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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Sex Matters are asking you to email your MP this weekend

212 replies

PachacutisBadAuntie · 31/10/2025 18:03

Re the delay in publishing the EHRC guidance. Can't see a thread on this yet, please do email if you can.

sex-matters.org/take-action/write-to-your-mp-the-government-must-stand-up-for-womens-rights/

OP posts:
DuesToTheDirt · 17/11/2025 19:43

I'm glad I didn't vote for him!

DialSquare · 17/11/2025 19:44

DuesToTheDirt · 17/11/2025 18:29

Over two weeks on, there's zilch in my inbox from my MP. I suppose that's my answer.

Same here.

lcakethereforeIam · 17/11/2025 20:41

lcakethereforeIam · 17/11/2025 17:20

I got a response to my 2nd email to my LD MP

Thank you for your thoughtful response. My sincerest apologies for addressing you by the first initial of your name in the previous email (my mistake!).

I want to reassure you that, as a Liberal Democrat, I am committed to protecting the rights of women and girls, including their right to safety. In our 2024 manifesto, we outlined what needs to be done to achieve this.

This includes, ensuring that survivors of violence against women and girls and domestic abuse get the support they deserve by:

  • Fully implementing the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, with protections for all survivors regardless of nationality or immigration status.
  • Expanding the number of refuges and rape crisis centres to meet demand.
  • Ensuring sustainable funding for services to support survivors of domestic abuse, with a particular focus on community-based and specialist ‘by and for’ services.
  • Ensuring that survivors are properly supported within the criminal justice system.
  • Require social media companies to publish reports setting out the action they have taken to address online abuse against women and girls, and other groups who share a protected characteristic.

As well as, tackling the specific economic barriers facing women by:

  • Ending the gender price gap so that women are not charged more than men for practically identical products or services marketed at them.
  • Ending period poverty by introducing a right for anyone who needs them to access free period products.
  • Expanding access to flexible, affordable childcare, doubling Statutory Maternity Pay and expanding shared parental leave.

As I said previously, I recognise your frustration at the lack of clarity that has, for too long, left service providers uncertain about what is lawful, and women and girls feeling that their dignity, privacy or safety may not always be properly protected.

However, we need to wait and see the final version of the EHRC Code of Practice before reaching conclusions. We will scrutinise the guidance properly when it is published. I included the link to the debate in September in my previous email to inform you that Lisa Smart MP, the Liberal Democrat Women and Equalities Spokesperson, called for proper parliamentary scrutiny of the final guidance once published. This should ensure that any concerns constituents may have should be duly considered.

Liberal Democrats are clear: existing rights must be protected, including those of trans people and women. Thank you again for contacting me, I hope this clarifies my position.

Nope.

Fwiw, this is the email from me he was responding to

As we seem to be on first initial terms. A less charitable person than I would think my email was put through some rather stupid AI (that mistook an initial for a first name) and possibly never crossed your desk. This might also explain why it was thought a Hansard link to a debate about Support for Trans People was suitable to include. Fortunately, I try not to be so cynical.

Regarding Charlie, I can sympathise with her. I've thought for a while of joining a gym. Unfortunately, all the gyms near my house are trans inclusive, which means they let men self-ID into the women's facilities. I don't wish to get changed and shower with male strangers. My daughters did not use the gyms at their Universities for the same reason. I'd likely be fine with sharing facilities with Charlie once it had been established she was female. She's a woman, beard or not. Unlike birth certificates that can't be changed.

Something for you and your fellow men to consider regarding supporting transwomen (who are biological men). What can you, as men, do to support them? Perhaps you can speak up, use your position, to encourage them to continue to use the facilities designed for men, even gender non-conforming ones. Try to include your trans-identifying siblings rather than try to push them into the women's facilities. Perhaps you could, as a Lib. Dem. MP, try to influence this as a policy in your party? I know Ed Davey claims to believe women can have a penis. I hear this and I think if he can lie about something so demonstrably stupid and false why should I trust anything he says? What does that say about the people who support him? Why should I vote for them?

An alternative would be for third spaces (actually fourth as disabled facilities should be for disabled people and their carers).

