Human Rights

What I said at the Lib Dem Autumn Conference 2015: On Human Rights

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The afternoon after the trans motion passed unanimously, I was back on the Conference podium speaking in favour of human rights. This was to propose Calderdale’s amendment to the human rights motion putting party policy in favour of ratifying the Protocols to the European Convention of Human Rights that the UK hasn’t already. The amendment … Read more

Corbyn’s Carriages are a recipe for transphobia

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Jeremy Corbyn raised the ire of many twitterati commentators on Monday when announcing his plans to consult women on women-only shelters. I generally agree with Lynne Featherstone on this issue: while his intentions are noble, the answer is not in segregating women, but in actually combatting the men who harass them. Women-only spaces are good only as a stop-gap until we create a society without latent sexism or other sorts of bigotry.

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Amnesty should support decriminalisation of sex work

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This post was originally written for Lib Dem Voice.

This month, Amnesty International delegates will vote on a proposal to make decriminalisation of sex work a campaigning matter for the human rights organisation. This, understandably, has raised ire from many people, but none so large as parts of the feminist movement.

Just last week, we saw several Hollywood actors – ordinarily staunch allies of Amnesty’s work – sign an open letter promulgated by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women calling for Amnesty to reject the policy. One notable signatory was Anne Hathaway, who received an Oscar two years ago for her portrayal of Fantine in Les Miserables.

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Appropriating equality

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There’s been a flurry of news stories in the past week, most likely to coincide with the country’s first same-sex marriages starting next Saturday, regarding how the bill came to pass. Firstly, we had television personality Paul O’Grady describe David Cameron as a “twat” and state the Lib Dems were “as much use as men’s tits”. Then, a few days later, Ben Summerskill tried (very unconvincingly) to attack the Lib Dems for being “opportunistic” on same-sex marriage. And finally, Tony Blair said that “in hindsight”, he would’ve pushed for marriage equality whilst Prime Minister. All this leads me to think one thing: both Labour and Stonewall seem to be very keen to take the credit on LGBT equality, especially with a general election round the corner. But this credit is perhaps undeserved, especially as they both seem to have done everything they could to stall it.

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My speech on digital freedom to the Liberal Democrat Conference

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Making your first speech at a political conference is tough, especially when you know that the media are watching you as well as delegates there. That didn’t stop me, as a first-time conference attendee, from making a speech to the Lib Dem Spring Conference in York last Sunday, on the Digital Bill of Rights motion. Having been persuaded to by Julian Huppert and Tim Farron to mention digital freedom at Conference, I decided to make such a speech, which I reproduce below:

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Transphobia and patriarchy in action: Jason Wong

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On Tuesday night, I wrote and published this piece on transphobic feminism, and how it’s inherently part of the patriarchy.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up to find out about a comment piece written by LSE student Jason Wong that was printed in London Student on the subject of gender-neutral toilets:

Jason Wong's comment piece in Leeds Student
“Should unisex toilets exist on university campus?”: No, by Jason Wong.

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Why I’m Out4Marriage

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Please consider supporting campaigns such as Out4Marriage and the Coalition for Equal Marriage.

It was World Pride Day in London yesterday and I’m stuck in Yorkshire. So I thought I’d do a few posts over the following days about LGBT stuff. This is the first one. It’s something I think I should’ve done a long time ago but I didn’t have the words to explain it all. I still don’t, really, but I’ll try.

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It’s me yuman rites, innit?

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I’m taking some cues of my friend over at Legal Fiction by doing a short blog on human rights, the bête noire of all of our so beloved right-wing newspapers. I’m going to not cover the minutae of things such as judicial review, because he’s done it already. And he knows it better than me.

It’s been a disastrous month for the European Court of Human Rights in British opinion. Not only did they have to deal with prisoner voting, but now there’s news about an impending case before the ECHR about prisoners in psychiatric units being given “pocket money” – or, as the Daily Mail put it so eloquently, “Killers and rapists go to European Court of Human Rights to win full state benefits“. It’s a perfect story for the Mail; they can rag on criminals, benefit claimants, the mentally ill, and Europe at the same time! I mean, factually, the headline is correct. But the intention of the article is to equate people who did these horrific acts because they were severely mentally ill (and thus, not responsible for their crimes) with those like, say, Ian Huntley or Harold Shipman. It’s bad for mental health awareness, but it’s absolutely terrible because these newspapers are using this as a way to score cheap political points.

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