People have been shocked at MP Ben Maguire's outbursts this week. Firstly implying that @jk_rowling had only spoken out for women for "attention" and secondly saying @ForWomenScot has a "fascist agenda". Clearly unacceptable however not unusual behaviour within @LibDems - 🧵 In 2022, unlawful Defn of Transphobia was changed to say "Holding and expressing gender critical views, whether in internal debates or publicly, is protected by law under the Equality Act, Article 9 ECHR and Article 10 ECHR and is permitted." So English Party passed this motion

Today in HoC LD Women and Equalities spokesperson took aim at the Equality Act & Supreme Court ruling - questioning "whether we need fresh legislation in this country to deal with all the issues in the Equalities [sic] Act which have been raised by the...Supreme Court Ruling?'🧵 @cajardineMP also said issues were raised by EHRC 'interim guidance.' Leaving aside W&E spx referred to the Equality Act as the 'Equalities Act' and referred to the interim update as 'guidance' (despite being told it wasn't guidance by Bn Falkner last week') this is v. worrying

Interesting article by human rights lawyer & academic, revealing it was discussion of the spousal exit clause that provoked him to say “Trans rights don’t trump everything else!” Discussion in the @libdems party of spousal exit clause is v. different 🧵 telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/2… Last week during a Westminster Hall debate about gender self-ID two Lib Dem MPs spoke against the non-transitioning spouse (typically a women) having the right to consent to a fundamental change to their marriage contract @VikkiSlade72 & @cajardineMP

After this year's Spring Conference, where Lib Dems voted on a motion backing self-ID the @Telegraph ran an article highlighting that Lib Dem members did not agree with self-ID. Lib Dem voters feel the same as shown in various YouGov polls. 🧵 However @LibDems sources told the journalist @DominicPenna that our characterisation of the motion at conference was wrong - that the Lib Dems had sensible policies and did not back self-ID. But yesterday in the Westminster Hall debate @cajardineMP stated we backed self-ID...

Some astonishing exchanges on a question about women's sport in House of Lords yesterday. @SarahLudford spoke about women and girl's participation in sport, the fact many teen girls gave up sport and some women/girls excluded themselves due to males in their teams and sports. However in response Bn Twycross said this was tangling two issues. Only if someone thinks female participation in sports is not relevant to the Supreme Court ruling could that be true. Of course if the Bn listened to the voices of women & girls on this issue she would know this

It is now 13 months since the publication of the Cass Review. @LibDems have had 2 recent opportunities to state a formal position on Cass - the 1st at Spring conference with motion F9 and the 2nd in the recent puberty blocker debate – yet still we wait…🧵 Firstly, conference. Motion F9 was supposed to address @LGBTLD & @libvoice4women calls for a debate on Cass – both groups presented motions for Autumn conf. in 2024 but were told there would be a Spring spokesperson paper. However, F9 did not mention Cass at all

Important bill coming through parliament right now #DataBill where MPs voted last night not to collect accurate data on sex. This goes against the recent #SullivanReview (which @UKLabour sat on for 6 months) and is at odds with the Supreme Court ruling on collecting data. 🧵 One @LibDems MP spoke against amendment NC21 which would have ensured accurate collection of data on sex - showing a fundamental understanding of how digital ID would work. Currently to prove age people hand over a drivers license with name, address and age on for example

The Supreme Court ruling offers a golden bridge to those who were caught up in gender identity politics. It is right to give politicians the opportunity to walk over that bridge, even though many will never admit they were wrong. Some @LibDems are doing that, some not 🧵 Here is @libdemdaisy yesterday. She states she respects the ruling but says that it was a narrow ruling. Those who listened to the judgment know how detailed and holistically the judges opined, from sports to spaces to sexual orientation.

Many people ask why the @LibDems have adopted their extreme positions on trans people, women's rights and childhood transition. As @cajardineMP made clear at #LDConf for many in the conference hall room this issue is personal. 🧵 Most obviously it's personal for the many trans people in the party. Well known trans activists include Helen Belcher, Sarah Brown, Zoe O' Connell and Charley Hasted. Hear some of their speeches here about gender medicine, removing GRC safeguards, removing spousal exit clause.

