Write for us!Gender critical debate
Sex and Gender – an Extended Essay
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So given the recent article “Identity is a human right” (Liberal Voices – George Cooper – 24 June) – I thought I would put my thoughts down on the sex and gender debate here. In this case from what I have called myself Phronetic Liberalism. Liberalism is an influence, but so are some other philosophical strands – from Ancient Greece and Rome, Mills Utilitarianism and William James Pragmatism. My starting point is that any conclusions must consider the practical outcomes for businesses and people in real life. This reflects the influence of Pragmatism in my framework. From this starting point,…
Thoughts From the Woods
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I live near a beautiful park. When the weather permits, I put on my shoes and run up along a path through the trees, and turn left onto the track that winds through the recently planted Foresters’ Memorial Wood. It’s a lovely spot. The Foresters were people from Commonwealth countries who answered the call during the Second World War to cross an ocean and help Britain and the Allies in the struggle against the Nazis. Everyone did what they could We needed them. With so many able-bodied men sent away to fight there was a requirement for labour in the forests…
Breaking the Silence: Liberalism or Orthodoxy in the Lib Dem Gender Debate?
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In February 2025, Liberal Voice for Women settled its legal case with the Liberal Democrats, securing equal treatment for members who believe that biological sex is real and matters – often described as “gender critical” or “sex-realist” views. The settlement meant that we could finally book conference stands, organise fringe meetings, and in theory, participate in party life on the same basis as other members. Rather than improving our legitimacy though, this led to a simmering resentment amongst radical trans activists in the party who said we had “legally forced” the party to acquiesce to our requests. This was deemed…
Liberal Democrats Need to Stop Their Obsession With ‘Trans Rights’
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I’m a middle-aged man and I have a confession. I’d really like to be younger. And I feel young too. I’m very active. I exercise regularly – at levels that very few older people do. I’m in the small minority of middle-aged men in the UK who isn’t overweight. Go me! Now suppose I decided on those grounds that I will henceforth self-identify as a teenager, and on that basis I demanded access to youth clubs, a place on LibDem quotas reserved for young people, and so on? And suppose I also demanded that everyone should be obliged to treat…
The New EHRC Code Demonstrates Why Sex‑Based Laws Need a Root‑and‑Branch Review
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Ed Davey, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Marie Goldman, the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Women and Equalities, have recently written to Bridget Phillipson protesting the publication of the EHRC’s new Code of Practice for the Equality Act 2010 and declaring it not fit for purpose. Quite how balanced the evidence base was in reaching this conclusion is unclear. Nevertheless, their letter calls for the need for post-legislative scrutiny of the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act by a cross-party committee, “Taking evidence from all communities who have been impacted.” It suggests that the purpose of this is to…
Thought‑Terminating Clichés Are the New Normal
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Over the past week I have spent some time on Blue Sky. Partly because this is where a lot of Lib Dem MPs are now posting and I wanted to read their reactions to the EHRC guidance (in summary they have been largely silent except for the Women and Equalities spokesperson who condemned it as a huge step back for human rights – which I disagree with). However, I ended up in several conversations with trans activists on the app who are making the same kind of arguments that failed on Twitter (X) three years ago. One of the key…
Where Are All the Women?
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In most political Parties in the UK, men outnumber women, but in the Liberal Democrats the ratio of men to women is particularly bleak, worse even than Reform. Research published in December 2025 makes sobering reading for the Party: 33% of Lib Dem members are female, 39% of Reform members, and women’s membership of other Parties is much higher. Obviously our deputy leader and several of our MPs are women, and our one successful candidate in the Welsh Senedd election is a woman. But this success masks a growing crisis in female involvement in the Party at all levels. The…
Comment Is Free – if You Know Where to Look
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Censorship is central to the mission of LibDemVoice, the long established “independent” party platform. Its moderators guard their single interpretation of the party’s vision with passion. Opinions that question their beliefs and views from members who suffer from independent thought do not sully their website. This has become such a problem that many members no longer read its articles and those who do rarely attempt to respond, because they know that their contributions will end up in the bin. It was John Stuart Mill who famously wrote: “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of…
Access Denied: How the Liberal Democrat Leadership is Sidelining Women
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Last week saw another interview with Ed Davey telling a Lib Dem trans activist that he had been listening to trans people in the Party after the Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of woman in the Equality Act. Yet another illustration of the leadership jumping straight to placation mode when something upsets the trans lobby… Part of a pattern The 2022 changes to the unlawful Lib Dem Definition of Transphobia are another case in point. The Party held a special meeting with trans people just prior to amending the Definition. Several were invited to the House of Commons to…
Childhood Is Precious – It’s Time to Tackle Online Harm
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Many people in the Party – especially at the grassroots – are totally unaware of the extreme libertarian approach that has been adopted to a whole range of issues that are most accurately framed as ‘sexual exploitation.’ From pornography to prostitution there has been a laissez-faire attitude and a presumption that somehow these matters are all about individual choice and can even be framed as ‘empowering.’ Of course, the majority of the sexual exploitation in these cases is against women and by men (for example in the UK 88% of people in prostitution are women and buyers are 95% +…
Has the Party Become Too Libertarian for Its Own Good?
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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…
Sex, Equality and the Law: Cutting Through the Noise – Explaining the Supreme Court Ruling and What’s Next
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The fringe meeting offered by the LD group Liberal Voice for Women at York Novotel on Friday evening 13 March at 8:00 pm, looks set to enliven the whole weekend. The panel members are stellar names in feminist politics: Susan Smith is one of the successful appellants in the ‘For Women Scotland’ case against the bumbling SNP ministers. They had tried unlawfully to include transwomen (holders of a separate protected characteristic) in a positive action measure intended to appoint more female members to public boards in Scotland. Susan will recount her experiences of combatting injustice before, during and since that…
John Stuart Mill – Do His Values Still Matter to Liberal Democrats?
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Modern political thought is built on foundations laid down largely in the last 300 years by men like Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx – and for liberals, John Stuart Mill. In 1859 Mill’s seminal work, ‘On Liberty’ was published. It was the culmination of decades of thought and discussion and it is now recognised that the contribution of his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill was crucial to the endeavour. It is likely that she was responsible for sections of the book, though she died before its publication. A political philosophy that centres the individual The core tenet of ‘On Liberty’…
Have the LibDems Been Captured by “Authoritarian Progressivism”?
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In the Lib Dems’ 35 year history, the ideological divisions that have emerged in the party have always, predictably, been along left-right economic fault lines, with Orange Bookers on the right and social democrats on the left. Meanwhile, social issues have been largely understood to be matters of conscience. The thread that knitted individuals together as a party was liberalism – a fundamental commitment to individual freedom tempered by an imperative to avoid harm.
Moving the Overton Window – and the Implications for Women
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Barbara Lindsay was an inspirational Liberal Party and Liberal Democrat activist who sadly died in 2024. This is her last article. Recent conversations on language have reminded me of the ‘Overton Window’ characteristics of the shifts in the language used by GC (gender critical – believers in biological reality) people. (For anyone not familiar with this, the concept was devised by American policy analyst Joseph Overton.) The width of the window encompasses the breadth of acceptable opinion within a group, or society at large. As its activist members promote an aim and seek to push the majority towards its adoption,…
