New Zealand's Gender Villains II

The 'Do No Harm' gang.

Not all sins are equal. I reserve a special loathing for the medical professionals who have actively engaged in gender crimes against young people, i.e. medicalising, sterilising and surgically mutilating gender confused children.

Given their role in this unfolding disaster, I fear they will be like Helen Joyce’s parents who have transitioned their own children. The thought that they may have harmed these young people will be impossible for medical professionals to contemplate. Instead they are likely to double down on the ideology, even as evidence builds that it’s been a catastrophe of epic proportions.

Below are some of the top enablers.

Dame Sue Bagshaw - If you didn’t know about Dame Sue Bagshaw’s enthusiasm for medicating gender confused youth, you might think she was a sainted woman.

The doctor's list of good deeds is long and illustrious enough to have earned her a Dame Companion to the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday honours list.

Bagshaw, a doctor who specialises in youth health, is responsible for the establishment of a youth health centre called Te Tahi Youth in central Christchurch. Te Tahi is a one-stop shop for youth medical, sexual and mental health services, as well as mentoring and employment support, largely government funded to the tune of over $2m.

Bagshaw is also a senior lecturer in paediatrics at the University of Otago in Christchurch, chair of the Korowai Youth Well-Being Trust and a trustee for the Collaborative for Research and Training in Youth Health and Development, which she founded. She serves on the board of the Canterbury Charity Hospital Trust.

If all that doesn’t persuade you she’s a thoroughly good woman, her shining, scrubbed face will (see image above). Bagshaw radiates the kind of old-fashioned goodness I associate with nuns but, as we know by now, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Bagshaw’s are the best and, thus, possibly the most hellish.

The good doctor has been a pioneer in gender affirming care for youth, which means she’s an enthusiast for the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children.

She is on record as saying that:

" ..most kids know what they want, most kids know what they are. And that's confirmed with time, so they do carry on with the hormones."

My guess is that she’s applied the template for homosexual development to the diagnosis of trans youth, without considering that it is not possible to be born in the wrong body. Bagshaw regards opposition to puberty blockers as a "moral panic.”

She says puberty blockers are helpful "otherwise you get irreversible effects from their normal puberty which then need a lot of surgery, etcetera, to reverse... breast development and things like that."

Even when the Ministry of Health removed the claim that puberty blockers were “safe and reversible” from its website in 2023, Bagshaw continues to maintain that they are “safe and reversible.”

She is married to Phil Bagshaw who was awarded a companion in the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2019 for his services to health.

Dr Rachel Johnson is a paediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist in Auckland, known for her work in gender-affirming care for young people. She is an executive member of PATHA (Professional Association of Transgender Health Aotearoa) and works at the Kidz First Centre for Youth Health in South Auckland. Her work includes providing support and care to transgender and non-binary youth and their families, including the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

Despite mounting international evidence that puberty blockers cause harm, Johnson still thinks these drugs can be beneficial for those experiencing gender dysphoria. She sounds a lot like Bagshaw when she says:

“We are really clear that the young person is an expert on themselves and everyone's gender journey and story is different.

This is what she said in a stuff article June 2023 about the MoH review of puberty blockers.

"Puberty blockers are a medication that are used to pause puberty, they can't turn it backwards, so they can't reverse changes that have already happened but absolutely they can just pause things. So imagine if physical changes that cause stress are occurring, by stopping those can be incredibly beneficial on a psychological and physical level. But if you were to stop those puberty blockers, puberty would just kick in again.

"Over ten years of following people who are on blockers, with the worldwide evidence that is available, I do think that accessing puberty blockers in the context of the way young people can in New Zealand is really appropriate,"

Asked if they were safe and fully reversible, Dr Johnson replied: "I would absolutely say in the years of experience of using blockers and the worldwide evidence they are safe and reversible."

She has also been actively involved in the development of guidelines for gender-affirming healthcare in New Zealand.

She’s a worry - to say the least.

Dishonourable Mentions

Dr Alexander Brown is a surgeon at Wakefield Hospital, Wellington, shown in this tv clip here reassuring a young woman before the top surgery he would perform to remove perfectly healthy breasts.

Dr Rona Carroll - works out of Victoria University where she is the GP on the gender affirming healthcare team. Like Dr Rachel Johnson, she helped develop guidelines for gender affirming hormone initiation in primary care, and often teaches other GPs about this area of healthcare. She volunteers with PATHA. She’s also a senior lecturer at the University of Otago Wellington.

Dr Jeannie Oliphant - is the Clinical Director at Auckland Sexual Health Service. The service provides gender affirming healthcare across the Auckland region for people over 18 years of age. She is a member of PATHA.

George Parker calls herself a Pākehā queer non-binary trans person. In other words, female cosplaying as male. She is the senior lecturer in health service delivery at the School of Health, Victoria University, Wellington. Parker was also the lead investigator for a project on trans-centred midwifery care funded by the crown agency, the Health Research Council of NZ. This 18-month study concluded in March 2023 and received almost $180,000 in joint government funding. Its final report, “Warming the Whare for trans people and whānau in perinatal care,” was released in July 2023 portal.midwife.org.nz+4op.ac.nz+4The Trans Pregnancy Care Project+4. Veale and Kerekere were on the research team. Apparently its findings are being translated into guidelines and education materials to improve perinatal care.

Parker is a registered midwife and the parent of two children.

Emily Writes - pseudonym of a popular writer who writes about motherhood and mental health from a woke perspective. As such, she is gender affirming to the max and believes that children can be born in the wrong body. She is married to a man, but claims to be openly bisexual and embraces her queer identity.

Okay that’s it for now. I need a shower.