December 2021
New Zealand Government proposal on “hate speech”":
It’s a mistake
by Prue Hyman
In an article published in Watchdog 155, I expressed doubts about Government intentions to make hate speech legislation much stronger. Since then, the area has hotted up and this article is an update on events and proposals.
December 2021
The beauty and the “Do you call him him or her?”
by Sabine Schneider
James Max to Kellie-Jay Keen on talkback radio: “Well, maybe you should be cancelled.”
There’s no limit to what talkshow hosts will say to get attention. This one got his wish, but it left him looking like a dingbat. That’s what happens if you don’t know your stuff and invite someone on the show who has all the good arguments. Well done, Kellie-Jay! Here’s more of her crystal clear language talking about Girls’ Schools on GBNews.
December 2021
We must, somehow, uphold, um, or enable, free speech, maybe?
by Sabine Schneider
At a recent meeting of the Hobart City Council, Councillor Jax Fox who goes by they/them pronouns tabled a motion that would prevent an already booked event at Hobart City Hall from going ahead. Unsurprisingly, the event is an information forum organised by a gender-critical group, the Coalition of Biological Reality (CBR).
In an excellent article in the Spectator Australia, Edie Wyatt writes that “Fox, in conjunction with Mayor Anna Reynolds, has a reputation of trying to shut down public debate around gender issues in council.”
Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds.
Anna Reynolds‘ razor sharp reasoning: “If the event was, about this particular event, was going to be about criticising another religion and casting doubt about the beliefs of that other religion then that would also potentially be at risk of breaching the anti-discrimination act, so this is about, we do need to I think, we got some good elements here.“
Hobart City Councillor Jax Fox.
So what horribly harmful content is the CBR planning to distribute during the event? Here’s Edie Wyatt: “According to Stassja Frei, the group’s founder, the forum will address women in sport, the medicalisation of gender-diverse children, and the problems with criminalising explorative therapy under the gay conversion therapy ban.”
Despite all efforts to get council approval for the quasi shut down of the forum, which is planned for February 2022, a majority of councillors voted the motion down. This does not mean future events will be able to go ahead because part of Fox’s motion was to uphold and affirm existing anti-discrimination laws, as well as develop “better” policies for the process of hiring out council venues. These will likely be geared to prevent any event that “does or is likely to cause offense to a portion of the community”. If every such event was shut down, no events would be held - anywhere in the world - ever again.
Councillor Jax Fox does not approve of other councillors defending free speech.
To celebrate the first Gendercritical Day of Coming Out on December 19, LAVA joined in with tens of thousands of gendercritical voices around the globe. Our message was - and is - loud and clear:
Lesbians are never going back in the closet!
by Sabine Schneider
We were also taking the opportunity to celebrate the launch of our new website the week prior. If you have just found us - congratulations. We hope you stay a while, please contribute, and get in touch with us. Just by ourselves we are strong, but united we are an uncontrollable force of nature.
By the way “united”: We’ve been reading about the “blistering backlash” against the Gendercritical Day of Coming Out by our very own gay and lesbian community. It goes something like this: How dare you take our words! How dare you, it’s our term! So here’s the low-down on “coming out”: No one owns the term. It was coined to announce the “readiness” of aristocratic young women (“debutantes”, maybe of the Habsburg Dynasty) so they could be passed from their fathers to the next male to lord it over them. Anyway, we think women should be coming out with stuff anytime we like, and much more often than we usually dare to.
9 December 2021
I am who I say I am
by Sabine Schneider
New bill on sex self-ID will allow people to retrospectively change the sex on their birth certificate by simple declaration.
LAVA maintains: A changed birth certificate does not change a person’s sex.
LAVA has repeatedly pointed out the shortcomings and problems of the new BDMRR Bill (“sex self-ID” bill) that was passed by the New Zealand parliament today. Alongside thousands of concerned New Zealand citizens, LAVA has made a submission, naming the impacts of the bill on women and girls who will no longer be entitled to the dignity and privacy of safe spaces without men.
