Deb's petition against the NZ Midwifery Council’s dog of a revised Scope of Practice gets presented to Parliament.

It was a windy day in Wellington on Tuesday 9^th April 2024. So far, so normal.

It was also the day a group of terfs¹ got together to support midwife Deb Hayes’s presentation of her petition against the NZ Midwifery Council’s revised Scope of Practice to National MP James Meager on the steps of Parliament. And that wasn’t quite so normal.

In fact, it was very unique. No other Member of Parliament has dared to ‘out’ themselves so brazenly as to have their photo taken with a group of terfs. I daresay the very idea shakes them to their core. If only we could harness that power we apparently have to strike fear into hearts, and redirect it at will.

Not only did James brave the possibility of angry TQ+ hordes sending him “you’re genociding us” emails, but he was joined on the steps by NZ First list MP Tanya Unkovich. Two MPs with something more in their hearts than fear in today’s climate of tiptoeing around all things ‘trans’ is not a common occurrence. If it lasts – and long may it do so - and gathers company along the way, the day becomes even more unique.

In brief, for those not familiar with midwife Deb Hayes’s Parliamentary petition, she has called for an investigation into the NZ Midwifery Council’s removal of the words ‘woman’ and ‘baby’ from their revised Scope of Practice. In response, the Council slapped a hastily applied bandaid on it in the form of ignominiously squeezing in the words woman’ and ‘baby once each. However, the Scope remains woke gibberish, which is barely understandable. You can read and hear more about it here.

Yes, we know that both James and Tanya, as MPs, have their eye on more than just believing it’s bollocks to not have women and babies front and centre in a document that should have women and babies front and centre in it. But show me any person in the land of the living who doesn’t have more than one iron in the fire at any one time, and I’ll show you someone who’s telling porkies. A Parliamentary petition needs an MP to pick it up and present it to Parliament so it can be reviewed. Without that, it languishes in the long list of petitions, and eventually gets lost in the mists of time. So, if James picked up Deb’s midwifery petition for a combo of reasons, and Tanya stood with him when it was presented also for a combo of reasons, so be it.

The original arrangement for the petition presentation to James was to do it on the steps of Parliament Building in Wellington where these presentations are usually done, accompanied by photos. However, local Myanmar communities held what turned out to be a very vocal rally just a stone’s throw away from the steps, so James took us up to the steps of the Parliament library building next door, which is the oldest of the Parliament buildings. It was bloody lovely!

About sixteen terfs, including a couple of man-terfs, had gathered to support Deb and witness the presentation to James. We all chin-wagged with each other, including with James and Tanya, and enjoyed ourselves and the occasion in a low-key kind of way. Even so, the atmosphere was charged with a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’, which a number of us remarked upon afterwards.

With that surrounding us, and a beautiful background to give an extra boost of visual pleasure, Deb duly presented her petition to James and Tanya.

After the photos, a handful of us made our way into the public gallery above the debating chamber in the Beehive for a short time, just to hear the Clerk of the House read the petition out to Parliament during the 2pm session.

We only stayed a short while, although on another day in Wellington it might be interesting to listen at more length to the verbal sword fights between the political parties.

It took four long years for the Midwifery Council to produce an A4 piece of paper with crap on it, and at a cost of at least half a million dollars. As soon as they got wind that the Scope of Practice was being seriously challenged, they suddenly found a burst of speed and not only managed to slap a bandaid on the Scope, but quietly got it gazetted the day before the petition was presented to James, with the actual publication date being the same day of the petition. Anything that will, or desires to, become legislation in New Zealand requires publication in the NZ Gazette first. We found out the day after presenting the petition that this had been done.

We have until the 1^st of October to cut this travesty of a document into tiny pieces once and for all, and scatter it to the wind. The knives are being sharpened – on both sides, I expect.

PS: no disrespect is meant towards dogs in the title.

• ¹Terf = Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Most people who are familiar with this term believe it is a fairly recent invention. In fact, it grew out of the feminist movement in the 1970’s where it described those women who didn’t believe that feminism should include men who say they’re women, as opposed to those who did. The word ‘radical’ may be misinterpreted these days from its intended meaning from back then, which could have been simply referring to its now lesser-known meaning of ‘the root’ - i.e. the root of feminism. The other meaning of the word ‘radical’, which infers extremism, was less commonly used back then. When the acronym was resurrected around 2008, it was intended as a slur, and can still be used as one, but many of us ‘terfs’ also own it and wear it proudly - even those of us who can’t be bothered scrapping over what the word ‘feminist’ means anymore, and simply refer to ourselves as women’s rights advocates.