Vaishnavi Sundar visits New Zealand for a screening-tour of her doco 'Behind the Looking Glass' - which I missed.

I was looking forward to meeting Vaishnavi Sundar, but then got sick. I'm going to need counselling.

This week just gone, the Women’s Rights Party NZ hosted Vaishnavi Sundar on what I’m told was a highly successful tour screening her documentary Behind the Looking Glass. I say “what I’m told”, because I chose that week to be unwell. Crook timing indeed! However, I gleaned from the subsequent chat that it was very much enjoyed, as was Vaishnavi’s engaging personality.

For those who haven’t yet seen it, ‘Behind the Looking Glass’ is a first-of-its-kind documentary. It allows women to finally begin publicly saying what it’s like to have been in an established relationship with a man who decides to pretend he’s a woman. These relationships can oftentimes, but not always, be longstanding and have produced children. The women and children are expected to go along with the man’s pretence in order to keep him happy at home, and therefore less likely to become a public nuisance.

There is also the strange phenomenon of all sympathy being directed towards the man, because the anguish of his ‘dysphoria’ must be unimaginable. Until recently, little to no sympathy has gone to his partner and children. They’ve been expected to bear his self-inflicted change in silence, and allow him all the room he needs to centre his single-minded desires, which they should manage their lives around as best they can. After all, it’s not like he’s abusing them, and it’s only like a bit of harmless role-play, isn’t it? Sometimes, when women have put their own wellbeing before the man’s charade, it has resulted in splitting their children’s loyalties.

Of course, there’s much more to this than the brief synopsis above. In ‘Behind the Looking Glass’, we hear details about the havoc it can wreak on the women and children caught up in what can be a truly awful situation.

Christchurch’s turn to host Vaishnavi came over the weekend just gone, for which I was noticeably absent, preferring to selfishly nurse my germs at home, rather than benevolently share them in public. Even though my scintillating company wasn’t around to carry the day, I believe she and those who escorted her around still had a great time.

Kate Sheppard House was one of their ports of call, as would be expected. Kate Sheppard is honoured here as the woman who drove the hard fight for women’s right to vote in New Zealand. We were the first self-governing country in the world where women won that right, and although there were many other women (including Māori women), women’s groups, and male allies involved in attaining that, apparently Kate Sheppard’s exceptional organising skills came into their own for this.

Now, we know that no shrine to women’s achievements is complete without the neo-rainbow sullying it, don’t we? Sure enough, Kate Sheppard House has the ubiquitous neo-rainbow (im)poster marring her memory. And Georgina Beyer, a well-known cosmetically modified male to female¹ transsexual, also gets a place on the New Zealand women of significance wall. After finishing his drag queen and prostitute life, he got into politics and did a reasonably good job, as far as I know, although he still wanted to put male trannies amongst women. However, rather than being in Kate Sheppard House, maybe he could be classified as a NZ tranny of significance in the tranny hall of fame – wherever that may be - because he was never a woman.

Blowing on past those blots on the Kate Sheppard House landscape, there are true gems there from Kate Sheppard’s time. Unlike the surreptitious dealings, which we’ve discovered to our dismay, are the neo-rainbow’s way of getting what they want, these are memories of the honest hard work it took to achieve what she and others did.

Look - it gets legislated that "Person" includes woman!

It was a treat to have Vaishnavi Sundar here, even if all I could do was enjoy it vicariously. As is becoming par for the course, the Women’s Rights Party had to manage the screenings of her documentary here as secretly as possible, due to the inevitable outcry of ‘transphobia’ from all the usual suspects. This is the position into which women have now been placed.

Vaishnavi may be gone from these shores now, but I can’t imagine for one minute that it won’t be long before we hear her name mentioned again. She seems like a woman with a lot of work still to do :-)

Vaishnavi and and the Women’s Rights Party co-leader, Jill Ovens, say goodbye at the airport.

¹ Of course, there’s no such thing as male to female, as humans cannot change their sex.

Listen to Vaishnavi’s interview on The Platform - Vaishnavi Sundar On Her Documentary 'Behind The Looking Glass'

Follow Viashnavi on X: @Vaishax