Will liberal institutions sink or swim with the changing tides in women’s representation?
Baroness Sal Brinton, former President of the Democrat’s, was asked, at a Fawcett Society event in 2018:
Most all-women shortlists are open to anyone who identifies as a woman. So in theory, all-women shortlists could be composed of all transwomen, which means that parliament could see 50% male MPs and 50% transwomen MPs. Would that be fair representation?
Her reply? [...] On the issue - would I be happy with 50% transwomen? Absolutely. A transwoman is a woman.
The question was a sound one: how far are you prepared to go with this? If the idea is taken to its logical conclusion and we end up with this unlikely but not impossible scenario that a parliament could be composed entirely of people born male, but still be called ‘50;50’, do you agree that something might just have gone wrong here? Will you stop and wonder whether women’s rights have - on some level - been compromised?
A follow-up might be: ‘If transwomen are women, then what is a woman?’ Many MPs and candidates have been asked this question and floundered, talking about feelings and souls or grasping at references to intersex conditions. The absence of a coherent answer might lead on to other pressing questions, such as: how can women’s rights be properly represented when we are unable to usefully define a woman? How far back will we set women’s rights if the word which describes them becomes meaningless?
A story of a rejection
Liberal Democrat Women, the Association that claims to represent women within the party, has enshrined ‘transwomen are women’ in the preamble of its Constitution. We became aware of this when a Lib Dem member’s application to join Lib Dem Women was refused on the grounds that she had ‘publicly published statements that do not endorse and encourage transgender women to identify as women’ (the awkward wording here reflecting the fact that the problem was not with things that she had said, but things she hadn’t).
The Lib Dem in question was offered the opportunity to restore her eligibility for membership if she was willing to make a public U-turn. She was told ‘If you have changed your position since your pinned tweets on the topic in October 2020, have stated that publicly and wish to inform us of that, we would welcome your re-application in the future.’ In other words, if she is willing to, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has so succinctly put it, ‘mouth the words’, then her inconvenient speech (and absence of speech) could be conveniently glossed over. Being snubbed on the basis of words not spoken was perhaps less insulting than this invitation to lie about her beliefs.
The scenario provokes yet more questions, such as: How can an organisation reliably prioritise women’s rights when it proposes that members give up their integrity just to gain access to a club? How can an organisation that claims to represent women do so when it bans women who happen not to share its metaphysical belief in literal sex-change by self declaration? Furthermore, how can an organisation claim to be liberal when it endorses compelled belief?
A story of widespread betrayal
Liberal Democrat Women is by no means an isolated example of this phenomenon. It has happened in most UK political parties as well as the corporate women’s sector and a number of global human rights organisations. It has become commonplace for organisations that claim to stand up for women’s interests to pretend that they don’t know what a woman is at all. It seems that leaders and CEOs have been told that trans rights are the new rights that must take absolute precedence over all other kinds of rights, and that this view must never be questioned, however lofty or unreasonable its proponents’ demands.
UN Women, ACLU, Action Aid, Humanists UK and (staggeringly) La Leche League and Doula UK are among the very long list of organisations that have claimed that sex isn’t real or important, or that words about women must be given new meanings. Whether for the sake of their careers, or the (admittedly not unfounded) fear of repercussions, the women and men in charge of these organisations appear to have acquiesced to the demands of the gender identity lobby with little or no resistance.
Particularly striking is the case of Amnesty, an organisation explicitly established to defend people who find themselves on the ‘wrong side’ of prevailing political orthodoxies across the globe. Amnesty’s Ireland branch stated that they would seek to deny political representation to women’s groups that set out to ‘defend biology’.
The fightback
Finding themselves without representation, women have responded by doing what women in this situation have always done: stood up and represented themselves. Iseult White, the granddaughter of Amnesty founder Sean MacBride, launched a one woman campaign to raise awareness of Amnesty’s extraordinary abdication of its principles, and to protect the right of ‘people of conscience’ to political representation. A great number of other women have been mobilised.
