Who Will Stand Up for Women in the Lib Dems?

At the Fawcett Society event, Courage Calls: Ask Her to Stand in July 2018, our former Lib Dem President, Baroness Sal Brinton, was asked the following question by an audience member:

Most of the all women shortlists are open to anyone who identifies as a woman. So in theory, taking this to this ultimate theorisable end, all women shortlists could be composed of all transwomen, which means parliament could see 50% male representatives, MPs and 50% transwomen MPs. Would everyone be happy with that as fair representation?

Her reply: [...] On the issue about would I be happy with 50% transwomen. Absolutely. A transwoman is a woman. 

The audience member’s question was a sound one: how far are you prepared to go with this?;  if this 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’, will that give you reason to consider that something might just have gone wrong here? Will you stop and wonder whether women’s rights have on some level been compromised?

The questioner might have followed up with: “If transwomen are women, then what is a woman?” Many of our MPs and candidates have been asked this question and stumbled over it. 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 say what a woman is? How far back will we set women’s rights if the word which describes them becomes meaningless?

Liberal Democrat Women, the Association that represents women within the party, has enshrined “transwomen are women” in the preamble of its constitution. We discovered this when a Lib Dem member told us she had her application to join the Association 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: “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 reapplication in the future.” In other words, if she is willing to, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie puts it, “mouth the words”, then her inconvenient speech (and absence of speech) could be glossed over.

Being snubbed on the basis of words not spoken was perhaps less insulting than the implication contained in the subsequent invitation to lie about her beliefs. How can an organisation reliably uphold and prioritise women’s rights when it is considers it normal for members to relinquish their integrity of belief just to gain access to a club? How can an organisation that claims to represent women in the Lib Dems do so when it bans women who happen not to share its ideological position concerning sex-change? Furthermore, and this is a subject for another article, how can an organisation claim to be liberal when it endorses compelled belief?

Meanwhile in the Scottish Parliament our MSPs recently voted against an amendment in the Forensic Medical Services Bill designed to give women who have just been raped the right to ask to be examined by a healthcare practitioner of the same sex. The amendment, which asked for nothing more than clear and accurate language that correctly reflects equality legislation, was deemed by our Scottish parliamentary party to be a ‘stalking horse’, a dastardly trick to get MSPs to admit that transwomen are not women.

If it was a trick then our MSPs fell squarely into it. Nowhere in the law does it state ‘transwomen are women’. Specific exceptions in both the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act recognise that males who are legally considered women, as well as those who fall under the protected category of Gender Reassignment, are not in all cases to be treated as women. It is difficult to imagine a more humane and appropriate scenario in which to invoke these exceptions than this one. Yet according to the reasoning of our Scottish parliamentary party, rape victims are the bigots if they won’t prioritise the validation of their male healthcare practitioner’s feelings in the immediate wake of their trauma.

Instances like these are manifestations of a crisis in women’s representation that goes well beyond the Liberal Democrats. The crisis is in full effect in most UK political parties as well as the corporate women’s sector and the major human rights organisations throughout the western world.

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’. This has prompted Iseult White, the granddaughter of Amnesty founder Sean MacBride, to launch a one woman campaign to raise awareness of Amnesty’s staggering abdication of its principles and to protect the right of ‘people of conscience’, including women, to political representation.

Organisations that are funded to stand up for women’s interests have betrayed and abandoned them.  In response, thousands of women who are unwilling to ‘mouth the words’ have taken it upon themselves to set up their own groups in the vacuum left by their predecessors.

Liberal Democrat Women, a well-established Association within the party, has made itself constitutionally incapable of advocating for women’s rights on the basis of the protected characteristic of sex. There is therefore a need for another group to fill that gap; one which acknowledges that the struggles that women face are rooted in the inescapable reality their biological make-up. 

Cue Liberal Voice for Women: a new pressure group within the party and a home for sound, evidence-based policy rooted firmly in liberal principles of reason, equality and free and open debate. There is no reason why our party should continue attempting to defend the indefensible, or advancing inconceivably far fetched ideas just to prove an unwavering commitment to an ideology. We intend to help the Lib Dems do better than they have been doing in recent times, and to restore the party’s reputation as one that is capable of representing women.

While our group has initially coalesced around concern for the myriad implications of sex self-ID and gender identity based policy, we are interested in building policy and campaigns around a full range of issues affecting women and girls. Most importantly, we won’t shy away from any subject just because we are told it is ‘toxic’ or ‘divisive’. If someone tries to argue that there should be #nodebate a subject that affects women and girls then it is likely that that is the subject we will want to make space to debate.  We believe that in a democratic party, as in a democratic society, the way to handle division is through dialogue, not compelled or coerced speech.

We know our views and concerns about gender identity based policy-making are shared by many people at all levels within the Liberal Democrats. We believe it is still a majority belief within the party, as in society, that sex is not merely a social construct, that there are only two sexes, and that making such an assertion should not be a grounds either for disciplinary action, or prosecution. 

In a debate in the House of Lords last week, Sal as well as Baroness Liz Barker, argued that the word ‘mother’ or ‘woman’ should not be used in a Bill about Maternity Allowances. Two years after the Fawcett Society event at which she spoke, Sal has made it clear that not only would she be quite comfortable with the idea of a parliament composed exclusively of people born male, but she would also prefer it if maternity legislation did not even feature the word ‘woman’ or ‘mother’. There are those of us in the party who are determined to resist the disappearance of women, not only from the political sphere, but from language and from consciousness itself.

Millicent Fawcett’s rallying cry has taken on a fresh relevance:

‘Courage calls to courage everywhere, and its voice cannot be denied.’

The time for women in the Lib Dems to use our voices and stand up is now.

Will you join us?