A side, but important issue, is the proliferation of fully enclosed toilet cubicles. I understand why shops and schools have introduced them. As organisations, because of misinformation of the Equality Act (EA) spread by lobby groups, have made their toilets mixed sex they've had to prioritise privacy. Allowing males into intimate spaces with females will let a minority of the former indulge proclivities to further infringe the dignity and privacy of the latter. This means gaps that used to be standard in toilet cubicles and changing rooms are often designed out. This has catastrophic effects on safety. I've heard fully enclosed cubicles described as 'rape rooms', of drugs being taken in these rooms, of people collapsing and not being found for hours, long after their lives may have been saved. In one case a young man was not found for six days.

I'm interested in what you see as the way forward? Is it the one that is currently victimising hardworking nurses in Fife and Darlington? The one that has been soundly rejected by the Supreme Court, who made no new law? Or do you think it's acceptable that organisations, like the BBC, continue to ignore the law while others, like Virgin Active, have course corrected?

Look forward to receiving your reply. Apologies for any mistakes in grammar or spelling.

We're now on first name terms. Despite me not using my name, just my initial, which means he's looked me up. Probably on the electoral register. His reply is just blah.

PachacutisBadAuntie · 17/11/2025 21:05

@lcakethereforeIam I would be more heartened by his reply. It seems a lot more considered: yes still toeing the party line, but a more personalised email that he might have at least partly written himself.

Your email to him is beautifully expressed, calm, thoughtful, and makes practical suggestions for ways forward. I think you might at least have made him think 💛

OP posts:
FranticFrankie · 18/11/2025 21:13

No reply from my MP but im not surprised. She hasn't ever replied to my emails and I think she's marked my card with TERF- I'm still a constituent though!
She's fully TWAW and gets quite upset when this is refuted 😠

bincrate · 11/12/2025 15:27

My MP is Lola McEvoy (Darlington). She’s finally gotten around to replying to me. Pretty passive voice and I get the strong impression she’d rather clean out a septic tank than actually address the issues I raised or take any of the actions I requested. She’s a colossal disappointment as an MP and this has done nothing to improve my view of her.

PachacutisBadAuntie · 11/12/2025 22:50

bincrate · 11/12/2025 15:27

My MP is Lola McEvoy (Darlington). She’s finally gotten around to replying to me. Pretty passive voice and I get the strong impression she’d rather clean out a septic tank than actually address the issues I raised or take any of the actions I requested. She’s a colossal disappointment as an MP and this has done nothing to improve my view of her.

That's a long time to take to reply, but I sent a couple of emails on the same issue to my MP with no reply at all previously. I wondered if MPs have been told to stop ignoring us. Also, Darlington...

OP posts:
bincrate · 12/12/2025 01:02

yeah… darlo. I reckon she’s battening down the hatches for the outcome of that hearing. I’m weighing up the merits of replying to express my disappointment at her lack of owing any of the opinions expressed in the letter. She’s entirely hidden behind ‘the government’ and ‘ministers’. And her generalised support of said govt and ministers. I feel like she’s wasn’t quite prepared for the reality of MPing in a place like this. Or in times like this.

newtlover · 13/12/2025 09:01

I don't have it to hand but I had a fairly prompt reply from my Labour MP, on paper no less, saying, hhmmmm its all so complex and far reaching we must make sure we properly scrutinise this before its released. Agree with PPs its like they are waiting for something.
I don't really get what there is to scrutinise. The SC has ruled on the law, the EHRC has explained how it can be applied, what is the government's role in this?

ItsCoolForCats · 13/12/2025 15:25

newtlover · 13/12/2025 09:01

I don't have it to hand but I had a fairly prompt reply from my Labour MP, on paper no less, saying, hhmmmm its all so complex and far reaching we must make sure we properly scrutinise this before its released. Agree with PPs its like they are waiting for something.
I don't really get what there is to scrutinise. The SC has ruled on the law, the EHRC has explained how it can be applied, what is the government's role in this?

They are waiting for the outcome of the GLP judicial review to see what that has to say about the government's 'case by case' argument.

RandomHypatia · 13/12/2025 16:16

Still no response from my (Labour) MP in central belt Scotland. Just an automated email from 31st October acknowledging receipt and describing them as very busy. I wonder if they'll reply before the end of the year.
I assume it's been dumped in the "Terf scum" mailbox to be ignored.

PassTheHanky · 13/12/2025 18:22

I wrote to my Liberal MP Richard Forde on 1st November and have heard absolutely nothing back. I wasn't surprised because I've written to him before about the same subject and heard nothing. I'm glad I didn't vote for him.

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