Let Women Speak in New Zealand.

When we join forces to fight for a common cause, we can achieve what initially may seem like the unachievable. For me, I consider that we are at our strongest when we focus on a single issue, and don’t let ourselves get distracted by how we may hold differing beliefs and opinions elsewhere. Sure, it’s not a perfect strategy, it has its faults, but I gave up trying to live up to any definition of perfect some time ago.

Purity politics seldom advances us as much as mongrel politics does, like it or not, because we humans are just not homogenously pure. We’re all flawed in our own ways and according to the measuring-stick others apply to us, and always will be. However, I understand and respect those who hold the line on their political stance, and won’t give way on positions and policies they have thought deeply about, or deeply value. For the rest of us who will blur some lines for the sake of getting a result, right or wrong, we need those who uncompromisingly hold the line elsewhere.

Because I am a goal and results orientated person for the most part, reaching out to others in different worlds and finding common ground to achieve a goal seems natural to me. I do have some positions I won’t compromise on, but for others I’ll readily join forces with anyone. We may happily live in different worlds to each other, but can sometimes find that we have common ground, as well as like and respect each other, once we begin a dialogue.

The wāhine toa (warrior women) of Mana Wāhine Kōrero (Sovereign Women Speak) and my worlds are quite different in many ways, but we still find common ground in that we are women first and foremost. Our bodies are everything, without them we don’t exist. If we don’t protect and take care of them, we can’t do anything, and if we don’t protect our children from gender ideology, they’ll have one big messed up future. These are irrefutable commonalities, no matter what other differences we have.

Di, from Mana Wāhine Kōrero, and I have a great talk in the link below. We discuss the upcoming ‘Let Women Speak’ rallies here in New Zealand in late March, which will be fronted by Kellie-Jay Keen. Naturally, the catastrophising around these rallies has already begun with the Rainbow Greens appealing to the Immigration Minister to deny entry into NZ for Kellie-Jay with an open letter to him. In words taken from Jonathon Haidt’s article here, young people are being taught that catastrophising will get them what they want. I don’t deny that as ‘tweenies’ – us in our young teenage years – we were all hyperbolic and melodramatic, but the grown-ups kept us in check. Now, many of the grown-ups seem to be tweenies with arrested development.

Don’t expect a sugar-coated conversation here between me and Di. What you will get, though, is honesty. The honesty that gives both snarls and laughs, as we traverse the terrain of talking about the ‘Let Women Speak’ rallies, and whatever else arises.

#4: Let Women Speak in New Zealand. - YouTube