Lies are no way to live - except when the Psychotherapists Assn of NZ tell their members to do it, or else.

Language is central to our lives, and how it's used determines much of how we live them.

I was talking to my terf friend, Sarah Henderson, from Mana Wāhine Kōrero (Sovereign Women Speak) the other day about language. Sarah’s deeply interested in linguistics, and we’ve had a long and fascinating chat on YouTube about this before. Amongst other things in that chat, she talked about how language ‘codes’ our brains into thinking in certain ways. So, when I raised the subject of what it might do to women and girls mental and emotional health to have our language erased in favour of being called things like ‘cervix havers’, ‘the birthing parent’, ‘those who menstruate’, or ‘people who go through menopause’, as just a few examples, Sarah knew exactly where I was coming from.

It's a question that has been playing around my mind for a wee while now. So, I mentioned to Sarah that it would be good for someone more knowledgeable than me to write something about the impact on women and girls from taking our language away. Or, maybe she herself could consider working on something with me, I said, and perhaps a psychotherapist helping out, as well. To be honest, I’m not really up with the play on what all the psych-somethings do, but psychotherapist sounded good. Sarah had some reservations about that, to put it mildly, and reminded me about a psychotherapist fella on X, whom we both know of, who has sold his brain and soul to gender ideology. For a moment there, I’d forgotten about that particular ‘madman’.

Hot on the heels of that, the Association of Psychotherapists Aotearoa New Zealand (APANZ) put out a ‘do it our way, or else’ position statement called ‘APANZ Council’s finalised response to the 2023 Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Change Efforts (SOGICE) report’.¹

The report appears to be saying that talking through a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity is tantamount to trying to change it, and any psychotherapists who do that will be in deep trouble. APANZ even jam colonisation and the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) into the report, accompanied by claims about gender identities in pre-colonial Māori culture, which have no basis in reality in any provable way. They blithely ignore that, though, because why let the truth get in the way of a good story.

To get a flavour of the report, here are some of the statements within it -

• We, the Association of Psychotherapists Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Rōpū Whakaora Hinengaro, reaffirm our position that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity are unacceptable within psychotherapeutic practice.

• Sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts continue the process of colonisation and the subjugation of indigenous Māori sexualities and are at odds with our Association’s commitment to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We acknowledge Takatāpui as a unique indigenous identity, encompassing diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, that does not necessarily equate with other LGBTQAI+ identities.

• Given that we are all sexual and gendered beings, psychotherapists, like all human beings, are susceptible to being consciously and unconsciously influenced by normative assumptions regarding sexuality and gender.

A member of the Free Speech Union NZ alerted them to APANZ’s report, and they have taken APANZ to task over their heavy-handed way of trying to compel a particular way of thinking and speaking for psychotherapists around the subject of sex and gender.

In what seems to be an effort to put fear into their members to comply with their heavy-handedness, APANZ talks about the illegality of efforts to “change” sexual orientation and gender identity in their report. The illegality they refer to, is the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation bill – a.k.a. conversion therapy prohibition – which was passed into law in February 2022. This law makes it illegal to change or suppress someone’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. APANZ appears to associate exploratory therapy with attempts to change sexual orientation and gender identity.

The law left therapists unsure about what they could and couldn’t do and say, so in August 2022 the Children’s and Adolescents Therapist Association (CATA) held an in-person day conference in Nelson called “Children, Adolescents, and Gender – impacts of transgender ideology”. And the shite hit the fan at a dizzying speed. The activism against it was so intense, stoked by mainstream media, TQ+ lobby groups, and Labour Member of Parliament, Rachel Boyack, that the conference venue had to be changed to a secret location. Kudos to the original venue, though, as they held fast against the intimidation they received for hiring their premises to CATA. For those who attended, both in person and online, the conference was highly informative and can be viewed in segments here. The final 52 minutes of the conference were devoted to legal opinion and advice by Nicolette Levy and Annabel Markham, which did much to reassure therapists that they could treat gender confused children and adults without fear of being prosecuted for just asking questions.

If the idea of me asking a psychotherapist to help write something about the mental and emotional impact on women and girls from taking our language away hadn’t been quite dead in the water before reading the APANZ report, it was decidedly dead afterwards. The idea itself will percolate away, though, whether Sarah and/or I do something with it, or someone else does, because there’s no way on earth that erasing women’s language will have no effect on women and girls. And if our heads get completely messed up from granting those words of ours which do remain to men who also want them, who will clean up that mess? Forcing us to accept lies tends to not go well – neither for women nor men.

The title of this piece Trust Depends on Truth, by Fern Hickson of Resist Gender Education NZ, sums up the interdependency of truth and trust, and our language is right at the forefront of that. We older women will probably be okay, though, because, unless you’re one who has sold out to gender ideology, the rest of us are stubborn ol’ bitches who won’t play that game. We’ll hold the rebellious memory of what a woman is.

Something else I’ve learned during this whole years-long debacle, is that I now have an inkling of what it must have felt like for Māori to almost lose their language. Many older Māori, including Di Landy, co-founder of Mana Wāhine Kōrero, don’t hold with the current popularising of the Māori language, even though reviving it was important. Kiwi vernacular is commonly dotted with Māori words, but until recently, the language of officialdom was straight English. Now, it’s become a mash-up of Māori and English, increasingly being referred to as Manglish, in order to try and bring the Māori language as a whole into more common usage. As a result, they say it’s losing much of its nuance and context.

Di and I had a chat on YouTube about all this earlier in the year. It’s not a formal chat, but, as I discovered from re-listening to it, there’s quite a bit in there worth taking note of - even if I do say so myself.

Stella O’Malley from Genspect also makes some salient points to Paul Brennan on Reality Check Radio about APANZ’s bonkers position statement, and how the role of a psychotherapist is not just to sooth brows and murmur assurances. There are other people for that.

STELLA O'MALLEY: Psychotherapist & Genspect Executive Director: The Hidden Crisis Behind Gender Affirmation And APANZ's Recent Statement - Reality Check Radio

¹FINALISED-NOVEMBER-SOGICE-response-APANZ-Council-Nov-2024

Header photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash