising your democratic right AND DUTY to find out how your candidates would vote on issues. MLAs, MPS, Councillors are elected to serve us - not 2 be feared or revered!
Only time I’m glad people in GB are generally so abysmal in terms of their knowledge & understanding of NI - means she’s (so far…) getting less of a battering than [female] politicians on the mainland do when they dare suggest that women have a right to their own spaces (& that woman has a narrow meaning determined by biology not belief).
The work the women of Northern Ireland have been doing to try to protect their rights is incredible.

Am quite anxiously waiting to see what will happen at Stormont & if predictions are right about NI being about to have its first ever Sinner FM. Am desperately hoping with all I have that the Assembly will actually stay sitting & get on with massive amounts of stuff they need to; rather than somehow confusing themselves with a crêche & thinking it’s grand to refuse to govern because they can’t play nicely with the other children politicians.

@DomesticatedZombie
Am genuinely very pleased my post helped you. Employing emotional blackmail is always grim, but this is grim AND sexist. I mean, the suffragettes (as in the WSPU) were all about the emotional blackmail (to be fair, that was their least problematic strategy) but I still don’t think they’d be on board with “ZOMG JUST PUT A TICK IN ONE OF THE BOXES FFS”. The whole point was that women could be trusted to use their votes properly - & voting against your interests &/or conscience cannot be said to be doing that. Spoiling your ballot is using your voice. Weird some people seem so opposed to that around here 🤨

She's not canvassing. She's doing Get the Vote out. That means you are encouraging people to vote, not persuading them who to vote for. I volunteered to her who I had voted for and why. She did not ask me. She may have knocked on my door as I had emailed the Conservatives to ask them their view on sex based rights, so I would have been seen as a potential conservative voter. But it wasn't canvassing. It was Get the Vote Out.