Health NZ gets directed to use the word ‘woman’, and forget the gobbedlygook.

They may need therapy.

In a wow-factor move, NZ’s Associate Minister for Health, Casey Costello, sent a letter to Health NZ directing them to bring back the word ‘woman’. Instead of using gobbedlygook like ‘pregnant people’, ‘people with a cervix’, and ‘individuals capable of childbearing’, they’ve been told to say ‘woman’. Shocking, I know. Although the directive has been given, we’re talking about our woke-infested Public Service here, so I expect there will be resistance. Therapy will almost certainly be required.

Health NZ is the government agency responsible for managing and operating the health system in New Zealand. Like other government departments and organisations elsewhere, they’ve been pandering for some time to an infinitesimal minority who’ve sold them the concept that removing women from language is inclusive for those who pretend they’re the opposite sex to that which they were born, or no sex at all. And, reducing women to functions and body parts is, apparently, not in the least bit dehumanising. That infinitesimal minority – i.e. the neo-rainbow brigade - get an eye-watering amount of funding¹, a substantial amount of which appears to have gone into the pockets of the best spin doctors in town.

Even though communications and documents issued by Health NZ are riddled with woke neo-rainbow language, with barely a ‘woman’ in sight, they claim they haven’t created any policies around this. However, the Women’s Rights Party says “woah, back up the truck there, Health NZ”, and points to the ‘Gender Diversity Policy’ they were developing last year. Convenient amnesia, perchance? Or the left hand hand not knowing what the right hand is doing in Health NZ? I’m not sure which is more concerning.

Naturally, the loony Left (and not all Lefties are loonies) are upset because women want to be called ‘women’. Jaimie Veale, a man who says he’s a woman and also an executive member of PATHA, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Waikato (yikes), and the director of the Transgender Health Research Lab also at the University of Waikato, said the Minister’s directive was disappointing. Good - it means she must be on the right track. Veale spouted some more soft ‘spin doctor’ stuff to the media, which those of us who’ve seen the nefarious way the TQ+ have operated over the years just laugh at now.

Labour’s leader of the Opposition, Chris Hipkins, basically said there were more important things than not erasing women from language. He famously stumbled over the “what is a woman” question in April 2023, and is still stumbling by the sound of it. Technically, he’s not a stupid man, but he still doesn’t get that asking a politician, or anyone, if they know what a woman is, is a very simple test of picking who’s got their head in the clouds, and who’s got their feet on the ground.

I don’t particularly consider myself to be on the Right, but I admit that these days I gravitate more towards those who are grounded than those who are untethered to reality. And with that word ‘untethered’, a pair of unlovely beardy bros, who seem to have had a particularly bad breakup with reality, come to mind. They do regular podcasts, sometimes with an equally unlovely and untethered guest. I’ll spare you their names, and the name of the podcast, because then you might be tempted to do a search, and blame me for the scars it might leave. I encounter them on X from time to time, and although my preferred level of engagement is to scroll quickly past, sometimes I pause over one of their posts with incredulous fascination. Right on cue, these beardy bros proclaim that Minister Costello is wrong to say that only women can get pregnant, because – wait for it – girls can get pregnant, too. That’s their gotcha.

If that doesn’t leave your head reeling, or you just want more punishment, I invite you to read this opinion piece from The Spinoff A deeply frustrating line-by-line reading of Casey Costello’s letter to Health NZ. Opinion pieces by journalists are a way of writing something without the boring need for journalistic integrity. The writer, Madeleine Chapman, if not already a good friend of the above-mentioned beardy bros, is definitely a kindred spirit. The Spinoff is a left-wing media publication which has had $12M of NZ On Air (government) funding since 2016 to stay afloat. If your stoicism to read the whole piece is a little lacking, here’s a couple of gems from it for you -

1) Excerpt from Minister Costello’s letter to Health NZ:

Only women and people of the female sex can get pregnant and birth a child no matter how they identify.

· Madeleine’s response: Unfortunately this is not true. If Costello wants to get technical about a social construct like “women” then she should also note that girls can get pregnant too [ah- so this is where the beardy bros got their gotcha from, or vice versa]. She’s also asked for clearer language but frankly “pregnant women and people of the female sex” is a lot more confusing and clunky than “pregnant people”.

I agree with Madeleine that the excerpt is a tad clunkily written. Perhaps it was composed that way to accommodate the two tedious women per year who say they’re men, and get pregnant.

2) Excerpt from Minister Costello’s letter to Health NZ:

It is therefore reasonable to expect that women are fully aware of the services and support available to them. As such, I consider that clear language should be used in all documents and communications that refer to health issues specific to females.

· Madeleine’s response: Fitting to end this letter by once again conflating women and females, gender and sex. But evidently, despite not knowing this basic difference, Costello feels strongly about this language being used enough to demand that language policies be changed. And what was the policy exactly? When asked by RNZ this week, “a Health New Zealand spokesperson said the agency did not have a policy relating to the use of gender-inclusive language”. But wait – what about the Gender Diversity Policy that Health NZ was developing last year, as pointed out by the Women’s Rights Party?

I fully anticipate that NZ’s Associate Minister for Health, Casey Costello, is going to get a lot of very excited women writing to her this week to thank her for beginning to bring the word ‘woman’ back into language. Of course, she’ll get some wild-eyed beardy bros and Madeleines writing to her, too, to give her a good scolding for doing that, but we tethered-to-reality majority are delighted.

And looking overseas, we are also delighted to hear of For Women Scotland’s victory in the Supreme Court, which ruled that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ referred to biological sex only, and the Gender Recognition Certificate did not bestow the equivalent of biological sex upon the holder of that certificate². Many congratulations to all those who fought for this in both big and small ways. I’m sure the champagne will be flowing :-)

¹ The Great Rainbow Heist - by Yvonne van Dongen.

² Supreme Court backs 'biological' definition of woman

Header photo by Tima Miroshnichenko