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Our membership and, in particular, our activists, are overwhelmingly middle-class men. Quite what the ratio is between men and women is unclear because the Party no longer collects data on the sex of members, but apparently the ratio in the Lib Dems is worse even than in the Reform Party. Is this impacting on our policies and Party culture? Are we steadily approving policies, at our regular state Party and federal Conferences, that might well suit a lot of men, but are a disaster for women and girls?
Sex work is a questionable freedom
Take our policy on prostitution, for example. Ringingly endorsed by Conference amid acclamations of ‘sex work is real work’, our policy is to decriminalize prostitution. But ‘sex work is real work’ is a slogan, not a reasoned argument or an analysis of evidence. What we do know about people who earn their living through selling their bodies is, that they are overwhelmingly female and overwhelmingly they have been sexually abused as children. We also know that many are, frankly, under the control of pimps and are supporting drug habits. Decriminalisation is a pimps’ charter and enables men to buy sex and exploit women without hinderance.
The Lib Dems’ view that working in the sex industry is a decent and useful way for working class women to earn a living looks more like a convenient group fantasy, than anything based on the evidence. The vast majority of prostituted women do not make the decision to sell their bodies freely, but under conditions of desperation or coercion. Can we at least look at the Nordic model?
Does the party take online safety seriously?
The Online Safety Act (2023) is being implemented gradually, including efforts to enforce age restrictions for accessing certain online sites. Strangling and sexual violence are criminal offences, but film those acts and upload them to a porn site, and suddenly it’s all about free speech. Anti-censorship campaigners claim they are defending the individual against the state – a foundational liberal stance. But is this liberalism or out of control libertarianism?
The House of Lords has just backed amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill to ban certain types of pornography, such as incest and child porn (including the use of actors who look like children). There may well be many legitimate criticisms of the Online Safety Act, but the reaction of several members of the Lib Dems was profoundly worrying: total hostility to the Act as an infringement of personal liberty and freedom of expression, and a complete disregard of the real-world impact that online harms are having on women and children.
Is self-ID the answer to gender dysphoria?
Indifference to the impact on women and children continues with Lib Dem Party policy to amend the Gender Recognition Act (2004). This Act sets out the steps that an individual must take to legally change their sexual identity. Currently, none of these steps involve any medical intervention – neither medication nor surgery is required – but the individual must satisfy the panel that he/she has a profound and sustained sense of gender dysphoria.
No, say the Lib Dems. Pure self-ID is enough. The Party, over successive debates and policies, provides no nuance and brooks no exceptions to self-actualisation, be it in sport, the prison estate, public and school facilities, workplace changing rooms, personal care, quotas, or any other aspect of sex-based rights. Liberalism has always been about a delicate and difficult balancing of rights, freedoms and responsibilities. Gender self-ID is pure libertarianism, and the casualties are women and girls.
Is freedom of speech still a liberal value?
Freedom of speech has always been at the core of liberalism, and any restriction on it is rightly difficult for liberals. Or, at least, that used to be the case. When it comes to no-platforming, backed up with the unpleasant practices of name-calling and shunning, the Lib Dems have shown themselves intolerant of difference and utterly unwilling to debate difficult issues. Not exclusively, but for the most part, the name-calling and shunning have been expressed by men against women. How soon will it be before the Lib Dems get the reputation of being a men’s rights Party?
