Elementary!

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.

The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.

Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.

A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:

Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.

Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.

Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns

Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.

I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.

It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:

I'm not going to be able to go, but I do have some experience with lobbying my various MPs over the years, so here's some quick advice off the top of my head:

If you're resident in the UK but not a citizen you still have the right to go to Parliament and be seen by your MP.

If you don't know who your MP is you can look it up by putting your postcode into the Find My MP page on Parliament's website (pro tip if you are a uni student, check your MP for both your family home and your uni, one may be a better option for lobbying than the other, you may even be able to Green Card both of them, but I don't know if that's possible, ask on the desk when you ask for the card).

And everyone needs to remember that while officially you're not required to show photo ID to get into Parliament the official guidance from the House of Commons is "you don't need photo ID to get in but we suggest you bring it anyway" (which is just unhelpful)

You will also be required to pass through airport style security which obviously may be a stressful experience for some of the people taking part in the mass lobby. That can take anywhere up to half an hour, the staff are usually pretty nice, but the entry into the security check is a sloped metal ramp with zero shade and nowhere to lean or sit so plan accordingly.

If your MP is not in the building to come and meet you they are required to respond to your Green Card as soon as possible via the contact details you put on your Green Card. While meeting them in person is the ideal you will get a response so it will be worth it even if your MP is unavailable.

People in general, are more likely to take you seriously and want to help you if you are nice and polite to them.

They may not be in parliament. They may be their London offices which are located a 5-minute walk away in the Portcullis House.

Say it louder for the people in the back.

Removing watson and thus the whole watson-holmes dynamic in an adaptation literally makes no sense to me. Watson is the NARRATOR. One of the most interesting things about the books is that we are experiencing Holmes from Watson's first person pov, and therefore we get the same enchantment and surprise Watson does from watching him work. We are simply a bystander in holmes' investigation. Why do we think stories such as the blanched soldier and the lions mane weren't a hit when they first came out? Watson wasn't there and we therefore we got the story from holmes' pov instead, by nature removing the mistique, as that just isn't the way Holmes retells/experiences events.

Whatever happened to "I am lost without my Boswell". Why am I even watching a Sherlock Holmes adaptation without the secondary main character, whose relationship with the main character is a staple of the series? Because people want 'toxic yaoi'? Maybe I'm just biased, but watson/holmes is miles more compelling to me and has so much more subtext compared to holmes/moriarty, which has basically zero — and I feel like it undermines their relationship in the books, boiling it down to "oh they were both smart and had a rivalry", when the ACTUAL person who managed to match Holmes' wit is Irene Adler, and I have a lot to say about her being sidelined for moriarty as far as 'smart antagonists' go, but that's for another post. (I agree that this is most likely a product of BBC Sherlock and how they set up his relationship with Moriarty in there).