Spoiled for choice in Southmead

Good news for trans rights activists worried that transwomen are marginalised and underrepresented: not among the candidates standing to become councillors for the Bristol ward of Southmead.

The Bristol ward has not one, but two transwomen among the nine candidates vying for two councillor positions on Bristol City Council. Readers of Glinner’s update may be familiar with both. 

First up is Green Party candidate Kat Bristow. Kat is a former co-chair of Green Party Women until that imploded (what with Kat being a man). More on that below.

If you've joined the Greens...

Kat identifies variously as a lesbian and pansexual, as queer, asexual and polyamorous.

https://twitter.com/obsolete__units/status/1782348375779692614

Kat also has a drag alter ego, Holt Fracking. (See Kat in performance here, though, as X user Le_Sorelle_Arduino warns, readers may die of second-hand embarrassment watching it.) 

Kat appears to have had a stint working at Gender GP, an organisation so bereft of professionalism and morality that it tweeted on the day the Cass Report was published that: “We know that children and young people will suffer and die if these recommendations are implemented.”

Next up is Kaz Self, standing for Labour. Kaz has helped see off a number of gender critical members of the Labour Party in Bristol with some less than fraternal behaviour. 

Screenshots of his historic tweets has seen him take pot shots at JK Rowling, Allison Bailey, Julie Bindel, Women’s Place UK, supporters of WPUK, The Times, Emily Maitlis, some of Kaz’s fellow Labour Party members, and Bristol MP Thangam Debbonaire.

None of this seems to be an issue for local MP Darren Jones, pictured out on the campaign trail with Self. 

https://twitter.com/darrenpjones/status/1779171611855245597

If Bristow and Self are elected to Bristol City Council, they will be joining a Council that two years ago passed a long and detailed motion on trans rights that saw it agree to “recognise and affirm trans men are men, trans women are women, non-binary and genderqueer people's genders are valid”. 

The original draft motion wanted the Council to declare that while gender critical beliefs are protected, people have no right to express them. 

Although some of the most batshit content of the draft motion was watered down, the final motion appears to commit Bristol Council to “act on any known instances of anti-trans literature or propaganda being sent into schools”, to put sanitary product dispensers and bins in all men’s toilets run by the Council, and not to award contracts to organisations that “promote an anti-trans agenda or propaganda”. No definition of what constitutes “anti-trans” material, agendas or promotion is included in the motion. 

Councillors who voted for the motion seemed unperturbed by the very live debate in the UK courts and legislatures about the meaning of the word “woman”, interactions between the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act, or the Department of Education guidance to schools regarding gender identity.

Inevitably, concerned Bristolians began to appear in the public gallery at Full Council meetings to ask questions: What does the motion actually mean? Do councillors believe that women can have a penis? Have Council procurement officers been told to ban organisations from Council contracts if their owners or staff believe that sex is binary? Do teachers face sanction if they adhere to biological reality?

Each time that a member of the public asked a question, a number of Green Party councillors made a great show of leaving the Chamber. One Green councillor returned from her (or possibly their) safe space to retake her seat just as another Bristolian stood up to ask a second awkward question, forcing the Councillor to head back out for the duration. 

Despite the clash between women’s rights and trans rights being a red hot legal topic, Bristol City Council insisted that its Motion was neither unlawful or misleading, but declined to provide any rationale (or supporting documentation) to evidence its view. 

All of this puts Bristol very much at odds with events at South Oxfordshire District Council. In 2020, South Oxfordshire agreed a motion in support of trans rights that began “trans men are men, trans women are women, and non-binary genders are just as valid”. It appears that the Council’s new top lawyer was so concerned by councillors overstepping their powers that he sought an opinion from a leading barrister as to the motion’s legality. After reading it, the lawyer told councillors that the motion was “non-binding in nature or legal effect” and offered to, er, help them draft motions in future. 

Bristol City Council faces a similar mess. The Lord Mayor has quietly emailed at least one concerned resident to say that while the Motion was lawful, it is not actually binding. But until the Council issues a public statement to that effect, schools, businesses, Council staff and local citizens are left with the impression that they will be decried as bigots, banned from sending safeguarding guidance to schools, and excluded from Council contracts if they fail to repeat the catechism “transwomen are women”. If Bristow and Self are elected, it could make it even harder for Bristol to make the long journey back to material reality.