Now that men have been given control of female spaces in New Zealand, what do we do from here?

Opinion:

If there’s anyone left in New Zealand who thinks that women’s and girls’ spaces are still a female domain, then you must be living in a place where that quaint tradition hasn’t yet been demolished.

Please let me know where that place is.

For the rest of us, we have to submit to the presence of any man whomsoever says he’s a woman in our spaces - bushy beard, bollocks and all. This is despite The Independent UK having collected data way back in 2018 which showed that unisex changing rooms put women at more danger of sexual assault. Oh, but I guess this doesn’t apply to the ‘Aotearoa New Zealand context’, as is the latest fob-off we hear from our public service and politicians to any data or reports from overseas they don’t like. They’re not averse to claiming in the next breath when the circumstances suit them, though, that they’re following ‘international best practice’.

If we don’t like having a man in our female space, we are the ones who have remove ourselves and go into a private cubicle instead, if available. Not all men will say they’re women and intrude into female spaces – thank goodness – but the choice of whether or not they do say they are, is utterly and completely in their hands. Men now have total control over whether or not they use female facilities, whilst women and girls have none.  Even if we never encounter a bloke in our female spaces, we now have to go into them knowing that there could be, and there’s nothing we can do.

In places where the powers-that-be have decided to have only unisex cubicles as a clever solution, it’s not. Besides the issue of men in general having poorer behaviours of hygiene (yes, I know – not all men, and some women, too), there’s also a greater risk of creepy and/or predatory men lurking around unisex bathrooms unchallenged. The installation of undetectable spy cameras in unisex cubicles is easy-peasy, and even menstrual products can get fished from bins and disposal units and used for sexual gratification. Although this is the first legal case of its kind in NZ, you can bet your last dollar that doesn’t mean it’s an isolated incident.

Don’t get me started on those toilets where urinals and cubicles are all in the same room for both women and men to use together. I don’t care if all the oh-so-progressive tiny-thinkers declare they don’t mind, what about all those who do? Sure, they make themselves use the facilities when that’s all that’s on offer, but re-read the above paragraphs, and then ask “who do these type of arrangements suit the most?”

I heard a while back that there’s a town in NZ where the Council replaced their female and male single-sex public toilets with a block of back-to-back rows of unisex toilets. Some residents promptly designated, with their own signage, one side for female use and the other side for male use. The signage was removed, but the residents were having none of it and replaced it with designated female and male signage again. To my knowledge that signage remains. If anyone knows the name of this town, the residents who did this deserve an accolade.

The NZ First political party have introduced a member’s bill to Parliament for all new public buildings to have single-sex female and male toilets, as well as unisex ones. It will surprise no one that the radical neo-Left and our mainstream media had a meltdown over this “anti-trans” bill, because – gasp – men who say they’re women might have to use a unisex toilet instead of invading women’s. Of course, we’ve had unisex toilets for years as a requirement in public buildings, but because they often had a wheelchair logo on them to show that they were wheelchair accessible, trans activists declared it was unfair to make ‘trans’ people use them, as it could indicate that transgenderism was a disability. They’ve been exceptional creators of many a spurious claim in the pursuit of enabling men who say they’re women to use female toilets. Whether or not NZ First’s bill will be passed remains to be seen, but with the number of public servants and politicians we have who consider it “anti-trans’ to not give ‘trans’ people everything they want, it could be dicey.

Trans activists have had the march on us for decades. They have been as devious as all heck with the inroads they’ve made into eroding women’s and girls’ rights. The sales pitches to politicians (unworthy of their office) was well-honed and expertly executed. Somehow, the fact that much of it was for the benefit of men who say they’re women either by-passed these politicians, or they didn’t care - or they liked that aspect.  So good was the trans activists’ work under the cover of darkness, so to speak, we never had a clue how much they were undermining women’s and girls’ rights until we started losing those rights. We were caught well on the back foot, and we’ve been trying to make headway with stopping the erosion of women’s and girls’ rights ever since.

