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Longtime readers of this blog will recall that I have previously written about the census in some detail. And if you’ve been about the last day or so, you’ll have seen the fuss over the news that the Office of National Statistics might make declaring your sex optional in the 2021 census.

The full details are not known as the Sunday Times story is from a leaked report and contains few details. This did not stop the Times breathlessly rushing to get quotes from two well-known anti-trans “feminists”. It seemed no trans people were asked for quotes.

The misreporting around this issue is even more widespread than usual for trans-related stories. Misreporting caused by concerns that facts will get in the way of a good headline that further demonises trans people. So here are some myths already doing the rounds, debunked.

Myth: Gender will no longer be recorded in the census, or we will have inaccurate data on gender
There are many forms in existence in which make gender optional, and most people still tick the appropriate option. Religion is a far more sensitive issue and even when the question was made optional in the 2011 census, only 7% of people chose not to provide an answer.

And the Office for National Statistics are likely to use “imputation” to fill in the gaps – a system they routinely use and causes problems analysing statistics for minority communities, such as trans people and poly households. In a nutshell, if you put your name as Mary and don’t tick “Female”, the ONS may still record you as female in statistics.

Myth: This will erase women’s identity
Tick the box, or don’t tick the box. Your choice, nobody else’s. Established religion has not disappeared since the question was made optional in 2011.

Myth: Trans people and only trans people will not answer the question, which is why it’s optional
Most trans people identify more strongly with one gender than the other, and are likely to simply tick the box they most closely identify with. The groups most likely to skip this question are, roughly in order of likelihood:

  1. Those who think it is “none of your damn business”. (A view that’s been held by some feminists quite separate from trans concerns for some time)
  2. Respondents who didn’t understand the question, perhaps because of language issues
  3. People who simply couldn’t be bothered.
  4. Non-binary people

I predict that we will see some attempts to extrapolate the non-binary population of the UK based on 2021 data. I doubt such extrapolations will be valid.

Did the Office for National Statistics get this right?
In a word, no. At least, it doesn’t look like they have but it is hard to say until the final report is published – it may be that there has been selective quoting from the report in the original article (£) and the ONS considered other factors more important. In particular, I find it a little over the top for a government report to state that asking about sex rather than gender is reallys “unacceptable”. But that may have been one side point in a longer article, or reporting the views of a focus group.

And “Other” was rejected because it was “thought to homogenise trans people and differentiate them from the rest of society“. That statement suggests that whoever wrote the ONS report has a tentative grasp of trans issues at best, as it is only true if you start from the assumption that all or most trans people will tick “other”. Liberal Democrat Conference speakers cards have an “Other/Prefer Not To Say” option on them for gender for over a year, and we have not had any complaints about that. If we were going to get complaints about getting an equality issue wrong, that’s precisely the environment in which I would expect them to surface.

And finally, there seems to be some conflation in the quotes between non-binary and intersex issues. It is unclear why the ONS has lumped intersex people in with non-binary people in this way, as they are overlapping but still distinct groups in much the same way as being Irish and having red hair are.

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There has been a bit of a fuss in the media recently about the House of Lords. This is a perennial discussion and this time it was triggered by a BBC documentary “Meet the Lords”, which apparently portrayed the upper chamber as a bunch of out of touch scroungers.

I say “apparently” because I have not watched it. I know many members of the Lords, and certainly that description does not hold true for the ones I know and I don’t much feel like watching something I know to be inaccurate. That may be because the Lords and Baronesses I’m most familiar with are part of the 400-odd working peers who regularly turn up.

Not that I begrudge Lords membership to the others because many will have done their time. Yes, they can retire under current rules. But there is little incentive to do so and retiring might upset the political balance that exists if one party’s members retire quicker than another’s.

But it is very clear that having over 800 members is unsustainable and reform is needed. And the latest discussion has gone back to the idea of a mandatory retirement age. 80 is the most common cited retirement age, although 75 is also sometimes quoted. I should state here that I am against this idea, not just because it is not enough (as we’ll see momentarily) but because age and the ability of someone to contribute to politics are not necessarily correlated. The data used for this post has been extracted from the UK Parliament Data Service who also provide details on attendance and speaking, so I might try to see what correlation exists between age and attendance in a subsequent blog post.

Back on topic, I was interested in how retirement at 75 or 80 would affect the size of the House of Lords. I had a hunt around for this but other than some fairly rudimentary estimates for the size of the house in 2022, I could find no other information on the topic so performed my own investigation.

We can have a pretty good guess at what the Lords will look like under current rules, because statistical data on life expectancy is available and calculating retirement is easy. What we cannot predict is how fast Prime Ministers will create new peers, but a very conservative estimate would be no less than 12 a year. (The averages for Heath and Brown) It’s hard to know how fast peers will retire voluntarily as the rules allowing this are new, but 18 retired last year so a restrained Prime Minister should just about be offset by voluntary retirements.

As we can see, even retiring peers at 80 doesn’t shrink the upper chamber quickly. The membership will drop below the current size of the Commons (650) in 2020, versus 2027 under current rules, but 400 is reckoned by many to be a more sensible size and even without new appointments that level isn’t reached until 2028, 11 years from now. (Versus 2033 under current rules) The more aggressive approach of retirement at 75 does immediately make the Lords smaller than the Commons, and 400 members is reached by 2023.

You may have noticed the long tail on the graph above. This is not because we have some immortal members of the House of Lords, even though it might feel like the opinions of some more senior members hark back to some distant and long-forgotten past. This is because even without new appointments by the Prime Minister, there remain just over 100 hereditary peers plus the Church of England bishops. Removing those posts and letting the same rules apply to those members as currently applies to life peerages does not really affect the overall outcome much.

Whatever the solution to the House of Lords is, mandatory retirement age might be a step in the right direction, butoes not seem to be it. We’re back to needing more fundamental reform, such as an elected upper chamber.

And finally, if you wonder about how all this affects party balance: In every conceivable scenario of retirements, both with and without hereditary peerages and the bishops, the Conservatives remain the largest party in the Lords but they never quite achieve a majority whilst the bishops are present. However, scrapping hereditary peerages and Bishops woudl result in a Tory majority in the upper chamber some time between 2036 (Retirement at 75) and 2044. (Current rules)

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Last Saturday, The Times published an opinion piece by Janice Turner in which she tells a version of events that took place at Speakers’ Corner last week during a protest by trans activists. By the time of publication, Janice’s narrative of an elderly woman being beaten up had already been proven false by video circulating on YouTube. This is my letter to the editor in response to that piece, sent on Saturday afternoon – The Times have chosen not to publish it.

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to Janice Turner’s article “The battle over gender has turned bloody”.

Janice seems to be unaware that the incident which occurred during a protest last week was videoed and that it was posted on YouTube. The video tells a very different story to the one she presents, in which she claims a trans activist committed an unprovoked assault on a 60 year old woman. Or perhaps she has taken a leaf out of Donald Trump’s campaign playbook, and wants to try to establish her view as the pure and unadulterated truth regardless of the evidence to the contrary.

What the video shows is Janice’s “60-year-old in specs and sensible shoes called Maria”, who she clearly want to portray as someone defenceless, holding a trans activist in a headlock and trying to kick them repeatedly. I understand the police were called, viewed the video and concluded no action was needed because Maria’s injuries had been sustained as a result of her being pulled off by one of the activist’s friends.

Although stills are available, the video has since been taken offline. Presumably because the person who posted it realised that crying foul when you sustain injuries in the process of assaulting someone else is not a good PR tactic.

I condemn all violence. If Janice wants to condemn violence, she too should condemn all violence. Not just those incidents that help prop up her narrative of hate.

Yours,

Councillor Zoe O’Connell

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Companies House advice on dead names
A topic that comes up frequently in Trans circles is the problem of “Dead” (I.e. pre-transition) names, something that many trans people are reluctant to make public for a whole variety of reasons. Unfortunately, many forms ask for this information with the assumption that most people who have changed names have only done so because they have married.

I ran into this problem myself just over a year ago, in the context of a charity I became trustee of as a result of my role as a councillor. Neither Companies House nor the Charities Commission actually require this information but that is not made clear, and when holding public office it is often necessary to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on paperwork to avoid unforeseen repercussions later on. I asked both organisations for confirmation, and I reproduce both their responses complete with reference number in the hope that it helps others in future.

Charity Commission advice on Dead Names Click the images for full size versions, and plain text versions of the respones from Charity Commission and Companies House are also available if anyone needs them.

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I have not been keeping a particularly close eye on online pharmacy services for a while, but an interesting email from InHouse Pharmacy sent to their customers has come my way – and it suggests that the ongoing pressure on online pharmacies has not let up recently, with international payment provider OrbitRemit now refusing to serve online pharmacies.

