A roundup of some things from New Zealand, across the ditch - i.e. Australia - and the UK.

New Zealand

A few of us here have been beavering away in the last week writing complaints about the revised NZ Midwifery Council’s Scope of Practice to the Regulations Review Committee. Astoundingly, the initial revised Scope of Practice did not have one mention of the word woman’ or ‘baby’ in it. It was a masterpiece of ludicrousness, and definitely needs to be preserved in a museum displaying some of the stupidest things ever done. It really was quite a feat to write a regulatory document, which was four expensive years in the making, about a practice which is all about women and babies, and not mention them once. But then, I’m guessing much to their dismay, along came midwife Deb Hayes, who – to paraphrase – said “*%+#@*” about the revised Scope, and created a parliamentary petition against it. The Midwifery Council appeared to get the wind up about this, and hastily (and ignominiously) grouped the words ‘woman’ and ‘baby’ in with some other words to shut the pesky objectors up, and then gazetted the revised-revised Scope of Practice. As a fyi, all would-be regulations in NZ have to be announced in the New Zealand Gazette prior to the Regulations Review Committee passing them, or not. Normally, something like the Midwifery Scope of Practice would simply be a rubber-stamping process. However, the pesky objectors haven’t finished objecting yet and are submitting complaints, which the Regulations Review Committee are obliged to consider. More to come on this as it progresses.

The grassroots group ‘Let Kids be Kids’ has been travelling around the South Island with a presentation for the public which highlights some of the inappropriate sexuality and gender-identity ideology content in the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) guidelines for schools. There is also a disturbing element of removing parental involvement and rights, mainly due to omission, than suggestion. Having said that, there is some very good content in the RSE, and that’s not being contested. Naturally, Let Kids be Kids got some pushback. In addition to a particular drag queen trying to sabotage the group’s venue bookings, five nameless complainers and the 24-year-old trans-flag waving deputy mayor of Nelson, which is at the top of the South Island, got on board with the pushback. The Nelson Mail, ever eager to dish anti-LGBTQIA+ dirt, was alerted and published a hit piece about ‘Let Kids be Kids’. The ‘hit’ missed its mark by a mile, because there wasn’t anything to hit. The reporter, seemingly no novice, though, went digging for anything she could use to discredit them by inference and association. It would be fair to say that her piece probably won’t be winning a journalism award anytime soon.

Complaints about parenting group prompt venue hire questions | Stuff

Then, bugger me, Stuff actually published a mea culpa opinion piece by entrepreneur and columnist, Damien Grant, where he acknowledged he was wrong and cowardly to have ignored the controversy around gender ideology, as it relates to kids, as long as he did. It’s a good piece, and bound to create a few stirs, but being late to the party and a man, the worst he’ll likely experience personally now is a few sideways looks. The disclaimer by Stuff at the top of his piece is worth a chuckle, but it’s still doubtful if it will stem the flood of “hateful, anti-trans, bigoted genocider” complaints about Damien that will swamp Stuff’s email system. Even so, it’s a safe bet that this won’t be career-ending for him in any significant way.

Damien Grant: Pay attention to review into gender care for youth | Stuff

Across the ditch in Aussie

Just a quickie mention of a fantastic eight-part podcast I’m listening to called ‘Desexing Society’. This has been put together by Stassja Frei, and is “A gender critical podcast examining youth gender medicine in Australia”. The story could apply anywhere, though, irrespective of the different characters, organisations, and location. It is a detailed and captivating outline of how it happened, and still is happening. Stassja’s narration is engaging, and easy to listen to.

Desexing Society Podcast - YouTube

UK

The UK gave us ‘edge-of-the-world’ dwellers a couple of vicarious prezzies this week in the form of its National Health Service (NHS) ditching woke-speak - 'Chestfeeding' to be banned in NHS crackdown (archive.ph), and also ditching rainbow badges - UK Government Secretly Shuts Down NHS Pride Programme (vice.com). What the UK does is their business, of course, and NZ treads its own path, but just quietly, what goes on in the UK doesn’t go completely unnoticed here.

• Header picture by Leonardo from Pixabay