Kiwi women, in support of German women, participate in global protest against Germany's new self-ID law.

 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 caving into the concept of self-ID. Even a convicted child rapist, who’s considered too dangerous to let loose alone on society, gets called “she” when he decides he’s now a woman.

So, when German women called for a global protest against self-ID in solidarity with them on Friday 1^st November 2024, some Kiwi women (and a man) were up for it. It kicked off at 10.30am with banner displays on two different bridges distantly in sight of each other over a motorway in Wellington, organised by the Women’s Rights Party. One banner said #Save Women’s Sports, and the other said #Self-ID Harms Women.

Wellington has the honour of being considered the windiest city in the world, and true to form, it was blowing like a b*st*rd that day. I did my first short livestream to show off the above banner, and lessons – the first of many to come, I’m sure - were learned 😊

https://youtube.com/live/FUsAQ8pcvTU

On the other bridge, where the #Save Women’s Sports banner was being displayed, two young transactivists targeted the women there. As they walked past, they sprayed the footpath behind where the Women’s Rights Party women were standing with an unidentified odious-smelling liquid from a large plastic bottle they were carrying, and did the same along the footpath outside the German Embassy. Interestingly, they didn’t spray the stuff at the women. Perhaps even transactivists are capable of learning lessons, too – like how that sort of thing might land them in court.

The banner displays were followed by a brief protest with signs at midday, which was arranged separately, both outside the German Embassy and across the road from it. Apparently, the German Ambassador to New Zealand, Nicole Menzenbach, was invited to talk at the protest, but declined. To wildly paraphrase her response, it was because -

• Germany likes to be liberal
• Allowing men who say they’re women into women’s spaces is really good for women
• This is working well in other countries
• Everyone invested, or co-opted into this says it’s true, so it must be true

A couple more transactivists - older women with signs about trans rights - showed up to stand outside the embassy, as well. Two women from ‘our side’ independently tried to engage them in a good faith discussion, and both independently said later than those two were ……. well, let’s put it this way – eyeballs were rolled alongside the opinions given of them. Some women just love participating in their own oppression. It’s embarrassing.

The protest outside the German Embassy wasn’t lengthy in duration, and we moved on into a courtyard in the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Park, conveniently across the road from the embassy, to listen to some pre-prepared speeches. This effectively made it as close to private as an outdoor setting can get, and perhaps it was done like that for safety(?). As I was lingering before also making my way to the courtyard, a police car pulled up outside the embassy, where only the two above-mentioned women remained. A female police officer got out of the car, and started talking to them in what seemed a friendly way. “Hell’s bells’, I thought, “she’d better not being getting chummy with them.”  I marched on over to join the small group and to earwig. But the police officer was only checking that there was no trouble or disruption, so, mollified, I left, as did the police car.

After the speeches, which finished around 1.30pm-ish, the Back Bencher pub opposite Parliament buildings was deemed to be the next stop. The Back Bencher is one place where ‘bad women’ can go who may be wearing t-shirts which could get them kicked out of other places.²

As always, it’s so good to catch up in person with those we only otherwise meet and converse with online. The chitchat goes off in many different directions, and the general discussion about sex self-ID made me even more aware of how bollocks it is. For example, men who say they’re women claim they need to use female toilets and changing rooms, because they’re not safe in the men’s from other men. Yet, those same men they claim they’re not safe from could come into any female facilities simply upon saying they’re women.

Female boundaries are meaningless under self-ID laws and policies - that’s how self-ID works. When places have policies which say “people who identify as being a woman, are welcome”, that means there are no safe communal spaces for women from any man. If men who say they’re women are not safe in men’s spaces, that should be a problem for men to work out between them, but transactivists have unforgivably made it a problem for women and girls.

Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, unequivocally says of Germany’s Gender Self-Determination Act, it “undermines the safety, privacy, and other human rights of women and girls”. ³

Self-ID ruins everything for women and girls, and if takes a thousand protests to change it, then that’s what women around the world may have to do.

 

¹Germany eases gender change rules

² Four ol' terfs walk into a bar ....

² "Men are not women, even if you squint" said the t-shirt which got a woman trespassed from a NZ supermarket.

³Germany: Gender self-ID law fails to address implications for women and girls, says Special Rapporteur | OHCHR