I could not find any further information about this change on either InHouse Pharmacy or OrbitRemit’s web sites, although I did run across an FAQ on IHP’s web site that’s now specifically blaming “BigPhama” – something that’s long been assumed to be the root cause of their problems, but had not previously been confirmed: “Unfortunately we no longer accept Visa Debit and Credit Cards or MasterCard due to lobbyist pressure from BigPharma interests.”

The good news for IHP and those using their services is that Bitcoin is becoming increasingly mainstream and now list this as their preferred payment option. Although it offers no buyer protection compared to other services, it is hard to see any way that pressure can be brought to bear on IHP via this route.

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State Opening of ParliamentI noticed a couple of the usual outlets today reporting that the Queen’s speech included measures to protect LGBT+ people. So I went to check the text – and that’s not quite what it says:

My government will make further progress to tackle the gender pay gap and discrimination against people on the basis of their race, faith, gender, disability or sexual orientation.

That is a half-complete list of the protected characteristics from the Equality Act 2010. The complete list is race, faith, gender, disability, sexual orientation, age, marriage/civil partnership, pregnancy/maternity and gender reassignment.

I can understand why some of these might not be included if the topic is employment protections – but the exclusion of gender reassignment given the track record of both the DUP and some (not all, thankfully) of the Conservative Party on these issues is worrying. I hope this is merely an oversight, but it seems worthwhile keeping a close eye on any legislation that comes forward during this parliament, to make sure it is fully inclusive.

It would be very easy for someone to slip through legislation that misses or even penalises trans people while parliament is busy dealing with Brexit.

 

Update: I have now received a copy of the briefing notes for the Queen’s Speech, and whilst they do include trans-related provisions they are all in the past tense. There does not appear to be anything in here for LGB people, let alone T+!

LGB&T Equality

• We have established a £3 million programme from 2016 to 2019 to prevent and address homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools.

• To support transgender equality we have increased investment in Gender Identity Services and issued new guidance to prisons on the treatment and management of transgender offenders.

 

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament – yes, I know it’s a photo from the wrong year but free-to-use ones aren’t up yet

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It will come as no surprise to anyone following the results that no trans members of parliament were elected yesterday, as despite the shock over the overall result relatively few seats actually changed hands. However, a record number of people standing (9) also means some record results – yesterday saw three trans candidates gaining second place. The last time a trans candidate at a parliamentary level reached second place was also the first known trans parliamentary candidate, Alexandra “Sandra” MacRae, who stood for the SNP in 1992.

General elections are predominantly national rather than local campaigns, and the fates of trans candidates have followed those of their party colleagues standing elsewhere – Labour up but with limited gains, Liberal Democrats slipping slightly in non-target seats and the Greens struggling to make an impact.

Liberal Democrats Helen Belcher
Chippenham		 2nd place, 25.6% (-3.8%)
Majority: 29.1%
Green Party Aimee Challenor
Coventry South		 5th place: 1.3% (-2.6%)
Labour Sophie Cook
East Worthing & Shoreham		 2nd place, 39.3% (+19.8%)
Majority: 9.3%
Green Party Andrew Creak
Caerphilly
(Non-Binary)		 6th place, 1.1% (-1.2%)
Liberal Democrats Charley Hasted
Swansea East
(Non-Binary)		 5th place, 1.8% (-2.4%)
Green Party Dom Horsman
North West Durham		 5th place, 1.1% (-2.6%)
Green Party Lee-Anne Lawrance
Runnymede and Weybridge
(Non-Binary)		 5th place, 2.6% (-1.5%)
Zoe OConnell Liberal Democrats Zoe O’Connell
Maldon		 3rd place, 4.3% (-0.1%)
Labour Heather Peto
Rutland & Melton		 2nd place, 22.7% (+7.3%)
Majority: 40.1%

 

Photo sources – not all Creative Commons. Please check before reuse:
Helen Belcher, Charley Hasted: Liberal Democrat candidate promotional literature.
Aimee Challenor: CC BY-SA 3.0, credit Green Party of England and Wales.
Sophie Cook: Labour party candidate promotional literature.
Dom Horsman, Lee-Anne Lawrance: Provided by the candidates for use on this blog.
Zoe O’Connell: CC BY-SA 3.0, credit Zoe O’Connell.

