Govt single sex spaces bill - our response

Liberal Democrat Women strongly reject the apparent proposals which would restrict the ability of trans women to use women’s single-sex spaces.

Experience where such bills have been debated and implemented shows that any woman who does not conform to someone else’s idea of what a woman should look or sound like will be subject to challenge. Such legislation, if implemented, is almost always reversed quickly because of the effects on all women. Lesbian women have many stories of how they have been discriminated against and subjected to violence in women’s facilities, simply because of their appearance.

The government is scrapping plans to make it easier to change gender and intends to protect women-only facilities, The Sunday Times reports. Plus part 8 of The Funday Times Home Classroom #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/79q47IBCa4

— The Sunday Times (@thesundaytimes) June 13, 2020

The proposals take no account of the discrimination that trans women already face, and would make it impossible for those trans women early on in their transition to participate in public life, including travel and shopping.

The idea that trans women are or enable predatory males is a dangerous myth – one that now puts every woman at increased risk of violence and sexual assault. Why would any man try to declare themselves to be a woman in order to access a woman only space, when it would be easier to simply put on a hi-vis jacket and grab a mop or a pair of pliers?

We abhor this singling out of trans women as the main risk to women’s safety. Rather than penalising them for men’s violence, we should stand together to pursue women’s liberty together.

Read more:

• ITV report
• PinkNews: Layla Moran demands Liz Truss come before Parliament to explain "retrograde" policy