Author Archives: Marlowe North

I canvassed seventy-five doors for the Liberal Democrats last Saturday.

I know it’s not a massive number by many politicos’ standards — I mean, I did seven hundred and sixty-nine across the short campaign period last year — but it’s still a decent amount to do on one casualish action day, I think.

And yet, when I watch my partner (our local candidate) trawling through the local rag’s website for things we can use as Focus stories, I can’t help but wonder what I’m doing here.

I am (as far as I’m aware) the only trans member of our local party, and I’m our diversity officer too. I organised and ran the Lib Dem stall at our local pride event this summer, and I spent eight hours wearing my voice hoarse (top tip trans-masc people, it’s a great temporary alternative to T in terms of dropping about an octave) telling attendees that the Lib Dems are standing up for all queer people’s rights. It was a tough day, but it was exhilarating and I loved every second. It was a fantastic way to spend my first ever pride event.

I don’t know if I could do that in good faith any more.

I canvassed seventy-five doors last Saturday because this is the party I’ve signed up to, and because I really truly believe that my partner would be significantly better on the council than the God-awful complacent Labour people currently clogging up this ward. But I did have to slightly switch my brain off in order to do so, because I really don’t know what I would have said if a trans voter had asked me about our party’s policy on their rights.

Now, I know our party’s policy is excellent. We’re in favour of self-ID including a neutral option, a complete ban on conversion practices, and removal of the spousal veto. But at the same time, trans people within the party are not free to be who we are: not if we want to be counted in quotas.

(Non-binary people in particular now don’t show up in gender quotas at all, and it’s not like this can be blamed on the Supreme Court ruling, because non-binary people have never existed in UK law.)