The talk I gave at the Helen Joyce event in Christchurch NZ.

It was wonderful to be in such exalted company :-)

Currently, Helen Joyce from Sex Matters UK is on a speaking tour in New Zealand. She is being hosted by the Women’s Rights Party for the first leg of it, and then the Free Speech Union will host her for the second leg. The Women’s Rights Party events have so far been held in Auckland and Christchurch, with tickets still available for Dunedin and Wellington.

I was honoured to be asked to speak on the panel at the Christchurch event hosted by the Women’s Rights Party, but unfortunately didn’t get the obligatory photo of me and Queen Helen, as there was too much else going on which distracted me, as happens at these events.

In lieu of that photo, here’s a photo of the Hornby Club, where the event was held :-) No protestors turned up, as unlike Council-owned venues, the club would not hesitate to hurt their feelings.

I spoke about my experiences, observations, and revelations in dealing with the Christchurch City Council over their women’s swim sessions which allow in men who say they’re women.

This is what I said -

Early in 2022, I had a meeting with some Christchurch City Council staff about their new policy of allowing men who say they’re women into the women’s swim session at Linwood Pool, and I got outclassed before it even began.

Prior to that meeting, Nigel Cox, head of recreation at the Council, rang me to ask if we could agree that the point of the meeting was to come up with some pragmatic solutions. He was polite and pleasant, and I agreed, thinking that this sounded promising. I was fooled. He played me like the naïve rookie I was then.

The online meeting was attended by me, Conservatives.NZ party leader Helen Houghton, my sister, and two other women on ‘our’ side; and on ‘their’ side by Nigel, and the activities team leader at the time, and the Council’s lawyer. During the meeting, Nigel used our agreement as a parameter from which to not let the discussion go where he didn’t want it to go. It was my first time coming up against players who easily batted away ten irritants like us every day before morning tea. It was a valuable learning curve.

Needless to say, the Council wouldn’t give way on their policy of allowing men who say they’re women into the women’s swim session. They call these men ‘transgender women’, but that term is misleading, and I don’t use it, even if using the phrase ‘men who say they’re women’ is clunkier. Four years after the Linwood Pool opened, that policy still stands, and has now extended to the women’s swim sessions at Hornby. The Christchurch City Council aren’t alone, of course, and the Selwyn District Council also rolls out the red carpet into female spaces for men if they “genuinely identify as female”. How that genuineness is established is not established.

I think it’s fair to say that gender ideology, without fail, does not make those who talk it sound smart.

The “pragmatic solution” presented to us in that meeting with the Christchurch City Council was that if we wanted a women’s swim session which kept out men of any type, then we had to run it ourselves, pending Council approval. That’s possible, of course, with the people and commitment behind it, and there is a weekly Muslim-run swim session for women only. I’ve also talked to a couple of women from Napier who run their own weekly women-only swim sessions there, organised and run by their own effort and commitment. You can hear that interview, and the benefits women are getting from the swim sessions, on my wee YouTube channel.

Suffice to say, it’s clear there is a real hunger amongst a number of women to have some women-only spaces for recreation, and they thrive when they have them. When people thrive, that benefit spreads out to those around them. Maybe the same goes for men, but men can talk for men.

It doesn’t matter if a man never goes to the women’s swim sessions, the Council should not provide the avenue, via their policies, for men to attend them simply upon their own say-so that they’re women, or “genuinely identify as female”. That’s a violation of trust, a violation of basic preventative safeguarding principles, a violation of openness and honesty with the public, and a violation of women’s and girls’ wellbeing. What does it matter that the Council has a line buried in their website which basically says that the women’s session is also open to men who say they’re women? If a woman goes to what she believes is a safe women-only space, then the Council should honour that without her having to hunt for obscure lines in their website to find out whether it’s actually true, or not.

And it doesn’t matter if some women say “oh, I don’t mind”. They do not speak for all women. Their “don’t mind” comes from a place of shallow understanding, and a failure to comprehend that being edgy and breaking certain social boundaries does not always mean ‘liberation’ for women, or they’ve just managed to indoctrinate themselves with extreme foolishness – I stole that last bit from Helen Joyce. Ditto for men who think that there’s nothing wrong with letting men who say they’re women into female spaces.

The Council’s assurances that they will deal with any bad behaviour by these men rings hollow, because those men shouldn’t even be there. By the time they’re dealt with, they may have already done damage which often can never be fully undone, whatever it’s severity. What that damage can be made up of is a conversation which has been had over all the centuries that humans have walked the earth, but one which the Council is curiously deaf to now.

In contrast, they couldn’t get enough of the sad stories from men who say they’re women, and couldn’t open the doors to female spaces for them fast enough. The Council has made it clear that even extreme violations are not enough to make a blanket rule to exclude these men from female spaces. Only the men who commit the worst behaviours will be barred, upon being reported, but the policies stay in place. Fun fact – not – data from Corrections NZ shows that men who say they’re women are imprisoned for offences, including sexual offences, at around twice the rate of other men.

All the way through the struggle women now have to keep men of any stripe out of female spaces, there’s either been a sub-text, or outright statement, that this is a fringe issue and there are more important things. This was never said to the fringe group of men who say they’re women. They were never told that 51% of the population were not going to have their rights and lives compromised for the sake of a tiny percent of the population. They weren’t told to stop it, go away, and think of the women and girls. Why was the appeal from these men for access to female spaces not considered a fringe issue, but when women and girls want those men to stay out, that is considered a fringe issue? And why is it when men say they’re women they’re believed, but when women say men are not women, they’re not believed?

