A round up of New Zealand’s year of gender ideology in 2024.

Either a lot more has happened this year around gender ideology here in New Zealand, or I’ve just written a lot more. I’ve published 85 blogpieces in all, including those which have been in the form of intros to YouTube videos, or articles written by others. I think a number of us terfs and terf-supporters increased our networking this year, which created more awareness of issues, as well as activity. Here’s a precis of the goings-on in 2024 taken from my blog, which admittedly isn’t a short read, but I’ve made headings on each section, so you can skip through and decide on what does and doesn’t take your interest.

1) The t-shirt which said “men are not women, even if you squint”. The year kicked off with a Māori woman elder, Phillippa, being kicked out of a smalltown supermarket for wearing a t-shirt which said “Men are not women, even if you squint”. The t-shirt agitated a male pretend-woman staff member behind the Lotto counter, and he was surly and rude towards Phillippa as she was buying a Lotto ticket on her way home from work. Phillippa, not unreasonably, made her objection to his behaviour known, whereby the staff member escalated his umbrage. This alerted the manager, as it was likely intended to, who brusquely evicted Phillippa and trespassed her from the store for two years. When the incident went public, he and the staff member spun a version of the story, which unsurprisingly, conflicted with Phillippa’s version. The manager’s behaviour does beg the question - has he ever evicted and trespassed a bloke from his store, for wearing what a female staff member deemed to be an offensive t-shirt? Phillipa’s t-shirt can’t possibly have been the first one worn in the store which was ever considered to have come into their category of ‘offensive’. Understandably, Phillippa was shaken by what had happened, but eventually began proceedings to get the trespass order lifted, so she didn’t have to travel another 30 mins to the next nearest supermarket. However, she was stonewalled, and unable to make progress with that. A couple of months later, Phillippa spoke about the incident on Reality Check Radio.

2) The challenge to the wording of the Midwifery Council’s Scope of Practice. We stepped up our challenge to NZ’s Midwifery Council* about them ditching the words ‘mother’, ‘woman’, and ‘baby’ from their initial revised Scope of Practice. They did this in favour of using what is commonly, but erroneously, called ‘inclusive language’. I prefer to call it ‘amorphous blob’ language, for its lack of definition. This amorphous blob language included liberally using Māori words in the English language version of the Scope of Practice, even though a Māori language version had also been created. Māori women’s group Mana Wāhine Kōrero rejected the way the Māori words were used in both Scopes, saying that many were used out of context, or were dodgy translations, and therefore didn’t make enough sense.

Midwife, Deb Hayes, started a Parliamentary Petition against the initial revised Scope of Practice, after the Midwifery Council ignored an overwhelming rejection of it via a public consultation process. The Council was determined to proceed with it in the form they liked, but which the public didn’t. The petition gained nearly 7,500 signatures – a lot for NZ – and was presented to Parliament by National MP James Meager. Written submissions were then made to the Parliament Petitions Committee, and from those submissions only Deb Hayes and Mana Wāhine Kōrero were invited to make oral presentations to the committee in September to state our case, as was the Midwifery Council. In an extraordinary and never explained move, the Petitions Committee decided to withhold the video of Mana Wāhine Kōrero’s presentation from public access. Reality Check Radio subsequently invited the presentation to be read on air with them.

Prior to making their oral presentation to the Petitions Committee, the Midwifery Council made what appeared to be some grudging last minute changes to the revised Scope of Practice. These were perfunctory at best, and the revised Scope remains unsatisfactory. No decision has yet been made by the Petitions Committee about the language used in the revised Scope, but the Midwifery Council is proceeding with its implementation, regardless. However, the challenge to it remains active, as well. Sarah Henderson talks with Paul Brennan on Reality Check Radio about it.

* The Midwifery Council is a different body to the College of Midwives.

3) Health NZ continues to be afraid of using the word ‘woman’. How many ways can a health body make their messaging about menstruation incomprehensible? Health NZ has mastered the art of that. It stays determined to not use the word ‘woman’ when gobbedlygook will do. Neither do they like using that icky word when talking about pregnancy, preferring the sanitised word ‘people’ instead. In effect, they and others who won’t give women definition, veil women with their amorphous blob language. They’re under some sad misapprehension, cleverly sold to them by overly influential TQ+ lobbyists, that it makes everyone happy. However, there is at least one (secret) place in NZ where the health provider either doesn’t know that the word ‘woman’ is forbidden, or doesn’t care 😊

