Local Heroes

The ones who challenged the regime

So far I’ve written about New Zealand-born gender luminaries (two) and thought criminals (many) overseas. Now I want to highlight local gender luminaries, mainly because the villains depress me and I feel like a lift. Why are there always so many more gender criminals than luminaries? My current working hypothesis is that New Zealand is a cult.

Forgive me for not featuring the brilliant women in organisations like Resist Gender Education, Speak Up for Women and the Women’s Right’s Party. Nor Bob McCroskrie at Family First. All are relatively well-known TERFS. Instead I want to introduce a lesser known individual who has had an impact on the issue.

My greatest admiration in this contentious cultural conflict will always be reserved for the brave souls who dared to swim against the tide, that is, express gender critical views that got them bullied and cancelled at work, and, no doubt, socially too.

In this respect, Dr Holly Lawford-Smith (image above) is a total mensch. Born in Taupo, educated at the University of Otago, she is currently Associate Professor in Political Philosophy in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, (Melbourne is close enough for her to qualify as local).

Lawford-Smith’s special interest is radical feminism or gender critical feminism, that is feminism that centres women and not the ‘inclusive’ kind promoted by the likes of Labour and the Greens, which includes men. This has put her at odds with some of her colleagues.

Universities, as we all know by now, are no longer centres of enquiry and debate. They have become monocultures of thought, and prone to authoritarian impulses such as cancellation, ad hominem attacks and calling out wrongthink.

So no surprise then that when she launched a website called "No Conflict, They Said" in 2021, that collected anonymous, unverified stories of the impacts of transgender women using women-only spaces, many of her academic colleagues were outraged.

Their righteous indignation was cheered on by Dr Hannah McCann, a senior lecturer in cultural studies, who said the site “promotes the vilification of transgender people.” At the time of McCann’s complaint, Lawford-Smith’s website had received over 900 submissions from all over the world from women outlining their experiences sharing spaces with men. McCann said that was just “fear-mongering.”

At least two open letters from academics, students and staff condemned the website as transphobic. One garnered more than 1400 signatures, the second over 600 signatories expressing concern that the website had potentially violated the university's Appropriate Workplace Behaviour Policy.

Fortunately the University of Melbourne did not cave in to their demands. Instead a spokesperson said “The university is committed to principles of academic freedom of expression, and to fostering a diverse, respectful and inclusive community.”

Lawford-Smith also toughed it out and in 2022 Oxford University Press (OUP) published her book Gender-Critical Feminism. The book attracted the usual whinge-fest but OUP defended it as a work of rigorous scholarship. A year later they published Sex Matters: Essays in Gender-Critical Philosophy.

In 2023 Holly Lawford-Smith visited New Zealand and took part in a Free Speech Union debate on the issue of no debate versus speech causing harm. You can read a review of that debate here. Ani O’Brien notes that she went “full TERF” pointing out that because we haven’t been able to discuss and debate matters of sex/gender identity, women have been harmed. Lawford-Smith writes frequently for Quillette.

Georgina Beyer deserves accolades for many things in her lifetime but, for the purposes of this article, for not toeing the trans activist line. She’s not strictly a luminary but I want to reclaim her from the blue fringe folk.

At the shameful mobbing of Posie Parker and supporters in Auckland in 2023, people waved placards with Beyer’s image on it (see above). They could get away with this appropriation since she had died less than three weeks before the event.

The protestor’s ignorant use of her image and their delirious fervour was a kind of mania I doubt would occur today. My sense is that Labour and Green politicians who expressed concern about Posie Parker’s visit and the immigration officials who tried to prevent her entering the country, would not do so today. The moment has passed. The mania has moved on.

The way Beyer’s image was used in March 2023 in contravention of the facts is a reminder of how woefully ill-informed many protestors are. The same dopey mania has been evident in other protests such as climate change, the anti Treaty Principle’s Bill hikoi and now the pro-Palestine/anti-IDF movement. Too often, protestors prioritise feelings over facts.

But back to the facts about Georgina Beyer. Beyer was the world's first openly transgender mayor, and the world's first openly transgender member of parliament. She served as the mayor of Carterton and also the MP for the Wairarapa.

In her 65 years, she’d also been a singer, an actor, a drag queen performer and a sex worker. Beyer was also the first person of Maori descent to address the Oxford Union. In 2020 she was appointed a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

Beyer gave the lie to the claim that trans people are discriminated against. The electorate that voted for her had previously been regarded as conservative.

“Rural, conservative people who overlooked my colourful past, looked at the substance of me and gave me a shot.”

She was completely unlike the current crop of transactivists. For a start, she did not make the demands they do. In an interview with me before her death, she told me she thought “some of them should pull their heads in.”

Beyer was critical of the evolving language within the trans community. She preferred to be called a transsexual and noted that this term had become politically incorrect among some activists.

“Whoever invented the term Transgender really opened up a Pandora’s box and now it’s a term that’s meant to now include everything on the gender continuum I presume.

“So when I use terms like transsexual, I’m told it’s very ‘UnPC’ to use around members of the Trans community and so on, well fuck you! Get over yourself.”

She worried that broadening the transgender umbrella to include so many identities could lead to confusion and dilute the movement's focus. Beyer stressed the need for the trans community to bring the public along through education rather than confrontation. She advised activists to avoid alienating potential allies by being overly aggressive or dismissive.

Had Beyer been alive and seen her image so badly misused, I’m sure she would have told the protestors to ‘eff off.’

Next: The Villains. So many!