This means, former safeguarding principles will no longer apply to Girl Guides, women’s and girls’ changing rooms, single-sex dorms, rape-crisis centres, single-sex facilities in schools, sexual violence services (women’s shelters), breast-feeding spaces, prisons, women’s and girls’ sports, single-sex mental health self-help groups, gynaecological services in hospitals, intimate care for elderly women, and many more. Fully intact males will be able to access these spaces and services by virtue of them declaring they are women. No medical or any other transition or pretense is necessary.
Examples from the UK, US, Ireland, Scotland, and many other countries show the disastrous consequences of this kind of legislation. LAVA will continue to carry the baton for women and girls the New Zealand government has so shamefully dropped this week.
Anyone can change the sex on their birth certificate multiple times by statutory declaration.
29 November 2021
What is a woman?
How gender identity ideology captured New Zealand public sector institutions
A new article in the Policy Quarterly, a journal published by the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies of Victoria University in Wellington, explores the tensions between women’s sex-based human rights and the claims of transgender advocates. Authors Jan Rivers and Jill Abigail detail the nature, implications and (unintended) consequences of gender ideology. Despite legislation proposing sex self-identification being deferred in early 2019, numerous government departments and agencies have quietly implemented self-identification in their policies and practices. If a man can declare himself to be a woman, what, then, is a woman, and how can women’s rights as a political class be maintained? Following the same pattern seen in other countries of failing to adhere to well-established policymaking processes, the New Zealand public sector is instead embracing key tenets of gender ideology. Read the article.
15 November 2021
The retirement closet
Retired lesbians worry they won’t be able to be as out and proud in their old age as they have been throughout their working lives. In the November edition of the Dominion Post “Forever Home” supplement, Stuff reporter Mikaela Wilkes talks to Marg Curnow and Lou Brandon about their hopes and fears. Read the article.
Lou Brandon and Marg Curnow
13 October 2021
Nolan Investigates - Stonewall
For the past few years, there seems to have been a kind of self-imposed ban on investigating the gender lobby in the UK, but not any longer. Stephen Nolan is a journalist with a sizeable following on his popular show, Nolan Investigates on BBC Radio Ulster. Nolan, a BBC employee himself, published his 10-part podcast on the BBC’s involvement with the LGBTQ+ rights lobby group, Stonewall. It’s fascinating and somewhat exasperating to follow along as Nolan and his team uncover how the BBC - and other UK government sectors - are deeply entangled with the charity. Listen or download.
May 2021
Interview with Ngahuia Te Awetokutu and Sue Kedgley
At this year’s Auckland Writers Festival, Sue Kedgley talked about her memoir Fifty Years A Feminist and together with lesbian feminist Ngahuia Te Awekotuku looked back on half a century of the New Zealand women’s rights movement.
March 2021
Public Sector Rainbow party
Back in March 2021 a number of LAVA members leafletted the Conference of the Combined Agency Rainbow Network (CARN conference). The conference is the public sector's event for the Rainbow sector conference event, complete with $132-per-seat gala dinner at Parliament.
It's where the New Zealand public sector's version of Rainbow inclusion and diversity is on display. Heads of public sector departments try to outdo each other, demonstrating how faithfully they have been following the orders of Rainbow Tick, Gender Minorities Aotearoa and Inside Out. Our leaflet, which we continue to stand by, shows exactly how narrow a version the government's version of the Rainbow community is. Inclusion and diversity should mean just that. But at the conference, we heard nothing about the growing intolerance in our community and the resulting harms to women and lesbians. We are hearing on the grapevine that many Rainbow public servants want nothing to do with the network organisations across government that are supposed to have their backs.
The Who’s Who of Public Sector Rainbow goodness.
All sponsors and supporters will get the Rainbow Tick, for sure.