4) Other organisations still in thrall to gender ideology. In particular, the Association of Psychotherapists Aotearoa New Zealand (APANZ) came to my attention. To put it in a nutshell, they issued a completely bonkers position statement on how all therapists registered with them have to believe any patient who says they’re the opposite sex to that which they were born, or any ‘gender’ they say they are, no questions asked. Like me, you might have thought that asking questions is what therapists do. However, it seems that some questions can be put on the naughty list, as can the therapists who ask them, for no other reason than a personal ideological belief held by those on the APANZ Council. I’ve written more about this here, in which I include links to a legal opinion and advice for therapists given by two lawyers at the (rebel) Children’s and Adolescents Therapists Association conference in 2022, after the Conversion Prohibition bill was passed into law.

The Ministry for Children also appears to show a preference for transitioning “rainbow” children and young people to their opposite natal sex, and foster care and children’s homes may be in breach of the Ministry’s policies if they don’t.

5) Christchurch’s anti-woman Equity and Inclusion Policy. The Christchurch City Council continued to erode women’s and girls’ rights by implementing an overarching Equity and Inclusion Policy in March. The policy lists the categories it serves, including ‘gender’, but doesn’t have the word ‘sex’ in it. This means it will be difficult, if not impossible to apply s 46 of the Human Rights Act in Council-owned venues for women and girls, which allows for the provision of single-sex spaces. Effectively, the Equity and Inclusion Policy is the final nail in the coffin of putting the control of women’s and girls’ spaces into the hands of men. All a man has to do is claim a ‘woman’ gender identity, and he gets into all female spaces in Council-owned venues.

No amount of reasoning could persuade the councillors who were driving this policy to include the word ‘sex’, which was abundantly evident during the Council meeting where it was voted on, and subsequently passed.

Prior to that meeting, I had sent all the councillors an email (bar the three driving the policy) outlining the concerns with excluding the word ‘sex’ from the policy. During that meeting, two councillors raised those concerns to the Council, and Councillor Sara Templeton, who led the drive to implement this policy, was asked to address them. She said the advice received was that although sex and gender are not the same, the two can still be used interchangeably, like the Human Rights Commission does. As an aside, the HRC has been an abysmal pit of wokery, but now has a new Commissioner, who is reputed not to be of that ilk. However, getting back to the Equity and Inclusion Policy, it appeared that Councillor Templeton was not bothered about clarity. She is happy to conflate sex and gender, even though the word ‘gender’ is now used to mean a number of things, including gender-identity or gender-expression. It isn’t defined in any way in the policy about how it’s being used there.

She went on to say that “Our rainbow community, especially those who are transgender, are some of the most vulnerable and victimised in our community. They deserve our support, and deserve to be included in all the different activities we are able to provide as a Council.” For such a vulnerable and victimised group, they sure have a lot of power within Councils, organisations, and amongst politicians.

It is obvious that Councillor Templeton considered including the word ‘sex’ in the policy to be a threat to men who say they’re women from having unchallenged access to female spaces in Council-owned venues, as it might be able to contest ‘gender’. If that wasn’t the case, what was the harm of adding it in? So, now women and girls in Christchurch are not entitled to any man-free communal female spaces, or swim sessions, in Council-owned venues. If they encounter a man in one, they are burdened with the anxiety, whether large or minimal, of having to second-guess his motives and staying aware of him. This is likely to be the same in many cities and towns across NZ.

6) Are we going to put ‘gender’ into law? Even though the word ‘gender’ isn’t suitable to use if we want clarity in policy and legislation, the Law Commission has revisited the idea of putting it into the Human Rights Act. In June, they published a 211-page ‘issues paper’ justifying their argument that the Human Rights Act needs to be changed to include “people who are transgender, people who are non-binary and people with innate variations of sex characteristics”. For the most part, it read as though it had been written by recently qualified students who’d been indoctrinated with gender ideology at uni.

Public submissions about this were invited, and I went to Wellington as part of the combined Women’s Rights Party and Mana Wāhine Kōrero delegation to make ours in person, which are included in my blogpiece here. There are multiple issues with the issues paper, not to mention the very concept of putting ‘gender’ into law and the misunderstandings and confusion that will create. A decision on this has not yet been made public, but our Supreme Court has already referred to an adult male child rapist as ‘she/her’.

7) Sall Grover. Aussie woman, Sall Grover, she of the Tickle v Giggle court case, also made a virtual presentation to the Law Commission to help reiterate the importance of keeping the word ‘gender’ out of law, using her own experience as the example of why.

