Plus Ça Change

The NZ Herald clings to an ideology crumbling all around the world.

Just when you think the winds have changed, they really haven’t.

Following the revolutionary ruling from the UK Supreme Court that sex is real and binary, optimistic gender criticals marvelled that the New Zealand Herald had finally got the memo. A day after the ruling, the nation’s largest newspaper actually published an opinion piece written by their head of business, Fran O’Sullivan, on why the decision matters for women’s rights.

Writer Katrina Biggs remarked on X that Fran O’Sullivan’s description of Posie Parker as “British pro-women activist” was the first time this phrase had ever been used in mainstream media. “How times have changed,” she wrote.

Except they hadn’t.

Cherubic senior reporter Chelsea Daniels was on the case. Clearly such heretical truths could not be left for the unprogressive proles to take on board. Ten days later Daniels produced an article and podcast on the issue calling for a New Zealand response to the UK Supreme Court ruling.

She did note that a government coalition partner, New Zealand First, had already introduced a members bill to “ensure the biological definition of a man and woman are defined in law.”

But that wasn’t quite the New Zealand response she was after. Daniels wondered aloud whether such a move as the UK ruling could be translated here. Could it? The sex binary? Ridiculous obv because New Zealanders reproduce in a unique and special way yet to be appreciated and recognised by science.

Fortunately there’s never a shortage of academics willing to argue the impossible, and it didn’t take Daniels long to track one down. The University of Waikato would have been a logical place for her to start, given that they harbour the most credentialed trans advocate in the country, Jamie Veale. Veale, who is a senior lecturer at their school of psychology, is also president of the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA), secretary of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), associate editor of the International Journal of Transgender Health and director of the Transgender Health Research Lab, home of the Counting Ourselves project.

But Veale isn’t interviewed for this story. Instead Daniels unearths a woman who is neither a scientist nor a biologist but a professor of sociology and social policy at the same university.

Roen does her best to explain the inexplicable, warbling on about the difference between sex and gender, the mutability of gender and variation in sex characteristics to justify her muddled reasoning that sex is a spectrum. At least I think that’s what she was saying.

“As a society, we might construct gender as being binary, as just being ‘woman’ and ‘man’. We might construct sex as being binary, as just being ‘male bodies’ and ‘female bodies’. But, research recognises very clearly now that’s simply not the case. There isn’t a clear binary except in the social construction.

“For example, in sex bodies, we see a whole spectrum of possibilities of sexes, not just two. We see all kinds of variations of sex characteristics, and these are being talked about much more widely.”

This tortured rationale is made to justify Roen’s claim that the desire to define a woman is driven by the belief there are just two sexes, and “that’s simply not the case.”

Once again intersex people are dragged into the debate even though people with differences of sex development have nothing to do with people who believe they are born in the wrong body or - and this is distressingly common amongst transactivists - men with paraphilias who demand others affirm their fetish.

“For instance, we might have been taught that women have XX chromosomes and men have XY chromosomes. Well, it’s simply not true that the whole population either has XX or XY chromosomes. There is a range of alternatives,” she said.

Honestly, I feel embarrassed for her. Does she not know the basics of reproduction and that mutations do not denote a third, fourth or fifth sex?

Next Daniels attempts to give her story legal gravitas by referencing The Law Commission. The Commission is currently examining the protections in the Human Rights Act for people who are transgender, non-binary, and those who have an innate variation of sex characteristics. I suspect this is included to suggest gender might be given protection and to indicate Daniels has done her research.

But then it’s back to Roen who is right out of the gate by now. She has no hesitation in announcing that this country has a different attitude to trans and gender rights so these views (biological reality) should not be brought to our shores.

Except that’s not true. Repeated surveys on whether New Zealanders support men in women’s sport, for instance, have shown a high level of support for biological reality.

But to Roen what we do here is “special and extraordinary and worthwhile.” We’re recognised internationally, boasts Roen. That’s right, the world knows how special we are. The world! The whole wide world! Truly.

But er - what does she mean exactly? Roen inhales yet another mouthful of gases emanating from her own backside and exhales the predictable progressive grab-bag of justifications.

“Things like research into identity, Māori understandings of gender and sexuality, and sex diversity. “

Crikey, even fellow academic Elizabeth Kerekere doesn’t buy this. In her thesis on the topic, she noted that, although intimacy and gender expression existed among Māori in pre-colonial and post-contact times, there is not yet evidence that Māori had diverse gender identites or that takatāpui played specific roles in pre-colonial times. Takatāpui translates to intimate companion of the same sex.

Also Dr Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku, an Emeritus Professor who spoke at a Genspect conference, argued that word takatāpui was described as having been “commandeered” by the ‘rainbow community’ rather than being ‘gifted’ and that the community misrepresents the word. They use it to refer to numerous gender identities when it meant nothing of the sort.

Finally, there’s our very own Di Landy from Mana Wāhine Kōrero, possibly the only indigenous gender critical group in the world, who wrote scathingly about this trend. It’s a great piece and well worth a read.

“Mana Wāhine Kōrero vehemently opposes this rewriting of our culture, our language, and our history. Many children who fall prey to it will be unable to have tamariki of their own, ending our whakapapa forever. What better way to engineer us extinct as a people?”

The argument, such as it is, winds to a close. And the coup de grace from Roen is?

“So, it would be a real step back for us if we tried to follow in the footsteps of either the US or UK and the directions that they’re currently going.”

Affirming reality is regressive. Affirming made-up gender woo is progressive. Got it. Thanks NZ Herald. This one’s going straight to the pool room.