A chat with Yvonne van Dongen, a longtime Kiwi journo and terf.
Much to hear here - insights, opinions, predictions, and pontifications :-)
Yvonne is a freelance journalist, with 40 years experience at the coalface of media. She’s written hundreds of articles, and gained respect and credibility in New Zealand. Then the cold shoulder from the mainstream media started, brought on by her effrontery in owning that she is a sex realist, and not a gender idealogue.
Journos who’ve been in the field for any length of time meet and mix with a helluva lot of people, and it’s not unreasonable to surmise they must develop a pretty good bullshit detector. Yvonne smelled it all over gender ideology, and wouldn’t pretend she didn’t. That cost her work, although, as she says, the demise of the mainstream media played a part, too.
Some of her friends and colleagues have stood by her, but, amazingly, many have bought into gender ideology hook, line, and sinker – and she got the cold shoulder from them, too.
Here, we chat about her career; the unsanctioned re-write of her article about puberty blockers by The Listener in 2021; the failing mainstream media; the pleasure of starting her own Substack where she was able to publish the aforesaid article in its unedited entirety; some strong and brave Kiwi women get a mention; how long we think gender ideology in NZ will survive the wave of demolition coming from the USA; the mystery of why women are more woke than men, even to the detriment of their own rights and safeties; and more.
Yvonne and I have slightly different perspectives on why women have sold out other women like they have, for the sake of blokes in frocks, yet both are true. Whilst it’s also true there’s no one reason for this, I’m convinced that one of those reasons is that women would not have bought into gender ideology as wholeheartedly as some have, if it was more about women saying they’re men, than men saying they’re women. Despite the increase in girls and young women wanting to pretend they’re men, women do not fawn over these women as much as they do the men, and men certainly don’t.