Ashley Dalton, Labour Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities this evening...

[Abeona]

This evening Labour held an online meeting for LGBT+ History month. I called round to pick up something from a friend's and he was listening to what was going on — so I stayed to take notes and to listen to what guest speaker Anneliese Dodds had to say.

Steph Richards (TW) of Steph's Place seemed to be dominating proceedings and ranting about Labour Women's Declaration, Sex Matters, Julie Bindel, WPUK etc, who are apparently all part of an evil right-wing plot against trans people financed by the evangelical churches. Steph is very angry about this! For someone who identifies as a woman he seems very angry with women full stop. I've seen it written down before but never heard anyone actually say all the right-wing evangelical tosh without laughing. I hoped someone would disagree or laugh, but no one piped up.

Anneliese Dodds couldn't make the meeting by Ashley Dalton, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities attended instead and said that when Labour get into power they will:
Ban all conversion therapy
There will be tougher sentences for LGBT+ hate crimes
They want more LGBT+ people in Parliament and driving policy and there's money available to support those who'll stand. She wants activists on all fora. (We all know that when they say LGBT+ they mean T+, but GC lesbians, take note and get in there. Contact Ashley Dalton for more information and about the funds available.)
She suggested that we might want to introduce the use of pronouns in CLP meetings.
She also wants to breaks silos and have all minorities coming together to discover what they have in common. I can just imagine how that will work. Steph will dominate those meetings, too.

This doesn't sound like the Labour party is planning to change its direction any time soon.

Jaysus.

We’ve an actual issue when it comes to the [lack of] prosecution of disability hate crimes. The police & CPS are already expending more energy on Hurty Words, Funny Looks & Stickers With Facts On than they are on protecting truly vulnerable people. There’s already a sentencing uplift for hate crimes, so what is this great eejit suggesting? Special “justice” for special people? Disability Hate Crime is “massively under-reported” rather than there being activists dedicating their time to reporting everything under the sun; & deliberately targeting a disabled person because their disability makes them vulnerable is not, bizarrely, counted as a hate crime. The special “equal” treatment bench book compels people to perjure themselves so that male criminals are not upset by being correctly described by their victims. Heaven forfend one should be untoward about paedophiles, after all. Or rapists. Or violent men who’ve committed assault. Or men who “just” threaten women online. (There is of course also a layer of ableism woven into it: there are several disabilities where being forced to [try to remember to] address/refer to a male individual using terms reserved for the female sex could cause discomfort, distress, stress & confusion.)

Absolutely homophobic & transphobic hate crimes should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. (By “transphobic” I mean eg the assault of an individual motivated by a hatred for transgender people.) Happily that is, generally speaking (I’m not going to pretend there aren’t some issues still) the case.

Quite how Labour could look at the crime stats & think “yes, that’s what needs our focus” I don’t know. I mean, we know they’re not going to touch the record high of antisemitic hate crimes (only one Labour peer spoke in the Lords’ discussion of Anti-Semitism in the UK yesterday & he was focused on suggesting the Tories weren’t doing enough 🤨) but you’d think perhaps someone would look at the actual statistics involved & realise “we’re going to prioritise a group that’s already receiving a disproportionate amount of resources” isn’t good optics.

That's a very considered post @NitroNine. You are right.
I'll spend some time reading those links you added. Thank you.

I despise Labour for putting us in this position. Meanwhile, the UK maternal mortality rate is the worst in Europe (or something). B*stards.

Yes, Stonewall Scotland are part of the cabal of groups who advise the Scotgov on 'gender' issues, alongside Equality Network, LGBTYS (still under police investigation?), and others. So they informed the GRR bill and I expect will be doing the same for the upcoming conversion Bill.

I seem to recall someone high up in Stonewall Scotland telling women off for tweeting too late at night? Can't recall his name.

Just went to check his name, and found an odd loop on the SS website that says 'who we are' and tells you nothing!

Tuns out he's stepping down. Colin McFarlane.

tfn.scot/news/head-of-stonewall-scotland-to-step-down

I've just come here from the thread about Yvette Cooper on WH and noticed the following quote:

They want more LGBT+ people in Parliament and driving policy and there's money available to support those who'll stand. She wants activists on all fora.

LGBT+ people are already overrepresented in parliament, at just under 10% of MPs (vs the 3.3% of the general UK population who identify as LGBT+).

Only 34.6% of MPs are women (who make up 51% of the adult population).

There are fewer than 10 MPs who are known to be disabled (obviously there may be others with unknown or hidden disabilities), as opposed to the 130 or so that you might expect if parliament were representative of the UK population.

In 2019, a record-breaking 54% of MPs had been educated at a state comprehensive - which sounds great until you consider that 88% of the UK school population goes to a state comprehensive and only 7% are educated privately.

Parliament underrepresents a number of different groups, but LGBT+ people is not one of them.

It sounds as if the Labour Party has collectively gone insane.
But what other minorities would want to ally with them? Muslims? Hindus? Any group which values their children?

I think it’s grip might be slipping but there’s a hell of a long way to go, many people are just oblivious to all of this and they don’t want to listen, it’s going to take a lot more damage to wake people up but little by little, I think we are gaining ground. We need to keep emphasising the fact that much of the advice that they are giving out is actually illegal and leaves organisations at risk of litigation.