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.)
I know that this quotas policy doesn’t represent our membership; that was established pretty clearly at conference. And so in theory I should have no problem explaining the party’s views to a trans voter, because there’s nothing anti-trans there. But in the Liberal Democrats — unlike in, for example, Labour — the party machine is supposed to have to listen to conference, and that hasn’t happened here. So why has this rule been broken, and for such a horrible reason?
This quotas decision is against several parts of both UK law and the Liberal Democrat constitution (trans status is private information, changes to election rules should not be made the day before polls open, the conditions of use for collecting someone’s data can not be changed after they have given consent), but above all it’s not us. We showed that it’s not us when Liberal Voice for Women asked.
And yet it’s happening. So how can I go out there and bruise my knuckles knocking doors and tear my skin pushing bits of paper through letter boxes and get Riso ink all over my hands folding leaflets for a party machine which allows a returning officer to throw trans people’s rights out of the window as a shoddy attempt at appeasement that’ll probably just end in us getting sued by transphobes anyway?
I mean, I’ll carry on, of course I will, but please. Can we sort this mess out so I don’t feel awful while I’m out there. It’s tiring enough being trans in the UK anyway without this on top.
* Marlowe North is the diversity officer and a campaigner for Norwich Lib Dems as well as the vice president of Lib Dems UEA. They are an Irish citizen.
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10 Comments
Yes, the party nationally needs to recognise that sometimes, like every human or organisation, it gets things wrong and this situation is clearly that. It needs prompt revision.
I have been a party member for 61 years. During that time, I have found myself at odds with the party about one thing or another, for example, the merger, student fees, economic policy. I have always stayed to fight for what I believe in, successful more than not. I came nearest to leaving over the merger, but after looking for alternatives, I found that generally the Liberals/LibDems are always nearest to my own beliefs.
This decision is a bad one. I have a trans grandchild and a trans stepchild and I too find it incomprehensible that the party does not stand up and fight these TERF bigots. But, I know the majority of the party has repeatedly stood up for trans rights and that somehow we will sort this out and continue to be loud and proud for all our members regardless of their orientation or gender choices.
“because non-binary people have never existed in UK law”
Isn’t getting UK law to recognise the legal existence of non-binary people as a separate category of “biological sex” actually the way forward?
It has the advantage of being supported (at least at the moment) by molecular and other evidence; and my initial thought is that it is compatible with the idea that the law should (so far as sensibly possible) recognise and support the gender people live in (supported by a Gender Recognition Certificate if that person wants one) as well.
Is Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers compatible with this result? The Court used the expression “biological sex” to describe the sex of a person at birth (*) . (Para 7 of the judgement). This is consistent with the (current) fact that only two biological sexes are recognised in English law at least. However I don’t think that legal position is expressly spelt out.
Maybe the judges deliberately left space for a development of the law so that “biological sex” can include, in legal terms, a separate category for non-binary people. It may be they felt that such a change in the law should be left to Parliament. I don’t know whether the judges were constrained by statute from making that decision (that for legal purposes there is a third biological sex) as a development of the common law.
(*) which of course can only be a provisional assignment though accurate in most cases.
Very persuasive piece. Let’s just suspend quotas now and give ourselves time for considered, civilised discussion. As a liberal, I find the need to put people into boxes distasteful, so a re-examination of this matter would be welcome.
🫂
Why does the state arrogate to itself the decision about someone ‘s gender? Seems no more necessary than the distinction between blankes and nie-blanks in apartheid era South Africa .
@Jenny Barnes
As I read the situation, the State does not ‘arrogate to itself the decision about someone’s gender’ – assuming you are defining gender as a person’s gender identity. What the State does is require the sex of babies to be recorded as part of the registration of their births, and then provides certain services and facilities on the basis of sex. These requirements and actions reinforce the importance of sex distinctions in society and therefore make life difficult for those whose gender identity does not reflect the sex that was recorded at their birth
Paragraph 267 of the Supreme Court ruling begins:
“There may well be public boards on which it is also important for trans people of either or both genders to be represented in order to ensure that their perspective is brought to bear in the board’s deliberations and in the organisation’s governance. Nothing in this judgment is intended to discourage the appointment of trans people to public boards or to minimise the importance of addressing their under-representation on such boards. ”
The ruling only blocks trans-women with a GRC being counted as part of a women’s quota (and similarly for trans-men where there is a men’s quota).
Given our lacklustre media strategy and unwillingness to develop a good one, its baffling the party should be so contemptuous towards the activists and members who help it attain political power.
Given the ruling quoted by Laurence Cox, would it be possible to implement a slight bias towards trans representation by ruling
– A trans person of either gender may not be eliminated as a result of quotas by sex
– If a trans person is elected, quotas by sex would be recalculated based on reducing the total places by one.