Bully fronts anti-bullying campaign

An open letter to the Mental Health Foundation about bullying by Pink Shirt Day frontperson Shaneel Lal.

Full video

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To: Mental Health Foundation NZ

From: Garwhoungle

Re: Call it!

Date: 28 April 2023

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Dear Mental Health Foundation of Aotearoa New Zealand,

As advised by your Pink Shirt Day campaign. I am not being a bystander but an Upstander and I am calling out bullying! Of particular concern to you I am calling out bullying by Shaneel Lal who is featured in your anti-bullying video. Lal bullies women and people they don’t agree with according to your own definitions of bullying.

Quick reminder: what is a “TERF”?

Some people have been sucked in to the idea that “TERFs” are hateful people who don’t deserve respect or the same protections as others in a democratic society. Their ideas are apparently so vile that they deserve any bullying they get.

However, any of the following beliefs might get you called a “TERF”. None of these views are fascist or nazi views, and none are hateful. People called “TERFs” include women who have been at the forefront of a range of civil rights campaigns including for gay rights and women's rights–many themselves the targets of extreme bullying for their activism.

Views that get you called a “TERF”

• Believing in the difference between males and females (aka biology).

• Not believing transwomen are literally women (while believing they deserve compassion).

• Wanting decisions to give kids and young people drugs (in this case puberty blockers and hormones) to be based on sound scientific evidence.

• Wanting families considering puberty blockers to have access to a full range of facts, evidence and views about blockers.

• Standing up for the right for women to have single sex spaces including public bathrooms, toilets, changing rooms and rape support groups.

• Wanting women to have the right to compete in single sex sports because we understand the biological advantage of males.

• Wanting women to have the right to freely associate without harassment (as per international human rights agreements).

• Wanting women to have freedom of speech (as per international human rights agreements).

• Believing that lesbians are entitled to define who they are attracted to (i.e. women not men–regardless of how the men identify).

Illustration of ways the term TERF is used as a slur

When examining the use of the term “TERF” locally, it is important to understand the wider context in which the term is used to dehumanise and promote violence against those considered “TERFS”¹.

And our very own local grown example from the Whatever You Do Don’t Let Women Speak demos.

Quick reminder: what is bullying?

Here are some definitions from you, the Mental Health Foundation, on your very own Pink Shirt Day website: (see update below!)

Shaneel Lal’s bullying

Using your own definitions I explain and show examples of how Shaneel Lal engages in bullying.

Bullying is deliberate - harming another person intentionally

Well, Lal is not accidentally saying any of this. Lal is on social media and saying it. And I think Lal is trying to harm those who have disagreements on points of gender. Not that those people are hateful just that they want to have discussions about, say disabled women who want to specify same sex care. Grandmothers worried about their granddaughter’s safety when competing against biological men. Or lesbians who don’t want to be shamed for their exclusive same sex attraction. Or parents concerned about their children being put on untested medicine.

Bullying involves a misuse of power in a relationship

Shaneel Lal has 11.2K followers on twitter, a regular column in the country’s largest circulation newspaper, and has been interviewed on multiple mainstream media channels. Lal has a large reach and uses it to belittle and smear those with different views to himself. Lal does not represent others’ views honestly. Among other examples, Shaneel Lal stated on a Marae interview during the Posie Parker media coverage that the burning of the Rainbow Centre in Tauranga was a transgender hate crime despite a widely available judge's statement stating this was not true.²

Bullying is usually not a one-off - it is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated over time

Below I share just a few examples of what Shaneel says on Twitter. Lal has repeated similar slurs and defamations against people who believe in biological sex, safeguarding of children and retaining women’s sex-based rights multiple times.

Name calling

Well “terfs” is definitely used as a slur that Lal is happy to retweet. How about stupid, bitch, fag and ugly. I don’t know the context of the third tweet but simply using those terms, regardless of how unappetising the comments Shaneel was responding to were, indicates a willingness to use terms of abuse against women in online conversations.

Spreading rumours or lies

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull aka Posy Parker has publicly stated that she abhors naziism. On the whole those called TERFs are feminist, pro-gay, pro-women and progressive. Good riddance Nazi TERF wrongly associates women’s rights activists with some of the people who have traditionally been the most horrific to women. This false association no doubt sparked much of the braying mass that protested against Posy Parker on her visit to New Zealand. Shaneel actively spread rumours which meant many decent people, who are usually in favour of grown women being able to speak their minds, falsely believed they were protesting against a nazi.

Here is a link to Posy Parker’s group’s website: Standing for women. Spoiler: there is no nazism or fascism on the site. There is only a stated belief that we should protect language that allows women to talk about ourselves in meaningful ways.

Excluding people from social activities

Well does this count? I think it does. Lal wants women they disagree with to be silenced in a very unpleasant way.

And this counts. Here, Lal is celebratory about a large braying mob shutting down some woman who wanted to speak. To be clear, the women were not nazis, they were not wanting to remove human rights for transpeople, they wanted to speak about issues that affect women. At this rally Posy Parker was assaulted and there was at least one other assault where a woman punched in the face. There has been no condeming by Lal of either act. Rather they have minimised the violence against women.

This video features video footage from the protest that Lal is victorious about.

Final thoughts

So what’s up Mental Health Foundation? I don’t think anyone should be bullied; that includes the people I agree with and the people I disagree with. Why is this bully part of your anti-bullying campaign? Is there something I have missed? Is there some reason why these instances of bullying, according to your own definitions, are in fact something else? Or does Shaneel Lal get off scot free because you have decided that one group of people in New Zealand deserves any bullying that they receive? And if so, how does this align with the stated aims of Pink Shirt Day? Aims I could not agree with more.

Yours sincerely,

Garwhoungle

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Contact:

Pink Shirt day

• pinkshirtday@mentalhealth.org.nz

• Public relations: 021 998 949

• Pink Shirt Day contact form

Mental Health Foundation

• Mental Health Foundation contact us form

Consider ccing all letters to Shaun Robinson, Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foundation to ensure we know he’s made aware of the situation.

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I and others have been blocked from the Mental Health Foundation’s Twitter feed for pointing out Shaneel’s behaviour that appears so at odds with an anti-bullying campaign. Others have rung to express their concern to no avail.

1. See more examples at https://terfisaslur.com/

2. “The suggestion has been made that this was a hate crime within the popular parlance, if not necessarily the statutory definitions. The reality however, I am satisfied, is far from that. Neither of these men have been proven in my view on the available material to have been engaged in anything that could reasonable be described as involving a hate crime. What happened here was two men who are severely affected by their mental conditions, which are similar, that has led them to undertake something for which they are mentally competent to properly plead to the charge laid, and to come before the Court for sentencing in the ordinary way, but they are a long way from fully mentally capable in the sense that most people would consider.” from NZ District Court ruling: https://www.districtcourts.govt.nz/assets/secure/2023-02-21/d237647a0a/2022-NZDC-23665_R-v-Burgess.pdf