How the Sall Grover event went in Christchurch NZ, and how the audience that questions gender ideology has changed in three years.

Sall Grover is a star. That mid-winter night in Christchurch where she spoke to an attentive audience on the last leg of her speaking tour in NZ may have chilled her star extremities a little, but she still shone. The story of how her creation of an app for women went sideways due to a litigious man who says he’s a woman, Roxy Tickle, is now very relevant to us here in New Zealand.

This Tickle bloke claims his self-declared ‘woman’ gender identity trumps the fact that he’s not actually a woman. He has sued Sall for discrimination in federal court in Australia for not letting him onto her app. The verdict is due anytime. The law around sex and gender here in New Zealand is different to Australia’s, but our Law Commission has now released a proposal to put the word ‘gender’ into our Human Rights Act against discrimination. If it goes ahead, it may put us into the same awkward situation that Sall has experienced, and we’ll be required to contest whether or not gender – whatever that means - trumps sex in a court of law.

The other speakers in the line-up of Christchurch’s Sall Grover event – Helen Houghton, an ex-teacher and defender of children against the harms of gender-identity ideology; Nicole, a mother whose daughter now says she’s a man; and Jill Ovens, co-leader of the Women’s Rights Party – also relayed profound experiences of the ways gender ideology had impacted on, or affected, them. They all weaved a story which painted a disturbing picture of how it can spread into various aspects of our lives. None of us can guarantee it won’t touch us in some way, somewhere.

From left to right - Helen, Nicole, Sall, and Jill.

As interesting as the panel of speakers were, it was also interesting to feel how the tenor of the audience on that winter’s night in Christchurch had changed from the tenor of a similar audience on another winter’s night in Christchurch three years ago.

In mid-2021, I was involved in organising a venue for a speaker to come and talk about the upcoming sex self-ID bill. The central library was the venue of choice, but they cancelled the booking I made after trans activists, one of whom was ‘Lucy puts bows on her dick’, made complaints about the topic of the talk and the woman’s group the visiting speaker belonged to.

(The above picture was copied from another publication, and I can’t make it any clearer, sorry. The letter from the library reads: “Dear Lucy, thank you for your email. After we received complaints from customers and staff, we decided to decline this venue hire request. We assessed the request against our code of conduct, particularly our commitment to providing a safe and welcoming environment for all. In summary, the SUFW event will not be held at Tūranga. Kind regards, Sean Rainey.”)

A co-organiser working with me made another booking at a club of the type we used to call a Working Men’s Club - the irony wasn’t lost on us – lol! However, what a fortuitous choice! The manager later relayed how he also got complaints after trans activists discovered our change of venue, but he decided to do a bit of online research for himself, and soon found out they were a hundred times (probably more like a thousand times) less desirable than we women were.

On the night, even though the club had a duty manager, the club manager also stayed behind to keep control of the premises. He stood in the foyer as we all entered, and when around a dozen protestors turned up with the intention of attending the event, he stopped them until he’d checked with us if it was okay to let them in. We agreed as long as they behaved, and only then did he let them in the doors out of the cold night. That wouldn’t happen now, as protestors try to gain entry to our events with the express purpose of making so much noise that speakers can’t be heard. However, three years ago were different times – and the manager knew how to manage. He maintained a watchful presence until the end.

The audience was about half the number on that night as attended the Sall Grover event, and for the most part they were confused and discombobulated about what the hell was going on. This thing called sex self-ID seemed to have popped up out of nowhere. It’s now known that neo-rainbow lobby groups and the Green Party had been surreptitiously working on it together for some time before we became aware of it. At the forefront of most of the audience’s minds back then seemed to be “wtf is sex self-ID and this thing called gender ideology?”

In contrast, the tenor of the audience at the Sall Grover event was that they were pissed off at sex self-ID and this thing called gender ideology, and they wanted to do something about it. A lot of water can go under the bridge in three years.

We may have small wins here and there against gender ideology, but we’re still up against the Public Service, government, councils, and mainstream media who continue to relentlessly push and entrench it. If we want to gain any real ground in defeating its promulgation, some differences must be put aside so we can focus on the immediate objectives of recovering women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces and sports for females only, protecting children from the harms of gender-identity ideology, and taking back our female language. Disparate groups are ready to work together on this, and park the things they don’t agree on until later. This kind of compromise is nothing new.

It was good to feel a new determination in the air at the Sall Grover event in Christchurch. How that manifests is yet to develop, but people’s appetite to do something more is increasing.

I’ll keep you updated :-)