A B'Old Woman

  Health New Zealand - renamed Te Whatu Ora under the last government when it renamed all government departments in te reo Māori (Māori language) first, with English second, and which the new coalition government intends to reverse - appears allergic to using the words ‘woman/women’ whilst happily immune to using the words ‘man/men’. Karen Guilliland, ex CEO of the NZ College of Midwives, picked up this strange anomaly in Health NZ/Te Whatu Ora’s latest newsletter, which she still subscribes to. There, scattered amongst the information in it, the word ‘men’ was used with gay abandon (in the Ngaio Marsh era meaning of the word ‘gay’), and even brought ‘fathers’ and ‘brothers’ into the fold. In all, men got ten mentions in the section devoted to prostate health. Fair enough, seeing as it’s only men who have a prostate. In contrast, Health NZ/Te Whatu Ora was extremely miserly in their use of the word ‘woman’ in the section about maternity, something only experienced by women – i.e...

 The first disruptions in the flow of gender ideology into our schools, public services, and sporting bodies here in New Zealand have begun. Our incoming coalition government, comprising the three centre-right political parties of National , ACT , and NZ First , has produced policies around education, sports, and free speech, which show promise of rolling back an ideology which should never have got as far as it has. National’s education policy below states that it will “ Refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based guidelines ”. Not all sex education for students is bad, of course, and there are some very good guidelines which should remain in the Relationships and Sexuality Education guidelines. However, when students from a young age can get told that they can be born in the wrong body, and change their sex, that is just lying to them. There is other non-factual guidance ar...

  First written in April 2023: Every single sportsperson in the world, past and present, was born from a woman. All our sporting heroines and heroes were born from women. The women and men on sporting bodies and boards were born from women. It wouldn’t be too silly to think that might be worthy of a bit of respect. Yet, for all their crucial contribution to providing the sporting world with the people to populate it, women get the bum’s rush from Sports New Zealand when it comes to the consideration of fairness and safety in their own sports. Women didn’t ask for the bodies we’ve got, which are on average, smaller, weaker, and more complex than men’s bodies. But like them or not, these bodies are what we have, and as long as there are established boundaries which keep us safe from the harm that may be caused by men’s greater strength and bigger build, we can fully participate and thrive in the world. In fact, being safe from harm is the first essential ingredient for anyone to be a...

  NB : I wrote this blog below in Feb 2023. A number of things have happened since then, but I haven't observed anything that would indicate a change of priorities amongst NZ's neo-rainbow groups. Feb 2023: The devastation from Cyclone Gabrielle in the mid east coast of the North Island of New Zealand is huge. To date, there are countless people without homes, without power, and without drinkable water. Ten people are confirmed dead, including a two-year old girl and two volunteer firefighters, and around 3,500 people are still reported as being uncontactable. Roads and bridges are broken, and mud, silt, and debris from the floodwaters are everywhere. Thousands of animals have drowned, and orchards and crops have been destroyed. Emergency services, civil defence, the navy, the air force, and the army are working with ordinary people to bring what help they can to the affected regions. The recovery from this cyclone will take years. Meantime, while all this is going on, I can’t ...

 When New Zealand’s kids use puberty blockers at eleven times the rate of England’s kids, it’s likely that New Zealand is the country with a problem. And it’s not the kids. Charlotte Paul, epidemiologist and emeritus professor in the Dept of Preventative and Social Medicine at Otago University, NZ, has written a factual firecracker of a piece in December’s issue of the North and South magazine about NZ’s continuing high use of puberty blockers for confused and distressed kids. It’s not to be missed. In September last year, Charlotte had her first public piece about her concerns with NZ’s high use of puberty blockers published in ‘The Listener’ weekly magazine. She did so at the urging of her younger medical colleagues who were too afraid to raise their heads above the parapet on this matter, for fear of the risk to their careers. They are still seeing young people in their clinics who have changed their minds about wanting to transition to the opposite sex they were born, and are ...

 New Zealand’s National Party leader, Chris Luxon (now the Prime Minister-elect), when asked a question in August this year about NZ First’s policy of retaining single-sex toilets for women, openly scoffed at the notion that it was even an issue for New Zealanders. He opined that the NZ First Party were on a different planet if they thought that bathrooms were something we cared much about. Then just when Mr Luxon thought he’d successfully put that one to bed with a good dose of mockery to boot, and proved it even further by going on to win NZ’s general election in October, Talbot Mills popped out a poll which showed quite clearly that most New Zealanders do care about this issue . So, which planet has Mr Luxon been on? This is the fifth poll in the last year which shows New Zealanders do not like gender ideology being forced onto us in women’s sports, women’s spaces, and our children’s education¹. How many polls will it take before our politicians and Members of Parliament dei...

  A woman here in New Zealand recently had the experience of her local Member of Parliament telling her that he couldn’t quite grasp the fear around having “transgender women” using women’s bathrooms. He apparently hadn’t heard any problems with it locally, and doesn’t know of any evidence of harm to women when men can use their spaces. So, I decided to work on putting together a list of reasons so he, and others, can have it in writing. This is not something that we’ve needed to do before, as much of it was discrete oral advice and information passed down to us from our mothers, aunties, grandmothers and grand aunties, based on women’s life experiences throughout our entire human history. Men also knew it from the male perspective of knowing men, and their own oral histories. Suddenly, though, if it’s not in writing, the reasons women need single-sex spaces seemingly don’t exist. The cleverly devised ‘loud’ campaign narratives from trans activists have overridden women’s quiet ora...