Respect My Sex: Lib Dem Round-up

‘Respect My Sex if you Want my X’, a grassroots campaign led by women from across the political spectrum, catapulted the issue of women’s sex-based rights up the political agenda for the duration of the 2022 local elections, with a seemingly endless stream of news coverage including a good number of front pages, and extended social media activity.

For Lib Dems, the standard claim that this issue ‘never comes up on the doorstep’ became less and less credible as local election candidates were issued with a specific briefing on how to navigate the Respect My Sex questions being posed by voters on the doorstep, at hustings, on social media and by email.

It is clear that the Lib Dems as a party no longer considers ‘transwomen are women’ to be an acceptable proxy for a serious answer to questions on women’s rights policy, evidenced by the fact that the briefing encouraged candidates to engage positively with them, instead of telling voters they are bigots if they don’t agree. Progress indeed!

We sent our own briefing to Lib Dem councillors, and received many positive replies saying the question was coming up on the doorstep a lot and thanking us for the extra information.

This new line on sex and gender, adopted by Ed Davey, Daisy Cooper and council candidates across the country, contains some welcome changes in position. For instance, it says we are not proposing any changes to the Equality Act, and that, regarding GRA reform, we are committed to ‘preserving safeguards to prevent abuse by non-trans people.’

The trouble for party leadership is that Lib Dem policy is made by Lib Dem Conference, and as far we know there has never been any update to the 2015 motion that said the Single Sex Exceptions in the Equality Act should be removed, or that the medical safeguards in the GRA should be scrapped. So the story continues…

An unfortunate low point in the Lib Dem campaign was this extraordinary intervention by ALDC, in which women asking questions about policy are characterised as dangerous extremists. It advises candidates to question the motives of questioners, treating them with the utmost suspicion. We are of the view that this unhelpful guidance, which will have been read by thousands of candidates and campaigners, will have lost us votes and maybe even elections.

ALDC’s post appears to have been prompted by an instance where a Lib Dem candidate claimed on Twitter to have been ‘shaking in anger’, after encountering women distributing leaflets promoting single sex spaces and services outside a hustings at which the candidate was appearing. Clearly the provision of such services is something that is likely to come under the remit of local councils. If the thought of someone needing, wanting or asking for them is enough to incite such rage, it is not unreasonable for a voter to question the suitability of such a candidate for the role of councillor.

There was however at least one Respect My Sex success story for Lib Dems. In the final days of the campaign, a woman in Tunbridge Wells tweeted that she had been accused of being ‘obsessive’ by a Labour candidate when asking questions about women’s rights. Meanwhile, the candidate’s Lib Dem counterpart, Mark Ellis, had written her a letter in which he respectfully addressed her questions. She described him in her tweet as ‘much more receptive to women’s concerns’, and said her vote would be going to him.

Ultimately, Mark Ellis won the election by 4 votes.

The moral of this story is self-evident: Lib Dem activists who argue ‘there’s no point engaging with voters who ask these questions because they are usually doing so in bad faith and are never going to vote for us anyway’ could not be more wrong.

Women voters during this election, especially on the left of centre, were looking for local representatives who would simply respect their sex. The clue was in the name of the campaign. In many cases they were even willing to overlook the national policy of a candidate’s party if that candidate was willing to :

- acknowledge current equality law as it relates to the protected characteristic of sex
- recognise the need to balance the rights of different protected groups when planning service provision
- respect women’s rights to hold and articulate legitimate political views on issues that affect them.

The same is likely to be true of next year’s local elections, at by-elections, and every other election after that, until women’s existing legal rights are protected.

The stories above tell us the dividing lines in the Lib Dems are now clear: there are those, including the parliamentary party, who believe it’s worth listening to and respectfully engaging with women who ask questions about their rights under the law, and there are those, like ALDC and LGBT+ Lib Dems who believe… something else.

The elephant in the room remains: existing policy is indefensible . If we have to lie about policy then it is not fit for purpose and needs to be changed. We can’t continue to gloss over the contradictions indefinitely.

Lib Dem politicians in media interviews, and candidates on the doorsteps will be made to awkwardly skirt around this topic until we have a decent policy we can be proud of: one that acknowledges the material and legal concept of sex.

We think it will benefit the party to sort this out sooner rather than later. Sign up here to help us make the case.