Women and girls have lost control of female spaces in our Council-owned venues to men. Not just to men who say they’re women, but to all men, because all a man has to do is say he’s a woman, even if it’s just for ten minutes, never mind the weasel words of “genuinely identifies as female”, and he gets in. A few years ago, a man who was lurking and leering in a female changing room at a pool, not in Christchurch, had his presence there excused by the staff because he was ‘transitioning’. I’m aware that there may be some out in the wild who’ll get a little tingle of excitement at the thought of the control of female spaces being transferred into men’s hands, and I could opine just where they can put that tingle, but for the sake of keeping things seemly tonight, I won’t.

So, how did we get here? The Council has been able to get away with this travesty, simply by deciding to corrupt the meaning of the word ‘woman’ to mean anyone who says they’re one. They’ve done this in-house, and under the radar. If challenged they’ll deliver a template reply which blathers on about diversity and inclusion, in which they’ll use corrupted language, and cite changing social norms as their grounds for doing it, but won’t be publicly open and honest about what they’ve done.

Like many organisations now, including our public service, our Council here in Christchurch will be peppered with transactivists and the go-alongs. The ‘go-alongs’ are just what they sound like – those who go along with transactivists, no questions asked, for whatever reason. It takes very few transactivists to turn an organisation from something which at least attempts to run along the lines of rationality into something which overlays that with gender ideology. The most fervent transactivists are those who have been complicit in transing their kids, or who know someone who has been. As Helen Joyce says, parents who have kids they’ve helped to transition to a pretence of the opposite sex to that which they were born will die on this hill, and I’ll add to that by saying their friends and family will be close behind. I’m sure we have a few of those in our Council.

The transactivists and the go-alongs in the Council would have been meeting with transactivist lobby groups to plan this incursion of men who say they’re women into female spaces long, long before we had any inkling of it.

For the record, Qtopia is the name of the transactivist lobby group here in Christchurch, which is headed by a man who calls himself Jennifer Shields, and who says he’s a woman. Labour MP for Christchurch Central, Duncan Webb, has published a photo of himself along with Labour MP for Christchurch East, Reuben Davidson, having a lovely catch up with this man. As an aside, Duncan Webb has said he is not going to seek re-election in 2026.

However, Labour MPs are not part of our Council, even if they might be influential. So, who specifically in our Council can we not trust to look after the sex-based rights of women and girls? In my opinion, the primary driver amongst the councillors who want to prioritise men who say they’re women, over women and girls, is Sara Templeton. Let’s thank our lucky stars she didn’t win the mayoralty, and is no longer a councillor, either, although I’m sure a place in the Council somewhere will be found for her.

Whilst our mayor, Phil Mauger, doesn’t particularly give a rat’s about this matter, he doesn’t actively advocate for it, like Sara did. Sara also drove the overarching Equity and Inclusion Policy, which was passed in March 2024. Alongside her were councillors Celeste Donovan and Tyler Harrison-Hunt. They refused to include the word ‘sex’ – meaning biological sex, before anyone starts getting excited - amongst the categories deemed worthy of equity and inclusion in the policy, but put the wishy-washy and variably-defined word ‘gender’ into it. The word ‘sex’ would have meant that our sex-based rights, as written in the Human Rights Act, could be protected, whereas the word ‘gender’ gives no guarantee of protection.

Only two Councillors challenged the omission of the word ‘sex’ from the policy – Councillors Aaron Keown and Victoria Henstock – and the rest went along with its omission. The Council’s lawyer, Elizabeth Neazor, the same one who attended our first meeting with Nigel Cox, was heard to actually give incorrect information to the Council by telling them that ‘gender’ is in the Human Rights Act. It’s not, and it’s blatantly false to say it is.

Sara Templeton agreed that the word ‘gender’ had variable meanings, but amongst her reasons for having that word in the policy, and excluding the word ‘sex’, she made it clear that she wanted no obstacles for men who say they’re women to access female spaces. In the video of the Council meeting where this policy was passed, she was heard to say how “transgender are some of the most vulnerable and victimised in our community”. I don’t know of any other group of men who have ever before been given access to female spaces because they’ve been deemed vulnerable and victimised. Strangely, Councillor Tyler Harrison-Hunt, who is a convert to Islam and has a daughter, went along with this. I only mention his conversion and daughter, because I’m sure he must be aware of the Muslim-run women-only swim session.

What can we do? To be honest, it feels as though everything that can be done at a grassroots level has been tried. In the end, maybe only legal action will make any impression. However, that takes time, effort, and not least, money.

There is an interesting case coming up, though, via the Human Rights Review Tribunal, whereby a Christchurch man by the name of Brian Brodie is taking action against the Council for discrimination against men in regards to the women’s swim session. The hearing for this is in late November, but I don’t yet know the date and time.

I don’t know how successful he’ll be, as men could have a men’s swim session if there was enough of them who wanted one – which would allow in women who say they’re men as well, of course – but according to the Council there seems to be little appetite for it. Maybe Brian Brodie, or any men, might have more luck in taking the Council to court for discrimination against men who don’t say they’re women from having access to the women’s swim session, and other female spaces, whilst allowing in men who do say they’re women. After all, what is the difference?

Believe it or not, I don’t hate the Christchurch City Council, I think they do some good work. But, allowing men of any type into female spaces is a big fail on their part. I still recommend writing to your local Councillor about this bad policy of allowing some men into female spaces, despite the likelihood of being fobbed off with the usual template reply, as applying pressure may eventually make some inroads somehow.

Currently, we don’t have a group in Christchurch specifically dedicated to fighting the Council on those policies which allow men into female spaces, but there are some groups and organisations where you can meet like-minded people, and you can find this information on the table at the back of the room.

Thank you.