Sex self-ID in New Zealand has a 'get out of jail' card for service providers.

The Christchurch City Council, NZ, opened a new swimming pool complex in October 2021. After getting overwhelming support from the community for a women’s session, they bent over backwards to make it happen. Then, after the public consultation process closed, and unbeknownst to most before the opening ceremony, they slipped in a bit on their website which says: “Transgender women, and people who identify as being a woman, are welcome” – i.e. men. However, boys over five years old aren’t.

I, and a few other women, engaged with the CCC for a period of time over this, but they wouldn’t budge on their stance that the women’s session would include men who say they’re women.

On 15 June this year sex self-ID came into law in NZ, so I thought it was a good time to re-establish contact with the CCC. Unlike some countries, sex self-ID here in NZ does not legally obligate a service provider to allow men who say they’re women into women’s spaces. If they do this, that is their own choice they make. I felt fairly certain that the CCC could do with being ‘educated’ on this, so wrote to the head of recreation - again. Tbh, he doesn’t seem like a bad bloke, but he’s either captured by TQ+ ideology, or his staff are. Here’s my letter -

Good afternoon, Nigel – how are you?

I would like to address the matter of the sex self-ID law, which came into effect on 15^th June this year, and what this means for the Christchurch City Council as a service provider. I would appreciate it if you could also forward this email onto your legal department.

The sex self-ID law enables anyone to change the recorded birth sex on their birth certificate to that of the opposite sex, non-binary, or another gender, via a simple online process now. However, a service provider is not legally obligated to consider a birth certificate proof of a person’s sex. The rights of a service provider to continue to provide a single-sex service, based on legal advice, can be read here. Please scroll on past the flyer on the page to read the information in its’ entirety.

Notably, the Department of Internal Affairs devotes the bottom section on their FAQs page to service providers, to confirm that sex self-ID does not alter the right to provide a single-sex service. In brief, a service provider is not legally obliged to allow any man who identifies as a woman to have access to women’s and girls’ spaces. If a service provider allows men who identify as women to have access to women’s and girls’ spaces, then that is a choice made by the service provider. It is not a legal obligation, as erroneously inferred by the CCC in earlier correspondence.

My own opinion is that a service provider may not be working in their own best interests if they allow men who identify as women into women’s and girls’ spaces. If anything untoward, distressing, or abusive happens to a woman or girl from a man in their space who identifies as a woman, then the service provider could be held liable, seeing as they will have made a conscious choice to allow the man to have access, when they also had a choice not to, and keep the space single-sex.

In regards to the women’s swim session at Te Pou Toetoe: Linwood Pool, I feel that the destabilising effect on women from the CCC’s policies, which allow any man who identifies as a woman into that session, is too important to walk away from (I surmise that this policy is also applied to all women’s and girls’ spaces managed by the CCC). It doesn’t matter if there are never any incidents reported about men behaving badly in that women’s session, or anywhere else they’re allowed into - the whole idea of a woman’s session is to not even have to wonder if there might be a man in it, and to not have to be on alert for a man who might come into it and then to have to make the decision whether to leave and ruin our enjoyment, or stay and mar our continued enjoyment.

Another destabilising effect on women’s lives is, of course, self-exclusion from exercise and the mental and emotional wellbeing gained from a communal activity, due to the policy of allowing men who identify as women into women’s spaces. Nor does it matter if some women are nonchalant about sharing women’s single-sex spaces with men who identify as women. The right to single-sex spaces is not theirs to give away on behalf of all women.

It wouldn’t be difficult to make provisions for men who identify as women to be able to enjoy the pool, too, without destabilising the women’s session. For example, Thorndon Pool in Wellington has a regular Out in the Pool session for all “transgender, gender diverse, and non-binary folks”.

Thank you for your time with this.

Regards,

Katrina Biggs – women’s rights advocate