Prior to that in late June, she visited NZ on a public speaking tour about that experience, to demonstrate how easily ‘gender’ in law can play out in a negative way. One venue in New Plymouth cancelled the room booking made for her talk, and attempts were made to get her cancelled in Wellington. The second attempt failed, due to a canny manoeuvre by the Women’s Rights Party, who brought Sall here in conjunction with Helen Houghton, the leader of the New Conservative party. The events in other places, including Christchurch, went without a hitch. In addition to her public appearances, I had a chinwag with Sall on my YouTube channel shortly after she arrived in NZ, and later on Helen and I talked on Reality Check Radio with Paul Brennan about the Christchurch event, and how the mood of the audience has changed compared to a few years ago.

8) Two stories from women in the prison system; and disturbing social media content. I was privileged to be trusted with the stories of two women’s past unpleasant experiences with men who say they’re women in NZ Women’s Prisons. One is an ex-prison officer; the other an ex-inmate, who has since been exonerated of the historic charges against her. Men who say they’re women are in prison in NZ for sexual offences at around twice the rate of other men, and there is no evidence that they suffer unduly from being offended against, as frequently claimed. Conversely, it’s not uncommon to discover that men who say they’re women have disturbing social media content, such as that of an Auckland University of Technology lecturer, or recent ex-lecturer, which was reported on by Reduxx.

9) Cancelling a fundraising recipe book. Even a worthy cause couldn’t survive cancel culture in February this year. When Wardini Books in Hawkes Bay decided it would rather be woke than help people in need, it turfed a fundraising recipe book out of its store. Jane Morgan compiled The Dinner Club recipe book to help raise funds to feed people in cyclone-ravaged Hawkes Bay, which only Wardini’s stocked at the time. Then it banned her book from the store, due to her supposedly being “anti-Māori and anti-trans”, not realising that Jane’s mother was Māori. The book is very well done – I have one -and it is available in the link above, or by email thedinnerclub-hb@mail.com

10) Haranguing the ‘Let Kids be Kids’ road show; Kiwis going toe-to-toe with their kids’ school; and comedienne cancellation. In keeping with the theme of being cancelled, the group Let Kids be Kids, who advocate against age-inappropriate sex and gender-ideology content in the Ministry of Education’s ‘Relationships and Sexuality Guidelines’ for schools, also got harassed and had venues cancel bookings during their South Island road show in April. I chat with Penny-Marie from Let Kids be Kids on my YouTube channel here.

I also have a chat here with two ordinary Kiwis who went toe-to-toe with their kids’ school over the same inappropriate content in the guidelines, which had been incorporated into the curriculum.

And standup comedienne, Sacha Jones, talks about her cancellation for being gender critical.

11) The ‘UNSILENCED’ event. A few blokes got together and created an event in May called ‘UNSILENCED’. Its purpose was to allow those critical of gender ideology, who had previously been silenced by all the usual culprits, a chance to speak. It was a huge success – but also stirred up huge controversy, of course. The organisers secured the flash new Council-owned events centre in Wellington to hold it in, due to a fortuitous piece of good luck. That made one particular councillor sour, and he proceeded to rile up as many others about as he could both inside and outside the Council, which culminated in a protest outside the venue on the day. The venue itself engaged in petty acts of sabotage, which included –

· Withholding soap from some of the dispensers and toilet paper from some of the cubicles in the women’s toilets.

· At 9pm the evening before the event, the venue manager rang one of the organisers and said there’d been a miscommunication, and video equipment wouldn’t be part of the hire contract after all. Some urgent action got an independent videographer there the next morning.

· The venue demanded excessive security costs. Security was eventually provided privately free of charge.

· The café area in the venue, which was managed by an independent contractor, shut themselves down for the day, apparently in “solidarity with the trans community”. Event attendees had to go outside the venue for food and drink.

· The few staff on duty were surly, and unhelpful towards a disabled woman who asked how to get up to the first floor where the event room was.

But, despite the attempts at derailment, it was magnificent. The speeches can be accessed here.

12) Puberty blockers. The Ministry of Health was due to release a review of NZ’s use of puberty blockers a few months before the release of the UK’s Cass Review in April. However, it waited to analyse that before considering whether or not to release theirs. Compared to the UK’s usage, prior to the restrictions put on puberty blockers there, NZ was issuing ten times more per head of population. After analysing the Cass Review, our Ministry of Health decided to further pause their release. Something tells me that we might have narrowly escaped a Ministry of Health “full steam ahead” recommendation - which undoubtably would have been strongly encouraged by TQ+ lobbyists.

