Tag Archives: lib dem mum

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Dear Lib Dem Mum,

I am a feminist, and a liberal, and I think we should all have the right to live our lives as we choose. I have been watching, as an outsider, the heated discussions about trans rights. I don’t (to my knowledge) have any trans friends or relatives, and my interest in this is purely a human rights one. I do not want trans people of any gender to suffer, but nor do I want women to suffer. There are people on both sides of this debate who I find broadly credible, and there are people on both sides who seem to want to destroy the other. I want to be fair and just to everybody, and for us all to go forward to a more liberal and just society.

Help?

Confused, Lanarkshire.

Dear Confused,

As a peace-loving liberal mum, I generally like to try to see all sides of a debate and reach a compromise if one is possible. This is one of those instances where I do not think compromise is possible.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the 1980s have seen all this before. The discourse around trans rights is very much a warmed over version of things people used to say about gay people in the 1980s, with a thin cloak of feminism added on top to make it more superficially acceptable. Even the toilet panic is an old canard that’s been resurrected. “Men in dresses are a threat to YOUR children” is an exact copy of the scare stories that went around at that time. And yes, there were angry and unreasonable people on both sides of that debate in the 1980s, too. It didn’t stop us, as liberals, ultimately accepting that one side was in the right. The other side, I’m afraid, was a force of reactionary conservatism (even the ones who were otherwise perfectly nice people and were good at phrasing their rhetoric in respectful and reasonable language).

Then as now, I find the best way to navigate claims and counterclaims is to look at evidence. Britain doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and several other countries have already implemented the reforms trans people call for – our closest comparison being Ireland. Trans people of all genders are no more likely to be a threat than any other human being – in fact the horrifying statistics show that they are far, far more likely to be threatened by other humans. Yes, some humans, cis and trans, of all genders and none, are Bad People. Yes, some humans, cis and trans, of all genders and none are “a threat to YOUR children”. This is because those individuals are a threat, not because of their gender, or sex, or lack of either.

Dear Lib Dem Mum,

My local party is moderately successful (we have some councillors but not an MP) and I want to help out. There are some great people in my local party, both elected to public office and on the executive committee, and I really want to help further the cause of liberalism. However, the only thing they ever want me to do is deliver leaflets, and I am not physically capable of doing a delivery round due to mobility problems.

 What can I do to show them that I can be useful in other ways?

 Frustrated, Yorkshire

Dear Frustrated,

 If our party has a major flaw alongside all the minor ones that come with being a group of human beings, it’s that we can be more of a leaflet delivery cult than an actual political party. Yours is not the only local party that tends to view volunteers as leaflet dispersal machines. Happily, there are other things you can do: 

• Within your local party:
  • Stand for the exec. In my experience, local party execs tend to be in need of people who can do things other than deliver leaflets. A good treasurer, for example, is worth their weight in gold, similarly a secretary who is actually good at taking the minutes of meetings.
  • Someone who is good with computers and can do the admin work to arrange leaflet deliveries for other people is often helpful. 
  • Volunteer to do phone banking.
  • Volunteer to proof read the leaflets so that they don’t go out filled with embarrassing typos.
  • Start, or take over an existing, policy working group and work on policies to put forward to regional or federal conference.
• Within your state and/or region, there is almost certainly a need for people to do all the things that you can do for a local party, but on a larger scale. You can also volunteer to be someone who scouts locations for meetings or conferences for accessibility: that’s not needed on a very regular basis, but it sounds like you would be the person to do it.
• Within the many internal party organisations (Young Liberals, Lib Dem Immigrants, LGBT+LDs, Lib Dem Friends of Cake, etc. – there are hundreds of these, and there’s sure to be one that meets your interests, the party has a directory of them here), or for the party nationally, there are lots of volunteer administrative roles and most of these are done remotely, from the volunteer’s home, as a matter of course, just because of the geographical distribution of members.
• You can also stand for federal committees, and/or join Federal Policy Committee working groups, and/or train to become a candidate assessor or an adjudicator for disciplinary matters, and do myriad other things to help out on a national level.
• At the moment, you can also volunteer to help out your favourite leadership contender. Volunteer to help Layla here or Ed here.