The Federal Board announced yesterday that it had amended its definition of transphobia in light of recent legal advice. The new wording can be found here,
However, LGBT+ Lib Dems, the official party body for gender and sexual minorities, has vowed to resist it, saying that the party had been unable to stand by its values when confronted by well-funded and organised transphobia. They said:
Like many reading this, the team at LGBT+ Liberal Democrats are disappointed and frustrated with the recent revisions to the Liberal Democrats definition of transphobia. While some tidying up of it may have been needed to protect against vexatious legal challenges, we are sad that our party has been pushed so far backwards.
As a party, we see ourselves as having the longest and strongest record on advocacy for trans rights and the wider LGBTQ+ community. Only last month our leader, Ed Davey MP, met with trans and non binary activists in the party to talk about trans people’s lives in the UK today. Many, many people throughout our party are staunch trans allies – be that in Parliament, the Council chamber, or party staff. And yet institutionally we remain risk-averse, unable to fully stand by our liberal values (as clearly laid out in the preamble to our constitution) as an organisation when confronted by well-funded and organised transphobia.
This process began earlier in the Autumn, and LGBT+ Liberal Democrats were sought for consultation on these changes. Naturally, we had a strong line on any changes that might be made, but sadly these do not appear to have been reflected in the final version. Key points that we raised in our response included:
- Seeking further information on the balance of risks if we kept the previous version of the definition
- Probing the promotion of ‘gender critical’ views. Why do we need to specify these views, rather than transphobia more broadly? Why are they deserving of explicit protection?
- Highlighting the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association of trans, LGBTQ+ and pro-trans members of the party
- Questioning the relevance of any employment law to political party associations
We understand that a lot of onus has been put on a specific part of the revised definition as part of the defence of it. In one paragraph (7) the new definition specifically prohibits creating a “hostile environment” for trans people in the party. Some have argued that it is virtually impossible to meaningfully advance transphobic views of whatever kind, without ultimately falling foul of this. However, even under the prior definition, it has been many of our member’s experiences that a hostile environment already exists, and people have already resigned their membership because of this.
Even assuming that this is the case, and that this section contains our secret weapon against transphobia, there is too much ambiguity elsewhere in the revised definition to protect against wilful misinterpretation. We have already seen misleading and concerning tweets and comments, saying that the revised definition now allows deadnaming and misgendering. This is entirely untrue – but has been weaponized by transphobes anyway.
Publishing this on the first day of trans awareness week was also, frankly, shocking. We understand it was published swiftly to avoid being weaponised by transphobes, but the result has been to make us look utterly stupid at best, or worse – insincere.
The fact that a political party can essentially be cowed into this position highlights once again the dangers of organised and well-funded transphobia in the UK. Many will be aware of the looming threat of punch-down complaints and spurious law-suits, which have a far more chilling effect on freedom of speech in our politics than anything LGBTQ+ people themselves could pose.
The LGBT+ Liberal Democrats will resist this revision through all routes available to us. At a time when trans people are feeling particularly under threat, the leading liberal party in the UK should be standing with them, firm and proud.
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10 Comments
Well done! Proud to be with you!
Is Liberal Voice for Women going to be allowed an equal amount of space here to put the alternative view? Seems only fair.
Tony, they are not an official party body so no.
I have read the Party’s new official definition of Transphobia, and consider it to be a reasonable definition.
I have also read the linked full text of the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats Statement on Revision of Definition of Transphobia which is quoted above. In my opinion, while the LGBT+ Statement expresses great dissatisfaction that the Party has changed the definition, the Statement fails to explain adequately why the writers are dissatisfied.
Given the importance of the issue, and the fact that the Party has acted after receiving legal advice, I think LGBT+ Liberal Democrats should explain in greater detail why the object to the change, citing precisely what words in the new definition they are dissatisfied with, and how they would revise the new definition so that it was satisfactory from their perspective.
I sort of agree to an extent with Mohammad that reading the new definition in isolation it isn’t immediately obvious what is wrong with the new definition of transphobia. There is a fine line between not being patronising and expecting too much of people who are not as up to speed as you are on a subject.
Reading what it replaces, I think the problem is it waters down the party’s commitment to opposing this sort of discrimination. The new code of conduct is less explicit about what constitutes transphobia. The new code does not give examples of what constitutes transphobia, and also makes clear that making a simple unintentional mistake will not have you disciplined. This is to head off an off cited myth that transphobia policies punish confused old people who make mistakes.
I feel the celebration from anti trans organisations that align themselves with lib dems is muddying the waters. It is not now permitted to misgender or deadname trans people with impunity for instance even though, and I feel it was dishonest to claim the old policy would punish people for simply not being up to speed or making honest mistakes. I can see some people treating it as others do the 10% margin of error on prosecuting speed limits. They will feel they have in their back pockets permission to deadname or misgender each trans person once, believing this is an act of resistance when in reality it is just an act of spite.
You can’t both allow ‘Gender Critical’ views and avoid creating a hostile environment for trans people in my opinion.
I think it’s incredibly unfortunate that guidance which ought to be in line with our values and be something reassuring to trans people is instead explicitly welcoming people with bigoted views into the party.
It also spends far too much time trying to explain what isn’t transphobia.
What Andrew T said. The problem with the new definition is that it explicitly welcomes so-called “gender critical” views — the latest term for transphobia that transphobes have come up with as part of a euphemism treadmill. “Gender critical” *means* transphobic hate speech.
The new definition was written without consulting Plus and without even consulting any trans people. The result is horribly flawed.
You could do something similar for homophobic hate speech. Just call it “same-sex attraction critical” and you’re welcome in Qatar.
I agree with Andrew Hickey. It is unacceptable that the Party’s definition of transphobia has been changed without even consulting trans people. It is never acceptable to make decisions that will affect a vulnerable minority group of people, without members of that group of people playing a leading role in the decision. Why couldn’t LGBT+ Liberal Democrats have been invited to write the new definition (assuming a new definition was needed).
It is worrying that the new definition seems to accept that “gender critical” views are a protected characteristic, and that the party must be bound by this. The Maya Forstater ruling, on which this assumption is based, was really about employment law, and does not necessarily apply to a political party. But shouldn’t we as a party be challenging the whole idea that so called “gender critical” views can be a protected characteristic? As Andrew says, “gender critical” really just means transphobia. To say that this is a protected characteristic, seems like saying racism could be a protected characteristic, if racists called themselves “race critical”.
Bizarre that a definition of transphobia should cite legal protections for gender-critical people over (or at least, instead of) the greater legal protections that exist for trans people.