After dragging the chain for seven more months, the Ministry of Health issued a media release in November about their decision to hold a public consultation on the matter. The media release contains links to their position statement and evidence brief. The public consultation closes on 20^th January 2025. In general, the Ministry of Health’s response has been considered weak, and that TQ+ lobbyists appear to still have an outsized influence on the Ministry. Veteran journo, Yvonne van Dongen, gives a rundown on the views about it from some significant gender-critical groups and individuals, and Jill Ovens gives the Women’s Rights Party view here.

Also, Simon Tegg from Genspect NZ wrote a powerful open letter to the Health Minister, Dr Shane Reti, where he shoots down any credibility that WPATH (World Professional Assn of Transgender Healthcare) and PATHA (Professional Assn of Transgender Healthcare Aotearoa) might still have had in regard to puberty blockers.

13) ‘Transgender’ sports guidelines to be reviewed. Save Women’s Sports Australasia* presented an open letter to Sport and Recreation Minister, Chris Bishop, in September, which was signed by 59 former elite and Olympian athletes, requesting him to protect female sports. Mr Bishop has since asked Sports NZ to review and update its ‘Guiding Principles for the Inclusion of Transgender People’ in community sport. No updates to this have been received so far.

* For those unfamiliar with the word ‘Australasia’, here is the definition, but it’s mostly used to mean Australia and New Zealand combined.

14) One woman’s challenge to the ‘rainbowing’ of her local library. In a small town in New Zealand, a local woman noticed that the library was ‘rainbowing’ itself up, and, rightfully, she considered that to be wrong. Libraries should be havens of impartiality, where everyone can rub shoulders together, and not places where any bias is on permanent display. Although, those responsible for ‘rainbowing’ our organisations are usually determined ‘rainbowees’, they should still be challenged. I take my hat off to Paula (not her real name) – this is her story.

15) Tomato-juice man gets convicted and discharged. The man in a pink dress who threw tomato juice over Kellie-Jay Keen at the Let Women Speak rally in Auckland in March 2023, was convicted and discharged for it in September. He has since applied twice to have the conviction overturned, but denied it each time.

In better luck, Shaneel Lal, the man who was highly influential in whipping up the violence against Kellie-Jay Keen and the Let Women Speak rally attendees, got given a job with a Labour MP, and within the Labour Party itself. Clearly, it pays to be their pet.

16) A protest in solidarity against Germany’s draconian sex self-ID law. I took myself off to Wellington again in November to be part of the Women’s Rights Party’s protest in solidarity with German women against their sex self-ID law. It’s a brutal law, where any person who hurts the feelings of another by ‘misgendering’ or deadnaming’ them, can be fined up to €10,000. The Women’s Rights Party hung banners over the motorway, and protested outside the German Embassy alongside those from other groups.

17) Journos on our side. This year, we were lucky to have a couple of respected longtime journalists, Yvonne van Dongen and Graham Adams, writing more about gender ideology issues. Other journalists still remain either afraid, unconcerned, flirt with it a little here and there at best, or are hostilely woke.

Yvonne, who now has her own Substack, published four articles in 2024 pertaining to gender ideology, and one about women’s wellbeing -

The Charity Industrial Complex - racketeering by charities, in which, needless to say, the neo-rainbow racket features significantly.

So Proud – how much taxpayers are funding neo-rainbow events.

Would You Vote for This? – how NZ’s liberal prostitution legislation is not really working out that well.

The Plot Sickens – a precis on what relevant groups and individuals have to say about the Ministry of Health’s public consultation on puberty blockers.

Moment of Truth – 2025 Gender Critical Predications for New Zealand – it’s in the title.

Graham Adams published -

Puberty blocker use surges in NZ (mid-Dec 2023) – a follow up article after Professor Charlotte Paul’s article in the December edition of the ‘North and South’ magazine about New Zealand’s scandalously high use of puberty blockers. Graham puzzles over the mainstream media’s almost total disregard of this.

NZ’s trans lobby is fighting a rearguard action – the reaction in NZ to the Cass review.

‘Man gives birth’ doco requires major denial of reality – a woman who says she’s a man has a baby with a man, and the documentary tries to sell it as a man having a baby.

So, there are the main events as published in my blog – now to get into 2025 😊

Header image by Marie from Pixabay