I always try to check and reference primary sources when I blog or tweet, because I like making sure my facts are correct. I have had to bin a blog post more than once when it’s turned out the numbers and figures are not exactly as I thought. WordPress allows me to see who has clicked on links, and although it is depressing to see how few people follow up my sources, I do hope that people would call me out if I cited something wrong.

And a recent example illustrates exactly why I do this, specifically a Twitter image meme about Maria Miller (Now Secretary of State and Minister for, among other things, Equalities) that was doing the rounds a couple of days ago. The content of that image is rebutted pretty well in this blog post, although it confirmed what I already knew from my own research: Whilst neither Miller nor Helen Grant (Who has Lynne Featherstone’s old job as Parliamentary Undersecretary for Equalities) have a positive record on LGBT, they actually have a worryingly blank record rather than a negative one.

I get irritated by such things firstly because that they spread due to the “common sense” view that “All Tories are Evil, so this must be true!” and I don’t believe all Tories are evil. (Misinformed, perhaps…) If you assume, even by implication, that every member of the Conservative Party is evil and anti-equality, people who are on our side will leave in frustration. Eventually, a party that spends a lot of it’s time in government will become even more anti-equality: Not good news for real equality on the ground.

And secondly because “common sense” leads to institutional cases of Trans and other discrimination, especially in large organisations. I’ve recently run across a case where a large public body classes all Trans people as being high risk for mental health and thus need extra evidence to prove sanity, even if there is no other psychiatric history at all. They don’t have any evidence to back this up besides a note in some meeting minutes saying “It’s OK as long as Trans people can prove they’re sane” because doctors all “know” it’s true and don’t bother checking sources. (The British Military did check, and came to the conclusion there is no reason to assume someone with a history of Gender Dysphoria would be high risk, unless there is some other history to indicate otherwise)

P.S. Astute readers will have noticed I even linked to Maria Miller and Helen Grant’s Wikipedia page. Yes, I’m that anal – and in doing so, corrected one of my own errors. I had Maria Miller down as Secretary of State for Equalities, but her official title is Minister for Equalities.