Moment Of Truth

2025- Gender Critical Predictions for New Zealand

2025 will be the year truth makes a comeback.  It will be the year it is no longer heretical to say people can’t change sex and a woman is an adult human female.

So that’s good news. Nevertheless even as gender ideology slowly collapses, felled by its own internal contradictions, plenty of hangovers from this awful era will continue to plague women and girls.   

In New Zealand a number of critical decisions are due in 2025.

• First, there’s the Ministry of Health’s determination on puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. Long after the Cass report was released, the MoH finally responded, urging a more precautionary approach to medicating troubled adolescents since there was a lack of “good quality evidence.”

The ministry is consulting on whether further regulations are needed and has asked for feedback from organisations affected, not individuals. Consultation is open until late January 2025.

When their response finally comes we hope it arrives with a ruling ditching gender affirming care. Gender distressed children need questioning therapy, not affirming medication and surgery. 

• Men out of women’s sport: The coalition agreement of the current government includes the intention to “ensure publicly funded sporting bodies support fair competition that is not compromised by rules relating to gender.” This commitment comes courtesy lobbying by NZ First.

In September a letter was presented to Minister of Sport Hon Chris Bishop penned by former Olympians, top athletes, and Save Women’s Sport Australasia (SWSA) requesting he urgently reviews the Guiding Principles for the Inclusion of Transgender People in Community Sport. SWSA co-founder Ms Edge says the current guidelines ignore the rights of every female athlete to fair and safe competition and enable the participation of males who self-identify as female in girls and women’s sport at all levels in New Zealand. “It gives transgender athletes the right to play sport in the gender they identify with and requires no explanation or transition.”

In October Sport & Recreation Minister Chris Bishop asked Sport NZ to review and update its Guiding Principles for the Inclusion of Transgender People in Community Sport. He expected the update to be made ‘in the coming months.”

• The current guide on Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) curriculum will be removed by the end of the first term this year. The guide presents gender ideological beliefs as if they are facts. 

Groups such as Resist Gender Education say the ERO Report contains much useful information in this era of online abuse and pornography, but it also perpetuates confusion and misrepresentation that has led to the current crisis and parental loss of trust in the content of RSE lessons.

• Lesbian Action for Visibility in Aotearoa’s (LAVA) case against Wellington Pride will be heard in the second half of 2025 by the Human Rights Review Tribunal. In 2021 Pride refused to let LAVA have a stall at the ‘Out in the City’ Pride Event. 

Media continue to refer to them as anti-trans. Wellington Pride have called 19 expert witnesses to support their view that LAVA are anti-trans, bigoted and hateful. LAVA’s argument is that their gender critical opinions are political and thus protected under New Zealand’s Human Rights Act. The court case may take up to a month. LAVA is fundraising to source internationally respected academics, scientists and clinicians who support their views. 

• Taxpayers on the hook for more court action from infamous immigrant transactivist.

 

On March 10 2025 Eliana Rubashkyn faces charges of dangerous driving and assaulting a male police officer with a blunt instrument (a vehicle) in court. Rubashkyn is the Colombian intersex immigrant convicted and discharged of two counts of common assault for the pre-meditated violence he perpetrated against two gender critical women at the Let Women Speak event on 25 March 2023. Rubashkyn is appealing this decision at the Court of Appeal but no hearing date has yet been set. Beyond that court lies the Supreme Court. 

• The definition of far right.

Helen Houghton, the leader of the New Conservative party, filed for defamation on December 20 following the publication of an article in the Spinoff titled ‘Women and the alt-right in New Zealand” by Byron Clark. Clark’s book “Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld Extremists” was published in 2023. Houghton, who recently passed her third year law exams, will be representing herself. Clark describes her and other women with shared views such as opposition to the UN Global Migration Pact as ‘alt-right’ and ‘far right', wihout defining the terms. Helen is also openly gender critical. 

• The definition of sex.

Speak Up for Women has a petition requesting that the house of representatives define ‘sex’ in the Human Rights Acts 1993 and any other legislation as referring to the biological definition.

• The definition of who gives birth

The Midwifery Council has spent four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to come up with a new Scope of Practice, only to remove the words ‘mother’ and ‘woman’ and replace it with the word ‘whanau’. Presumably this was meant as a nod to Maori inclusion, when all it actually does is embed gender theory. The Scope of Practice determines how the profession is governed  - and the standards that midwives must meet in their practice.

The revised Scope of Practice document was open for consultation until late November. Women asked the Council to rewrite the scope into a more suitable form and to carry out another round of consultation. In the meantime the Midwifery Council continues to roll out the training for the faulty scope.

So there you go Kiwi Terfys - so much to look forward to!