Maya Forstater

When I started to try to understand why politely questioning gender ideology gets you shut down & called a bigot, one thing I did was try to find other women local to me to talk to. Four of us met in a pub in October 2018. We called ourselves "St Albans Feminists in the Pub"

There are now about 30 of us. Mainly mums, mainly lefties, lesbians, mumsnetters....angry & bemused that our institutions and our politicians are trying to push through self ID through "no debate", bullying and thought terminating sloganeering "transwomen are women, get over it"

We invited Daisy to come to the pub. And she came! For two hours she listened & asked questions. We told her about our experiences: a parent whose child was "socially transitioned" at school, lesbians being told they should accept male sexual partners...

Me losing my job for using "exclusionary language", Kate Scottow being arrested, and most of the others afraid to say too much on social media for fear of consequences at work.

We talked about how making it impossible to recognise sex undermines safeguarding, single sex services, inclusion, sex discrimination protections, data on crime and violence, evidence based analysis and freedom of speech.

She didn't call us bigots, or dismiss our concerns. She said she'd read what we left her with. She has held the Lib Dem line on self ID, but she also told us there needs to be more debate and understanding of how to protect womens rights and transgender people's rights.