‘Free to be who you are’ - proposed by @cajardineMP
- Discusses LD LGB history
- Recognises meeting LVW & some of our concerns; we don’t think they've been addressed
- Implies a boy who likes dresses, plays with girls may be trans
- Backs ‘gender affirming care’ amendment 1/ The mover of amendment 3 discusses the benefits of 'gender affirming care' they personally saw. There is no mention of the #CassReview which found the evidence base for these treatments in children with gender distress more generally was weak with emerging evidence of harm. 2/

A new UK you gov poll was released last week about the conflict between trans activists who want access to women's spaces/sports & rights of women. We analysed survey results for @LibDems voters. First question on sports. Overwhelming support for female only sport 🧵(bookmark) Across 4 surveys (from 2018) Lib Dem voters have always supported female only sport and over time those numbers have risen by over 20%. How about access to single-sex spaces? First question is changing rooms. Here we look at 2 questions on this topic (2nd qn introduced in 2020)

It is now 10 months since the publication of the Cass Review and the @LibDems have still not made an official statement about whether they accept it. We submitted a motion to Autumn conference 2024 on this. It wasn’t selected: 🧵 libdemvoice.org/wp-content/upl… Neither was the LGBT+ Lib Dem motion accepted. Note the motion was considered by Equalities – not Health. We believe decisions about the best treatments and care pathways lie with Health. The public rejection reason for both is screenshot here.

It is now 9 months since the publication of the Cass Review and the Lib Dems have still not said if they accept the findings and recommendations. The report from Autumn conference has now been published which asked this direct question, response below 🧵 Lots of words but a failure to directly accept the Cass Review’s findings from Lord’s leader Dick Newby and Chief Whip, @wendychambLD. More diversion and chiding about ‘toxic debate’ and a new term introduced ‘high-quality healthcare.’

We thought we’d start the year by looking back at contributions from @LibDem women MPs from the last parliament (2019-2024). We started by doing a search of how many times each MPs had mentioned the word women – note 3 were elected in by-elections which we accounted for. 🧵 The LD female MP who mentioned the word ‘women’ the most, both in absolute terms & on average per year was @Wera_Hobhouse who mentioned the word women 82 times across her 5 years of contributions. Wera brought forward two private members bills important for women too

It is now 8 months since the Cass Review was published and still there is no formal statement from the @libdems about whether the Party accepts the findings of the Cass Review. For those who are still wondering why, the events of this week help exemplify. 🧵 On the 11th Dec the Secretary of State for Health, @wesstreeting, announced an indefinite ban on puberty blockers for treating children with gender dysphoria. He cited an unsafe prescribing environment and lack of safety and efficacy data in this cohort. See 👇

The LD president Mark Pack did a recent blog about a you gov poll, from which he concluded that ‘women were more supportive of trans rights than men’ citing statistics saying e.g. women supported males who identify as women in their toilets. However, this isn’t the whole story… In the poll, quite rightly, the British public were supportive of people identifying as they wished. The issue is when people think their gender identity means they can have the rights of the opposite sex e.g. should males have the right to compete in female sport?

Thanks to the magnificent efforts of @LabWomenDec, the courage and foresight of MPs and Peers, and aided by apparent dawning awareness of the existence of something called public opinion, Labour appears to be finally taking steps towards sanity on women’s rights 🧵 Starmer says he thinks women are female and drops self-ID
lbc.co.uk/news/keir-star…

Excellent news for #TransAwarenessWeek

The @libdems Federal Board has finally revised the party's Definition of Transphobia after 2 years of controversy, criticism and legal uncertainty.
beta.libdems.org.uk/code-of-conduc… The change comes after the party received legal advice from two KCs, of which Karon Monaghan's can be viewed here liberalvoiceforwomen.org/s/Karon-Monagh… The second legal opinion has not yet been published.

V encouraging performance by @EdwardJDavey on @BBCAnyQuestions Acknowledged:
✅ Importance of safeguards in GRA to prevent abuse
✅ Need for mature, open debate
✅ Importance of level playing field for women and girls' sports
✅ Gender ID is question of BELIEF 
#RespectMySex "The GRA allows people to change their gender, but it puts safeguards in to avoid abuse."
This is such an important acknowledgement @EdwardJDavey
Please have an urgent word with @agcolehamilton before these crucial safeguards are abandoned in Scotland.
#RespectMySex

The interim report for the Cass Review of gender identity services for children and young people, out today, is VERY good news for everyone who wants to see evidence-based care for children and young people.
cass.independent-review.uk/publications/i…
Here are the key points in tweet form 👇 "The rapid increase in the number of children requiring support and the complex case-mix means that the current clinical model, with a single national provider, is not sustainable in the longer term."

Ever wondered why our party appears to have such a blind spot when it comes to the impact of our trans policies on women, LGB people, children, the wider social fabric?
Here is your answer:
libdemvoice.org/the-funny-thin… The people who would ordinarily interrogate policies and flag up problems are literally frozen out of the channels that normally host debate, because people who are fundamentally opposed to discussion of the subject get to control the groups!