The sticker that brought back memories of the fight against sex self-ID in NZ.

The insanity around gender ideology is waning now, but back in 2021 it was raging.

I recently stumbled across one of the stickers we’d used when campaigning against sex self-ID in 2021 here in New Zealand. In time-honoured fashion, the few I had leftover resurfaced when I was doing some clearing out. It sure brought back memories.

In an unexpected twist, the QR Code on the sticker takes you to a rap song by Francis Aaron on YouTube called ‘Boys Will Be Girls’. It’s still there.

What a time that was! Politicians and the mainstream media were insanely hostile to anyone who rejected the premise that men could become women, and vice versa, just upon their say-so. At first, I was puzzled at the level of malevolence, but eventually learned that what we were seeing was the decades-long result of gender ideology being taught in universities, and how students of it had gradually changed the culture in the public service and media. Attitudes amongst those who are proponents of gender ideology have not changed much, only the vehemence with which they deliver their hostility has toned down a little.

That toning down mostly came about after what happened at Albert Park on 25 March 2023 at the Let Women Speak rally, when Kellie-Jay Keen came within a hair’s breadth of being seriously harmed, or even killed, by a mob of frenzied transactivists. It was the worst mob violence against women in NZ’s history, and a number of politicians and media helped to whip up. They came close to having blood on their hands that day.

The Greens initially tried to pass sex self-ID into law by stealth in 2018. I guess they’d seen how well that had worked in Ireland in 2015, when their Gender Recognition Act got passed by stealth. Sex self-ID here in NZ is the ability to legally change the sex marker on one’s birth certificate simply and cheaply, just upon the desire to do so. The only reason the sex self-ID bill got stopped in early 2019 was because at the time NZ First were part of the coalition government, and NZ First MP Tracey Martin deferred the bill due to credible concerns about it raised by women who’d spoken to her. Those women themselves only knew of the bill from inadvertently encountering online chatter around it.

When Labour got into power by themselves in the 2020 general election, they resurrected it, and it was unanimously passed in Dec 2021. Notably, NZ First didn’t make it into Parliament at that election. I suspect there was a mixture of zealots in Parliament who were all for sex self-ID, and those who thought there was no harm in it - a sentiment held by the then Opposition Minister for Women. It would seem that none of them either listened to the concerns raised, or they just dismissed them. Of course, we were up against a well-oiled trans machine, with strategies, money, and stories polished over decades. And all the politicians in Parliament back then soaked up every bit of it.

By June 2023, sex self-ID was law. Despite not being able to prevent that, one good result did come out of the fight against it, as it’s now officially stated that “other factors can be considered over and above the registered sex listed on a birth certificate”. In other words, it’s legitimate for our eyes and ears to make that determination. A while ago, a man on X who’d had cosmetic surgery in the attempt to emulate the body of a woman, tried to claim that he was female because he had the paperwork to prove it. I presume he was talking about having had his birth certificate altered. But, no sir, a birth certificate is no longer definitive proof of your sex. I guess they forgot to tell you that.

We tried hard to raise public awareness about the negative fallouts from sex self-ID, both the legal and social aspects of it, but it was a battle all the way. Those potentially in positions to help both professionally and personally, but who hadn’t been brainwashed or taken over by gender ideology, or unafraid of the vitriol they’d get from transactivists could have been counted on one hand and still had fingers left over.

The brainwashed and/or fearful included all the main women’s groups and organisations, as well as the mainstream media who wouldn’t publish adverts which shockingly had the words “Woman noun: adult human female” in them. A billboard company, who’d erected a billboard in Manners St, Wellington, with the same words on it, caved into pressure from transactivists and removed the billboard within 24 hours of erecting it. The Christchurch Central Library cancelled the room booking for the first of our public talks about the sex self-ID bill, because they deemed it offensive to ‘transpeople’, and other Councils had to be stopped from following suit by urgent legal proceedings.

How times change, though. Auckland Council had no issue with hiring a room to a group who wanted to hold an event honouring Iran’s Supreme Leader, even though it would clearly be offensive to many others.

Almost 7,000 written submissions on the sex self-ID bill were sent to the Select Committee, with oral submissions made via Zoom. Few of those with oral submissions which opposed sex self-ID were spared the ‘bared teeth’ treatment from a number of MPs on that Committee. The unprofessional and uncontained animosity and rancour from them is now almost legendary. Even overseas submitters who made their submissions via Zoom, and who may have made the effort to be present at what could have been an ungodly hour for them, more than once got rudeness for their trouble if their submission opposed sex self-ID. Complaints to The Speaker - whose job it is to maintain order in the House - about the Committee’s atrocious behaviour, were initially brushed off. However, he may been persuaded that a word to them was in fact necessary, as they appeared to settle down a little before the process ended.

Some of those who were on the Select Committee are no longer in Parliament, but one who remains is Labour MP Deborah Russell. In an email exchange with her afterwards, she said to me that “I have friends who have trans gender children”. Scratch the surface of the most vigorous defenders of gender ideology, and the ‘trans kid’ is always somewhere close by in their lives.

Many people had no idea that all this went on, and naturally the mainstream media only reported on it - when they did - with the “anti-trans” smear. Nowadays, I don’t give one damn about the names I’m called, but back then it seemed unfair when all we wanted was the chance to talk about the sex self-ID bill, as was our right.

I’ve only lightly touched on those days here, but the memory firmly remains of how gender ideology turned people into unthinking vicious mouthpieces and activists for the trans machine. It just took one sticker to bring it all that back, but I’m proud of what we did as novices in the face of that adversity, and how all of us got stronger from it.

Unlike the everlasting truth of that languishing sticker, the lie of sex self-ID in all its forms undermines women’s and girls’ safety and freedom, and corrupts organisations and systems. Portugal is winding it back, much to the dismay of gender idealogues, and one day New Zealand will see the light, too.