I had a canvasser from Labour round the other day. It was probably the longest 15 mins of his day, but he listened patiently and respectfully and we had a really good conversation. We’re a key marginal (Lab/Con) and the sitting (Lab) MP is very good on mostly everything and personally very likeable but is a bit TWAW, which worries me.
i started by saying I was concerned about the erosion of women’s rights. He asked what I meant by them and I said the changing of the meaning of language and the refusal to have a sensible debate about where sex based protections matter, with women’s [the old fashioned meaning of that word] voices being shut down. He said he thought people were scared of entering a toxic debate so I asked who was making it toxic and did that tell him anything. He acknowledged the point. I said I wanted to see the parties creating a space where the discussion of the issues could happen in a calm, balanced way and in a way that accepted that most people on the so-called “gender critical” side supported trans rights and wanted trans identified people to feel safe and able to live their lives peacefully but not at the expense of eroding women’s rights to do so too.
I said the problems went back to the passing of the GRA, when society understood the “problem” to be “solved” by that legislation was to enable a small number of gender dysphoric transsexuals [when such a word was acceptable] to marry and what was really needed was equal marriage legislation but the then Labour government were too scared of that (and did he feel ashamed that it was the Conservatives rather than Labour who had eventually legalised same sex marriage?) so the GRA was a compromise to create a legal fiction instead of actually solving the actual problem. Now, the GRA wasn’t just used by a small number of transsexuals with gender dysphoria, but a much wide range of people, some of whom were using it to get their sexual kicks, and part of that involved dominating and invading same sex spaces for women just to show they could. Self ID would make this worse.
We then moved on to gender stereotypes and how oppressive these were - for everyone, but especially historically women. I don’t expect, when he set out that morning, he had anticipated a debate on pink fluffy ladybrain and how offensive it was, to those of us who had been fighting stereotypes all our lives and who are definitely not feminine, to have people think if we have boobs we must also have ladybrain. I told him that I didn’t “identify” as feminine or any of the stereotypes associated with femininity, but my biology meant that I WAS female, and that (& my age) were the basis on which people judged me and discriminated against me. We touched briefly on the lack of research of (eg) medical drugs on female bodies and how that affected women’s health - we were just seen as small men rather than different type of human, equal in worth but physically different.
i said I was disgusted at the way Rosie Duffield had been treated (he agreed). I said I included the Labour leadership in that. He said he thought it was fear of entering that debate. I said they should be brave and do it.
At this point, he realised his colleagues had entirely finished in our (quite long) street and he would be in trouble if he didn’t catch up with them before they started the next street. He said (convincingly) that he would relay all of this to the candidate and completely understood I was not coming at this from a transphobic position, but wanting to have an open debate about how everyone’s rights could be respected.
there is a lot more I wanted to say, but it was quite therapeutic to say that much out loud. I felt a glimmer of hope, albeit the National picture has not really helped sustain that. I may follow up with writing to the candidate - and indeed the other candidates - on this and my other election priorities.
it’s the first time we’ve had Labour round ours in the 20 years we have been here. Conservatives have been a couple of times in the past but not yet this year. It tends to be a (very close run) two horse race here so the others have not bothered much.
sorry that was a bit of an essay - you may be wanting to run up the road to join your colleagues too if you have read through all of that!