Back in 2018, the first whispers were heard that a sex self-ID bill was going to be sneaked into law in NZ. Sure enough, the Greens had surreptitiously inserted it into an innocuous updating of the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Act (BDMRR). This was a similar ploy used in other countries to evade scrutiny of it. It didn’t work the first time round here, but after a renewed effort later on amid much controversy, it was passed into law in mid-2023. The fight against it did, however, get an amendment made which says that a birth certificate does not have to be taken as evidence of a person’s sex in NZ, and other factors can be taken into account – e.g. what our eyes and ears show and tell us.

Even before 2018, people – mostly women – were sounding the alarm in NZ. And yet, where are we with women and girls losing our rights to men who say they’re women? Our public service and our Councils are determinedly entrenching policies that prioritise those men over women more and more. Added to that is the trans’ activists targeting of kids. NZ has prescribed puberty blockers to young people at ten times the rate of the UK, per head of population, and the Ministry of Education’s ‘Relationships and Sexuality Education guidelines’ for schools have gender ideology imbedded in them - all upon advice from TQ+ lobby groups.

There is so much more that could be said about how trans and gender ideology has permeated our public service, Councils, universities, schools, our Ministry for Women, the National Council of Women, United Nations Women, corporations, and the minds of those who think that there’s no harm in being kind to just a scant handful of men who say they’re women. I used to be one of the latter. I learned, though, that when it comes to pushing and breaking down women’s and children’s boundaries, there is no such thing as “just a scant handful of men”. There are many men who would never consider breaking women’s and children’s boundaries, and there are those who are only held back by boundaries.

Despite considerable brilliant and dogged work over the years done by individuals and groups to try and halt this erosion of women’s and girls’ rights, the erosion continues. Neither have we been able to protect children from gender ideology here in NZ, so far.

However, some progress has been made in raising more public awareness about the harms of gender ideology. Seeing and sensing this groundswell, a few businessmen who knew each other, and had been concerned for some time about how gender ideology is harmfully permeating everything everywhere, got together and created a new group called Inflection Point¹. They planned an event called UNSILENCED to bring all the disparate individuals and groups together who care about women, children, and young people. It was a huge success².

But, boy, did it have some detractors and would-be saboteurs³.

Amongst the detractors were people who dissed the event because it included Christians. Supposedly, Christians and those of us who don’t follow that faith should avoid each other at all times, due to holding some opposite beliefs, even when we have the common threat of gender ideology. Even when it’s at all our doors we should remain pure in our separatism, and snub each other instead of facing the enemy together.

The purists can be damned – I want to win this fight against that which is destroying women’s and girls’ rights and safeties, not win some purity contest.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, but at the same time none of us needs anyone else’s permission about who we do or don’t ally with. Still, let’s be honest, neither Christians nor those who aren’t Christian know how successful an alliance between the two will be. However, we can either take a risk and come together to create a bigger force against gender ideology, or not do it, and keep fighting our own separate little battles. I’m choosing what I believe will work right here and now - i.e. item-specific collaboration. We can still maintain our independent positions over those things we disagree on, but parking those differences for a common goal is a well-used strategy in warfare – for good reason. It may only ever be a loose alliance of convenience, but right now that works for me. We all took a calculated risk in turning up to UNSILENCED, but as they saying goes “fortune favours the bold”.

Unlike the neo-Left, there are no nasty surprises with Christians, or those who are right-leaning. We know their beliefs and their agendas, and they know ours. And a funny ol’ thing has happened - I’ve discovered I very much like some of those Christian people, differences and all. They were a lot kinder, too, about the trans activists protesting the UNSILENCED event outside the venue than I was 😊

¹Inflection Point on X: @InflectPointNZ

²New Zealand's first summit of UNSILENCED gender critical speakers now on video. (substack.com)

 ³UNSILENCED – a day to remember when voices against gender ideology in New Zealand were heard. (substack.com)

header image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay