The councillor who opened up Christchurch’s female spaces to men is running for mayor.

The choices for mayor, so far, are one who doesn’t care that men are allowed in female spaces, and one who actively promotes it.

Councillor Sara Templeton has announced her candidacy for Mayor of Christchurch, NZ. She is also a staunch advocate for allowing men who say they’re women into female spaces. Local body elections will take place in October 2025, and so far, the contest for Christchurch’s mayoralty is between her and the current mayor, Phil Mauger, who is running for office again. Unlike Councillor Templeton’s actual advocacy, Mayor Mauger doesn’t care if men are allowed in female spaces.

He established this in a reply I received on his behalf to an email back in October 2023, which stated “We confirm this is an operational matter and is a not a political matter; therefore, the mayor has respectfully declined your request to meet. He is aware of the Council’s operational practice regarding transgender women accessing women’s spaces.”

So-called ‘transgender women’ are men, and no amount of wordplay can change that. If Mayor Mauger saw a ‘transgender woman’ with his dick out, I guarantee his first thought would not be that he was looking at a ‘girl dick’. However, I suspect that like many now, he thinks a woman or girl needs to be grossly physically harmed by a man first, before considering it important enough to make a stand on us having some spaces free from men. Until then, in his opinion the matter is not political, and he fobs it off as simply a technical matter for Operations.

The Operations department of the Christchurch City Council and Councillor Sara Templeton are in lockstep. She has actively worked to ensure there are no barriers to men who say they’re women to have free and unfettered entry to all female spaces in Council-owned venues, and Operations have all but put out welcome mats for them. This is particularly evident in the women’s swim sessions in our public pools, where “All women are welcome, including transgender women and people who identify as being a woman”. The only people who would identify as being a woman are men.

Determined efforts by some in our Council have resulted in putting the control of all female spaces in Council-owned venues into the hands of men. Many private venues have gone down the same path, too. All a man has to do is say he’s a woman, and he’s allowed into a female space. Most men won’t do this – we hope – but the choice is entirely in their hands. However, potentially there is discrimination at play here, as men who don’t say they’re women are not allowed into female spaces, but men who do say they’re women are. What is the difference between a man who says he’s a woman, and one who doesn’t? Are men who don’t claim to be women being wrongly discriminated against?

Councillor Templeton also vigorously opposed including the word ‘sex’ in the Equity and Inclusion Policy she spearheaded. This policy states that is “intended to apply an equity, access and inclusion lens over all Council services”, and lists the categories for consideration when applying this lens, amongst which is ‘gender’. Nobody really knows what ‘gender’ means anymore, though, as it has become a very fluid word. In addition to sometimes still being used as a synonym for ‘sex’, meaning the two different biological sexes, it can also mean a personally felt identity. So, it seemed reasonable to request that ‘sex’ be added to the policy for clarity, and to ensure that legislation which allows for the provision of single-sex spaces could still be applied.

No dice.

In the Council meeting where this policy was voted on, Councillor Templeton made it abundantly clear in her defence of keeping ‘sex’ out of the policy, that it was because it might work against men who say they’re women from getting access to female spaces. She also seemed to consider that conflating and confusing ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ wasn’t a problem.

So, our mayoral candidates are an incumbent mayor who wipes his hands of the matter of men having access to female spaces, and a councillor who actively ensures men have access to female spaces. It’s possible that one or two more candidates may yet emerge, but for now these are our choices. From the perspective of protecting women’s and girls’ rights and safeties, it’s not much of a choice.

If I have to choose between the two above-mentioned candidates at election time, I’ll avoid Councillor Templeton. She appears invested in continuing to remove the security of single-sex spaces for the female population across all Council-owned facilities in Christchurch, for the sake of men who claim they’re women. This travesty is referred to as ‘inclusion’, and Councillor Templeton is aiming for an “inclusive future”. I can only surmise this signals an intention to expand her female-unfriendly practises in some way.

Some women and girls may never encounter a man in the same female space as them, but they can never now go into one secure in the knowledge, as much as possible, that there won’t be one in there, or that one won’t come in while they are. Councillor Templeton has knowingly contributed to destroying that peace of mind for women and girls.

Many councils across New Zealand will have done the same thing. Choose carefully who you vote for in October’s local body elections.