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And so, with polls closing in the last set of elections less than a week ago it is time for another election – 4pm today was the deadline for candidates in the upcoming General Election to get their nomination papers in.

This year’s local elections saw relatively few openly trans candidates with only three people putting their names forward, and no winners. That might seem relatively few, but county elections often produce a different crop of candidates to district councils and three was at least an improvement on the last set of council elections, 2013, in which no known trans people stood.

Against that background, and given this was a snap election in which parties would have less time to ensure a diverse slate of candidates, it would not have been surprising to find fewer openly trans candidates standing than in 2015.

But politics at the moment is defying expectations, and trans candidates are no exception with a record of six eight nine trans and non-binary people nominated – four Green, three Liberal Democrats and two Labour. This compares well to four in 2015 and none in 2010.

As ever, if you know of anyone I have missed (and you are certain they are out!) please do let me know.

Liberal Democrats Helen Belcher
Chippenham		 Swing required:
9.1% (2015)
-3.9% (2010 – held seat)
Green Party Aimee Challenor
Coventry South		 Swing required:
19.2% (2015)
20.2% (2010)
Labour Sophie Cook
East Worthing & Shoreham		 Swing required:
15.0% (2015)
15.9% (2010)
Green Party Andrew Creak
Caerphilly
(Non-Binary)		 Swing required:
21.0% (2015)
No Green candidate in 2010
Liberal Democrats Charley Hasted
Swansea East
(Non-Binary)		 Swing required:
24.5% (2015)
16.6% (2010)
Green Party Dom Horsman
North West Durham		 Swing required:
21.6% (2015)
No Green candidate in 2010
Green Party Lee-Anne Lawrance
Runnymede and Weybridge
(Non-Binary)		 Swing required:
27.8% (2015)
27.3% (2010)
Zoe OConnell Liberal Democrats Zoe O’Connell
Maldon		 Swing required:
28.1% (2015)
20.3% (2010)
Labour Heather Peto
Rutland & Melton		 Swing required:
20.1% (2015)
18.5% (2010)

 

Photo sources – not all Creative Commons. Please check before reuse:
Helen Belcher, Charley Hasted: Liberal Democrat candidate promotional literature.
Aimee Challenor: CC BY-SA 3.0, credit Green Party of England and Wales.
Sophie Cook: Labour party candidate promotional literature.
Dom Horsman, Lee-Anne Lawrance: Provided by the candidates for use on this blog.
Zoe O’Connell: CC BY-SA 3.0, credit Zoe O’Connell.

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Unsurprisingly – given there were only three candidates standing versus ten last year – none of the openly trans candidates were successfully elected on Thursday.

I will be posting my list of General Election candidates after the nominations close on 11th May, and the notices of poll have been published.

Labour Sam Feeney
Cambridgeshire, St Ives North & Wyton		 3rd place: 17.3% (New boundaries, so no %age change)
Mridul Wadhwa
Edinburgh, Craigentinny/Duddingston		 6th in a 4-member division, 6.3% of first preference votes
Alex Bear
Derbyshire, Ripley East and Codnor		 4th place: 2.2% (+2.2%)

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There has been some fuss recently about Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat party leader, and his views on sin. I am finding I am having to answer the same questions and rebut the same half-truths over and over again, so I put together a quick handy guide. The progression of points in here is typically how the debate unfolds but my style tends to be quite dry. Those who want a slightly more emotional response to the issue, which can best be summarised by “FFS, not this again”, should read Jennie Rigg’s post. Jennie is also chair of LGBT+ Liberal Democrats.

For those new to this blog, I should clarify that I’m a bisexual transwoman in a polyamourous relationship.

I have avoided criticism of other politicians in this post, but I would like to note that there is more than enough of the brown stuff to go around if we want to get into a mud slinging contest. Some people might want to go there, but that’s not something I’m doing in this post.

Edit: Since I wrote this post, Tim has answered a direct question on this in parliament. His reply to “Do you believe that homosexuality is a sin” was “I do not”. You can see the clip on BBC iPlayer at about 13:46. It remains to be seen if he has opened Pandora’s Box or not…

But why won’t Tim Farron say gay sex is not a sin?
I don’t think he can, because the question is a trap. It’s not a new trap, and back in 2003 Tony Blair was stopped from answering questions on religion by his spin doctors with the now-infamous line “We don’t do God“.

For political leaders, religion is a Pandora’s Box and should stay closed. Cathy Newman, when she asked him the question, no doubt had follow-up questions for him to try to back him into a corner – she’s an accomplished political journalist and anyone of that calibre will not ask a question without follow up questions in mind. With enough questioning, any politician is going to find themselves forced either into a row with religious leaders (Just look at what happened with Cadbury’s and the National Trust) or with their own party. Neither of those are vote-winning choices.

Unfortunately, Tim did fluff a 2015 interview with Cathy Newman on Channel 4 by starting to talk about theology before he had realised it was a bad idea in his new role as party leader. This original error is why the issue has become a story. For those who might have missed the initial interview, what he actually said was “We’re all sinners”. Yes, it is theologically accurate, but it is unhelpful for a party leader to say. Nevertheless, he has definitely never said he thinks gay sex is a sin.

I do recognise that some people won’t be happy unless he says “No” to the question and that not everyone will agree with me here, but I believe that Tim’s statement that he is not going to make theological pronouncements is probably the right approach. Although Cathy Newman has so far failed to ask any other political leadership figures the same question, you can bet that the likes of May, Khan and so on now all have their own soundbite-sized version of “We don’t do God” prepared.

But he abstained on Same-Sex Marriage!
There were six votes, and Tim abstained on one of those due to issues surrounding the spousal veto. “They Work For You” have more on this, just click the linked image on the right to see the detail. If you think that trying to fix the spousal veto during the passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act was a bad thing, then that’s far from evidence that Tim is homophobic and I must respectfully disagree with you on parliamentary tactics. One of my regrets is that trans politicians did not rock the boat more at the time and try to persuade people to vote against the bill due to its transphobic content. Sadly, we did not as a group have the influence then that we have now.

Gay frogs!
Seriously? That wasn’t even close to Tim’s usual tweeting style and he’s hardly likely to wade into random twitter debates on LGBT issues with the British Humanists Association. He’s not the only party leader to have his twitter hacked either.

He’s only suddenly become LGBT+ friendly since he became party leader!
This is where I get to point out that Tim has a long track record of positive action on LGBT+ issues. Tim doesn’t – or didn’t, I suspect the school of hard knocks may affect this – do vapid soundbite politics. Those of us in bi/queer/trans circles often get marginalised by soundbite politics, with “Equal Marriage” being a prime example. (Top tip: We do not have Equal Marriage in the UK. We have Same-Sex Marriage, and you only have to look at the injustices perpetrated by the spousal veto, pension laws and so on to realise this) What he had done is learnt about the detail and spoken in favour of many positive Liberal Democrat policies that are often overlooked.

There’s plenty more press coverage since he became leader, and Pink News have a pretty good list of his pro-LGBT work once you scroll past the headline and attacks on him. Most recently, Tim was front of the queue condemning the homophobic atrocities in Chechnya, when I don’t think we’ve heard anything at all from Corbyn or May. However, there are a whole host of other things linked to from that article. Please do go and have a look.

The older stuff has less coverage as party presidents don’t usually get the limelight, but the photo at the top of this article was at an LGBT+ Liberal Democrats event he spoke at in 2012. From memory, that was the event where several of us spoke to him on the concerns trans people had about accreditation at party conference and which he helped us lobby on in his role as party president. The photo on the right was taken in February 2015, when Nick Clegg was still leader and Tim was out campaigning in my ward. Anyone local to Cambridge may recognise this as being outside the primary school on Coronation Street. Apologies for the poor photo, we didn’t realise this was going to be a “thing” at the time.

You’re only defending him because you’re a Liberal Democrat!
Hardly, and I was quite willing to be critical of Clegg when he messed up.

There are a number of loud bisexual/poly/queer/trans voices in the party defending Tim – Jennie Rigg, whose blog post I linked to above for example. A number of us get Righteously Annoyed when people attack Tim on LGBT+ issues because he has been solid on the BT+ parts of the debate for many years when other political leaders have left us out in the cold for not being vote-worthy enough. Seeing people, and sometimes even the same people who sold us down the river over Same-Sex Marriage, attack him for not being word-perfect and repeating the same damaging soundbites as other leaders (“Equal” Marriage) is predictably going to rile us up.

As I said on Twitter, we’re the Awkward Squad. We don’t DO “Loyal party drone”. But I do have a nice photo of two of us with Tim Farron in Bournemouth that I’d like to share.