A B'Old Woman

  I was talking to my terf friend, Sarah Henderson, from  Mana Wāhine Kōrero  (Sovereign Women Speak) the other day about language. Sarah’s deeply interested in linguistics, and we’ve had a long and fascinating  chat  on YouTube about this before. Amongst other things in that chat, she talked about how language ‘codes’ our brains into thinking in certain ways. So, when I raised the subject of what it might do to women and girls mental and emotional health to have our language erased in favour of being called things like ‘cervix havers’, ‘the birthing parent’, ‘those who menstruate’, or ‘people who go through menopause’, as just a few examples, Sarah knew exactly where I was coming from. It's a question that has been playing around my mind for a wee while now. So, I mentioned to Sarah that it would be good for someone more knowledgeable than me to write something about the impact on women and girls from taking our language away. Or, maybe she herself could consid...

 The declining population in countries referred to as ‘Western’ countries has been noted for some time. Here in New Zealand, the fertility rate as at December 2023 was 1.56 births per woman, which is lower than what is deemed to be the population replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman.¹   Like other Western countries, we rely on immigration to boost our numbers, but we’re buffered somewhat from unfettered and illegal immigration by being at the edge of the world. For the most part, immigrants to New Zealand tend to be more productive, than not. Having said that, of course I’m aware of stories and events which fly in the face of it. No need to enlighten me, thanks. Nothing’s perfect. The fact is, given the means, many women prefer to have fewer children now than our forebears had. Studies into this phenomenon have produced numerous hypotheses, both of the armchair variety and from actually studying the broad spectrum of women’s lives. I was listening to an interview (whi...

 Germany passed self-ID into law on 1 st November 2024. Under this new law, euphemistically called the Gender Self-Determination Act, any man or woman over 18 can legally swap out the sex they were born to that of a changeable ‘gender’. A person who hurts the feelings one of these men or women by ‘misgendering’ or ‘deadnaming’ them – i.e. not going along with the ‘gender’ fiction - can be fined up to €10,000.¹ Is there anyone who doesn’t see a raft of vexatious complaints arising for spurious hurt feelings from this? New Zealand’s sex self-ID law was passed in June 2023. Our politicians at the time also chose not to believe there were any problems with it, even though the problems were well laid out for them. NZ law states that a changed birth certificate does not have to be taken as proof of a person’s sex, and “other factors” can be taken into account – which could simply be what our eyes and ears tell us. However, many groups and organisations, both public and private, are...