Powered by courage, intelligence, resourcefulness, persistence and humour, women who are unwilling to mouth the words have gone ahead and set up their own advocacy, consultancy, discussion and protest groups from the ground up, in the vacuum left by others.
Their achievements, invariably funded by small personal donations, and often at great cost to themselves, have been phenomenal. Finally we are seeing the tide begin to turn. To name a few key events:
Fair Play for Women successfully forced the Office for National Statistics to acknowledge that sex is real and can’t be self-identified;
Keira Bell, a young woman detransitioner, took the Tavistock Gender Identity Service to the High Court and won her claim that children are unlikely to be able to consent to puberty blockers;
World Rugby, again with the help of Fair Play for Women and a number of others, has acknowledged that women’s rugby is no place for males;
The entire House of Lords (with a few notable exceptions) stood up to oppose the political erasure of sex, thanks to quiet conversations with women who told them why the question of ‘inclusive language’ needs to be viewed with a wider lens when it comes to public policy.
The LGB Alliance has been granted charity status to further its aims of promoting equality and diversity and human rights.
Maya Forsater’s landmark case on freedom of belief currently awaits a decision. But significantly, the EHRC intervened in the case on Maya’s side, confirming that the belief that transwomen are men is protected by law.
With numerous meaningful precedents now set, and others just around the corner, our institutions, and especially our political parties can no longer sit back and watch their out-of-control activists abuse women, call them 'terfs’ or try to compare them to racists. The current state of things is neither ethical, nor sustainable, nor is it even politically astute. Women (and men) across the country are waking up to what is at stake here.
A fresh voice for women in the Lib Dems
By enshrining ‘Trans women are women’ in its own Constitution, Liberal Democrat Women has closed its doors to debate, to intellectual rigour, to women’s interests and to the freedom to name material reality. It has made itself constitutionally incapable of advocating for women’s rights on the basis of sex. This is despite the fact that sex is a Protected Characteristic under the Equality Act and that the Preamble to the Liberal Democrat Constitution recognises sex as a key axis of discrimination. There is therefore a need for somebody else to fill that gap.
Liberal Voice for Women is a new pressure group within the Lib Dems composed of members determined to help the party stay ahead of the curve on women’s issues. While our group initially coalesced around concern about the myriad implications of sex self-ID, we are also unconvinced by our party’s current ability to address any important issues affecting women and girls. We have therefore set ourselves a broad remit. Crucially, we won’t shy away from any subject that we are told it is ‘toxic’ or ‘divisive’, or because it comes into conflict with men’s rights. Any issue that comes with the hashtag #nodebate is likely to be a subject that needs debate. In a democratic party, as in a democratic society, the way to handle division is through dialogue, not censorship or compelled speech.
We believe our parliamentarians have been very poorly briefed when it comes to how women’s rights and trans rights should be negotiated. We have seen our MSPs falling over themselves to defend the indefensible in the Forensic Medical Services Bill, peers engaging in absurd acts of sex denial, and, more recently, a bizarre and unfounded outburst attacking the LGB Alliance’s correspondence asking for greater consideration for LGB people in a debate about conversion therapy. As Lib Dem members we are shocked and saddened to see these things happening in the name of our party.
Since the launch of our website in March we have received interest from many people at all levels within the Lib Dems. We have held two online events, and attendance has doubled each time as awareness of our work has begun to spread. As we had suspected, there is quiet concern within the party about the impact of sex self-ID, about the pathologisation of gender nonconformity in children, and about the party’s handling of discussion on the subject. It is clear to us that there is still a majority belief within the grassroots of the party, as in society, that the existence of two, immutable sexes is a material fact and not merely a social construct, and that a belief in gender identity is harmful to children.
If political parties and women’s organisations want to avoid sinking into irrelevance, they must make space for ‘gender identity-as-policy’ to be challenged and debated. Two days ago Maya Forstater asked ‘I wonder how many organisational leaders are mulling over how to safely defuse the gender radicals in their org this bank holiday?’ This will be no easy task in the Lib Dems. But we are here to help and to remind the party that as the rudders fall off the gender identity ship, the organisations that are able to stay afloat will be those that can stay true to their purpose and remain anchored in reality.