Women’s Rights Party NZ newsletter – Tuesday 19th November.

Shared with permission from the Women’s Rights Party NZ. This newsletter gets emailed to members, of which I am one, but the news in it may also be of interest to a wider audience.

Upcoming events

Filmmaker Vaishnavi Sundar to visit in March

Indian filmmaker Vaishnavi Sundar is touring Australia and New Zealand in March next year to show and discuss Behind the Looking Glass, her movie about ‘trans widows’ and their families. The Women’s Rights Party (WRP) are working with the Australian organisers to bring Vaishnavi out here in association with International Women’s Day in Brisbane.  Vaishnavi is applying for her NZ Visa and when this has been approved, we can work out dates and venues over here. Here is an interview with Vaishnavi by Katherine Deves, on Talk Straight: 

https://www.instagram.com/vaishax_/reel/DCT2E6VSYtG/  

Helen Joyce open to speaking tour in 2025

The WRP has invited Helen Joyce (Sex Matters campaigner and author, “Trans: Gender Identity and the New Battle for Women’s Rights”) to come on a speaking tour of New Zealand next year. Helen has responded saying she is keen to come and that she has also been invited by the Australian Free Speech Union to visit Australia, so we are looking at combining the two. The Women’s Rights Party will be working with Genspect NZ and Resist Gender Education on the New Zealand leg of the tour. Watch this space!

Gender critical news and views

We joined in the global action against new German sex self-ID law

Women's Rights Party members turned up to protest against Germany's extreme Self ID law, on 1 November at the German Embassy in Wellington, which was organised by Speak Up for Women. This was part of a grassroots women's protest around the world, and a demonstration of international sisterhood.

“Lasst Frauen Sprechen!”, the German organisers of the global event, put together a summary of the protests outside German Embassies and Consulates around the world in support of women and girls in Germany against the new Self-ID law #Selbstbestimmungsgesetz. They are urging us to keep the spirit and show the world that we are a force to be reckoned with. “If you hurt one of us, we are watching and we will ALL stand up and say: NO!” 

In Wellington, the first of the events because of the time zone, Women's Rights Party members unfurled banners over two bridges: one saying “Save Women’s Sports” and the other with the official “#Self ID Harms Women”. While we were on one of the bridges, two TRAs spilled a foul-smelling substance on the footpath behind us and then proceeded to spill the rest of the substance along the front of the German Embassy. We think it might have been fertiliser. Another two trans rights supporters turned up, and some of our members attempted to engage in discussion with them.

We were standing opposite the German Embassy with our banner and placards while Suzanne Levy and Tania Sturt, SUFW convenors, led the one-minute silence at 5 past 12. The significance of this is that when it is too late, Germans say, “It is five past twelve.“ We have to believe it is not too late to turn around self-ID laws that have been passed in almost every Western country, including here in New Zealand.

We then went through to a beautiful spot in the Katherine Mansfield gardens near the German Embassy where the speeches were held. For video footage of the speeches, hear is the link to the Speak Up for Women website: https://www.speakupforwomen.nz/global-selfid-protest

You can also find a collage of photos from the day on the Women’s Rights Party public Facebook page, dated 5 November: https://www.facebook.com/womensrightspartynz 

Women’s Rights Party member Katrina Biggs did a live stream from one of the bridges and wrote up the event in her substack: https://aboldwoman.substack.com/p/kiwi-women-in-support-of-german-women

“Man gives birth” documentary requires major denial of reality

In an opinion piece for The Platform, freelance journalist and columnist Graham Adams has written a scathing review of the “Trans and Pregnant” documentary that screened last Monday on TV1. He says the documentary requires a “major denial of reality”. As some of our WRP members pointed out on the member-only Facebook group, the documentary would more properly have been titled “Woman gets pregnant and gives birth” as Frankie Karetai Wood-Bodley is in fact a female who became pregnant, in the end without the help of IVF, with partner Rewa, a male.

Frankie had taken cross-sex hormones until a year before deciding to have a baby, which the consulting obstetrician explained had affected her uterus, hence the three miscarriages along the way. And because Frankie had a double mastectomy to deal with “gender dysphoria” (which she doesn’t regret), the baby was fed breastmilk donated by Christchurch mothers. This wasn’t the only contradiction. As Graham pointed out, the couple happily sexed their baby as a boy.

Predictably, TVNZ commissioning editor Jude Callen was gushing about the documentary. She told the Listener magazine: “Trans and Pregnant was chosen to lead [the channel’s Documentary NZ series] as it is a beautifully made, heart- warming human story about a Kiwi couple who wanted to start a family. The couple happen to be two men.” 

And the documentary’s producer, Nicola Smith, was quoted in Stuff news saying there was nothing unusual to see here: “It blows people’s minds in a lot of ways, but actually, it’s quite simple. It’s just two men that are in love and one of them is physically able to have a baby.” 

You want to scream, “They are NOT two men!” One is a woman who, despite all her attempts at presenting as a man, complete with a beard, is still a woman with a uterus and the desire to have a baby. The other is a man with the wherewithal to impregnate his partner. In a sense, yes there is nothing unusual to see here!

https://theplatform.kiwi/opinions/man-gives-birth-doco-requires-major-denial-of-reality

The documentary is available on TVNZ +.

Surrogacy submission on our YouTube channel

You can listen to our Health Select Committee submission on the “Improving Surrogacy Bill” here on our Women’s Rights Party You Tube channel (apologies about the sound quality): 

 

I will be speaking to this on the Australia and NZ Women’s Declaration International webinar at 9pm, Saturday, 30 November. Suzanne Levy (and/or Tania Sturt) will be outlining Speak Up for Women's submission to the Law Commission about proposed changes to the Human Rights Act.  And Hilary Oxley will be updating LAVA's complaint to the Human Rights Commission about their exclusion from the 'Out in the Park' event at the 2021 Wellington Pride Festival.  We will circulate the video recording of the webinar when it goes up on YouTube.

“Tomato boy” loses his appeal against his conviction

Eli Rubashkyn, or “tomato boy”, lost his appeal in the High Court to against his conviction for common assault when he poured tomato juice over Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker) and Tania Sturt in Auckland’s Albert Park in March last year.

Justice David Johnstone said he couldn’t overturn a district court decision denying Rubashkyn a discharge without conviction because of the message it would send to others. Justice Johnstone said Rubashkyn’s actions blatantly crossed a line that must be maintained, between the legitimate verbal or written expression of contrary opinion on one side, and physical conduct that risks provoking violence or harm to individuals, communities and institutions on the other. “It is important that those who wish to oppose, by protesting against, views they consider abhorrent, do so without engaging in physical attacks,” he wrote near the conclusion of his 11-page decision.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/transgender-activist-eli-rubashkyn-loses-appeal-for-dousing-posie-parker-with-tomato-juice/ZNZTRBKOKRA7BNKINYLQOVGF54/

The New Zealand Women's Rights Party